Tempest, meet Teapot.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Heavens, the uproar over President Bush's remarks about teaching the theory of intelligent design makes it seem like he issued an executive order changing the name of the course from biology to Bible-ology. Theocracy, here we come.

Only he didn't say anything even remotely so outrageous. In a lighthearted give-and-take with a small group of Texas newspaper reporters, the president was asked about his personal views on the theory of intelligent design, which religious activists advocate should be taught in U.S. schools as an alternative to evolutionary biology.

Bush responded that "both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about." When pressed to clarify whether he accepted intelligent design as a valid alternative to evolution, Bush artfully dodged. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

Bush is a born-again Christian, and it would be unsurprising if he believes the theory of intelligent design is every bit as valid as the theory of evolution. However, speaking as the president, he said no such thing.

The official translation of Bush's ambiguous pronouncements came from his own White House science adviser, John Marburger. It's folly to think that in the most disciplined, on-message administration in modern history, Marburger was not speaking directly for the president when he said "intelligent design is not a scientific concept."

Marburger tried to banish any confusion when he added that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology."

The president, Marburger explained, was suggesting that intelligent design be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes. It's entirely appropriate to discuss the social origins of religious conflicts with science. Such conflicts have occurred throughout history.

Teachers could introduce the issue with a preamble that said something like: "This science class teaches evolutionary biology as pioneered by Charles Darwin. Within American society - though rarely seen outside the United States - there are some devout Christians who question the theory of evolution because it conflicts with the biblical account of creation. They periodically try to force schools to teach faith-based alternatives to evolution called creationism, or, more recently, intelligent design. However, these religious approaches don't qualify as science curricula, so we will explore them briefly only in the context of their social relationship to the scientific study of evolution. Please open your books to Chapter 1, 'The Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle.' '

The appeal of intelligent design to latter-day creationists is easy to understand. Intelligent design makes the reasonable observation that natural selection - the underpinning of Darwin's theory of evolution - doesn't adequately account for the extraordinary complexity of life. Such mind-boggling intricacies, proponents argue, could have come about only as the result of an intentional guiding force - an intelligent designer. Yes, of course they mean God.

What is equally mind-boggling is that anyone finds fault with evolutionary biology because it can't yet explain how every organism in the known universe came into existence. Scientific knowledge is, ahem, still evolving. For scientists, it's cheating to fill in every blank with "God did it."