The pending proposal from state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah schools be required to teach what he calls "divine design" alongside the established processes of evolutionary biology is, of course, wrong. Worse than that, it is unoriginal.

Except for his new label for an idea called "intelligent design" -- itself a euphemism for the oxymoron "creation science" -- the proposal from the West Jordan Republican is an echo of battles that are already being fought in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and Alabama, battles that consume a great deal of the oxygen that ought to be expended solving real problems, from health care to poverty to war.

The need to teach science from the firm basis of evolutionary theory is well established. The fact that we don't do it very well is also established. That failure explains why intelligent grown-ups such as Buttars condemn evolutionary theory for saying things it does not say and meaning things it does not mean.

Evolution does not hold that people "come from monkeys," and not just because that would be an insult to monkeys.

Evolution does not suggest that there is no God or that humans are not somehow special in the eyes of that God. It does not lead intelligent people to abandon morality or to despair that they are but worthless cosmic accidents.

Evolutionary theory is a scientific framework for explaining that which can be observed in the natural world using our basic senses and our most advanced instruments. Evolutionary theory is not, and makes no claim to be, a philosophical or theological explanation for why we are here or how we should live.

Any unpleasantness is a result of the fight that is picked over and over by confused people who don't see that science and faith serve very different, but equally necessary, aspects of human searching.

For their part, scientists could do a better job of knowing and saying that, while evolutionary theory explains the how of life, its ability to explain the why is very limited. For many good people, religious faith fills that void.

Forcing religion to stand in for science does no favor to religion, to science, or to our children. How wonderful it would be if Utah understood that.