Maybe, rather than teaching Utah students about intelligent design, the public schools need to teach them about the scientific method. Perhaps if that concept were better understood, the latest battle in the culture wars - evolution by natural selection vs. intelligent design - would not be a battle at all.

We're guessing here, but it seems that Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. grasps this insight, or something like it. In his monthly news conference on KUED, he said, "I would expect my kids in science class to be instructed in those things that are somewhat quantifiable and based on thorough and rigorous empirical research."

The governor added that it would be fine if intelligent design were one of many creation theories discussed in a philosophy or sociology class, but not, he seemed to say, in a biology class.

We think the governor is on the right track here.

Evolution by natural selection, or Darwinism, or whatever you choose to call it, is just a theory. But then, so are electricity and our solar system.

All of these theories are regarded as true because the physical, observable, reproducible evidence for them is overwhelming. If science reaches a point where the physical evidence is better explained by different theories, then they will supplant the current ones. That's how science works. That is how we got from an Earth-centered cosmology to a Sun-centered one, from Newton's physics to Einstein's, and from creationism to Darwinism.

That said, there are limits to science. Beyond them, you've got to rely on something else.

Which is why many people have no problem embracing both evolution by natural selection and a universe created by God. In this way of thinking, the Creator lays down evolution by natural selection as the means that leads to humankind.

Our beef with the crowd pushing intelligent design is that they are deliberately confusing science with non-science and manufacturing a scientific controversy where none exists. The debate over intelligent design has been invented by the Discovery Institute, an ideologically driven think tank which has cleverly shifted the discussion of evolution vs. creationism into an argument about academic freedom.

But within mainstream science, there is no debate. Evolution by natural selection is universally accepted because the evidence for it is overwhelming, and it would be wrong to teach Utah public school students otherwise.