Thursday's edition of NPR's "All Things Considered" featured a program that discussed how scientists who believed in Intelligent Design are held in general disregard by their peers. The program began with the cautionary tale of Richard Sternberg, a staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health. Sternberg, the editor of a scientific journal loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, published a peer-reviewed article by Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design, an idea which Sternberg himself believes is fatally flawed.

"Why publish it?" Sternberg says. "Because evolutionary biologists are thinking about this. So I thought that by putting this on the table, there could be some reasoned discourse. That's what I thought, and I was dead wrong."

Apparently, Sternberg believed that both sides would present their facts and there would be intelligent and logical discussion on the matter. What Dr Sternberg has not considered, though, is that, while there is evidence for the theory of evolution, there is no evidence for Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is based on religious mythology. Religion is based on faith. The very most proponents of intelligent design could present in their behalf would be "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." That would not be conducive to a reasoned discourse. The only weapons Intelligent Design proponents have is that there are "holes" in the theory of evolution. Disproving one theory does not prove a contradicting myth.

I feel for Sternberg. He probably thought he was doing a reasonable thing. But he did not stop to think that there can be no middle ground between faith and science. One depends on believing something in the absence of proof; the other demands that a theory fits the available proof.