Diane Carman says:

Quick: Define miosis and mitosis. Explain mitochondrion and chloroplast. Now briefly, what's RNA?

The biology teachers assembled at the University of Colorado last week for a seminar on teaching evolution know most Americans are clueless about basic science.

They find our ignorance exasperating.

But it also explains a lot.

With most people content with being scientifically illiterate, it's no wonder so many believe intelligent design is a scientific theory.

It unequivocally is not.

It's a religious belief, a political issue or an abomination destined to cripple Americans in global scientific achievement, depending on your point of view. But it is not a legitimate counterpart to the theory of evolution.

She's hit on a central reason why Intelligent Design creationism has acquired a popular following in the US—good old-fashioned home-grown ignorance. It's more than that, though. I expect that in the case of some of pious philosophers and right-wing con artists of the Discovery Institute, they would be able to answer those questions at the top (she set the bar low…those are extraordinarily basic questions in cell biology), and could probably recite some other simple facts about cells, too. In those cases, we also have to recognize that there are people with an ideological axe to grind, who have consciously gone out to acquire some superficial knowledge about the discipline so they can destroy it. You can't get more blatant than Jonathan Wells on that one.

"Father's [Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me to enter a PhD program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle."

One part of the recipe is a set of leaders who aim to demolish a scientific principle, not because it is wrong, but because they don't like its consequences. Another part is a citizenry (and politicians) sufficiently ignorant that they don't recognize the con job the leaders pull on them. The US has both.

Carman's column is a good read that makes an important point strongly, but there is one little piece to which I object.

…some at the seminar suggested that creationism or its politically correct descendant, intelligent design, should be taught in social studies, history or philosophy class along with other creation ideas such as those of the Iroquois, the Chinese and the Egyptians.

As a biologist, I admit to sometimes thinking that would be a fair compromise. But as a professor at a liberal arts institution who respects his colleagues in the social sciences, history, and philosophy…well, that's not nice. Intelligent Design creationism is a poor and artificial philosophy with no respectable history, and old school creationism is junk religion. They don't belong in a serious curriculum.

And yeah, that is elitism. If elitism means wanting all of my compatriots to be educated and informed, and expecting that policy will be set by those who actually know something about the subject, then I'm guilty.