I don't want to, myself, and I read this op-ed by James and Cheri Bogart and just cringed. That it is terribly bad and grossly wrong is just to be expected of a pro-Intelligent Design creationism article, but these two just set themselves up for a terrible and embarrassing fall. Their first paragraph pompously announces,

We, as two trained, field experienced scientists, wish to clarify these issues.

They then proceed to demonstrate their incompetence with a serious of trivially false claims. They want to claim that there is a simple, strict hierarchy of legitimacy for scientific ideas, from hypothesis to theory to law, and they just mangle every concept on the way.

If public humiliation and absurd pratfalls make you squirm, don't read the link above, and stop right now.

First, look at how they define "theory".

A theory is an assumption based on limited information (also known as a conjecture).

Thus a “theory” is not a fact and is not even close to being one.

Honestly, this does not correspond to any definition of the term I've ever read. I suspect it came from the creationist dictionary.

• Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. (Gould)
• In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." (Futuyma)

The Bogart's first paragraph is a declaration of their competence and authority, and their second paragraph is a collection of bone-headedly wrong definitions that belie the first. I read that and thought to myself, "they can't possibly have actually written that, can they?" and re-read it a few times. It's unbelievable. And it gets far, far worse.

If humans evolved from the lower primates (chimps, monkeys and gorillas), then where are the “in-between” specimens? Where are the chimps that can use verbal language? Where are the chimps that can reason well enough to negotiate the price of an item? Where is the chimp that understands sarcasm and jokes? All of these intermediate specimens are missing from the evidence. Yes, we can find fossils of something that looks similar to both humans and the lower primates, but if they were superior to the chimps, then why are they gone while the chimps remain?

That's right, these two "trained, field experienced scientists" have just committed the infamous "Why are there still monkeys?" error. It requires a complete failure to grasp the simplest concept of evolution to push this idea. It's been shot down on Talk.Origins, and even the creationists at Answers in Genesis recognize its fallacy. And the claim that there are no transitional forms is simply a bald-faced lie.

They can't stop there, either…they drag out the tired Second Law of Thermodynamics argument.

Couple this serious gap in the data to support evolutionary theory with the fact that the theory itself actually violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That law basically states that all things tend to move from an ordered condition to a disordered condition. Evolutionary theory requires that a “more ordered” being be the offspring of “less ordered” beings, which indeed opposes the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This is a misrepresentation and misuse of the law; if their interpretation was correct, we could never have babies, and we could never grow and develop. There's a FAQ on this one, too.

After that long interlude in Bizarro World, our two brave authors then reassert their authority.

We are both scientists and we both are Christians who lean toward the ID theory as being more plausible because there are just too many flaws in the data used to support evolutionary theory. Many scientists have been misleading people by offering conjecture as fact. [talk about self-fulfilling prophecy…pzm] The Dover school board is therefore quite justified in its efforts to offer both theories in its district’s classrooms.

James Bogart is a part-time college instructor and Cheri Bogart is a biologist.