In June, Governor Brad Henry vetoed the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act,” a piece of legislature authored by Sen. James Williamson and infamous fundamentalist Rep. Sally Kern.

If passed, this bill would have, among other things, guaranteed that “students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions.”

You read that correctly.

Answer on a test that the universe began 6,000 years ago with a few words from the mouth of an invisible, magical entity rather than 13.73 billion years ago with the expansion of energy from a gravitational singularity? A-plus!

So it might have been if Gov. Henry hadn’t interceded. I’d like to tell Henry: Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and God bless you.

And to those of you who weren’t kicking up a fuss about the bill or at least complaining about it on your blogs: What were you thinking?

This isn’t the first time Kern and those like her have tried to insinuate superstitious nonsense into the curriculum of our state’s children, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Some of you may be too busy to follow each shot fired in the battle between the proponents of intelligent design ¬≠— the nom de guerre behind which creationism usually hides when its proponents seek to incorporate it into educational curricula — and its detractors.

This is fair enough, I suppose, though I hope you’re busy with something more productive than World of Warcraft.

To the rest of you, those who didn’t object to Williamson and Kern’s bill because you approved of it: you’re wrong.

Intelligent design doesn’t belong in schools for two reasons.

Firstly, it’s not science. Secondly, it’s not true.

Intelligent design proponents usually promote their cause by attempting to pick holes in the theory of evolution and then suggesting their own idea as the default alternative. And I do say “idea” advisedly because intelligent design is not even a theory.

A theory is a framework of propositions formulated to explain a phenomenon. A theory must be predictive, and it must be testable. It must be capable of being disproven.

Intelligent design makes no predictions, and is so amorphously defined that it is effectively unable to be proven false.

It is not even truly explanatory, as it creates the problem of the origin of the designer, an agent necessarily more complex than that which it has created.

Scientifically, intelligent design is worthless.

Intelligent design proponents frequently refer to the elaborateness and complexity of organic structures as evidence for design.

Breathtaking elaborateness, yes -- but nothing that isn’t predicted by evolutionary theory. Evolution accounts for the numerous design flaws we see in organic structures such as the human body, which intelligent design cannot do without a bit of contortion.

Take, for example, the fact that the urethra runs directly through the prostate.

Surely an entity capable of aligning the 100 billion cells of the human brain would know better than to make such an oversight. And a major oversight at that — just ask any man over sixty.

Observations in genetics, zoology, botany, microbiology, epidemiology, paleontology and ecology all affirm evolution’s validity with mountains of evidence, while not a single paper confirming intelligent design has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Intelligent design — according to the overwhelming preponderance of evidence — is nonsense.

There are, of course, many more points in favor of design (and counterpoints to match them) than I could possibly put down here, so I encourage you to do your own research.

Talkorigins.org is an excellent resource for those interested in the creation/evolution debate and includes many links to both evolutionist and creationist websites.

Even a cursory examination will lead inescapably to the conclusion that intelligent design has no more place in our schools than does alchemy.

And, to those of you who were too busy to notice when the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act was put forward: next time one of Sally Kern’s ilk proposes a similar piece of rubbish, take notice and get to angry letter writing.

We shouldn’t have to depend on the governor to defend Oklahoma’s children from fundamentalist indoctrination.

Zac Smith is a University College sophomore. His column will appear every other Monday.