Your OFFICIAL program to the Scopes II Kansas Monkey Trial

To opponents, it's a coy act. Most of ID's leading lights are devout Christians. Earlier this year, the Pitch put it directly to one of the movement's local point men, University of Missouri-Kansas City professor of medicine William Harris: Did he believe the "designer" was the Christian God?

Harris admitted that, for him, that was true. But intelligent design itself had no opinion on the matter, he said. "I know Muslims who equate that designer with Allah," he told us.

Which is why Kansans are paying to bring Mustafa Akyol to Topeka.

Harris included Akyol on a list of witnesses whom he wanted brought in to testify on behalf of intelligent design in this week's hearings.

Harris says he hasn't heard of BAV. Told of the group's harassment of bioligists in Turkey and evolution's defeat there, he replies, "Great! Congratulations! I mean, that is the point, once people start to see science more objectively."

Edis says there's little question why Akyol is on the list of witnesses.

"It's perfectly bizarre, in that Akyol really has nothing to contribute in terms of substance to the whole thing," Edis says. "I think it's fairly blatantly obvious the only reason he's coming in is to present the case that this isn't just a Christian thing."

"It's stupid," Sayin adds. "Akyol's not a scientist at all. He's just an activist."

But imagine the pride that Akyol must feel. (We wanted to ask him about it directly, but Akyol didn't answer our e-mail.) After getting a leg up from American creationists, BAV sparked a revolution in its own country and is now so successful that it's been asked to send an emissary to return the favor.

So let's review.

In order to make up its mind over what sort of biological concepts should be taught to Kansas schoolchildren, the state's school board is using taxpayer money to fly in a nonscientist associated with a group that terrorized Turkish professors who dared question that the proliferation of life on Earth was a miracle of Allah.

Was it just six years ago that the state's school board put us through the same thing, minus the Turkish connection?

Back then, board member Steve Abrams of Arkansas City boldly disregarded the science teaching recommendations that a standards committee had made and instead moved to adopt creationist language he'd cribbed from a California Christian group. Before the world's laughter had even had time to settle down, it seemed, incensed voters tossed out several conservative board members in the next election and the evolution-centered teaching standards were restored.

But when conservatives regained control of the school board last fall, there seemed no question that, once again, Abrams and his allies would be determined to deal evolution a blow. Several things are different this time, though.

In the past six years, the intelligent-design movement has made gradual gains advancing its agenda, which was spelled out rather nakedly in a document that surfaced in 1999. The "wedge strategy," penned by members of the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think tank in Seattle, detailed a long-term plan that would introduce ID concepts through a concerted media campaign. Beginning with simple ideas that sounded logical -- that structures in some species seemed too complex to have been created through random processes -- ID would be like the "thin edge of a wedge" that would eventually overwhelm Darwinism and transform society.

Meanwhile, Abrams has learned his lesson from the debacle six years ago. Once again, science standards are on the table in the state, and a committee of 25 scientists and educators has delivered a set of teaching standards that sensibly recommend the teaching of evolution for the school's children. A minority group of eight members of the standards committee, led by UMKC intelligent-design advocate William Harris, has forwarded a different set of standards critical of evolution.

Guessing which set of standards Abrams and the other five members of the school board's conservative majority will adopt is the easiest game in the state. There's simply no question that the board is eager to adopt Harris' evolution-bashing standards.

So what's the holdup? Abrams seems to be delaying the inevitable because he wants to avoid repeating the controversy of 1999, when he acted too boldly for the taste of Kansas voters.

This time, he wants there to be at least the appearance that evolution is getting a fair hearing.

So Abrams has called for exactly that -- a hearing. Over three days this week, some of intelligent design's biggest names will be in Topeka speaking to a subcommittee of the board -- Abrams and two of his most conservative colleagues, Connie Morris of St. Francis and Kathy Martin of Clay Center. Then, next week, Abrams will give evolution its turn. (Scientists are boycotting the event, though -- more on that later.)

Naturally, when word of Abrams' plan was first announced, the hearings were immediately compared to the famous 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial in Dayton, Tennessee. And the analogy fits.

John T. Scopes was a substitute science teacher who agreed to take part in an attempt to overturn a Tennessee anti-evolution law. There was little doubt about his guilt -- he admitted to teaching evolution in defiance of the law and eventually was fined $100. But everyone involved had no illusions about what Scopes' prosecution was really about -- a chance for pro- and anti-evolution forces to debate the theory in a showdown between two of the country's most high-profile figures, lawyer Clarence Darrow and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. As memorialized in the play and movie Inherit the Wind, the trial's high point was Bryan's day on the witness stand, when Darrow called him to testify as an expert on the Bible. Although the testimony was ultimately thrown out by Judge John Raulston, Bryan's defenses of some of the more mythical stories from the Bible was high theater.