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My column about intelligent design a couple of weeks ago sparked lots of responses from readers.

One of those opposing my claim that ID is based on ignorance or fraud was once an aide to President Richard Nixon. I have adversaries in high places! That includes our current president, George W. Bush, who has advocated teaching ID in public schools.

As I said in my earlier column, there isn't a scintilla of evidence to support ID. The main thrust of those who back ID seems to be an emotional need to knock down Darwin's concept of evolution through natural selection.

They cannot accept the idea that life arose spontaneously from non-living chemicals. They abhor the idea that we human beings were not specially created separately and apart from the rest of the animals. It is anathema to them to think that we are a species of primate ape.

But that's what the evidence shows! Whether it's fossil bones, DNA studies of genomes, behavioral studies by anthropologists and primatologists such as Jane Goodall, all the evidence supports Darwin's concept of evolution through natural selection. All the ranting and finger-wagging in the world cannot overcome the real, concrete, observable, measurable evidence that has been amassed over the past 150-some years.

What do the ID people have to counter this evidence? Nothing except their claims that life is too complex to have arisen without an Intelligent Designer to create it.

And what does that statement tell us about life and its origins? Nothing!

ID boils down to sheer ignorance. It claims that we can't know how life began because it's too complicated for our poor little brains to understand. Don't ask questions. Be content with the idea that an Intelligent Designer did it all and we cannot, ever, understand how it was done.

That's the philosophy of the Spanish Inquisition! Don't ask questions. Accept what you are told. Don't try to teach anything else to our children.

Look at Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist. When the citizens of Dover, Pa., voted to throw out the school board that wanted to put ID into the schools' science classes, Robertson told them, "I'd like to say this to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected Him from your city."

This is a Christian?

The letters attacking my earlier column made the claim that "Standard Darwinism is atheistic macroevolution that is mathematically impossible." Wrong. Inert chemicals do combine to form organic matter: that's been demonstrated since the 1950s. It won't be long before living cells are created in a laboratory.

One writer defined science as "any department of systematized knowledge, art or skill, such as the science of boxing."

That may be a dictionary definition of the word "science," but here we are talking about science as practiced by scientists, not prize fighters. Science is an organized search for knowledge, for understanding the world in which we live.

Science depends on asking questions and seeking answers. Science deals with observation, measurement, and testing every observation and measurement to make certain it is valid. Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University, testified against ID in a hearing before the Dover board of education:

"If you invoke a non-natural cause, a spirit force or something like that and I decide to test it, I have no way to test it. I can't order it from a biological supply house, I can't grow it in my laboratory. And that means that (ID) ... even if (it) were correct ... really wouldn't be part of science."

In science, all ideas are subject to test. Darwin's been tested since the 1860s, and has become the bedrock of biological knowledge.

What do ID's supporters offer in refutation of Darwin? Assertions such as, "There would be no science without intelligent design." Or, "Belief in the theory of evolution requires great faith to fill huge scientific voids."

Scientists don't depend on faith to fill voids. Scientists go out and gather EVIDENCE to fill those scientific voids. Science encourages the asking of questions; ID shuts off any possible questioning by claiming that we're not bright enough to understand.

One of the weirder statements was: "(ID's supporters) are not introducing religion or philosophy. Quite to the contrary, it is the evolutionists who introduce philosophy by defining science as only that which can be empirically validated within the naturalistic world. Naturalism ... is a philosophy."

I find that statement close to hypocrisy. The goal of ID's supporters, it seems to me, is to get Darwin out of the classroom — or at least to undermine the teaching of Darwinian evolution to our school children. They are determined to remove Darwin from the schools.

Honest, God-fearing Christians fear that if Darwin is right, and we humans arose as a result of natural processes, then the entire Christian faith is in doubt, including the belief that Christ died on the cross to redeem us.

Can Christianity and Darwin co-exist? Just about every scientist I know believes they can. Science is trying to understand the natural world. Christianity is trying to define humanity's relationship to God, and to set a code of ethical conduct based on that relationship.

But there is a major difference between the two. Science changes. Scientific knowledge is never complete, always subject to revision in the light of new evidence. To the scientist, truth is a goal that is sought after, but never attained.

Religion is based on authority. Religious believers know they are right, and to doubt any aspect of their faith is to put their souls in danger.

Religion does not change — not easily, at least. It took the Vatican more than three centuries to admit the Church may have been wrong to silence Galileo.

Human minds have puzzled over our origins since time immemorial. Religion began, in part, as an attempt to understand who we are and how we got here. Science is a much more fruitful method of investigating those questions.

ID does not belong in science classrooms. It is being pushed by zealots who want to see Darwin discredited. They have no scientific evidence to support their view, so they resort to specious arguments.

They are wrong.

Ben Bova's latest futuristic novel is "Mercury," part of his acclaimed Grand Tour series. Dr. Bova's Web site address is www.benbova.net.