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He never saw it coming. Just like a scene in a horror movie.

One minute, West Jordan Republican Sen. Chris Buttars was preparing to berate the state school board for not explicitly endorsing an "intelligent design" course in Utah's classrooms.

The next, he was attacked by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

"A woman wrote me an e-mail this morning about four pages on it," he said earlier this week. "I don't have a clue what that is."

He since has learned the pasta deity is a Web-page parody (http://www.venganza.org) concocted by Bobby Henderson, a 25-year-old Oregon State University physics graduate, to mock those who support teaching intelligent design as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

Henderson posted an open letter to the Kansas School Board on his Web site earlier this summer when the board was considering allowing criticism of evolution. In that letter, Henderson insisted the Kansas School Board give equal classroom time to a theory that the universe and all life within it were created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Utah Board of Education members are expected Friday to approve a position statement on teaching evolution developed by a 25-member committee made up of science educators from high schools and universities.

The statement endorses evolution "as a unifying concept in science," consistent with the stand taken by the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The board says evolution will continue to be taught in Utah schools as a necessary part of science classroom instruction.

Buttars, nonetheless, will be on hand to argue that intelligent design should be taught. Last week, he repeated his threat to sponsor a bill requiring that intelligent design be part of the curriculum. He also said he may work to get the issue on next year's ballot as a public referendum despite Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s recent assertion that intelligent design has no place in a high school science class.

Proponents of intelligent design question the Darwinian theory of evolution, which states that natural selection acting on random mutation is the primary mechanism by which life forms have evolved. Instead, they say, an "intelligent cause" formed the universe.

Robert L. Crowther, spokesman for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, emphasizes that "intelligent design theory does not claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause. Nor does it claim that the intelligent cause must be a 'divine being' or a 'higher power' or an 'all-powerful force.' "

But one of its senior fellows does.

William Dembski, who also heads the Center for Theology and Science at Louisville, Ky.'s Southern Seminary, argues in his book, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, that the designer must be the God that Christians worship.

By Buttars' own definition, "it means that, first off, the organized universe, as complex and balanced as it is, is impossible to have happened by chance. There had to be an intelligent force that put this all together. End of story."

As evidence in support of intelligent design, Buttars offered, "Look at yourself. I totally believe in God. Look at the universe."

So, the designer is God?

We don't know, Buttars said. "It took an intelligent force. Don't put that word on me. If someone says it's God, I'll just grin."

Henderson already has people grinning.

Parts of his plea to the Kansas School Board read: "We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by him"; and, "If the intelligent design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith."

Buttars complains that critics of intelligent design say it doesn't use science. "They call it a faith-based system, which they use to downplay it."

Intelligent design theory

Intelligent causes exist and their past action can be detected in the natural world today.

When intelligent agents act, they tend to produce certain types of information in the objects they design.

We can describe the type of information we see consistently being created by intelligent agents in the world today. We can then look in nature to detect that sort of information to ask if intelligence was at work in the past to create an object.

Intelligent design does not study the designer. It studies objects to determine if they were designed or not.

Source: The Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture