The focus on intelligent design has, paradoxically, obscured something else: genuine scientific controversies about evolution that abound. In just about every field there are challenges to one established theory or another. The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. "Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat," you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: "See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms." And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

William Dembski, one of the most vocal supporters of intelligent design, notes that he provoked Thomas Schneider, a biologist, into a response that Dr. Dembski characterizes as "some hair-splitting that could only look ridiculous to outsider observers." What looks to scientists - and is - a knockout objection by Dr. Schneider is portrayed to most everyone else as ridiculous hair-splitting.

In short, no science. Indeed, no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.

To formulate a competing hypothesis, you have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be.

And that bit of intellectual dishonesty, claiming that they don't have a specific "designer" in mind, provokes Dennett's ultimate question: "Is intelligent design a hoax?" The answer is that it most certainly is: it's a classic example of bait-and-switch, the technique beloved by hucksters of all kind.

Scott Atran points out one of the dangers:

As Americans rose against England, inspired by Benjamin Franklin's credo that "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God," English historian Edward Gibbon wrote Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, attributing Rome's collapse to religious infection by Christianity. Ever since, most politicians and ordinary people have continued to praise God whereas most scientists and secularly-minded scholars have continued to bemoan religion's influence and predict its demise. If anything, religious fervor is increasing across the world, including in the United States, the world's most economically powerful and scientifically advanced society. An underlying reason is that science treats humans and their intentions only as incidental elements in the universe, whereas in religion — as for people generally — they are central. Personal gods speak to people's problems. But in purging intentional causes from science, including supernatural agents, great progress has been made in understanding nature and helping people, as with modern medicine. Those who preach intelligent design would reintroduce intention into science and so reduce science's capacity to serve. For society, that is an unintelligent design.

As many have often noted, science is a tool, it can be abused and misused, but the scientific method has not only been the most powerful tool humanity has ever devised for uncovering facts about the natural world, on the whole, it has been the most tool which has benefitted us the most as well.