Inside the newsletter, sure enough, was an article attacking evolution.

Sigh. I'll state the obvious: Evolution does not equal atheism. Sure, some people who accept evolution as the bedrock principle underlying the biological sciences are atheists. Others are Christians. Some are Jews. Still others may be Buddhists and so on. Many, many religious people - including lots of Christians - accept the reality of evolution. (One of them is a guy Perkins might have heard of: Pope Benedict XVI.)

The FRC is angry because the National Academy of Sciences and the Institutes of Medicine, two of the nation's most prestigious scientific organizations, have issued a new publication calling for better instruction about evolution in the nation's public schools.

The booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, doesn't hold back in branding creationism a religiously-grounded concept that has no place in public schools. To combat a publication produced by the nation's leading scientific experts, FRC dispatched Tony Perkins, its president, who is former Louisiana state legislator, and Peter Sprigg, FRC vice president for policy. Neither man is a scientist.

Science, Evolution and Creationism, the FRC asserts, equates old-style, young-Earth creationism with "intelligent design" (ID).

Actually, the publication does no such thing, although it points out that both ideas are ultimately tied to religious views of origins that have failed to produce any valid scientific research.

All of this makes me wonder: What exactly does FRC believe about creationism these days? If Perkins is so offended that the National Academy conflated creationism with ID, does this mean Perkins and the FRC oppose traditional creationism? Do Perkins and the FRC now reject creationist claims that fundamentalists have pushed for years, mainly that the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old, that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time and that the Grand Canyon was created by swirling waters retreating from Noah's flood?

I would like to know the answers to these questions - but no one at FRC will answer them. About this time last year, I appeared on CNN's "Anderson Cooper" with Charmaine Yoest, then a highly placed FRC staff member. My suspicion is that Yoest and many others at the FRC are old-style creationists who want a lot more than ID taught in the schools, so I asked her several times how old she believes the Earth to be. She refused to answer.

For me, this matter is not theoretical. I have two children in public schools. If Perkins, Sprigg, Yoest and the rest of the FRC gang want to change what my children are taught in science classes, I figure I have a right to know exactly what those changes will be.

Our planet cannot simultaneously be 6,000 years old and five billion years old. So I'm asking: Hey, FRC, which is it going to be in the classroom? The fact that the FRC doesn't want to answer me says a lot.

One more thought on this: Some scientists do occasionally believe things that turn out to be wrong. The great thing about science is that it has self-correcting features built into it.

Hundreds of years ago, some scientists believed maggots spontaneously generated on rotten meat. In 1668, Francesco Redi tested this with a classic experiment using three pieces of meat. One was wrapped in a piece of paper, one was left out in the open and the third was covered with cheesecloth. Flies could easily lay eggs on the open piece and on the cheesecloth, resulting in maggots. But they could not reach the covered piece, which remained free of maggots. Other scientists were able to duplicate the experiment and got the same results. So much for spontaneous generation.

If advocates of ID or any other form of creationism believe they have a sound scientific argument, there is a mechanism and a forum they can use: the double-blind experiment and the peer-reviewed journal. In other words, the tiny number of scientists who agree with Perkins on evolution should stop whining and start emulating Francesco Redi.