Day 1: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Or God didn't.

No one really knows for sure -- scientifically, that is.

But a well-organized and well-funded group of scientists and politically astute Christian conservatives is trying to change that, to turn faith into science. Their idea -- a hypothesis that life is too complex to have evolved randomly, that at the molecular level it shows the hand of an intelligent designer, be it the Judeo-Christian God, Buddha, Supreme Being, alien or whatever -- is the latest salvo in our country's culture wars.

It is called Intelligent Design. Whether the theory is science or religion depends, to a great degree, on your political orientation, how deeply you identify with a church or how much training in molecular biology you have.

And it will soon be affecting Florida and a school board near you. A St. Petersburg Times poll in December showed that 58 percent of the Pinellas County school parents surveyed wanted to see Intelligent Design taught in public schools alongside evolution.

"Schools are always at the heart of politics in terms of curriculum, because that's where people put their hopes and fears," said Candy Olson, a Hillsborough County School Board member. "It's understandable. People feel like if schools are changing, the culture will change."

The battle over Intelligent Design has pitted scientist against scientist, teachers against teachers. The people of faith want their theory on the origin of life defined as science, while the people of science want it defined as faith.

And it begs the questions: Isn't the idea of God's creation compatible with the idea of evolution? Why can't public school science students be allowed to hear about both of them? Are we truly on the edge of a scientific revolution that will replace evolution theory, or are we merely riding the crest of a theistic political wave? And where does this leave Charles Darwin and his 150-year-old theory?

Day 2: And God said, "Let there be disagreement over how this all started."

Here is a primer on Intelligent Design, widely known as ID.

Unlike creationism, or even its successor scientific creationism, ID doesn't directly address the belief that God created the universe. It instead attempts to go toe-to-toe with the science behind Darwin and offer an alternative explanation.

There are basically three ways that life -- plants, animals, microscopic organisms or people -- came about on this planet, and you can take your choice. We could exist by random chance, the idea that our molecules smacked together in just the right way for no rhyme or reason. We're just a happy accident.

Or you can buy Darwin's scientifically tested theory (albeit one that is incomplete on its own without modern genetics and other complementary knowledge developed over the past century and a half) that humans are built the way we are because of natural selection: that genetic-level changes in organisms produced variations in species, and that those species that changed for the better got to live and reproduce while the others didn't. Evolution explains biological change over time; it makes no claims about the origins of those life forms in the first place.

The third explanation is ID. Its scientists and believers look at evidence -- some of it at the microbiological level -- and see the hand of an "intelligent designer," someone or something that put all living things together in a precise way.

At its simplest, ID strives to find scientific evidence of that unseen hand. It has not yet made a case that mainstream science has accepted or published widely in its peer-reviewed journals. But it is trying, arguing for instance that the explosion of new life forms in the pre-Cambrian period are too quick and too plentiful to be explained by natural selection. Or that the flagellum "motors" that power bacteria are too staggeringly complex to have evolved under Darwinian terms.

For their part, critics say ID is just creationism dressed up in a new gown, that it implies God's hand, and since many of ID's scientists are Christians, it is a Christian God's hand.

Day 3: Then God said, "Let the nature of life be debated, not by scientists, but by politicians and judges."

Dr. Margaret Barthel, the head of the science department at Freedom High School in New Tampa and a biology teacher, remembers an encounter that took place years ago at another school that demonstrates the powerful stereotypes at play in the ID debate. A parent of one of her students came to her and told her she felt sorry for her "being an atheist."

Barthel is actually a practicing Catholic who describes herself as a "devout Christian." She shook her head at the idea that science and God cannot co-exist.

"Who's to say who created the first molecule or how we all started?" she said.

On a recent Wednesday, Barthel sat in the library of the middle school next door to Freedom High while her advanced biology students judged science fair projects. She said she felt strongly about speaking out on the subject, despite the fact that it is politically charged, in order to set the record straight. Evolution is not, as the typical ninth grader might answer, the idea that "we came from monkeys." That oversimplistic definition is why she de-emphasizes using the word evolution and instead focuses on the concept: Evolution is merely an explanation for biological change over time. The students get that.

For Barthel, it is particularly disconcerting to hear the prevailing opinion that if you believe in the theory of evolution, you cannot believe in God or be a Christian. The fight over ID doesn't rage in her classroom; that doesn't mean the underlying emotions about it aren't present.

"It's almost like an underground movement," she said. The students, especially those from strong Christian backgrounds, "do reflect their parents' beliefs. (But) they don't make an issue of it."

By Florida law, public schoolchildren are taught the theories that comprise evolution in high school as part of the Sunshine State Standards for science. The current standards, adopted in 1996 during Republican Frank Brogan's tenure as education commissioner, never mention the word "evolution." They instead require that a student "understands the mechanisms of change (e.g., mutation and natural selection) that lead to adaptations in a species and their ability to survive naturally in changing conditions and to increase species diversity."

Teachers have latitude. In both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, they are free to discuss ID, although most acknowledge they do not do so.

In some cases, they bring in someone like Fred Cutting to do it.

Cutting is 62 years old and has a strong background in science. He retired as a mechanical engineer from Honeywell in Pinellas County and has a master's degree in engineering from the University of Wisconsin.

Once a year for the past four years, Cutting has found himself at Countryside High School in Clearwater during the Great American Teach-In, talking about ID to honors students.

"I've got the really good students, and they ask really good questions," he said. "I'm not teaching religion; I'm teaching, 'Let's think.'"

Cutting passes along not just an encouragment of intellectual curiosity but his reading of the evidence about how life came to be on Earth.

"It may not have been just the way the Bible story tells it, but I'm looking at it as a scientist, and it is pretty evident to me that there was an intelligent designer," he said. "It doesn't say he was a Christian God, or anybody's god, but just that he did exist. Anything else is just faith."

And, Cutting adds, why should evolutionists be allowed to dominate public schools with their "humanistic" faith?

"In our schools, those whose faith is atheism or humanism, they use Darwinism to reinforce their faith," he said, "and that's not intellectually honest."

Day 4: God set the judges in their courtrooms and pointed them to a small town in Pennsylvania.

Almost 23,000 people live in Dover, a small town in Pennsylvania between York and Gettysburg, an unlikely spot for the ID war's ground zero. It was here in Nov. 2004 that the local school board -- mostly conservative and Republican -- voted to require that their 9th graders be read a 1-minute statement in high school biology class, which said, in part:

"Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

"Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. ...

"With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments."

The 159 words set off a firestorm and immediately prompted a group of parents to file a lawsuit, alleging that the school board's action violated the U.S. Constitution's separation of church and state by teaching religion in public school.

The fight over Charles Darwin's idea of how life came to be is as old as, well, Darwin himself. For those who slept through high school biology class, Darwin was the British naturalist whose journey aboard the HMS Beagle brought him to strange new lands (mainly the Galapagos Islands off South America) and to an astonishing variety of animal species that led him to his theory of natural selection. As outlined in his 1859 The Origin of Species, Darwin's theory provided an explanation for the wide range of diverse species on the planet by saying that random mutations and the natural survival advantage of those changes that produced advantageous traits were the mechanism of life -- and not the creative hand of God. Darwin's theory did not require a Supreme Being to make sense of the nature of life. As such, it was viewed as heretical and attacked viciously by God-fearing politicians who didn't want it to come anywhere near their children. At its pinnacle, the battle resulted in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial and the resulting play and film, Inherit the Wind. Today, the fight to remove Darwin from our schools is a continuation of the broader culture war that has resulted in such much-ado-about-nothings as Bill O'Reilly's assertion that there was a "War Against Christmas."

Although other states dabbled in Intelligent Design, most notably Kansas, the Dover case became the leading test. It was assigned to federal District Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican protégé of Tom Ridge and a Bush appointee.

In a blistering opinion that is hotly disputed by ID adherents, Jones went beyond the legal issues to debunk the science of Intelligent Design.

Jones traced the history of fundamentalist opposition to evolution, from creationism to scientific creationism to ID. "For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child," Jones wrote. "It is our view that a reasonable, objective observer would, after reviewing both the voluminous record in this case, and our narrative, reach the inescapable conclusion that ID is an interesting theological argument, but that it is not science."

Day 5: Let the fish multiply and fill the oceans, as long as they don't show up on the cover of textbooks that include four sentences about Intelligent Design.

Nancy Bostock is a Christian conservative who has served for seven years on the Pinellas School Board. She believes God created the universe, but she isn't pushing for ID to replace evolution in local schools.

"Locally, we've not had a big controversy here, and I like that," Bostock said. "Over the years I've had maybe a dozen parents come to me and say is there any way we can teach ID in our classrooms."

Bostock said ID doesn't claim to be a science and, "frankly, evolution isn't either. Science is physics. Evolution and ID are conclusions that we draw from science. The same hard science that people use to support evolution is the same hard science people use to support ID."

The vast majority of scientists -- and most certainly the scientific community -- would differ with that view. Evolution is a time-tested theory; ID is a hypothesis, a guess about how the world works that is largely untested, or at least not to the extent that Darwin's work has been.

That doesn't mean that the ID folks aren't trying. They have established the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Research as the scientific face of the ID battle. The institute is funded, in part, by wealthy Christian conservatives, some of whom have theocratic aspirations for our nation, including Howard Ahmanson Jr., Richard Mellon Scaife and Philip Anschutz.

The problem, for ID, is that the scientific establishment has deemed its line of inquiry one that cannot be proved scientifically. One leading group of scientists has formally opposed ID, stating that it offers no credible scientific evidence that it is a testable hypothesis explaining the origin of the diversity of life.

Only two or three serious works about ID have been accepted into peer-reviewed publications. And even those instances were controversial: One editor of a lesser-known scientific journal lost his day job for publishing an ID study written by Discovery Institute director Stephen Meyer. Richard Sternberg was a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution who, on the side, edited articles for the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. After Meyer's study was published, Sternberg was shown the door at the Smithsonian, and the journal repudiated the article and criticized Sternberg's editorial process. Sternberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel, which dismissed it on jurisdictional grounds after writing that "our preliminary investigation supports your complaint" of retaliation. An investigation of e-mails written by his horrified bosses and colleagues showed religious and political intolerance and a concerted effort to drum up a reason to discharge Sternberg.

But most parents, and especially those who identify themselves as politically active Christians, don't want to get into the minutiae of debating "irreducible complexity," flagellum motors or genetic databases, the stuff of ID's scientific repertoire. They believe in God, don't understand why God is being shut out of our schools and, Bostock insists, want ID included in any discussions of evolution.

"There doesn't have to be a controversy," she said. "Present two different theories on the origin of life."

It's called "teaching the controversy," and it is either a legitimate and fair way to present an opposing viewpoint (if you are an adherent of ID) or a way to sneak religion in the back door of the science class. "ID's backers," wrote Judge Jones in the Dover decision, "have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard."

In fact, some people are so sensitive to even the smallest intrusion by ID into the science curriculum that four sentences in a 1,190-page science textbook can set off a media frenzy. Just ask Bob Orlopp, who supervises the science curriculum for Pinellas schools. Florida's schools are undergoing a regularly scheduled science textbook review, and one of the four books being considered in Pinellas -- Biology: The Dynamics of Life -- features four sentences about ID. Orlopp has heard from more reporters about it than from the four or five parents who were upset about its possible adoption.

"Quite frankly, I think it is a very excellent book," Orlopp said. "I hate to think that one page would make or break the book."

The publisher, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, likely feels the same way. That is why it offers with the book in two versions: one with the page on Intelligent Design and one without.

Day 6: God made all sorts of wild animals, not to mention the special interest groups.

"I've read the case," Hillsborough School Board member Candy Olson said a week after the Dover, Penn., case was resolved. "I love the judge's opinion."

Olson comes from the progressive end of the school board spectrum. For her, the Dover case brought with it the hope that she and her colleagues here won't have to face the same kind of decisions and pressure that have fueled the ID movement in Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"This is creationism in another guise. We're beginning to hear from people" who want ID added to the school curriculum, but only a handful, she said. A search of the Hillsborough Schools' e-mail archives for the past month, for instance, reveals only two that mention ID.

Christian right groups in this state are preoccupied with a referendum to ban gay marriage; ID sits as fertile soil awaiting only the tiller. No group is pushing it in Florida yet (in fact, the Florida Family Policy Council declined an interview request for this story by saying it was talking only about gay marriage this month) but most are aware of it. Very aware.

"We've seen it coming for years," said Ron Scheffler, a Christian Coalition co-chairman in Pinellas County.

"I don't understand the discussion, because it sounds like anything that is contrary to the sacred cow that is evolution is crazy because it doesn't agree with evolution," he added. "Whether you call him God or call him Buddha, somewhere along the line there is an intelligent species that did all this. Where did the big bang come from? There has to be a point of beginning."

"I don't think we're radical. I don't think we're far out," Scheffler concluded. "We're mainstream."

But to scientists debating ID, mainstream has nothing to do with it. An idea's political popularity doesn't make it scientifically sound. And if it is not scientifically sound, it has no place in a public school classroom, they say.

Even "teaching the controversy" would be inappropriate in a state that is already criticized nationally for science standards that are too packed with subjects.

"We have more to teach than we can possibly teach now," Olson said, "so it would be irresponsible to add anything right now."

Day 7: Then God looked over all he had made, and said, "Give it a rest."

Dr. Tom Woodward ran across the campus of Trinity College outside of Pasco County on the first day of class in the spring semester last week, talking on his cell phone as he went. Woodward, 55, has his doctorate in communication theory from the University of South Florida and teaches several courses at the Christian interdenominational private school. His favorite, however, is "Introduction to Science."

He teaches all the usual areas: chemistry, paleontology, Kuhn on scientific structures, the Big Bang theory -- and Intelligent Design.

"The irony is that Intelligent Design is a gigantic tent," said Woodward, who is also head of the local C.S. Lewis society. "I have several of my friends who are agnostic, but they are adamant members of the ID movement. I have friends who are Jewish who are members. I have friends who are Christians who are Darwinists."

He, in fact, stands up for Darwin. To a degree.

"I think the Darwinian theory needs to be highly respected," he added. "It has a lot going for it at the micro level. The problem is that most people don't begin to separate between the micro level and macro level. The science is hurtling further and further and further away from Darwinian paradigm."

Woodward doesn't believe in putting ID into science curriculum, but does support "teaching the controversy. We should require the states to be balanced when they talk about Darwinian theory."

More and more, that controversy is finding its way into the public arena.

Last week in Boynton Beach, about 100 retirees gathered to hear a sidewalk-café debate between a university anthropology teacher and the founder of the Creation Studies Institute in Fort Lauderdale. Two weeks before that, ID was the focus of an orthodox Jewish scholarly conference held in North Miami. Dozens of attendees swarmed the microphone to attempt a rebuttal after one of ID's leading patrons, William Dembski, spoke, according to an account in Miami New Times. His ideas, however, were embraced by many in the group, including Moshe Tendler, an Orthodox rabbi and Yeshiva University biology professor.

It is an emotionally charged issue, which makes it perfect as a wedge in an election year. (The Discovery Institute's private memo on its strategy to win the Intelligent Design war -- leaked out a few years ago and mentioned in the Dover court decision -- was labeled by opponents as the "Wedge Document.")

The issue is so delicate that even Gov. Jeb Bush tripped over it. In the aftermath of the Pennsylvania case, he gave an off-the-cuff answer about whether he believed in Darwin's theory of evolution to the Miami Herald: "Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you." Within days, his office was clarifying his remarks: "I am a practicing Catholic and my own personal belief is God created man and all life on Earth. However, I do not believe an individual's personal beliefs should be the basis for determining Florida's Sunshine State Standards."

Those very standards, however, are set for review in 2007 or 2008, ensuring a lively public debate for the state Board of Education. Freedom High's Dr. Barthel hopes that process won't place religion over science's precise methods.

"The debate is certainly worthwhile," she said. "It is just not worthwhile in a science classroom. There is a place for science. And there's a place for faith."