The scientific theory of evolution is strong, says Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and one of the witnesses who will testify for the parents suing Dover Area School District.

As a competitor in the public arena, though, the theory is handicapped, and badly. A Gallup poll found last year that 13 percent of respondents believed human life arose from evolution naturally, and 38 percent believed God guided evolution. But 45 percent believed evolution played no role, preferring biblical accounts.

"The scientific community has to do a much, much better job at making the case for evolution," he said. But it's tough to do that in a sentence or a paragraph, in a newspaper story or a quick television piece. Opponents of natural evolution who support intelligent design have become adept at spouting snappy quotes. "Teach the controversy," they'll say. Evolution is just "a theory, not a fact," they'll say.

The current media setup, pitting evolution against intelligent design, "benefits them in a number of ways," Miller said. The journalistic instinct to seek tit-for-tat balance in a story, he said, makes it appear as if evolution and intelligent design have equal support within the scientific community, and that a controversy actually exists.

It does not, he said. "You have the entire scientific community, balanced against four or five people, and it's portrayed as though these are two equal sides."

Those "four or five" people include Michael Behe, of Lehigh University; John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture; Phillip Johnson, author of "Darwin on Trial"; and William A. Dembski, who has written several books on the subject.

There are other supporters. The Discovery Institute points to a list of 400 scholars who either support intelligent design or, at least, have issues with evolution. Four hundred sounds like a big number, but as a light-hearted retort, the National Center for Science Education has come up with its own list of defenders, all of them named Steve, in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist. About 700 scientists are on the list.

Miller, in an interview last week, said he was confident that the federal courts would find that intelligent design is not science and has no place in a science classroom. "It's very simple," he said. Intelligent design, despite its clinical and nonreligious terminology, says nature presents evidence that a designer assembled life's building blocks and gave rise to new species.

And that designer, whoever it is, exists outside of the natural world, and its existence "cannot be tested. This whole idea is beyond the realm of science."

He put it another way. "Maybe you think the Red Sox won the World Series last year because [God] was just tired of [New York Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner," Miller said. "That may well be true," but even if it is, it can't be tested by science.