Intelligent design -- long promoted by people who want to see it replace evolution in science textbooks and classrooms -- has been added to the agenda for a Vatican conference in March marking the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

But ID, which posits that a higher power must have guided the evolution of species across time, will not be presented as "science." Instead, a zoologist at the University of Rome who is a conference organizer, told The Associated Press,

The committee agreed to consider ID as a phenomenon of an ideological and cultural nature, thus worthy of a historic examination, but certainly not to be discussed on scientific, philosophical or theological grounds.

So here will be the Vatican, where the official position is that science and faith are compatible, sharing the international spotlight with with those discount Darwin's game-changing work on natural selection, unguided by God or a higher power. (Remember, we're not even touching on what kicked off "life" to begin with, just on what happened next).

Do you think ID belongs on the Darwin conference stage -- culturally or scientifically?

Photo by Dan Kitwood,Getty Images; The first published copy of Charles Darwin's "On The Origin Of The Species'" is displayed at the home where he wrote it in Orpington, England.