LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Views of intelligent design are debated by readers

Dear Editor,

I recently read the May 30 article, "Evolution vs. intelligent design: School Board takes up debate on theories of life." I must confess that the opinions expressed by those in the article made me uneasy. As I understand it, there are several persons who would like to teach, in a public biology classroom, the idea that a supernatural force is responsible for all life on earth. As a citizen of Chesterfield County and a father, I have a serious stake in this debate, and I oppose this push on two fronts.

Firstly, they propose to teach mythology in a science class. Intelligent design is not science. There is no evidence to support it. There is no analytical process by which it was discovered. No atheistic centers that study it. No respected biologists that teach it. No one teaches intelligent design separate from religious doctrine. There are no peer-reviewed journals that publish it. It is not science.

Evolution, on the other hand, is science. There is a huge body of evidence to support it, including such biology mainstays as genetics, physiology and paleontology (see the November 2004 National Geographic article, "Darwin's Big Idea"). There is a clear process by which a person, Charles Darwin, arrived at the idea. There are innumerable universities and centers that teach evolution outside of religious doctrine. There are massive numbers of respected scientists who teach evolution. There are peer-reviewed journals that specialize in evolution (a random sample of the 35 journals available electronically from Virginia Commonwealth University dedicated to evolution: Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics; Evolutionary Ecology Research; Journal of Evolutionary Biology; Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution). I do not want my children to be intellectually crippled by having creationism presented to them as legitimate science.

People argue, "Well, evolution is just a theory." That is true, but so is Newton's gravity, and the Copernican model of a suncentered planetary system. I don't see anyone attempting to teach alternate versions of those. Theory, in science, is any idea that explains a collection of facts. Facts are measurements or observations. To illustrate: bodies with mass are attracted to one another. That is a fact. Gravity is the theory that there is a force, proportionally related to mass, that causes bodies to be attracted to one another. The facts regarding the origin of life on earth support evolution, not intelligent design.

My second objection is the brand of creation that they want to be taught. I'm sure that it would be the Judeo-Christian Genesis myth that the world was created in seven days by the supreme god Jehovah (a.k.a. Yahweh or Elohim). But, I am not a Christian. My personal faith is Taoism. I wonder if they would teach the Taoist creation story about how the world was created from the dead body of the giant Pan Ku? Perhaps they would teach about Nanu-Buluku, the creator god of the Fan people of West Africa who rides in the mouth of the great serpent, Aido- Hwedo? Perhaps they will teach about Yggdrasil, the world tree and the frost giant, Ymir. Whose creation do you teach? In Chesterfield County there are Taoists, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians of every stripe, and a host of pagans and New Agers. Are we going to teach everyone's creation story? Allow me to answer that for you, "No."

If the School Board chooses to saddle the public school system with teaching religion, do it in a comparative religion class, not in a science class. Our students have already fallen far behind the rest of the modern world. It seems, to me, that we should focus on producing well-educated students with a solid knowledge of accepted science, rather than try to indoctrinate them with public funds. It is the county's job to teach academic matters to my children. It is my job to teach them faith and religion. I ask the School Board to please mind their own business, and I will mind mine.

Shannon Wortham

Chesterfield

Dear Editor,

I read with interest the three letters [Chesterfield Observer June 6] defending the theory of evolution. The truth is evolution has holes in it, claims unsupported by science.

Evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, order to disorder. Messer's Fruhwald, Lehr, Smith and my body are all visibly decaying; this is an observable phenomena. Evolution claims disorder to order, against the law. The evolution theory in which life climbed out of the ooze, a biogenesis, is not replicable by modern science, no matter how many times the effort is made. There are animals and plants that violate evolution and cannot be explained by its precepts of adaptability. Finally, there are genetic firewalls that mean I am not related to a banana via evolutionary progress.

Normally, a theory with flaws, it cannot be replicated. It violates other natural laws, there are unexplainable problems [that] would be open to conjecture, debate and further consideration. Certainly, it cannot be claimed as "fact" or what the writers are really after, "truth."

However, evolution seems to be held to a different standard. One in which debate is squelched, problems with the theory are ignored, and legalistic arguments are used. They even hide behind a difficult, constantly reinterpreted piece of the Constitution, the establishment clause, in a nation where the Constitution more clearly guarantees free speech.

All of these tactics hide the truth. There is a debate about how mankind has arrived here, that there is a place for God in this debate, and that there should be a place for a theory to be debated and options considered, and one of those places should be the public classroom. If they are allowed to consider Marx, Nietzsche or Russell, all philosophies that are anathema to Christianity, why are they not allowed to debate evolution vs. intelligent design? In short, what are you afraid of?

I applaud [Dale School Board member] David Wyman's courageous attempts to bring this debate to the public and the classroom, and pray him success in the future to the considerable illumination of all the citizens of Chesterfield County.

Bob Lawrence

Midlothian