I write in response to Erik Bussa’s column on teaching evolution in public schools.
I am a fellow believer in intelligent design, but that is where our similarities end on this subject.
Perhaps if intelligent design was given fair treatment in Ohio public schools, you would have a different opinion on this subject. It is amazing how quickly the overwhelming evidence for evolution becomes rather underwhelming when weaknesses are pointed out.
I agree that evolution should be taught in public schools. I just don’t think it should be taught as absolute, indisputable truth, and charging that you’re a moron if you believe intelligent design.
Also, “separation of church and state” appears absolutely nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, no matter how many times it is cited. In fact, William Rhenquist, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has said that separation of church and state is bad history and worse law and should be abandoned. Our public schools are not supposed to be religion-free zones, absent of any religious influence or thought.
Because intelligent design theory has religious influence, it is not intellectually inferior to non-religious or secular thought. Many believe intelligent design because scientific evidence attests that life and the rest of the universe could not have manifested by chance, and this evidence indeed points to a designer.
It is intellectually dishonest to say we are objectively trying to explain our origins when the possibility of supernatural design is excluded before examination of evidence has even begun. The notion that religious thought should be banished from public schools is ridiculous.
The reason you can read this letter right now is because you are amazingly designed, made with eyes to see and a complex brain to translate what your eyes have detected. Thank your designer, not random chance.
Judy Albright
OSU alumna
