Your recent essay by Pepper Trail expresses great
concern over the current evolution debate (HCN, 10/3/05: What’s at
stake in the evolution debate). I agree that this is an extremely
important issue, but for exactly opposite reasons.
Trail
lumps intelligent design theory together with creationism, which is
misleading. Creationism is based on a literal interpretation of the
Bible and conflicts with widely accepted natural history, while
intelligent design merely inserts God as an active participant in
natural history. The current debate is not being fueled by some new
religious fervor, but rather by the numerous scientific discoveries
in recent years that describe both life and the universe as so
complex that reasonable people question evolution by random
processes alone.
The editorial goes on to cast the
essential issue in terms of reality versus belief-based thinking. I
would argue that we have always been a belief-based society; if the
founding fathers had all been scientists rather than visionaries,
we’d still be a British crown colony. We should not exclude a
theory simply because it includes God in the equation.
Neil Snyder
Jackson, Wyoming
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Putting God in the equation.
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