ID vs. evolution

Natural History, May, 2002

By providing an opportunity for Jonathan Wells, Michael J. Behe, and William A. Dembski to write about "intelligent design" (Special Report: "Intelligent Design?" 4/02), you gave them exactly what they desired: publicity in a mainstream scientific forum (though not a peer-reviewed journal, of course). Wells, Dembski, and Behe are not practicing science when they advocate the "intelligent design" position. They are practicing pseudoscience. These advocates should be ostracized by the scientific community, just as we would ostracize someone who claims to be researching the natural behavior of wood nymphs and faeries.

James G. Acker
via e-mail

What were you thinking? I am not at all against conducting debates for the general public in neutral forums about ID and creationism; but to bolster Wells's, Dembski's, and Behe's already overblown publicity by publishing their views in Natural History is akin to debating astrology in Astronomy. I assume the next "debate" in your magazine will be entitled, "Is Natural Supernatural?" Darwin forbid.

Barry F. Seidman
Boonton, New Jersey

Thank you for publishing your feature on "intelligent design." The proponents of ID are not as obviously foolish or fraudulent as astrologers or creationists, but rather are far more sophisticated and insidious. You have done your readers a service by exposing them for what they really are.

However, I was disappointed in Ian Tattersall's "Endpaper" essay, "Science Versus Religion? No Contest." The author, perhaps out of a desire to make science seem less threatening, tries to make the case that scientific and religious thinking aren't in conflict, that "religions seek ultimate truth" while science would never "claim to be doing anything like the same t thing."

Religious thinkers are right to fear science, because the understanding it produces demands that we give up the illusions of purpose and meaning and instead celebrate--after 4.5 billion years of evolution--how completely insignificant we are. If that's not an "ultimate truth," what is?

Gerry Bishop
Vienna, Virginia

Many highly educated professionals not only lack skills in inductive and deductive reasoning but also fail to understand the fundamental distinction between science and religion.

Ian Tattersall hits the nail right on the head when he states, "Science and religion deal in totally different forms of knowledge" As a biologist and an educator, as well as a believer in a divine creator, I am confident in the theories of my profession and inspired by my spirit faith. I thank God for his grace to me and for the human icons of natural history such as Charles Darwin, who provides humankind with workable explanations of the world around us and a window into the glory of creation.

Gary Noel Ross
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Natural History's e-mail address is nhmag@amnh.org.