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