In [author]’s recent column, he notes his confusion about opposition to Intelligent Design (ID) in school curriculums. Hopefully, I can provide a little illumination.

Intelligent Design portrays itself as science, but it is not, plain and simple. Science is a body of knowledge based on observable, repeatable, natural phenomena. Good science leads naturally to testable predictions about how things will happen, now and in the future. Anyone can look out a window and know the weather right now, but it takes a trained meteorologist to predict future weather patterns.

Intelligent Design looks through the window at biological diversity in search of observations to support a preconceived conclusion - that a designer is behind the mysteries of life. But this tells us nothing about how life will change tomorrow, next week or next year.

Which approach do you think will be more valuable for predicting and preparing for future events like the arrival of species-hopping strains of Asian flu or the spread of mad cow disease?

The heart of the ID position is to attempt to undermine evolutionary biology by pointing out perceived flaws, gaps and limits to scientific knowledge. I support anyone’s right to examine science critically - scientists do this everyday [sic] - but perceived imperfections in evolutionary biology do not provide evidence for an intelligent designer any more than hot-air balloons provide evidence for an alternative to the theory of gravity.

Students face enough barriers to success in science. Peppering them with notions that evolutionary biology is somehow tainted or inadequate undercuts the ability of science educators to convey the bedrock principles upon which all the life sciences are based. And that is why Intelligent Design should not be taught in science classrooms.

A local Ph.D. in biology claims Intelligent Design (ID) is not science but that Evolution is. He's half right. By definition, neither ID nor Evolution is science. The good doctor points out that “[s]cience is a body of knowledge based on observable, repeatable, natural phenomena.” Unless we can re-create the beginning of life and observe it, Evolution is beyond the realm of the repeatable and can never be labeled “Science.”

It is commonly asserted that we observe evolution regularly. This is false. We observe “Natural Selection,” which is nothing more than minor variations in a single species over time, like a virus that mutates to infect previously unaffected organisms. But we have never observed the spontaneous creation of an entirely new species, which is explicitly required by the Theory of Evolution. It is an astounding leap indeed to suggest that because we observe small changes occurring (like viruses changing in response to their environments) that we can establish as “Scientific Fact” that fish once evolved into birds or mammals. Even if it really did happen that way, we cannot “know” it in the sense that Science requires. The fossil record suggests it could be true, but the same record is replete with gaps and holes that materially limit our actual knowledge.

ID acknowledges that for the sake of scientific progress natural selection is important to understand. But given that natural selection is a legitimate, observable process, nothing requires that we expand it into a full-blown doctrine on the origins of all the species on the planet. Regardless of whether one subscribes to ID or Evolution to explain the vast diversity of life, the bridge between observation and belief is necessarily constructed of faith: either faith in a Creator or faith that the miniscule changes we observe can be extrapolated to produce — without external intervention — the fish, the bird and everything in between.

I do not resent scientists who refuse to label ID as science. They're right. However, I am greatly offended that these same people refuse to admit to equally profound leaps of faith in their own paradigms. Evolutionists deny it, but like ID, Evolution is a faith-based belief system. ID and Evolution are theories. Nothing more. Teach what we know. Teach natural selection, but teach its observed limits too. If science class is about teaching facts, neither the Theory of Evolution nor ID belongs there. Perhaps philosophy class would be a more appropriate forum for both of these topics.