To the editor:

About the issue of evolution versus intelligent design, I have an analogy that may be useful in this debate: Two people walking through the desert come across a fully functioning computer with a power source and loaded with software. The first person says, “Wow! There must have been some kind of explosion and all of the particles from the explosion came together and then out of a need for it to function it developed a power source.” The other person says, “I wonder who would put a computer in the middle of a desert.” Which one of those would you say had been thrown off the evolutionary boat and landed on his head?

Now, having said that, I will run this analogy into the ground. In the teaching of computers, it isn’t necessary to tell the students that computers were created by humans, we know that without being told. It is useful to teach about the evolution of computers. We know that computers can develop glitches and crash, which is usually a result of something the user has done and is not evidence that the computer wasn’t created by a human.

Since the belief about the origin of man is so tied up in personal beliefs, I think that it should be left out of the public schools and just teach the things that we have observed and studied scientifically.

Lori Safadi,

Lawrence