To the editor:

Now that Kansas voters have approved a ban on gay marriage, some leading evangelical Christians and social conservatives say they’ll turn to other issues, including “evolution.”

For decades, evangelical Christians have heard that evolution and religion are in conflict. Why do so many believe this lie? Mostly, it’s lack of understanding. It’s easier to simply reject the science, rather than learn enough to see how evolution and faith can be reconciled. Understanding is made harder by a small band of activists who encourage the myth of conflict.

The activists believe that evolution is a kind of atheism. To convince others, they change the definition of evolution, calling it “an unguided, purposeless and unplanned process.” Recently the activists invented “intelligent design” (ID), which is supposed to be an alternative to evolution. But, as science, ID is really lame: something in the universe, sometime, was deliberately created somehow by something. ID is even worse for religion. The “designer” gets smaller with every scientific discovery. The designer makes mistakes. The designers might be a race of super-intelligent space aliens.

Unfortunately, if people buy into the false belief that evolution is atheism, any alternative — no matter how lousy — can seem better.

In Kansas, ID activists want public schools to “teach the controversy.” But there’s no scientific controversy about evolution. The arguments ended more than 50 years ago. Instead, the political success of ID shows there’s a crisis in public understanding of science.

Robert Hagen,

Lawrence