To the editor:

I love Lawrence because I have never admired indifference. Yes, Lawrence is a passionate community. As long as ideological fervor is kept as campfires of shared ideas, I say feed the flames.

A CBS News poll on Nov. 22, 2004, reported that only 13 percent of us hold a purely naturalistic, evolutionary view. That same poll said that just over 50 percent of Americans believe in special creation.

Evolution has been taught to at least the last four generations of our nation’s learners. Yet, less than half of us believe what we’ve been taught.

There is a reason for this. Evolution is a faltering theory, based upon assumptions that cannot be reproduced. (Recall in those same science classes that we were taught “repeatable results” were part of the scientific method.) Surely by now, if evolution was “so simple in its complexity,” we all would have gotten it by now.

On Aug. 31, 2005, the Associated Press announced that 64 percent of Americans believe that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution.

Let’s make sure no fires are put out until we’ve let the flames talk. In one of those fires, there is gold.

Jeff Barclay,

Lawrence