To the editor:

Teaching intelligent design deters kids from asking the kinds of questions that generate scientific, medical and economic progress.

“Why?” is the force that drives scientists. Science is optimistic, driven by the assumption that people are sufficiently smart, clever and insightful to understand complex phenomena, such as the basic mechanisms of life. Scientists are seeking the knowledge that will prevent or cure Alzheimer’s, AIDS, arthritis, and cancer.

In contrast, intelligent design reflects the pessimistic assumption that natural processes cannot explain the creation of our universe and the life within it; true understanding is left to theologians. Intelligent design pushes us not to ask “why” but rather to thank, adore and worship an unknowable SomeOne. Children trained in intelligent design learn to shrug off challenges as too complex for science. Imagine if doctors had done that 500 years ago!

Science improves our life on Earth by understanding complexities. Intelligent design responds to complexity by saying, “He (God) did it!” Allowing intelligent design into the classroom would teach futility to our children.

The National Institutes of Health has a fiscal Year 2005 budget of $28.6 billion. NIH is well-funded because, as the introduction to the Feb. 2, 2004, budget document reads, “Over the last half century, the nation’s investment in the NIH yielded myriad scientific achievements, many of which improved the length and quality of human life.” Intelligent design has accomplished nothing.

Think, which will conquer cancer: studying the mechanisms of life or teaching kids to worship SomeOne?

John Rosen,

Lawrence