To the editor:

In an effort to restore faith to the place some people feel it deserves, intelligent design theory is being proposed as an alternative to Darwinian theory to explain the organization of the universe. Subjecting the faith that it takes to believe in intelligent design to scientific scrutiny runs the risk of doing serious damage to the concept of faith itself.

For those with faith that all of this was created, it hardly seems objective to use scientific proof – along with hypotheses, theorems, etc. – to prove creationism is the correct belief. Scientific standards for proof were designed by people to evaluate bodies of evidence in establishing standards for knowing. A leap of faith cannot be proven. A leap of faith is not supposed to be able to be proven or else there is no leap. If proven, you do not need faith to accept it. Faith is knowing in a radically different way than the way we know through scientific investigation.

Great things have been accomplished with leaps of faith. Having faith produces wonderful results in a wide variety of areas. For some, displaying faith saves you for all eternity. Why would anyone wish to subject faith to the ritualistic scrutiny that was developed to establish scientific proof?

Placing intelligent design on the plane with Darwinism as an explanation for the organization of the universe will result in faith being evaluated with a tool that it was not designed for. Faith cannot pass scientific scrutiny, nor was it designed to.

George Wanke,

Lawrence