To the editor:

In an article titled “KU class angers ‘design’ advocates” published in the Nov. 22 issue of the Journal-World, John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network in Johnson County, was quoted as saying, “I would predict that (Mirecki’s) effort will go down in history as one of the laughingstocks of the century.”

If history’s any guide, I believe the opposite to be true, i.e., it is Mr. Calvert’s beliefs that are bound to be recorded as yet another testament to humans’ capacity for ignorance, gullibility and hypocrisy, which can at times be laughable.

Mr. Calvert was also quoted as saying, “to equate intelligent design to mythology is really an absurdity.”

It’s perhaps arguable whether intelligent design is the same as creationism and therefore a modern re-creation of an outdated mythology, or that it’s truly a scientific theory.

A great source for answering this question and others like it is the sworn expert testimonies in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District.

Complete trial transcripts can be found at the National Center for Science Education Web site (www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?page_id=11). I encourage everyone interested in this issue to read these expert testimonies and decide for themselves whether it’s absurd to equate intelligent design to creationism and therefore mythology, or if it’s utter hypocrisy to pretend that intelligent design is anything but creationism in disguise. Testimony by Dr. Barbara Forrest is particularly relevant to this matter.

Adrien Yeganeh,

Lawrence