To the editor:

The editorial page of Sunday’s Journal-World posed an interesting point-counterpoint. On one page was a letter to the editor decrying the dogma distributed in support of intelligent design, and on the facing page was a comment piece that featured exactly that dogma. Three features of the pro-intelligent design piece were particularly disturbing.

First, the author spouts the misinformation that “doubts” about evolution are leading many prominent scientists to dispute its conclusions. The truth is that evolution is considered scientific fact, a cornerstone of modern biology and is supported by all of the mainstream scientific societies.

Second, the author wraps intelligent design in one of our cherished American traditions: freedom of inquiry. Freedom of inquiry does not defend the use of the politics of fear to bully your way into science classrooms. Inclusion of facts in science curricula must be earned by building on the careful observation and successful modeling of the natural world. Intelligent design has not met this test, so peddling it in science classrooms amounts to giving students false information.

Third, the author has the audacity to suggest that supporters of intelligent design are not wrapping intelligent design in the Bible. Statements by the chair of the Kansas Board of Education quoted in the Journal-World have exploded that falsehood. Movements that promote teaching factual distortions to students have no business taking shelter behind scripture.

Having reasoned, appropriate discussions of the meaning of the world is fine, but hawking cheap distortions of science in school curricula isn’t good science, good tradition or good religion.

Joe Heppert,

Lawrence