To the editor:

Another option to resolve the evolution/intelligent design issue, that Patrick Dority (“Messy issue,” Dec. 30) did not consider, is that Kansans may decide to vote out the conservative activist members of the Kansas Board of Education and that the new board will restore the established definition of science to the state educational standards. Thus returning science to the study of the physical world and its natural phenomena, leaving supernatural explanations to religious instruction where by definition they belong.

Intelligent design had its day in court, all of the arguments were vigorously presented and intelligent design was shown beyond doubt not to be science. The ruling in the Dover case (Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District) spoke clearly to that fact: “ID can not uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.” Religion is not science and science is not religion. There is no controversy. Supernatural explanations just have no place in science.

Most people believe in a creator, a supreme being, in God. I use those terms interchangeably. Intelligent design proponents mistakenly or disingenuously represent evolution as antithetical to the belief in the existence of God or in religion in general. While in truth, evolution in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator. That is pretty straightforward.

So, is trying to blur the line between science and religion just another wrongheaded attempt by religious and political conservative activists to distract or confuse the public while they subvert the establishment clause of the Constitution? It appears so.

Mark Stone,

Lawrence