An intelligently designed letter to the editor

Today's Albuquerque Journal published five letters in response to a poorly reasoned editorial entitled ID UNMASKED for What It is— Religion" by Eric C. Toolson, UNM biology professor. The original editorial demonstrated that Prof. Toolson had not read any actual Intelligent Design writings but only the work of people who mischaracterize it when he said, "Intelligent design's adherents start with the assumption that the Bible accurately describes Nature as created by God, and base their entire intellectual construct on that assumption." Nothing could be further from the truth as any reading of the actual writing of ID theoriests such as Michael Behe (not "Hans Behe" as Professor Toolson errantly identifies him -- adding more fuel to the idea that Prof. Toolson hasn't read anything by somehow who actually supports ID) and William Dembski.

Prof. Toolson also states, "Darwin's theory (which deals with how evolution occurs, not whether it occurs) has been consistently supported by the results of numerous scientific experiments, and is thus on a level with other widely accepted theories such as Einstein's Theories of Relativity." That is a really amazing claim. I leave it to the letter to the editor by D. Russel Humphreys, Ph.D., to give a more than adequate response.

As a physicist who used to be an evolutionist, I wonder what Albert Einstein would think of Toolson putting Darwinism on a par with relativity. Relativity has survived literally hundreds of experimental tests; evolutionism hasn't even been subjected to one.

As a grad student 35 years ago, I was astounded to find out that there is no real evidence for Darwinism at all— not in the fossils, not in the wild and not in the lab. All my teachers had told me that evolution had occurred, but I suddenly realized that none of them had given me a shred of real evidence.

Afterward, I found that most people, including most scientists, think evolution occurred not because of evidence, but simply because someone else told them it had occurred. In a 1999 debate at Harvard with a world-class paleontologist, professor Graham Bell of McGill University, I confirmed that he could offer no specific evidence for evolution— not even after the audience joined my challenge to provide just one item. He didn't want to admit that the lack of fossil evidence for evolution is one of the "trade secrets" of paleontology.

"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" by biochemist Michael Behe might help Toolson see the huge irony in the title of his article— it is not intelligent design, but rather Darwinism that is a religion masquerading as "science."

For those who say that I do not have a scientific background (which I readily admit beyond taking lower level Biology and Physics courses in college), I simply leave it to people such as Dr. Humphreys to point out what seems patently obvious to me as support for the idea that reasonable minds -- including those that are scientifically trained -- can agree that ID is not, as described by the misguided Prof. Toolson, "fundamentalist Christian dogma".