Utahns' e-mails defend, attack intelligent design

James Cobb, East Millcreek: Questionable "facts" purporting to support evolution are taught in school. For example, he said, "pictures of pepper moths on tree trunks (are shown) as evidence of natural selection. It turns out that pepper moths do not rest on tree trunks, but hidden under branches.

"For this picture, the moths (dead or alive) had to be placed on the tree trunks and photographed. Yet this picture is endlessly republished to provide evidence for natural selection," the basic tenet of evolution.

"These items are routinely taught to impressionable young minds but are not accepted by the best biologists. Does this concern anyone?"

Hards: "I agree with all of those who expressed a belief in a higher power starting it all in motion, but that has nothing to do with the process of evolution itself.

"The problem is that if something can't be tested, it isn't science. Nobody's arguing anybody's right to believe in Creationism if they want to, but it simply can't be taught in science class because it isn't."

Colton: "I am having a hard time making the point that ID is just as testable as blind evolution. If the formation of the cell or a new species is exceedingly improbable the most likely possibility is intelligent design. . . . "If an event is exceedingly improbable — it probably never happened."

Hards: "There are too many leaps of faith required to embrace it (intelligent design). Faith is, after all, by definition, belief without works. Science will never be able to test religion, by religion's own self-definition.

"On the other hand, I personally have seen massive evidence of evolutionary principles. The fossil record need not be absolutely complete in order to bolster the theory."

Tyler Allred, Orem: "The problem with intelligent design is that it is a circular argument. If someone or something is responsible for the intelligent design, then who created the designer . . . There is no logical conclusion to this line of reasoning, except that an eternal being did the creation.

"This is what I call religion, and it should be taught in church, not in science class.

"I am a very religious person, who believes that creation should be taught in church — and science should be taught in schools."

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