Intelligent design has scientific foundation

In the opinion section of the Nov. 18 issue, the Morning Sentinel ran a cartoon by Stuart Carlson that mocks the proponents of intelligent design and betrays the cartoonist’s misconceptions about the debate on evolution. In a “Wizard of Oz” setting, Dorothy says, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in the 21st century anymore,” while the Munchkins of intelligent design hold up placards with slogans such as “Science is for suckers.”

Thus, the advocates for intelligent design are portrayed as ignorant people, blind to the evidence of modern science. On the contrary, the intelligent design movement invites the most thorough examination of the most modern scientific evidence. The theory of evolution was an invention of 19th-century scientists who had no access to the vast knowledge we now have of biochemistry and the cell.

Darwin thought that the cell was a more or less simple lump of matter. He provided the basis for the demise of his own theory in this passage from “The Origin of Species”: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ system existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Twenty-first-century science has demonstrated just that in the irreducible complexity of the molecular “machines” within cells, the structure of cilia, flagella, and the intracellular transport system. I urge readers to read intelligent books on intelligent design, rather than heed bits and bytes in the media that take pot-shots at something they do not understand.

David Hoagland

Winslow

Intelligent design has scientific foundation