When I attended the Objectivist Club’s lecture on Intelligent Design, I was severely disappointed in it. The lecturer, Dr. Keith Lockitch, began well by describing the roots of Intelligent Design in Christian Fundamentalism, but lost his way by positing that Ayn Rand’s bankrupt philosophies were the way to combat this example of pseudoscience. I came away from the lecture fearing that he had only strengthened the opinions of local creationists, and from Eric Landquist’s recent letter it appears I was right.

Because debunkings of all of Eric’s examples of the “overwhelming evidence against evolution” can be found on the TalkOrigins website (http://www.talkorigins.org), I’ll waste no more ink on them. What seems to be Eric’s main problem with evolution is that he claims it is biased because it “excludes the supernatural.” He neglects the fact that science deals only with what can be observed. Yes, science and “the supernatural” can coexist, but by definition the supernatural cannot be observed, quantified, described in peer-reviewed journals or be made to repeat itself through experiment. Dr. Lockitch himself pointed out that no one has observed mitochondria stamped “made in heaven.” As such, science says nothing about the supernatural; it is agnostic. This is not a bias, but mere recognition of the limitations of what can be concretely known about the universe.

Treating Intelligent Design and other forms of pseudoscience as suitable for instruction in science classes diminishes science education. Grade school and high school science classes exist to communicate the current understanding of the scientific community, not the wishful thinking, misrepresentations and fabrications of biblical literalists. Because Intelligent Design is a faulty hypothesis with no data to back it up, it has no business being taught in classrooms as being equal to evolution.

Kyle T. Bergan

senior in LAS