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To the Editor:The story "Intelligent design study appears" on September 3 dealt with a major unresolved scientific question concerning evolution. I suspect that many scientists, Dr. Meyer included, may not fully realize that biological organisms are not designed the way that humans design mechanisms. Engineers, who deal with complex human-designed systems on a daily basis, have long recognized that the best designs are those that completely separate the functions of subsystems. Thus, the spark plugs of an automobile have an entirely separate function from the tires.Biological organisms are not designed this way. Even though there is functional specialization with organs and organelles, many functions may be distributed across almost the entire organism, and at all levels, from the molecular level on up. Indeed, such designs appear very complex, and are hard for humans to fathom. It is evolutionary change, of course, working at the whole organism level that produces such designs. Moreover, in many cases, the design of individual biological components and systems does not follow principles of human parsimony and elegance. Examples are the lengths of many biochemical pathways, the very large number of almost identical neurotransmitters and associated receptors, and the very low quality and extreme distortion of visual coding in the optic nerve compared with the reconstructed visual field.There is a famous article that bears on the whole subject of evolutionary design and optimization. In "The spandrels of San Marco," Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin pointed out that organismal traits and their possible adaptive purpose cannot be considered in isolation. Which leads to the opinion expressed by Sir John Maddux, editor emeritus of Nature, that so-called "evolutionary psychology" is not real science. Alan J. RobinsonMinneapolis, Minnesotarobin073@tc.umn.edu To the Editor:Re: "Intelligent design study appears": How sad to see the knee-jerk reaction to one intelligent design (ID) paper being published in a relatively minor journal! I've read science news magazines for years, and over the past year I've studied Nature carefully, and articles with ID themes are common. The only difference is that they toss in some speculation about how evolution might have somehow produced features that have just been compared to advanced human technology. Even some of the cover stories trumpeting new evidence for evolution actually turn out to be completely consistent with current creationists' expectations.So why all the fuss? The answer isn't complicated: a large part of the scientific community is determined to make science a field of endeavor that can simultaneously explain away all theistic ideas, while never allowing the possibility of support or even allowing much room for theism in human thought. They're happy to trot out scientists who somehow cling to belief in a God who never did anything in our universe, but they dare not allow one paper to point out the incredible design in living things that doesn't at least toss a bone to the gods of evolutionism: time, chance, and survival (natural selection). Having censored anything that doesn't toe the party line, they then turn around and use this shutout as support for their argument that ID isn't scientific. This gives them all the more motivation for keeping the blinders of censorship in place.The similarities of the mechanisms and systems in living things and those in the most advanced human technologies are obvious, and it is also clear that living things are in some ways far more complex and "hi tech" than anything we've produced so far. It's also clear that after almost 150 years of efforts, we've found no forces or processes of inanimate nature that produce complex organization, we're still far from reproducing the origin of life through our intelligent efforts, and we are still struggling with the most basic questions of speciation and natural selection. Scientists should be willing to consider that living things were produced by an alien intelligence, even if it's one that existed before our universe, just as they are willing to search for extraterrestrial intelligence and speculate about infinite forms of universes and such. David L. BumpFlushing, Michigandavid.bump@att.netTo the Editor:As a doctoral candidate in ecology and systematics at Indiana State University in 1983, I was required by one of my professors, the noted mammalogist John O. Whitaker, to become expert in discussion of and argument about all known issues surrounding evolutionary theory. Although there is little need to defend basic Darwinian concepts to a scientific audience, let me just point out that Darwin was attempting to explain, in the simplest way, all the evidence at his disposal. These included detailed knowledge of artificial selection in fancy pigeons, the biogeography of Asia, Australia, and the Americas, the geology of fossil beds in Europe and North America, and the sudden appearance of the nectarine in a peach orchard in France in the mid 1700s. Application of the Principle of Occam's Razor—the simplest explanation that fits the facts is the most scientific—led him to develop the ideas documented in the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection.In contrast, the theory of intelligent design makes the claim that the existence of complex systems and phenomena, lacking any justification for their existence that is known to us, implies that such systems exist as the purposeful result of the activity of a powerful, conscious being that designed the visible complexity into them. This is not a scientific explanation, as it posits the existence of something that cannot be tested or demonstrated by experiment, but must be taken on faith.The contrast between the theory of intelligent design and the theory of special creation is that the latter names the designer "God" and declares the story in the biblical book of Exodus as the whole truth, whereas the former does not name the designer nor does it declare any particular story of the designer's works and actions to be historical truth. However, both of these theories are theology, not biology, and while not identical, are both out of place in a life science journal.Theologians, and even scientists, are entitled to logically debate questions of faith surrounding the problems of first causes, complexity, the existence of evil, and so forth, but not in scientific publications. Albert Einstein is quoted as having said, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Let us be clear, however: science is about knowledge gained by hypothesis testing, and religion is about faith gained from reason, inspiration, and introspection. We must keep them properly separated to understand the difference between that which we can know and that which we must choose, or choose not, to believe.David P. VernonTucson, Arizonadvernon@us.ibm.com

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Story on intelligent design study highlights debate on creationism and evolution

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