Intelligent design …

THE NEWS ITEMS on "intelligent design" (Jan. 11) seem strangely out of sync. Reporting that civil-liberties watchdog groups are suing to block the teaching of intelligent design (ID), one item states: "The majority of mainstream scientists, including many Christian biologists and anthropologists, have criticized intelligent design as pseudo-science."

Four pages later another item reports that Anthony Flew, a formerly atheist philosopher, has been swayed at age 81 to believe in the existence of God, apparently under significant influence from the arguments for intelligent design. He is quoted as saying the theory is "enormously stronger than it was when I first met it."

The April 2004 issue of Science and Theology News quotes Ronald Numbers, a historian in the department of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, as saying "the only people who continue to identify ID with young-earth creationism are [its] critics." According to Numbers, there are significant historical and ideological differences between the two, but these are never even hinted at in the CENTURY's reporting.

Torrey Curtis

Beaver United Methodist Church,

Beaver, Okla.

COPYRIGHT 2005 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning