Let's make ID inclusive! - intelligent design - Letter to the Editor

If "Intelligent Design" should be forced into your school system, consider this. The whole purpose of the ID movement is to turn departments of science education into eighteenth century schools of "natural theology." However, one strategem of this movement--to slyly not identify the "designer"--leaves the door open to nontheistic "designers." There is Francis Crick's suggestion in his 1981 book, Life Itself, of "directed panspermia," a process by which a very advanced civilization has seeded the galaxy with life by sending spaceships loaded with bacteria many places, including Earth.

My own favorite would-be designers are the members of the Raelian "flying saucer" group. Rael, a famous European race car driver, claims he was taken aboard a spacecraft in southern France and recruited by the alien designers of our species to further their work. To that end, Rael formed a group with science degrees in the United States to perfect human cloning. Their testimony during congressional hearings on cloning last year was most colorful. I am a practicing school-teacher. When I tell some supporters of ID in the classroom about the need to include the Raelians in the lesson plans, their enthusiasm wanes.

John Davis

Jackson, Mississippi

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