Gavin Young, in the June 25 edition of The Press, wrote to object to Creationism being taught in our schools. His well-reasoned arguments were against the inclusion of religious teaching in public schools and the well-worn "separation of church and state" issues. In the reality of today's increasingly secular public school system his viewpoints will prevail no matter what many of us wish were the case.

However, he has raised the straw man that is at the heart of this issue. That is what we teach in public schools about the origin of the species, evolution and science to the extent that it is science.

The issue that needs to be confronted and taught in our schools is Naturalistic Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. Humanists/naturalists, while not a religion (according to the Supreme Court), do hold a worldview. And they are hell-bent on imposing that worldview on our children. The problem they have is that there is more science, evidence, logic, and reason supporting Intelligent Design than there is Naturalistic Evolution.

Naturalistic Evolution or Darwinian Evolution, and its various iterations, claim that over very long periods of time species made the transition from one species to another. That is Macro Evolution. (Micro evolution is the changes that occur within a species. Both sides agree on this.)

Fossil evidence and discoveries were in their infant stages when Darwin wrote his "The Origin of Species" in 1859. He said that his theory would not hold true if the fossil record did not uncover large numbers of transition fossils. That did not, and has not, happened.

Darwin also recognized that entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, was a problem and if a negative entropy was not found evolution was in trouble. The Second Law of Thermodynamics works against the development of life, and more so against the evolution of species as taught by Darwinists. The Second Law states that organization breaks down within a closed system, and that disorder naturally increases. (Darwinian evolution teaches that chaos over time becomes order, or more ordered.)

According to Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, (hardly a Christian), in A Brief History of Time; "It is a common experience that disorder will increase if things are left to themselves. A precise statement of this idea is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It states that the Entropy of an isolated system always increases, and that when two systems are joined together the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of the Entropies of the individual systems.

He continues, "In any closed system disorder, or entropy, always increases with time."

Intelligent Design says that when we look scientifically, at the cosmos on the very large scale and DNA and such on the nano-scale, we find irrefutable evidence of design. This is driving more and more of the scientific community, (not the academics), to recognize that the evidence is in support of Intelligent Design.

At the core, Naturalistic Evolution and Intelligent Design are philosophies. The core of science is observation and repeatable experimentation. The origins of life were not observed by anyone alive today, no one recorded the event, and we cannot repeat the experiment.

Naturalistic evolution requires belief in mathematical impossibilities, changes in the billions and billions all being 'good' mutations and occurring at just the right time in just the right order. That is a good definition of blind faith. It is not a definition of science ... or even rational thought.

The Intelligent Design community, includes Christians and other religionists, but is also populated by a large number of non-believing scientists. They do share faith. However, their faith requires only the belief that there is/was a creator outside of creation with the capacity to create things that had evident design. This faith is not based on math. It is based on the reasonable assumption that things that appear to be designed were designed by a power capable of creating it.

Naturalistic evolution requires belief that at some point in time, (which did not exist); for no reason absolutely nothing blew up and became everything.

Intelligent Design believes that at some point an intelligent designer created time and all the stuff of the universe.

Let's get back to the point of this letter; our schools should be required to teach Intelligent Design as well as Naturalistic evolution. That is what science, ration, and reason demands.

It can be done without bringing religious beliefs into the classroom.

Fair disclosure: I am an old engineer who worked on missiles, atomic submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Apollo program, air traffic control systems, satellite communications systems, and a bunch of projects for Boeing. I find no contradiction between the science I participated in and my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who I believe, spoke this whole universe into being.

I am willing to be fair in promoting the teaching of all viable scientific worldviews. I only wish our educators and Naturalistic Evolutionists were of the same fair mind.

Vern Westgate is a Hayden resident.