Letter from Linus U. Thomas-Ogbuji, Ph.D.
to Ohio Board of Education

March 14, 2002
To: The Ohio Board of Education

Esteemed Board Members:

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE

I attended your March 11 forum on "Evolution Versus Intelligent Design". Your board deserves to be commended for arranging that panel discussion, and for providing this avenue for more contributions to the topic. A truly representative panel on this issue would indeed consist of 10,000 scientists for every exponent of "intelligent design," as Dr. Krauss said in his presentation. And since scientists live by debate and disputation (more so than lawyers!), there must be 10,000 arguments against "intelligent design." Drs. Krauss and Miller could not cover them all in the time allotted at the panel discussion.

As a lifelong educator and scientist (currently at NASA's Glenn Research Center), I have a keen interest in the issue, and here is a précis of my humble contribution, in 3 points - in the interest of brevity:

• From the questions tabled, it was apparent your members are concerned over the limits to scientific knowledge. There will always be gaps in scientific knowledge, but everybody loses if you plug such gaps with mere belief. Before Isaac Newton, nobody could explain, without invoking God, why one heavenly body revolved around another; eventually, science found the answer. And remember that whenever theism collided with science, as in Gallileo-versus-the-Church, it was faith that lost face. The point is, if you paper over a scientific gap with mere belief, you do a great disservice to faith, which can only retreat when science comes up wit an answer (as it eventually will).
  
  
• Don't be misled by the sensationalism of the news media. The press wants to make capital of the fact that some "intelligent design" advocates have scientific degrees. A statement, claim or deed is not scientific just because it comes from a scientist, even a bona-fide scientist. The fact that some great, recent scientists were known wife beaters does not oblige us to regard wife beating as acceptable scientific conduct. Seriously speaking, an opinion is not scientific until the world community of scientists has carefully reviewed it and pronounced it sound. There is no exception to this principle.
  
  
• The "compromise" urged by "intelligent designers" is just a Trojan Horse! Their aim is to insert the thin end of a wedge. Indeed, we can make a much stronger case for real disputes in other subjects. For instance: Physicists still debate the nature of space-time, and a few harbor metaphysical ideas about the uncertainty principle of quantum theory; the full meaning of "zero" and "infinity" is not clear to all mathematicians, nor do they all agree as to whether a straight line can exist in nature; etc. Yet nobody is asking teachers to confuse students with endless, teach-the-controversy caveats: "Some scientists say thus, but a few disagree…" In this case where the supposed "controversy" is contrived by a mere handful of "intelligent designers" with a manifest agenda (and magnified out of all proportion by the press), such a caveat would be totally unwarranted.

Sincerely,
Linus U. Thomas-Ogbuji, Ph.D.