Science v. Dogma.

Galileo Galilei said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

As a father of three boys under the age of 13, I have a significant stake in the controversy over the introduction of the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools. Galileo captured the spirit of my value system well. He carried a faith in a Higher Power, and a confidence that God had endowed him with the will and the intellectual capacities to explore the natural world through scientific investigation.

Unfortunately for him, his support of Copernicus' "theory" that Earth revolved around the sun resulted in the Catholic Church's Inquisition in 1633 sentencing him to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Fast forward to 2005. Apparently, things have not changed all that much. The social fundamentalists in the United States, a nation founded on the principles of separation of church and state, secularism in government to avoid religious tyranny and freedom of religion, have cast doubt upon the "theory" of evolution and have begun to slowly introduce a veiled form of creationism back into public education.

Here in Kansas, there is a stubborn affinity for diminishing evolution. As it was in 1999, the "intelligent design" movement is alive, well and on the offensive. On Feb. 9, Attorney General Phil Kline held private meetings with the six conservative members of the Kansas State Board of Education who support degrading the status of evolution and introducing intelligent design into the science curriculum as an alternative theory. To skirt Kansas open government laws requiring meetings involving a quorum to be public, Mr. Kline held separate private meetings with three board members present at each.

Discussions included placing stickers on textbooks questioning evolution. Mr. Kline seems to have forgotten two important points. Kansas open government laws prohibit "serial meetings" to get around the quorum requirement, and a federal judge has already ruled against the use of the textbook stickers

Due to the 6-4 conservative majority on the Board, it is a foregone conclusion that the science curriculum in the state of Kansas will be altered to diminish evolution and introduce intelligent design. When this happens, it will be a sad day for our children. The one bit of good news is that Kansas is a local control state, so it is not certain that the state school board will be able to enforce their changes to the science curriculum throughout the state.

Evolution is not a threat to the notion of God or of a Higher Power of a person's understanding. The concept of evolution does not address the issue of whether or not there was a creator. A person can readily integrate the concept of a Higher Power with the notion that the universe was formed by the "Big Bang" and that life emerged from the "primordial soup" to evolve from simple, one-celled organisms to the complex beings that exist on Earth today. Who is to say that a Higher Power did not write the blue print for the "Big Bang", initiate evolution, and stand by to supervise the ongoing process?

My belief in the Higher Power is based upon faith, not evidence. Discussion of the existence of a Higher Power, or its contribution to our origin, belongs in a religious philosophical course, not in a science course. I rely on the mountains of available evidence for my acceptance of evolution as a truth. Evolution belongs in science textbooks and discussions in a science classroom because it has been demonstrated within the natural and material realm.

Leave science to the public schools and dogma to the churches and other faith-based groups.

--Jason Miller

Overland Park, Kan.