To the editor:
After reading Galen Rose’s letter “The intelligently designed mosquito?” in the Aug. 18 edition, I felt compelled to respond. It is more than apparent that Galen’s issue is not that of intelligent design, but that of the concept of an intelligent designer.
The scientific method is limited to that which can be tested, reproduced, or falsified. Anything which lies outside those parameters is not science, but is in the realm of faith.
The theory of intelligent design is ridiculed as “religious doctrine” and pseudo-science, while the justification for the ridicule is that creation is unprovable, therefore unreliable. Yet so is the theory of evolution unprovable and therefore unreliable. Therefore, evolution is a faith-based theory and not empirical scientific fact. Evolution is an unguided process of natural selection.
The theory of evolution is woefully inadequate to explain the observable universe today. The universe is a universe governed by laws. Where did those laws come from? The first law of thermodynamics, inertia, states that matter can only be changed but can be neither created nor destroyed. Where did the matter come from that was involved in the “Big Bang?”
Matter, time, and space are all physical constructs. According to the Universe Forum (the national center for teaching and learning about the structure and evolution of the universe, sponsored by NASA and based at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), “No one knows how the first space, time, and matter arose. And scientists are grappling with even deeper questions. If there was nothing to begin with, then where did the laws of nature come from?”
Evolution is nothing more than a search for an explanation of the origin of life that does not include God. I believe the intelligent design model answers far more questions than the evolutionary model. Yes, I firmly believe that God created this world. The mosquito does not discount it; rather, it confirms it.
Here are some other questions that evolution cannot answer. How did life spring from non-life? How did every species develop male and female at the same time with all the reproductive organs and components necessary to bear offspring? How did our cellular information evolve, where each cell in our body communicates with the rest of the body, all 37.2 trillion of them? How can our body replicate DNA, exactly 3.7 billion pieces of information, 242 billion times a day? How did our thought process evolve? How did our memory evolve? By what evolutionary process can the eye be explained? The questions are endless.
The simple conclusion is that evolution is an inadequate faith-based theory, a theory that sates complex life evolved from simple life. The law of irreducible complexity dispels that notion. Admittedly, there is some indication of micro-evolution (adaptations of species). Where are the new life forms that evolution should, by the very nature of the theory, be producing? There are only extinctions taking place.
I believe that intelligent design/creation is not only a credible explanation for life as we know it, I believe it is the only viable explanation for life.
Rev. David O’Donnell, Damariscotta
Faith Baptist Church, Newcastle
