Logo IMG   Intelligent Debate  To the Editors:  Pat Shipman's
timely piece "Being Stalked by Intelligent Design" (Marginalia,
November-December) confirms the impression I have that the
teaching of biology in the United States is in crisis. It is
high time the conflict was carried into the opposition's camp.
Since the purported Intelligent Designer is clearly God (despite
the disclaimers of the theory's advocates) we are faced with the
old God-of-the-Gaps argument: There is a supposed lacuna in some
theory or an absence of evidence of how things went from A to B,
therefore (a) it happened by divine agency, and simultaneously
(b) this "proves" God exists. This is surely rotten theology, at
least for the thinking believer. First, as the gaps are filled
by observation and experiment, God gets squeezed out; second, if
God exists there should be a cast-iron proof of his existence
quite independent of an alleged need to postulate him to explain
something.  Moreover, intelligent design (ID) theory is suspect
for this