"SIR – Your Editorial about the promotion of ID in schools and universities (Nature 434, 1053; 2005) asks us to persuade our students that science and faith do not compete, but for Christians this should always have been clear.
In the Bible (John 20: 25–29), Thomas doubts that the man speaking to him is the
resurrected Christ until Jesus reveals his wounds. Thomas then believes, but Jesus
says: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”.
The Bible throughout teaches that faith is more valuable when expressed in the absence of evidence. For a Christian, when science is allowed to be neutral on the subject of God, science can only bolster faith. In contrast, and I imagine without realizing it, ID proponents have become professional Doubting Thomases, funded by Doubting Thomas Institutes.
When advocates of ID use the vocabulary of science to argue for God’s presence in cellular machinery or in the fossil record, they too poke their fingers through
Jesus’ hands. In so doing, ID vitiates faith.
Not realizing this, many Christians now believe they are making a stand against evil by supporting religion-infused alternatives to evolution. For them, the fundamental debate is not over which is wrong and which is right, but over which is good and which is bad, and the majority opinion is clear. So if we want to ensure the continued learning of evolution in our schools, we cannot only argue that science and faith can be reconciled; we also have to show that ID actively undermines the basis of Christianity."
--- Douglas W. Yu
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation,
School of Biological Sciences, University of
East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
I agree in essence with what Mr. Yu says, but would clarify his closing comment by adding: "...in the precincts of the Comparative Religion, or Religious Studies, or even Bible Study classroom - NOT the Science classroom.