In the September 29th issue of the Daily Toreador, an article discussing issues regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design was presented. Two biology professors were quoted with statements that implied that it was foolish to even consider that life could have come about through processes other than known physical forces. It is the intellectual closed mindedness that pervades the evolutionary community and is appalling that it can be found so readily at TTU. If these individuals were to be intellectually honest, they would have admitted that even though there are hundreds of thousands of articles that show that genetic mutations and rearrangements lead to changes in organisms, not a single one has shown, scientifically, that evolution’s “first” cell from which all life descended could come about through self-assembly, mutation, reproduction, and natural selection. If experiments have already proved this, than why would Harvard announce in August that they were embarking on a research effort to explain how life came about? Harvard biochemist David Liu who is involved in the effort was quoted as saying that “my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.” I thought biologist already knew this and taught it across the world? Instead of labeling people as ignorant that don’t accept unsubstantiated evolutionary theories, maybe more time could be spent explaining why the fossil record is devoid of the millions upon millions of transitional organisms that would be necessary to show a progression from one species to another. Are we supposed to accept their previous existence on faith since they apparently didn’t do us the favor of dying during favorable fossil making conditions? It would also be nice to have a scientific explanation of the Cambrian explosion, wherein huge numbers of animal, insect, and plant species appear suddenly in the strata with no known “close” ancestors. It can now be calculated at what staggering rate new genetic information would have to have been accumulated to make the emergence of these species possible. Steven Meyer, writing in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON [117(2):213-239. 2004], explains in his article entitled The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories, why this is such a problem for current evolutionary theory. In addition to the gaping holes in evolutionary theory suggested above, maybe someone could explain how the evolutionary tree was constructed so many decades ago without knowing what the DNA sequences were for organisms and how gender came about. If evolution is a viable theory, it should be able to weather intelligent debate from those that don’t accept evolutionary interpretations of data. Refusing debate is a sign that evolution is merely a philosophical position more akin to a religious faith. If one doesn’t understand how it might be possible to subject a system to a scientific test to determine if it was designed, then one probably shouldn’t dismiss this analysis technique out of hand. Tim Dallas, PhD Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering President, Christian Faculty and Staff Association