Dear Sir,

What Christian's oppose is that a fundamental theory is being taught as a 
fact in Public Education.>

Some Christians may do that, most of them do not. Those who do oppose 
Darwinism disreagard the Pope's opinion and they misunderstand the current 
status quo. Evolution is thought as a theory that has high degree of 
plausibility.

The scientific community does not use the words "fact" and "theory" as 
synonyms. It is very important to know what is a scientific theory. A 
scientific theory is an attempt to explain a set of phenomena observed or 
measured.  Any such theory has to meet several conditions to be classified 
as "scientific". In addition to provide the explanation, it has to comply 
the rules of Logic, is has to define a range when it may apply, and most 
importantly is has to provide predictions which must be falsifiable.  The 
later is crucial in this debate. Falsifiable means that there must be a 
prediction that one can declare invalid by objective measurement or 
observation. Any attempt to invoke a Creator in any hypothesis automatically 
renders the hypothesis or theory unscientific, (per definitionem!), since 
God and his/her actions and motivations are transcendental, meaning: 
unfathomable for the human mind, reason and logic. The god may do or decide 
anything and its opposite, and there is no way for a scientist to make any 
judgment about its validity. That is why the supreme being can not be part 
of any scientific thought. It is not because somebody loathes your or 
anybody's god, it is practiced for pure logical reasons.



<Evolution does not stand the test of Scientific scrutiny.>



There is no such think as "scientific scrutiny". In addition, a basic 
assertion in the science that no theory can be unequivocally proven. However 
a special procedure -the scientific method, to accumulate information which 
is being organized and added to the body of scientific knowledge. It is 
noteworthy, that the scientific method is used exclusively for one and only 
one purpose: to disprove a hypothesis or a theory.  The theory of evolution 
has not been disproved yet.

It does not mean that there are no unresolved questions, and the question of 
'irreducible complexity" is one of them.

However the legitimate answer CAN NOT come in the form of an explanation 
which presupposes the intervention of god. This will not even be considered 
as possible explanation and I already explained why.

Intelligent design is another philosophy embraced by the majority of 
Scientists today.<

False again. There is only a vocal super-minority that entertains the idea 
of intelligent design, and most of these avoid invoking god, just use a 
murky and undefined "designer".





<Perhaps it shouldn't be taught in Public Education from your perspective 
but neither should an unproven theory be accepted as fact.>

You misunderstand the current status. In public education we teach science. 
The one you refer to is called theology, and even though the "logy" refers 
to logos, it is not science when deals with the notion of god. It becomes 
science only when the subject is the comparative religion studies or when 
argues about the historical facts about religion and religious organization, 
or even religious beliefs or people etc.

The bias of evolutionary theory is also a highly valid argument. 
Intelligent design is the accepted standard in the Scientific community 
today.  Our knowledge of genetics has shaken the foundations of life by 
accident.  Charles Darwin was a student of theology, not science.  Even he 
recanted his own theory.

All factual errors. I do not want to waste any time with these. do your 
homework, please.

If there was evidence of life by accident then it should be found in the 
fossil record.  No such evidence exists nor can we confirm it by DNA.

Nobody claims that life came into existence by accident.  The theory of 
evolution presupposes that the laws of Nature allowed the occurrence of 
events that lead to life. There are several hypothesis how this might have 
happened, but none of them claims that pure randomness is responsible for 
the process. All of them emphasized under which conditions may life start. 
Existence of water, certain chemical composition and temperature range etc 
are presupposed. Nobody searches for life in the sun, or in the vacuum of 
the space. The real question is what kind of self-organization by matter can 
satisfy the condition under which random events (meaning statistically 
defined ones, like thermal motion) can lead to primordial life. This life is 
not necessarily same as life we see today. The theory of evolution however, 
can say a lot about this lprimordial life.

1)      there must be a population of individual life-forms (for example 
pure chemical  systems, separated some way 9a membrane?) from their 
environment.

2)      The individual in this population must be able to replicate:  create 
offsprings that aremore or less similar to their parents.

3)      Since there is certain degree of dissimilarity between the parents 
and offsprings, some will be (statistically speaking) more successful and 
have more viable offspring than the others.



That is all, that simple. If these criteria are met by ANY system, the 
evolutionary process will jumpstart and may lead to complex life forms, the 
rest -even though we do not undertand every step- is only matter of time and 
self-organization. The overwhelming number of examples, observations, and 
the known laws of physics & chemistry suggest very strongly that there is no 
need for a God to intervene in this process. Moreover there is no evidence 
whatsoever that would suggest such an intervention. The puzzle of 
"irreducible complexity" may be answered withouth it.

we object too is that a theory is being taught as fact to our children. 
It > has destroyed there faith in their creator which must stop.>

The faith is not destroyed by the Theory of Evolution. The faith is 
destroyed, because people like you force it to confront with logic. Logic is 
in the domain of Science, as St. Thomas understood it a thousand years ago 
when emphasized the primacy of the faith over logic. Avoid logic, and the 
faith remains unchallenged, like in the case of Osama bin Laden.



<I'm not paying for public education .>

There is another misunderstanding: you are not paying for child education. 
The State and the Government is. You pay taxes, and as soon as that money 
arrives in the budget, it is not your money anymore, it's owner is the state 
and the government. Even though you may not like it, it is them who pay for 
the education of the children. The only influence you have over this is that 
you exercise you rights as citizen of the USA: through elections and 
political activism.



<..for it to destroy a child's confidence in the existence of God.>

Where does this confidence come from? How do you know that God exists? Some 
people do not think that he/she exists, others believe in different god or 
even a whole bunch of gods. Whose god should be the one and olny Creator? 
Yours of somebody's else? How do you know that the prophets that some people 
believe are messangers of god,  are not false? What about other peoples 
children? Do you want to shake their confidence in the existence of their 
gods? Or shake their belief in non-existence of gods? Or shake their 
confidence in the Gnostic teachings that the material world is not the 
creation of the true god, but the creation of the false one, the Devil since 
the material existence is the source of all of the pain and misery?

Please understand, changing the status quo and accept teaching "theology" 
(including intelligent design)  instead of science would not only an attempt 
to undermine the advances of logic and reason that made our life so much 
better that ever before, but fail miserably in this confrontation. In 
addition, it could easily lead to religious conflicts, misery and even 
persecution and death of great many.

I am sure you do not want that.

Please understand that nobody attacks religious beliefs, science only 
exposes the inherent vulnerability of Fait when it is forced to  bout with 
Reason. If God exists, he does not need us to protect him from his own 
creation.



Best regards: lajos, a faithful scientist