As a representative of Discovery Institute, I sent the following letter to The Seattle Times last week. It didn’t appear there, so we’re publishing it here.Dear editor,

“A Meaningful World is simply the best book I’ve seen on the purposeful design of nature. In sparkling prose Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt teach us how to recognize genius, first in Shakespeare’s plays and then in nature. From principles of geometry to details of the periodic table, the authors portray the depth, elegance, clarity, and pure cleverness of a universe designed to nurture the intelligent life that one day would discover that design. A Meaningful World recovers lost purpose not only for science, but for all scholarly disciplines.” Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box.

Much of the mainstream media’s coverage of the controversy surrounding Kansas’s science standards has repeatedly talked about a “conservative” or “far right” position on the one hand and a “moderate” position on the other. Are those labels accurate? The so-called “conservative” or “far right” position calls for students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. An overwhelming majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, support this approach. In contrast, the so-called “moderate” position insists that students learn only the strengths of modern evolutionary theory–science education as propaganda.

Now in a mirror-image scenario mapped out by astronomers Aden and Marjorie Meinel in today’s San Diego Union-Tribune, radiation turns the savage into the scientist: they argue that a spike in cosmic radiation well may have contributed to the evolution of modern humans by accelerating the rate of genetic mutations.