Friday's U-Wire column ("Intelligent Design should not be taught in public schools," April 1), an argument against teaching intelligent design in schools, raised an important issue facing Americans. Austin Modine got to the core of the question with the quote noting that the discussion is not about the merits of evolution or Intelligent Design, but the existence versus the non-existence of God.

With that in mind, I'm not trying to speak for or against what should be taught in schools, but we need to think beyond the educational implications of this debate.

If the Big Bang created our universe and our existence stems from the random synthesis of proteins, then natural selection is the governing law of life.

As such, it is not wrong for one life to exert superiority over another.

Therefore, events such as African enslavement, and more recently the value of Terri Schiavo's being, are simply manifestations of the struggle between the strong and the weak as natural selection runs its course

Yet, every rational person admits America messed up on a massive scale when we enslaved Africans. But if natural selection reigns, what's so bad about slavery? Furthermore, is there even a universal definition of "bad"? If a higher authority doesn't exist, then morals are reduced to the personal opinion of an individual.

"Right" and "wrong" become irrelevant.

Modine ends his article with the statement that "Christianity has brought immense good to this world." He makes an objective distinction between good and evil. Each of us must consider if a naturalistic worldview can support such a claim.