The guest opinion in the Oct. 7 Simi Valley Acorn “Theory of intelligent design shouldn’t be taught in schools” caught my attention.

I have had the good fortune of knowing and working with a lot of top-notch scientists in my 60-some years of adulthood, and have found most to be very open-minded on most any aspect of science. That is what science is all about: searching for the explanation of things.

Therefore, I am surprised that those who espouse proper teaching would choose to exclude any theory that might be plausible as an explanation for phenomena about which science has as yet no proven explanation.

While there is a good deal of evidence that Darwin’s theory of evolution has a lot of merit, it is not the end-all of biological science. Certainly mutations of DNA cause changes in species and perhaps even new species.

However, I have never seen a “scientific” explanation for how the orderly elements of genetic code and the building blocks of matter in DNA became written in the first place. Furthermore, while string theory is an attempt to explain what matter is made of (what are subatomic particles made of and how did all matter come to follow such strict laws of physics?), it is still an unproven theory and very controversial in the scientific community.

There are numerous other gaps in scientific knowledge. Therefore, nothing should be ruled out and kids should be taught to have an open mind.

It is just as bad to curb their thought from “intelligent design” as it is for religion to brainwash them that evolution and other theories are somehow sinful. Men with closed minds on either side of the subject do our educational system great harm, in my opinion. Robert Thompson Simi Valley