Here we go again. At least one school has mandated the teaching of "intelligent design" in their classrooms.

I have blogged on this subject before but it is so incredibly stupid, this intelligent design, that I can't really help myself from doing so again.

This, to me, is so amazingly backward that I have a hard time believing school districts and, for that matter, parents, are even considering it. I'll skip the details but there is a Whole Lot of evidence supporting Evolution. That's "Whole Lot" as in "millions, if not billions, of years' worth."

This evidence was brought to us by scientists and, while I wouldn't suggest that no scientists have agendas of their own, on the whole they're a group who tend toward physical evidence, plausible explanations, provable theorems, apparent facts and, oh by the way, peer review.

They say we came from apes and that the apes came from other life forms, all the way back to the original bacterial strains. And, they have pretty convincing evidence of this. That's "pretty convincing" as in "several million years' worth of physical evidence like bones, fossils, and the like."

On the other side, on the whole, are Evangelical Christian leaders; a group, I probably don't need to point out, who have not been quite as strict in the proof-and-evidence categories. Nor, for that matter--I'm thinking of Ernest Angely, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, etc. here--on the there's-nothing-in-it-for-me category. Quite the contrary.

Somehow they've cooked up--and even more amazingly sold--this idea that because we can't explain it, god must have done it. Therefore, we're doing a disservice to budding young minds not to teach it.

Excuse me?

I can't explain how semi-conductors work. Does that mean god made them? Or, closer to the Intelligent Design mantra, that they are too complex to have arisen strictly from man and so, therefore, god must have had a hand in creating the things that created them?

What?

Religions have been around for as long as man has been around. There's always been somebody standing ready to grab control of people by explaining things that couldn't otherwise be explained by invoking a god of some kind. The notion of religion keeps changing. The idea of what these gods meant or really were keeps changing. The concept of what you have to do to be in the good graces of whatever god you believe in keeps changing.

It all keeps changing because science keeps explaining away the lies and misconceptions. As far as I know, we no longer believe Apollo is the Sun God but that, instead, our Sun is just one more of a few billions of billions of stars. Science figured that out. Religion gave us Apollo.

And, Zeus, Jupiter, Seth, Allah, YHVH, God, and all the rest. Religion keeps working out the kinks in the story as science keeps uncovering them. It's not that the religious folks aren't working hard. Oh no, they're burning the midnight altar candles to keep up but, it seems to me, mostly to keep control of the masses. Control, in this case, sometimes actually means control and sometimes means cashflow. Or power. But ultimately it's control of some kind.

Intelligent Design is nothing but a new paint job on a tired effort to get religion back into our schools. I'm saddened to see it working.

1. Gregg Watkins11/18/2004 01:39:00 PM

Hi Scott!

I don't know how semi-conductors work either. But isn't their existence an example of the plausibility of creative design rather than a dismissal of it?

Thanks.

2. Scott Good11/18/2004 03:40:26 PM
Homepage: http://www.scottgood.com

Hi Gregg,

Semi-conductors as evidence of creative design? Sure. If there is such a thing. Here's a strong argument against it: http://www.def-logic.com/articles/evolution_of_technology.html

I was being facetious about the idea that a god created semi-conductors, of course. One way or another, they came from us...from humans. Is it creative design? Maybe. Whatever it is, it's the same thing that brings us music, art, language, and pretty much everything else that's in the world.

Human creativity. Memes. Something like that.

My point was more that semi-conductors (and music, and art, and so on) are not the product of so-called Intelligent Design, i.e., god's plan and that just because you can't understand something doesn't mean you should just roll over and say, well, I guess god did that.

Scott

3. Rock11/19/2004 07:55:56 AM
Homepage: http://www.LotusGeek.com

Scott, you have defined what is known as the "God of the Gaps". This is an ages-old argument for the "existence" of a deity. There is a TON of stuff on the web about the God of the Gaps (like this: http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/god_of_gaps.html ), so check it out. And you're right, unfortunately the fundies have taken the God of the Gaps, polished it up, and are now selling it as "Intelligent Design".

And it frightens me. I live down here in the South. And I am always fearful that this crap is going to be fed to my kids as some type of science. At least so far, I have been lucky; unfortunately I am sure it is only a matter of time

So, here's yet another great topic of conversation for us to discuss over dinner!

Maybe at Lotusphere, since I know you're going

Rock

4. Scott Good11/19/2004 08:34:03 AM
Homepage: http://www.scottgood.com

Rock,

God of the Gaps. I'd never heard that, but it's not only funny, it's true. I am ignorant, except, heck, I'm too smart to be ignorant, so it must just be a mystery of god I'm not supposed to know about. Oh...there's an explanation? Yeah, well, I knew that.

Fundamentalism in any form scares me, too. I can imagine this kind of stuff is a lot more obvious in the South but here in Columbus, in the North, last February, the School Board voted to put Intelligent Design in the lesson plans.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't that why they have churches? There are probably hundreds of flavors of religions in this world, all of which have different ideas about all kinds of things. Why don't we let them each spew their particular brand of spin and let the schools teach the best science money can buy?

Scott

5. Ray Grieselhuber11/19/2004 06:17:17 PM
Homepage: http://www.firewatching.com/ray/blog

What's sad is that there is nothing imcompatible in accepting evolution (I mean, hello???) and believing in God, and even with being a Christian. On the contrary, when you look at the implications of what evolution really means, it's more in line than ever with what Christians believe about God and free will.

It's yet another example of the polarized thinking in this country that forces people into one of two camps, when the truth is most likely not fully in either.

Ray

6. Scott Good11/20/2004 08:47:19 AM
Homepage: http://www.scottgood.com

Wow. You said a mouthful. The polarization, particularly politically, is really pretty astounding any more. I suppose it's mostly pragmatic; the more you can show how wrong the other guys are, the more money you can get out of your people. And, in big politics, Big Money usually means a Win.

But both sides go so far to be so opposite one another, they end up only speaking to the fringes rather than the bulk of the populace. I used to think I was a conservative but when I see the full position of the Republican party, clearly I'm not. But, on the other hand, I don't like a lot of the stuff the Democrats are spewing, either.

I have a friend, our neighborhood's token Liberal, who likes to say I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but it's pretty close. Moreover, I'd bet if you held everybody in this country up to a bright light you'd see that most people are in the middle of the bell-curve, not at the edges where all the noise gets made.

I wasn't a Bill Clinton fan but you have to give him credit for walking the line down the middle of the road. For all the stupid things he did (zip it up, Bill) I suspect he was so popular because he was not so polarizing, at least in his official actions.

Scott