"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
-Abraham Lincoln
The fact that President Bush recently said that Intelligent Design should be taught alongside Evolution, believing them both to be equal sides of a controversy, should tell you exactly how much stock you can put into the former of the two. To start with, there is no controversy, unless you believe religious people have the right to pass their myths off as science and ram them up the pineal glands of our children, clogging them up with all sorts of foul things such as fear of spiders, belief in devils, and the infallibility of the US government.
First off, evolution is not "just a theory" as the Christians like to repeat mindlessly. In science a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations and usefulness. (You know, the stuff they taught us in science classes back when we were kids.) This is not the same meaning as the everyday pop cultural understanding which sees "theories" as philosophical positions or as beliefs. Secondly, evolution includes natural selection, mutations, and genetic drift- all of which have been observed both in nature and in laboratories- as explanations as to how and why it happens. Most people assume that evolution says that humans evolved from apes, but that is NOT what it says. The idea of common descent says that evidence leads us to remark that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor. It seems to be the most certain explanation though the idea of common descent is only one piece of evolution. In light of this, what evolution SAYS is simply that life is evolving, and we have observed some of the processes which can go a long way toward explaining how.
Saying evolution hasn't been conclusively proved is simply wrong. Evolution has overwhelming amounts of evidence to support it. (And in genetics, it is actually proved to the degree of being fact.) But science works in probabilities and degrees of certainty. If something is consistently observed to operate in a certain way, we can say that we are almost certain. Science says nothing conclusively about anything. Scientific theories, unlike beliefs, are open to modification under new evidence. There is an overwhelming number of observations and data to support evolution, even collected by more ambivalent scientists. Even speciation (new species generation) has been observed. If Intelligent Design proponents and other Christians want to challenge evolution, they must address all of this evidence. (And stop using their straw men.) It seems that they can't do any of this, so their claims that Intelligent Design is a valid counter-argument against evolution have no merit.
Anyone who argues that evolution says that life proceeds by random chance has misunderstood the theory (as attractive as random chance is to some of us). There is chance, but natural selection processes out any harmful or unsuccessful changes over time. Even the appearance of life or consciousness is not completely random since the atoms and molecules that went into the first living organisms follow their chemical and physical properties, at least as far as we can observe. Intelligent Design proponents latch onto this idea of things being not-so-random as evidence of a Designer (a creator god). But things that are not-so-random and have the appearance of beautiful design without any designer can be seen all over the natural world. (Snowflakes, cellular life, organs, organisms, cloud patterns, molecular structures, and so on.) Some physicists have discovered some startling things beyond our common sense approaches to understanding those processes, but they still say nothing about Intelligent Design. As to why all this happened in the first place, evolution says it just happened according to those processes. No need for a creator. And putting a creator into the mix is just grasping at straws. It adds nothing to the explanation, unless you have "faith," which is not necessary for scientific explanations of anything.
I find it hard to believe that these idiots are still arguing that Creation- Intelligent Design- has just as much validity as evolution and want to have it taught in science classes. They ignore the fact that the early scientists who first started developing ideas that came together in the theory of evolution (working originally from the Christian "Great Chain of Being" myth from the middle ages) were much closer to trying to find evidence that fit into the Biblical framework of the world. And none of them could find any evidence supporting creationism as valid, no matter much they considered the universe to be "God's work." Why did so many of these earlier scientists who were a lot closer to biblical views of the universe come to the conclusion of "species origination through evolution" and other processes that need nothing to do with any god or idea of god? And in today's world, with rapidly advancing and ever more sophisticated tools of analysis and observation, why is it that evolution is gaining more supporting evidence while the old Creationist arguments are stuck in endless repetition and misused logic? So what does that say about what is now being packaged as Intelligent Design?
The old myths should be left to their own realms and kept out of science. Even if something comes along in the future that is a better explanation than evolution, it will not be Intelligent Design or any other so-called counter-argument that does not even address the evidence. (Creationism and any other term for any of its re-packaged sorts of regurgitation has had many centuries to prove its case and has failed.) But if Bush and his millions of supporters have their way, OUR kids and OUR friends will have to learn a narrow-minded religious view of the world packaged as "science." Another "pillar" of democratic society will have been squelched and you'll have to submit to having the ten commandments branded on your ass. (Okay, I admit this latter idea as a slippery slope fallacy, but I am allowed a fallacy or two especially when ranting.)
Evolution is the closest thing we have in explaining observable reality. It says nothing about creation by beings, supernatural or otherwise, in regard to the origins of any phenomena. Faith and mythology should be taught in their appropriate domains, churches, seminaries, and theology studies. They should be left out of science since they add nothing useful. Until such a day as when faith can be shown to come up with workable theories in scientific contexts, it should keep its hands off of science and stick to bilking people out of their hard earned money in exchange for the con of future "heavenly rewards." In the meantime, the religious right will probably take over American society and force us all to find Jesus again and again (they always seem to be losing Him since they are always asking everyone else if they have found Him). You had better get used to putting away all of your latex toys, beer, and Che Guevara t-shirts and getting up everyday at six in the morning to go and sign in to church so you can prove your patriotism. If you don't, they will always have worse places they can put you. Is this what you want? An Intelligently Designed universe believed in by idiots who probably couldn't intelligently design anything let alone a political system that is supposed to give you the space to be free?
Scoff now. But this has happened to technologically advanced post modern societies in recent history. Look at Iran for starters...totally owned by the religious right of a slightly different orientation than our American Christian version (their goals are similar however). The Intelligent Design proponents have found the best way to accomplish this, by inculcating their crap in people when they are still young. (Raise up children in the church and they will never depart, to paraphrase Loyola.) If this happens, every foul thing that people like the Good Reverend Roger and his ilk have been trying to warn about will happen to you and everyone of us, and you won't even get a chance to witness it on a Michael Moore documentary beforehand because he'll be locked up, if not shot and dumped somewhere. And those of you outside of America who think you'll be safe, will only be safe for a little while, because the Empire under God will be brought to you by your own corporate sponsors.
Say your goodbye to the Republic. Get ready for the theocracy. It seems to be an inevitable trend sucking us slowly but surely to the spinning blades and you won't even be allowed to keep your copies of the Principia Discordia or even your Hustlers. Better get used to carrying around those Gideon mini-bibles and Jack Chick tracts. Say goodbye to Slipknot and hello to bands like Stryper, boys and girls. You can at least look forward to one good thing when the Intelligent Design supporters finally win control. We heretics that have been so longwinded and preachy will all be disappeared and when you're not being forced to listen to hellfire and damnation, you may find a moment of silence. There's a silver lining on every cloud....at least until they find a way of strip mining them.
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Under the influence of recent media reports and my collection of Jack Chick tracts; You too can collect them all.)
August 13th, 2005