Why Intelligent Design is in fact Unintelligent
The New York Times is currently running a very interesting, very timely series of articles on "Darwin Under Attack." In fact, it is about science under attack from the religious right. Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/national/23believers.html?hp&ex=1124856000&en=18c409315b60bf1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Today's piece was about scientists who have no problem dealing with the seemingly contradictory dual beliefs in God AND science. Admittedly, it probably is a minority of the scientific community (one poll said 40 percent; another indicated 10 percent, but still, it shows that science isn't totally godless secularists as the religious right would like everyone to believe.
Fundamentalists and very conservative Christians naturally find science a threat to their belief systems because science by its very nature tries to deal only with provable facts and acceptable theories. Belief isn’t a quality in science. You don’t “believe” in evolution. Evolution is a fact.
How evolution occurs – the processes that stimulate evolvement - is a theory.
“Intelligent design” is a craftily created “theory” to explain evolution in a less obvious religious way. Make no “ifs” and “buts” about it. It is solely about injecting fundamental religion into the teaching of science and acting like you are not.
Intelligent Design in fact does not explain squat. It just says evolution is “too complicated” to occur naturally (but without providing any evidence to back up that assertion), so therefore the only explanation “must be” that it was directed by a supreme being. And this is where the major problem with Intelligent Design lies. They want you to believe that great quantum leaps in evolution (development of the eye, the arrival of humans on the earth, etc.) was specifically the hand of God, i.e., this long journey of evolving from bacteria to primates to man is totally wrong. We are back to God created Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth. That is not Intelligent Design – that is Creation Theory with a new coat of thin paint.
Don’t be misled by the seemingly innocuous title “Intelligent Design”. This is not some well-thought out theory by C.S.
Lewis-inspired scientific-theologians. It was dreamed up solely by the religious right Think Tanks as a way to get around the legal problems Creation Theory posed. The courts tossed out (including the Supreme Court) Creation Theory as an obvious misuse of one religion’s creation myth.
That is why I find it incredibly offensive to hear the President of the United States and members of his administration endorsing it as a perfectly acceptable education track. The man who stole the presidency is now trying to lead us back to the Dark Ages. To bad I do not believe that the Book of Revelations has any particular insight. I could propose the perfect Anti-Christ!!!
Today's piece was about scientists who have no problem dealing with the seemingly contradictory dual beliefs in God AND science. Admittedly, it probably is a minority of the scientific community (one poll said 40 percent; another indicated 10 percent, but still, it shows that science isn't totally godless secularists as the religious right would like everyone to believe.
Fundamentalists and very conservative Christians naturally find science a threat to their belief systems because science by its very nature tries to deal only with provable facts and acceptable theories. Belief isn’t a quality in science. You don’t “believe” in evolution. Evolution is a fact.
How evolution occurs – the processes that stimulate evolvement - is a theory.
“Intelligent design” is a craftily created “theory” to explain evolution in a less obvious religious way. Make no “ifs” and “buts” about it. It is solely about injecting fundamental religion into the teaching of science and acting like you are not.
Intelligent Design in fact does not explain squat. It just says evolution is “too complicated” to occur naturally (but without providing any evidence to back up that assertion), so therefore the only explanation “must be” that it was directed by a supreme being. And this is where the major problem with Intelligent Design lies. They want you to believe that great quantum leaps in evolution (development of the eye, the arrival of humans on the earth, etc.) was specifically the hand of God, i.e., this long journey of evolving from bacteria to primates to man is totally wrong. We are back to God created Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth. That is not Intelligent Design – that is Creation Theory with a new coat of thin paint.
Don’t be misled by the seemingly innocuous title “Intelligent Design”. This is not some well-thought out theory by C.S.
Lewis-inspired scientific-theologians. It was dreamed up solely by the religious right Think Tanks as a way to get around the legal problems Creation Theory posed. The courts tossed out (including the Supreme Court) Creation Theory as an obvious misuse of one religion’s creation myth.
That is why I find it incredibly offensive to hear the President of the United States and members of his administration endorsing it as a perfectly acceptable education track. The man who stole the presidency is now trying to lead us back to the Dark Ages. To bad I do not believe that the Book of Revelations has any particular insight. I could propose the perfect Anti-Christ!!!
posted by Robert | 9:43 AM
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