But seriously – I made serious points in my posts, with a few insults tossed in for seasoning, and you apparently didn’t have much to say in response to them. If you’re that easily rattled by a little rudeness, good luck keeping it together if you ever have to try to talk sense into fundamentalists in your son’s school district someday, and you get to watch all your “rational evidence based reasons” bounce right off their concrete skulls.

Given that evolution is change through time that entails a history, saying you believe in evolution is like saying you believe that the Civil War occured. Personally, I think the Civil War did happen, even though I can never “prove” it. All the evidence we have is entirely consistent with the Civil War, just like all evidence is entirely consistent with life on earth having evoloved over billions of years. Someone can claim the Civil War did not happen, but that claim would never be part of a responsible history class. Similarly, any claim that life has not evolved over billions of years has no place in a biology class. To reject the long history of life on earth you basically have to reject all of science. For example, you have to reject things like dating of rocks based on radioactive decay. And to reject that you have to claim that we don’t understand atoms as well as we think we do. And to reject that, you would have to explain to lots of people in Japan that their ancestors were not, in fact, killed by an atomic bomb. The nice thing about the truth is that it is self-consistent. And science works by looking for inconsistencies that allow you to reject a hypothesis. This makes science a wonderful process for uncovering truth. Religions track record in this regard? Not so good. Religion can have the spiritual side of things, but it should take Intelligent Design and stick it in the closet of shame next to its other attempts to explain the natural world like The Great Flood, the Sun Revolves Around the Earth, and the The Single Rib Theory of Womanhood.

Natural Selection is the process by which evolution occurs. People often conflate the two, but it helps to remember that evolution is what happened and natural selection is the mechanism that made it happen. Natural selection is often described as survival of the fittest, and, although this obscures many of the subtleties of the process, this captures the competetive nature of it. The important point is that natural selection can only work on the variation that is present at the time. In regards to the giraffe’s long nerve, the proper mutation that would have allowed for the shorter nerve probably just never occured. Certainly if a mutation occurred that made the shorter and more efficient nerve and left everything else the same, that would be favored and would eventually become the normal condition for giraffes. Its the same reason horses haven’t evolved wheels despite our best efforts to breed faster horses. Wheels would be much more efficient and faster, but a mutation that substitutes wheels for legs simply has not occurred and probably never will. The design of animals is constrained both by their history and the chance nature of the variation that is available. Natural Selection cobbles together solutions that are slightly better than the alternatives at the time. Designers optimize, particularly if they are intelligent. It is a big difference that shows up in many ways. The point of the post is that if you look at Intelligent Design scientifically (that is, as a hypothesis that makes predictions that can be tested), it is very easy to reject. That stands in stark contrast to evolution by natural selection.

Dorko, being that I’m blowing off steam here, I don’t really care if you’re offended or if I’ve convinced you of anything. By the way, quit saying you “believe” in evolution. It’s not a belief to be taken on faith. You examine the prodigious amounts of evidence supporting it, and accept it (if you’re intelligent) or reject it (if your family tree has no branches). Framing it as a “belief” plays right into their hands.

Calling bullshit with the fundies just doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to support it with rational evidence based reasons.

Jeepers, Pollyanna! You’re right! All we need to do is confront the religious nuts with scientific evidence, and they’ll see the light of reason! Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

Oh. That’s right. Because religious faith acts as a sort of cement, preventing anything that could cause mental discomfort from penetrating. But hey, if you’re feeling all idealistic and optimistic, knock yourself out.

Your points are well-taken, but let me clear up one thing about this post. The point of this post isn’t to mock religion, but to call “bullshit” on the argument that Intelligent Design isn’t a religious theory.

The ID argument largely states that creation is so complex and intricate that there’s no way it could be the result of an “accident”. The inner workings of life are so complicated that they could only be the result of a designer. In order to make their “theory” palatable to non-Christians, IDers are adamant that the glowing praise of “the designer” has nothing to do with god or religion.

If every aspect of creation was the result of decisions made by the designer, then why can’t we question some of the imperfections that exist in every sphere of life? If the arguments about ID are to be taken at face value, then the designer in question shouldn’t be above criticsm. Unlike god, the designer isn’t omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, or benevolent, right?

Well, wrong. Because the idea that the designer isn’t god is a big charade. To pretend that ID is a scientific theory completely divorced from religion is a lie and everyone knows it. The fact that you were offended by this post proves my point.

The presumptive designer behind ID is obviously god and any efforts to put alternative “theories” about the creation of life on earth into science classes are unconstitutional efforts to inject religious teaching in public schools. I respect people’s rights to believe what they want, but I’m not going to sit idly while some people try to sneak their religious beliefs into the classroom. The trickery that ID proponents will resort to in order to put religious propaganda in front of children is shameful.