The Verdict Is In
Not that you should be too surprised by the rigged outcome :
The mock trial of Darwin’s theory by Kansas’ Board of Education, which concluded on May 12, included testimonies and cross-examination of and by pro-evolution and pro-creationism experts.The board’s trial voted 6 to 4 in favour of bringing the concept of “intelligent design” within the methods of teaching science in schools. Over two dozen scientists, teachers and lawyers said the state’s science standards be amended to incorporate alternative thinking.
. . .
At the centre of the trials is Steve Abrams, a veterinarian and Republican, who among other things believes that earth is only 5,000 years old, a view propagated by Christian conservatives, as opposed to 4.5 billion years as argued by scientists.Abrams as the board chairman has challenged the validity of evolution as the only valid explanation of life. He has said evolutionary biology is inadequate in terms of evidence and there ought to be an intelligent designer at the helm.
Now let’s put aside the obvious fact that the folks pushing intelligent design are the same ones who think the Bible code is real, are looking for Noah’s ark, and think dinosaur bones were hidden underground by the devil. On its own merits, intelligent design is complete horseshit.
First of all, if you’re an ID advocate, stop using the word “theory”. You don’t get to use that word. What you’re trying to push is a hypothesis, which is always trumped by a theory. Just ask one of the kids whose science classes you’re trying to screw up. When scientists have an idea about how the world works, they come up with a hypothesis that they can test. If it stands up to repeated scrutiny, it eventually gets labeled a scientific “theory”. There’s a few decades of research and peer review to do before you earn the right to use that word.
Before that happens, you should also deal with the fact that intelligent design is a crappy hypothesis. It would be one thing if your “alternative thinking” was based on an observation of some sort, but it’s just a half-assed inferrence based on a lack of evidence. Looking at nature’s complexity and jumping to the conclusion that it must have been to the work of a “designer” holds about as much scientific merit and assuming that thunder is the sound god makes when she’s angry.
So if you’re serious about the “Gosh, the world sure is complicated. It must be god’s work.” hypothesis, go back to the drawing board. Stop concentrating on what you percieve to be evolution’s weaknesses and try working on ID’s strengths. Find a way to incorporate your beliefs with every bit of evidence that the scientific world has previously discovered and figure out how to test the damn thing. Submit your new hypothesis to some scientific journals and pray that the free marketplace of ideas favors your side.
It bears repeating that ID advocates already tried to get some respect for their hypotheis in the scientific community back when it was called “creationism”. They failed. This route isn’t about getting respect for intelligent design, it’s about trying to take a short cut (and in the process cripple the next generation of scientists) by appealing to the beliefs and exploiting the ignorance of school board members. As much as I want to religion out of public schools, my big concern here is protecting the integrity of our educational system from being slowly eroded by a flood of pseudoscience.
UPDATE : Reader Tony writes in to point out a mistake in the article I quoted above :
The “trial” was held before a subcommittee of three of the board’s most conservative members. They will supposedly take their findings to the rest of the board, which will vote sometime in the summer about which science standards to accept. The “minority” standards that they are likely to report won’t, as your post claimed, require Kansas teachers to instruct their students in intelligent design. The ID supporters are more subtle than that. Instead, they change the definition of science itself so that it will be open to “objective” approaches (i.e., allowing the role of miracles in the development of life).
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I think your critique of the Kansas School Board decision was unduly harsh. These folks are just trying to prove that the Enlightenment was a highly localised event that just hasn’t quite reached the trailer parks of America yet. Seriously though, since the decision is opening up the science curriculum to ‘alternate theories’ about man’s origins why stop at the Christian view. Kansas residents who oppose this decision should just flood the school board with requests to teach the Wiccan view or the Odinist view or the Aboriginal view or the Native American view, etc., etc. I also think that this faith thing could do wonders for our clogged healthcare system, provided Christians actually live up to their anti-science beliefs & toddle off to their nearest supernatural house of miracles when they find themselves ill instead of the nearest hospital.
Comment by Richard Kirby — May 17, 2005 @ 9:50 am
Here’s my advice to anybody living in a district with a board of education that signs on to this sort of horse shit: Take the county to small claims court to recover your property taxes for that year. That revenue is collected to support public education. If it’s being used to promote religious instruction, then it is being collected fraudulently.
It is not necessary to win the case. What’s needed is enough people to bring the actions. Once the theocratic impulses of the Toxic Christians start costing money — or even looking like they might — you’re gonna see a lot of people suddenly discover the language of the First Amendment.
Comment by Roddy McCorley — May 17, 2005 @ 10:18 am
Actually, ID is neither a theory NOR a hypothesis. A scientific hypothesis is empirically testable and falsifiable. The theory of evolution has been built through the testing of numerous hypotheses, each of which stood up to rigorous emprical testing. To my knowledge, no ID advocate has ever been able to provide a good answer to the question, “What evidence would lead you to conclude that you might be wrong?” If anything, ID is an axiom, and not a particularly scientific one.
Comment by X — May 17, 2005 @ 11:04 am
Dear US Evolutionists and Creationists:
What’s going on down there? Can you not raise your heads high enough above your little culture war to see that it’s not all about you? Why do so many of you rush to Fox-atize life with this “whoever’s not with us is against us” crap?
1) Are you really unaware that plenty of theists, from the Vatican on down, accept evolutionary theory’s main tenet, i.e. that we share a biological ancestry with other animals?
2) Are you really unaware that plenty of scientists (including staunch evolutionists) accept ID’s main tenet, i.e. that life couldn’t have been randomly generated?
3) Are you really unaware of the strenuous objections against evolutionary theory raised by non-theists and/or respected biologists and scientists, or the strenuous objections to ID raised by theists?
4) Are you really unaware that evolution and ID as you know them are only two of many ideas about our origins, and even those two exist in many forms (yes, even in the USA)?
Get over yourselves! The evolution debate is about more than your personal religious sympathies, or which idiot you’ll vote in next time.
Aaron Gaius Ricker Parks
Montreal, Quebec
Comment by Aaron Gaius Ricker Parks — May 17, 2005 @ 12:18 pm
Did you even bother to read the post before typing your patronizing comment that does nothing to refute the arguments I’ve outlined? I’d love to debate this topic with you, but your cute little list of questions doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the topic at hand.
Comment by greg — May 17, 2005 @ 12:53 pm
So, they are only going to go with the Christian’s version of the ID?
So in other words text books will be replaced with bibles…and science classes will now have experiments where children get to make men out of dirt and women out of spare ribs? That is too cool even for me, sign me up, and I am Buddhist.
I remember about a decade ago my Science teacher said this when he was about to teach evolution, “check your religion at the door”. Is it so hard to see that religion interacting with school or the government is a bad thing?
Comment by Kryten Syxx — May 17, 2005 @ 1:00 pm
I really don’t get the ID argument….it is possible to have both a Supreme Creator and evolution – it is very simple, but takes a simple understanding of science. Take for example the Big Bang THEORY – not a hypothosis. Suppose that all matter in the universe was together in one ball, place, nutsack, whatever. It is then quite possible – in fact, probable that something caused an explosion which resulted in a chaotic and incredible dispursment of all matter which millions, billions or trillions of years later gravitated towards each other, thus forming stars and planets.
Now if you have followed Newton’s Laws, then you know that one of the fundamental laws is that MATTER CAN NEITHER BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED……if so, then how did all of the matter in the universe get created in the first place? Surely THAT can be Intelligent Design. However, the retards on the right and the fundies of the modern Christian church will not accept this version of a Supreme Power.
I certainly do not claim to be a scientific master of the Force or something, but I am someone who tries to think on terms of logic, why is logic and common sense lost on these poor souls in Kansas?
Just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Comment by Webslinger — May 17, 2005 @ 8:14 pm
i do believe god created the universe, and unlike the IDers, i only need 3 words from the bible to build my belief upon: “God is love.”
i think about the entire humongous utterly amazing universe, and all that it contains, and i ask: where the hell did all this come from? i find it improbable that it was always “here”, although it’s possible; i think it came from … somewhere.
ok, that means it either has a physical genesis, which the laws of physics as we currently understand them would seem to refute (and who knows how accurate our laws on this are?) or it had a spiritual origin. i opt for the latter as the most feasible. love, even on this limited mortal world, is an amazing thing. imagine it in its purest form, how powerful it would be then. it would be, in essence, god. and it would be so powerful, it just had to exist.
actually, the whole idea of “where the hell did all this come from” really screws with my brain. i choose to believe that god is love, and that god is personal and real (and of many manifestations to humankind), and that god created the universe.
13 – 15 billion years ago or so.
Comment by t.a. — May 17, 2005 @ 9:30 pm
ID, far from being the product of any kind of scientific inquiry, is simply a throwing up of the hands.
It’s funny how the ID advocates demand 100% irrefutable proof that evolution is a fact, but they’re willing to buy ID on faith only:
They sound like a bunch of talking Barbies: “Science is SOOOOOO hard! It must be MAGIC!”
Comment by Jill — May 18, 2005 @ 7:29 am
Webslinger and t.a. – a little clarification:
The Big Bang theory holds that not only matter but SPACETIME itself expanded out of nothing. There was no universe for the matter to expand into. They arose together. It is totally mindbending to think about. Also, the laws of physics as we know them break down at the Big Bang, so are not applicable to how the universe arose, only to what happened right after.
Also, matter can be converted into energy (E=mc2), and vice versa. Though the total amount of energy (in the form of either matter or photons or whatever) is unchanging, matter and energy exchange forms all the time.
Good comments, both of you.
Comment by Dave — May 18, 2005 @ 2:26 pm
OK, this intellegent design thing has had me thinking for several days. The question of theory or hypothesis is interesting, but I think I can put it to rest. Intelligent design is the type of idea a bunch of college sophmores come up with while they’re sitting around in their dorm room smoking dope. I can see why the religious right likes the idea. For intelligent design to fit, God has to have a fascination for minutia which determines his greater caring for the religious right over the extreme vastness of the rest of creation. It’s the discredited belief that we are the center of the universe dressed up for the impending appocolypse.
Comment by KamaChanda — May 19, 2005 @ 2:51 pm
Dear Greg,
It’s too bad you assume that I was trying to argue with your post, and/or with your apparent pro-evolution/anti-ID position.
If you read my post carefully, you’ll notice that I wasn’t doing either.
I guess it’s good in a way, since it helps prove the point of my post – people routinely confuse discussions of evolutionary theory with dichotomous arguments (mostly arguments about religion).
this confuses the issue – or, more accurately, propagates the strategy of confusion used by religious polemicists – and earns you friends and opponents you don’t necessarily want or deserve. When I try to explain this to atheists, for example, I’m dismissed as a secret ID adherent and/or Christian. When I try to explain it to ID theists, I’m dismissed as a secret atheist and/or evolutionist!
In short, I’m not trying to “refute your argument.” I’m trying to tell you that if you want to combat US fundamentalism, you’d make better progress by rejecting its divisive with-us-or-against-us assumption than by accepting it, and thus letting them frame the argument.
Aaron Gaius Ricker Parks
Comment by Aaron Gaius Ricker Parks — May 20, 2005 @ 8:25 am
I agree with Jill.
The ID people are nothing more than those who want to dress up biblical-based creationism in a scientific-sounding “theory.”
Many forget that science and evolutionary biology are ongoing endeavors, they have not stopped researching. We are simply talking about the limits – so far – of our understanding. Science is a living thing that is still trying to find evidence and test hypothesis beyond what has already been figured out. We have many, many scientists who are actively working on fleshing out our understanding of the “big bang” and how it actually came to be.
It is not too hard to grasp that perhaps the “big bang” was actually a reaction in a far larger system or something.
Mind-bending indeed.
Comment by A. Mendoza — May 21, 2005 @ 11:33 pm