While I'm without Internet service at my global blog headquarters, I would like to take a moment to revel in yet another victory in the war on brains, this time in Kansas. Yesterday's news follows on the heels of other notable losses for the proponents of intelligent design. What follows, though written last year, represents my initial venture into the dark swamps of faith-based ignorance.In the war on brains, they've won.
The
Christian Taliban, emboldened anew by the election (and reelection) of President Bush, are trying to force the Bible - a book based on evidence as provable as the unicorn or mermaid - into America's science classes, where data, not Jesus, is lord.
Having failed at the outright insertion (heterosexually and
without protection, of course) of creationism into the public schools, the religious right has been trying, rather successfully, a new tack. They're using "intelligent design" as a Trojan horse to shove the proven, time-tested idea of evolution aside, replacing science with scripture, reason with religion.
In case you haven't been paying attention or - this would be better - your local schools haven't subscribed to this moronic "theory," here's intelligent design (or ID) in a nutshell: There are a great many things in this world - the development of species, for instance - that are simply too complex. That we cannot explain such complexity, therefore, means that there
must be an "intelligent designer" at work, not science. Who would this individual be? Put two and two together.
Let's stop, for a minute, to contemplate the
utter stupidity in the ID argument. The entire notion of ID is built on the ignorance of its adherents. They don't understand science, are fearful of progress and don't like it when the faith-based cocoon they've built around their children is punctured with sound logic and empirical research.
Things here on Earth, they just so cotton-pickin' complicated that we don't have no hope to explain 'em. But I betcha God could. Teach us, God!Again, think about that.
If I can't explain it, it must be God's handiwork. There are quite a few things I can't claim to explain in detail - how an airplane functions, the inner workings of a computer, the illegal defense rule in the NBA - but that doesn't mean
God created those things. It just means there are things out there I haven't learned.
But it gets better: Not only do
they not understand how the world works, but they also don't want
others to understand, either. So they're hell-bent on forcing ID onto the same intellectual plane as evolution, which is as dumb an idea as ID itself. The sad thing is that they've got the president's backing.
Bush has gone
on the record saying he supports teaching both ID and evolution, "so people can understand what the debate is about." Said Bush on August 1, "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."
Do you see what's at work here?
So far, it's not about ID-only education - though that is very likely their goal - it's about fairness and balance. They know that they've got no hope of schools signing onto creationism, so, for them, it's about presenting "both sides." They plead discrimination and cry outrage that their voices aren't being heard. But when school districts acquiesce and allow ID on the same footing as evolution, they've let the dunces win the debate. Suddenly, the lying, no-good, small-town drunk has earned a seat at the United Nations.
There are, quite simply, some instances where presenting "both sides" of an issue is flat-out wrong. There aren't two sides in the grammar debate. "Ain't" isn't proper English. There aren't two sides in the pregnancy debate. The stork hasn't replaced the womb. There aren't two sides in the gravity debate. Things fall down, or they don't fall at all.
And there aren't two sides to the evolution debate. Yes, ID fans, evolution is a theory, but not a theory in
your sense of the word, i.e. "I have this theory that Dale Jr. isn't at the top of the Chase for the Nextel Cup because NASCAR officials never liked his daddy." No, race fans, to scientists a
theory isn't a "hunch" or a "notion," it's a carefully crafted principle or series of statements used to explain accepted, repeatedly tested phenomena. What you call a "theory" scientists call "conjecture."
Furthermore, a scientific theory offers valid, testable predictions of future phenomena. Does ID, other than a prediction of a generation of scared, stupid children falling further behind other nations clearly beyond this debate? Doubtful.
The beauty of science is that its acolytes
never assume they know all there is to know, something that can't be said of creationists. A scientific theory, therefore, remains established until proven otherwise, when it is either modified or discarded altogether, like geocentrism. Theories don't become laws - something entirely different - and aren't precursors of laws as part of some grand sequence of truth.
Funny, isn't it, that in yet another case the Bush administration has selective memory when it comes to its policies? The administration built on states' rights had no problems trying to supercede a state as far as
Terri Schiavo was concerned. And the administration that won't let common-sense, life-saving sex education get in the way of its
abstinence-only fetish now wants its base's pet cause - religion in schools - to have a place at the table.
Is it any surprise, then, that these intellectually dishonest buffoons and their followers can't distinguish fact from fiction, theory from conjecture?
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