Don't forget! My new novel, "Not Another Savior!" is out and on sale... religion will never be the same. I hope.
A couple of friends of mine recently watched one of the most asinine "documentaries" ever filmed; Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The film lamely attempts to make a case that Intelligent Design (ID) should be considered alongside other sciences in schools, primarily because the field of scientific research seems to be controlled by "elite" (his word, not mine) groups of scientists. Essentially, because scientists are "elitists," goes the argument, they should be forced to accept the concept of Intelligent Design as just another scientific theory.
First of all, I want you to imagine if scientists made the opposite argument. Imagine that scientists called priests, nuns and preachers "elitists" and demanded that they be forced to teach evolution alongside creationism in a religion class. Can you imagine religionists sitting still for that? People like Ben Stein would be hopping mad, and rightfully so. Religion and science are two different disciplines, and should be treated as such.
Unfortunately, these friends of mine fell for one of the most absurd arguments made in the film; that ID should not be dismissed by scientists, because it's impossible to disprove that creation was engineered by an intelligent being or group of beings. This troubled me greatly, because these friends are usually very intelligent and usually quite logical. But there's something about religion that does something to some brains. For some reason, when people decide to adopt religion, they seem to lose their rational thought processes. There's a reason they call it faith, folks. The stories in the Bible were never meant to be taken literally, and the stories don't have to be proven true in order for them to have value in your life. Giving up your logical self is not necessary to make God happy. In fact, if you believe God gave you a logical, rational mind, it seems like an insult to disregard it to such a degree.
And let's face it; Intelligent Design is not science, and it is not in the least bit logical.
For those unfamiliar with Intelligent Design, it’s essentially a reworking of the creationism story using pseudo-scientific terms. The basic premise is this; because many natural organisms and systems are quite complex, they necessarily point to an "intelligent" cause, rather than the assumed "randomness" of natural selection. Intelligent Design proponents operate under the assumption that the likelihood of "random" events creating something as complex as a circulatory system is minute, so they "must" have been created by a being, like, say, God.
Here’s how an example of ID theory actually looks:
Because human beings are so complex, it's not possible that nature designed us "by accident" (again, their word, not mine) through random natural occurrences. Therefore, humans must have been designed and created by the being commonly referred to as God. Essentially, they start with an unprovable premise -- that humans are too complex to have been created randomly -- and make an unprovable conclusion -- that a single being or entity called God must have created them. But, as ID proponents see things, ID is just as valid, scientifically, as evolution, and should be taught in schools.
While that sounds "logical" on some level, if you don't think about it, it's really just pseudo-scientific double-talk. There's no science whatsoever in Intelligent Design, and wrapping religious belief systems in scientific-sounding jargon doesn't make it science.
Scientific theories and explanations are based on evidence, not based on the lack of evidence. Science isn't about explaining everything beyond a shadow of a doubt; it's about discovery, and putting that discovery into context, along with all other known facts. Scientific theories change all of the time, but the changes are always based on discoveries of new evidence, not speculation as to why there is no evidence for something.
Evidence for natural selection abounds; it's right in front of our faces if we bother to look at it. Polluted rivers are producing frogs and reptiles with what we call "deformities," which are simply mutations based on environmental factors.
Consider antibiotics; if you take too much of one antibiotic, it stops working, as forces inside your body mutate to fight the "invader." That's all "natural selection;" nature will always find a way to assist an organism in trying to survive, and species always adapt to their environment. We can also consider something as simple as variations in skin color among humans. Kind of strange that people whose ancestors came from warmer climates tend to be darker than those who spend long periods covered up, doesn't it? Isn't that an adaptation of sorts?
In other words, to claim that evolution is bad theory, or that natural selection is bogus requires more than a simple statement; it requires evidence. In the basic Intelligent Design theory, I could substitute "Santa Claus" or "Superman" for "God," and the basic statement would be just as true.
Try it.
Human beings are too complex to have simply occurred through a series of random occurrences in nature. Therefore, it's possible Santa Claus had his elves design and create us in a workshop at the North Pole.
I think we'd all agree, that's not scientific. But somehow. we're supposed to accept that, if you plug God in, it somehow becomes "science."
In science, if you have an alternate view, or a different theory, it must be based on available empirical evidence. To theorize without empirical evidence is called faith. And while the separation of church and state in incredibly important, so is the very distinct delineation between faith and science.
Ben Stein isn't a scientist, so his opinion on science and ID is necessarily specious, at best. That's not saying he's stupid. In fact, he's far from it. But he does have a political agenda. Ben Stein and the entire ID crowd are attempting to politicize science, for very insidious reasons. They're playing to a constituency that revels in its ignorance, and they're trying to make them even more loyally Republican than they already were.
Many saw George W. Bush's slaps against science over his eight year reign as the ravings of an ignoramus, who doesn't understand science, and therefore, doesn't want to think about it. They would be wrong.
To believe that would be to suggest that George W. Bush's handlers were equally as stupid as he, and that's just not the case. No, what is happening is yet another in a series of cynical political ploys, to create yet another flag for the ignoramuses that make up the Republican "base" (was there ever a better word to describe this group, really?) to wave, alongside the abortion and gay marriage flags, both of which are getting a little worn and tattered.
These people aren't religious. Look at the leadership of the neoconservatives, and you can't find one of them that adheres to anything resembling Christian principles, even though they fall all over themselves trying to insist they're "Christian." They use religious terminology to get power, and they proceed to shit all over the religious people who gave them the power in the first place. And if you think I'm kidding, consider this. This past week, the "Christians" in the House passed a bill further restricting insurance companies who cover abortions in their insurance plans. They know it'll never pass the Senate, and will be vetoed by the president. But from January 2001 to January 2007, they had the House, Senate and the White House, and never even considered such a bill. Odd, isn't it?
And the leaders of right wing churches get paid a lot of money by right wing politicians (anyone notice that most of the money for "faith-based initiatives" went to white evangelical churches in the south, while they attack groups like ACORN mercilessly?), so they scare their congregants into voting for the right wing politicians, to avoid the fires of hell and the wrath of the almighty.
In other words, corrupt politicians join together with corrupt religious leaders and screw the very people they're supposed to be "saving."
That is where crap like Intelligent Design comes from. The debate over ID has become absolutely unbearable. Not so much because a group of people have created a pseudo-scientific explanation for creationism, but because certain political types have run with it, and attempted to use it as a political wedge issue to marginalize science, at a time when we need science more than ever. There is no difference between forcing kids to study ID, and forcing them to pray at the beginning of a school day. No problem if you want to do that in a private parochial school, but there is no way such a thing should be taught in public schools, using taxpayer dollars. We don't pay our taxes to build schools that keep kids ignorant.
But even in private religious schools, children should be taught that there is a distinct difference between science and faith, and for the sake of human survival, they cannot mix. For science to work, it has to be free of any outside influence, except the evidence before the scientist. That doesn’t mean scientists can't create questions, and look for answers to them, but they have to do so looking forward, not backward. It may never be possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. That doesn't mean God doesn't exist; it just means that we have no evidence for it.
I've always wondered why so many people who claim such great faith are always so concerned with having to "prove" the existence of God to others. Isn't that the very definition of faith; to believe that something exists, even though it's not possible to prove it? Isn't just the feeling that something greater than us is out there sufficient? It's supposed to be, so a great suggestion from me would be to just relax and believe; there's no need to prove anything scientifically, if you have true faith. Religion, by the way, is not faith, but that's another column for another day...
Intelligent Design is creationism, made to sound more scientifically plausible. But it's religion, not science, so keep it in the church, and out of the science classroom. Our children are already at a disadvantage, scientifically; let's not confuse the issue by introducing theories so unscientific that you could substitute "God" with "The Easter Bunny," and get a statement that is just as "true."
