[Original:http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20050805190017815]
Creationist Wolf in Cheap Clothing
FFRF via BBSNews - 2005-08-05 -- Are we surprised when a president
known more for his faith than his intellect advises us that
creationism should be taught in public schools? George W. Bush,
responding this week to a question about evolution and "intelligent
design," gave us his learned scientific opinion: "Both sides ought to
be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is
about. . . . Part of education is to expose people to different
schools of thought."
Does anyone think Bush really cares about an objective academic
debate? Our president, the darling of the Christian right, is simply
using his office to legitimize his theistic views, which happen to be
the origin myth of the believing bloc that voted him into office.
As Christian conservative Gary Bauer pointed out: "With the president
endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that
position more respectable."
But there are more than two origin explanations. Does Bush advise
"properly" teaching the various Native American creation myths, such
as the earth forming on the back of a turtle rising from the waters?
Does he insist that the "school of thought" of the Raelians (that
humans are cloned extraterrestials) or the Babylonian Enuma Elish
(that we sprang from the blood drops of the goddess Tiamat) also be
"properly" taught in public science classrooms? Exactly how do you
"properly teach" myth and magic in the science class?
The proponents of "intelligent design"--which is just the old
creationist wolf in cheap clothing--want us to think that because
there seem (to them) to be examples of "irreducible complexity" in
living cells, or in other features of the universe, we must conclude
that it was designed by an intelligence outside of nature. Since
creationists have repeatedly been told by the courts that they can no
longer outlaw evolution or teach Genesis in public schools, they are
careful not to specify exactly who this designer is, pretending that
their hypothesis is merely objective, disinterested science.
Really. Golly, George, who do you think the mysterious Designer is?
Bush and the ID people are fooling no one. Look who cheers when the
president makes such remarks: not scientists--who overwhelmingly
reject "intelligent design"--but bible toters, theocrats and
preachers. Theologian Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna claims that
evolution as an "unguided, unplanned process of random variation and
natural selection" is untrue. This is not science vs. science. This is
poorly disguised religious dogma vs. the fact of evolution.
"Creationism science" is three things:
1) An attack on evolution, offering no evidence for their hypothesis
of a designer ("Natural selection is wrong, so we win by default");
2) The old "god of the gaps" strategy of seeking supposedly
unanswerable questions, and plugging the gap with a deity ("Gosh, we
can't explain this, so there must be a god");
3) A story, such as the creation myth in the book of Genesis ("God
said it, I believe it").
"Intelligent design" is not science. Its proponents have never had an
article published on the topic in any peer-reviewed scientific
journal. They conduct no experiments that would prove or falsify their
hypothesis. Their conjecture makes no useful predictions, nor can it
be mathematically modeled. There are no research labs doing ID science.
And who are they to proclaim that we have reached the end of
scientific progress? It is the gaps that drive science forward, not
grind it to a halt.
The ancients thought thunder and soil fertility were evidence of
deities, but now we know something about electricity, weather, and
agriculture. Those gaps have closed, and those gods have died. Isaac
Newton, a fervent Christian, played the same game. After brilliantly
discovering the laws of gravity that hold the planets in orbit, he
failed to come up with an explanation for why the planets move in the
same plane and same direction. He impatiently declared that these
unsolvable mysteries were evidence for an intelligent designer. But
now we know something about the formation of solar systems, and that
gap has closed.
Just because today's scientists can't fully answer a particular
question, can creationists mandate that no further inquiry is allowed?
(Many of their supposed examples of "irreducible complexity," by the
way, have already been explained, but this does not seem to discourage
them.)
Let's ask creationists: Someday, when these gaps have closed and all
your purported examples of "irreducible complexity" have been
satisfactorily explained by science, will you abandon your belief in a
god?
"Intelligent design" a not true science, vulnerable to
disconfirmation. It is merely a prop to legitimize prior beliefs.
Scientists, by the way, do acknowledge design in the universe: design
by natural selection, and by the limited number of ways atoms and
molecules can combine mathematically and geometrically, or by emergent
properties arising from "chaos," and so on. But "intelligent" design
is an unsatisfactory hypothesis because it simply answers one mystery
with another mystery. The mind of an intelligent designer would itself
show signs of functional complexity, raising the question: who
designed the designer?
If George Bush really wants to "expose people to different schools of
thought," will he advocate teaching Darwinism in Sunday School? Shall
we insert a chapter from Origin of the Species between Genesis 1 and 2?
The debate between the supernatural and natural world views ought to
be discussed, but not in science class. It's not as though today's
schoolchildren have been deprived of hearing about an "intelligent
designer." There are churches on every other corner and religious
broadcasts across the radio and TV spectra. Let's talk about
religion--the good and the bad of it--in a class on philosophy or
current topics.
But not in science class. Science teachers should teach science. Those
who pretend "intelligent design" is science are missionaries, not
teachers.
By Dan Barker, co-president Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
2005-08-05.
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