Letters to the Editor
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Watching from the outside
We Canadians have always enjoyed a sort of sick sense of satisfaction watching the downward slide of America, as the pillars which made it great are eroded one after another. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the secular basis of the constitution are constantly under attack, mostly by the religious right. The rest of the modern, secular societies watch in amazement as you undermine each of these. Scopes II is yet another example this.
Canadians have two major worries that may result from Scopes II: the first is that Canadian children use American textbooks in school, so whatever backward steps you take will affect the education of our children. The second is that the religous right is exporting ideas and funds to their Canadian counterparts in order to propagate their Chistianist agenda.
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Ignorance- of God, Math, and Science seems to be bliss
Most of the people, here and elsewhere, who talk about evolution and Creation have simply not done their homework. They do not know what they speak of, and blather about opinions.
Folks, Darwin was a contemporary of LINCOLN. In his day, there were no computers, no Internet, no decent fossil record. He said himself that if the fossil record didn't validate his THEORY, it should not be followed.
Well, here we are, with computers that can quickly PROVE that evolution requires a population of four quadrillion and a gestation period of less than 30 days to occur in a species. Viruses have that, no other species do. Viruses evolve, no other species do.
Piltown "man" was a pig's jaw. Cro-magnon man was just a shorter man- like Napoleon.
If it comforts people to Believe in the Religion of Evolution which has no Proof, certainly you should be free to do so. But certainly as there are more scientific proofs for the Intelligent Design of the Universe than life from non-life, which does not and will not ever occur, it seems simply fair to present both.
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Unintelligent hullabaloo
I'd like to address Gordy Slack's article "Intelligent Designer."
Richard Thompson said himself that his purpose in fighting the battle to get intelligent design taught in schools is because he can't accept that he's just a piece of matter bouncing around the universe and that we, the human race, are unplanned. This is precisely the difference between religion and science. Religion exists to fuel our egos, to make us believe that we are purposeful and that, above all else, we are chosen among god's creatures. Science is about observing the world and drawing conclusions, called theories, from it, until those conclusions are disproved. Then we draw new conclusions. It's the learn-as-you-go approach versus the assumption approach.
People who find truth in Darwin's observations aren't ideologues. Darwin's observations are not doctrine by definition. That's the beauty of science. Darwin's observations on the origins of life are, collectively, a theory, which in scientific terminology means that in biology Darwin's observations are the overriding guide but not absolute. A theory stays a theory until it is disproved. Darwin's observations on the origins of life have yet to be disproved. (And let's not forget that Darwin made a lot of scientific observations, and some of them have been disproved.)
When Thompson talks of two Americas--one deeply religious, the other with no foundation where anything goes--I just have to laugh. It's a simplistic and dishonest observation, and he knows it. But I'd expect such a black-and-white world-view from someone like him. That's what his religion teaches him. I know this because I was raised a Catholic.
Thompson tries to spin moral relativism as a "bad word," a contagious disease in our society. But what's wrong with moral relativism? Without moral relativism, we couldn't have sympathy for our fellow human beings. We couldn't look at things from someone else's perspective. What Thompson hates about moral relativism is that it completely screws up his perceptions of the world and makes him face other peoples' realities. It raises too many questions. It makes him face how the things he does affects other people. I think that's a good thing. But for Thompson, the implications of moral relativism are simply too much for him to deal with, so he forces his beliefs on others through court battles. Are his beliefs wrong? I don't know, and I don't care. But we live in a pluralistic society. And the parts of our society that apply to everyone must be secular.
The problem with intelligent design isn't that it comes from people who have faith in something most of them call God. It's that it isn't based on science at all, no matter what its proponents say. It makes a huge leap from accepting parts of evolutionary science to stating that we were made by an intelligent designer. That is a conflicting view of the world. A scientific theory isn't invalid just because it comes from someone of a particular faith, but it is invalid when it inaccurately applies science to support a leap of faith.
Intelligent design is nothing more than a means by which religious moralists are trying, once again, to get into our public schools because their churches aren't big enough for them. The folks behind it have certainly succeeded in penetrating our public schools. They've been working for years to do it, and they'll continue to do so. It's just that now the political climate is favorable for them. So they're taking advantage of it. Their goal is to get American public schools teaching religious material, because these folks don't believe in democracy. They believe in theocracy. They don't believe in free thought or freedom, period. They believe in a free will that must be suppressed.
And Thompson is wrong in saying that scientists haven't looked at intelligent design on its own merits. They have, and overwhelmingly they've concluded that it has no merit. If Thompson thinks evolution is only mere conjecture, then the idea that life springs from some kind of supreme being is fantasy.
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Intelligent Design? Great idea, if you are a evangelical athiest
I can understand the appeal of Intelligent Design to fundamentalist. A "scientific theory" that requires divine intervention.
But I don't think they have thought this through completely.
Long term, backing this theory has the potential to turn people away from religion.
After hundreds years of dabbling in physical science, and always getting a black eye, one would think religions would learn that the field of science is not a good environment for theology. Science is result neutral. It is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, we don't know what the final picture will be, but we will accept the picture the evidence points to. If new evidence is discovered that points to a different result, our perception of the universe changes. Religion starts with a big picture, then tries to make the evidence fit it. Science also requires supporting evidence, religion faith.
It is never a good idea to tie a belief system to a new scientific theory, especially one which has no supporting evidence (at this point ID is just a hypothesis). Most new theories are eventually rejected. Even if the theology the ID'ers are trying to justify is valid, once it is justified based on a theory, it loses credibility when the theory is proved invalid.
Religion will be especially tainted. Because their product is ultimate truth, backing a verifiable lie will raise questions about the validity of their message, and their credibility to deliver it.
Because the ID'est are trying to spin this as not religious, and because it is not based in scriptures, it has the potential to spawn new theologies. For example, if the intelligent designer use evolution and natural selection as it's toolbox for creation, one could hypothesize that the ultimate objective would be to live in sustainable balance with nature. That's not us. Perhaps we aren't the ultimate goal. Perhaps we are a mistake.
Intelligent design does not reject Darwin, it just speculates about a higher power which is controlling it. So any religion that endorses intelligent design is also endorsing Darwin and natural selection. When ID is proven false, the religions that support it will be left with natural selection and evolution, but without any means for spontaneous generation of complex new features. Evolution works by making small changes over a long period of time. Brains did not spontaneously appear. The were preceded by primitive nervous systems. This could lead to the embarrassing question, "who had the first soul?". Is there a primitive soul in all animals? It wasn't a very big problem to be wrong about how old the earth is, or our place in the universe, because those questions are not what people turn to religion to answer. Endorsing a scientific theory where the existence of a soul requires divine intervention, that also says eye balls and flagella are evidence of this divine intervention, is a risky strategy. When the observable organs are shown to have evolved slowly using natural selection, this leaves the soul as the sole exception to evolution. It is best not to shine too much light on the first soul question. Best to leave it as "God works in mysterious ways and lots of scripture is metaphor". Most people are quite content accepting both science and religion as separate fields answering different questions. They do not mix well, and whenever it has been tried in the past, religion has not faired very well.