How is the idea of teaching pseudoscience in the classrooms of our public schools even up for debate in this country? To anyone who has the audacity to claim that the "science" of "intelligent design" was given any more than two seconds of thought by the "scientists" who came up with it, I feel a strong obligation to refresh your understanding of the term science.
The definition of science, as defined by the Random House Dictionary, is as follows: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
With that clarified, it becomes necessary to reacquaint ourselves with the obvious: you cannot disprove the existence of God in any way, shape or form. In other words, one cannot prove a negative. That, in and of itself, does not make God's existence intrinsically probable, let alone does it come anywhere close to proving it. It's sort of become, at this point in human history, a cliche amongst the non-religious to compare the probability of God's existence with the probability the existence of unicorns. As with God, the existence of unicorns can not be disproven. Yet nobody I know believes in them. Why is it any different with God for most people?
Intelligent design, of course, is a poorly disguised way of claiming that God is responsible for all existence. God's existence, of course, does not need to be, nor has it ever been proven, because "faith" is all that one needs to appreciate the "fact" that he exists. Faith, of course, is synonymous with "believing things without facts or evidence." And finally, "believing things without facts or evidence" could easily be applied to the term "stupidity."
I've been reading The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins, and though the book focuses primarily on, as the name suggests, evolution, it does have occasional anti-religious remarks. The following is from early in the book, during which Dawkins makes a masterfully crafted argument:
"In spite of the fascination of fossils, it is surprising how much we would still know about our evolutionary past without them. If every fossil were magicked away, the comparative study of modern organisms, of how their patterns of resemblances, especially of their genetic sequences, are distributed among species, and of how species are distributed among the continents and islands, would still demonstrate, beyond all sane doubt, that our history is evolutionary, and that all living creatures are cousins. Fossils are a bonus. A welcome bonus, to be sure, but not an essential one. It is worth remembering this when creationists go on...about 'gaps' in the fossil record. The fossil record could be one big gap, and the evidence for evolution would still be overwhelmingly strong. At the same time, if we had only fossils and no other evidence, the fact of evolution would again be overwhelmingly supported. As things stand, we are blessed with both."
So why do the religious insist on meticulously picking out the bits and pieces of missing details, both supposed and real (but mostly supposed), which science has yet to explain? Science is an ever-progressing process that is continuing to explain more and more about the nature and origins of existence, through rational, structured experimentation and observation. People once thought that the Earth was flat; it has since been proven, by science, that the Earth is not flat, but is, in fact, round. So of course there are going to be gaps along the way, but such gaps are being filled more and more as science progresses. Religion, however, does nothing but fabricate explanations so as to weasel their way out of giving rational input. So for religion to demand more proof on the part of science, when the religious themselves justify their assertions sheerly on "faith," is an atrocious double-standard, one that should not go unquestioned.
The religious insist that there's actually a controversy within the scientific community about the validity of Darwin's theories. The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank and staunch supporter of pseudoscience being taught in our classrooms, has even started a campaign called "Teach the Controversy." This, again, is basically just another way for creationists to redefine terms to their own liking. Evolution is quite possibly the least disputed theory in the entire scientific community, at least as a whole. The details, of course, such as the patterns that occur throughout evolution, are debated quite a bit, but there's a strong, overall consensus about the theory as a whole. There IS no controversy.
P.S. It's astonishing how most people (or most of my fellow Americans, at least) still believe in "the missing link" of human evolution, when the missing link was actually discovered in the 1800s.
The definition of science, as defined by the Random House Dictionary, is as follows: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
With that clarified, it becomes necessary to reacquaint ourselves with the obvious: you cannot disprove the existence of God in any way, shape or form. In other words, one cannot prove a negative. That, in and of itself, does not make God's existence intrinsically probable, let alone does it come anywhere close to proving it. It's sort of become, at this point in human history, a cliche amongst the non-religious to compare the probability of God's existence with the probability the existence of unicorns. As with God, the existence of unicorns can not be disproven. Yet nobody I know believes in them. Why is it any different with God for most people?
Intelligent design, of course, is a poorly disguised way of claiming that God is responsible for all existence. God's existence, of course, does not need to be, nor has it ever been proven, because "faith" is all that one needs to appreciate the "fact" that he exists. Faith, of course, is synonymous with "believing things without facts or evidence." And finally, "believing things without facts or evidence" could easily be applied to the term "stupidity."
I've been reading The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins, and though the book focuses primarily on, as the name suggests, evolution, it does have occasional anti-religious remarks. The following is from early in the book, during which Dawkins makes a masterfully crafted argument:
"In spite of the fascination of fossils, it is surprising how much we would still know about our evolutionary past without them. If every fossil were magicked away, the comparative study of modern organisms, of how their patterns of resemblances, especially of their genetic sequences, are distributed among species, and of how species are distributed among the continents and islands, would still demonstrate, beyond all sane doubt, that our history is evolutionary, and that all living creatures are cousins. Fossils are a bonus. A welcome bonus, to be sure, but not an essential one. It is worth remembering this when creationists go on...about 'gaps' in the fossil record. The fossil record could be one big gap, and the evidence for evolution would still be overwhelmingly strong. At the same time, if we had only fossils and no other evidence, the fact of evolution would again be overwhelmingly supported. As things stand, we are blessed with both."
So why do the religious insist on meticulously picking out the bits and pieces of missing details, both supposed and real (but mostly supposed), which science has yet to explain? Science is an ever-progressing process that is continuing to explain more and more about the nature and origins of existence, through rational, structured experimentation and observation. People once thought that the Earth was flat; it has since been proven, by science, that the Earth is not flat, but is, in fact, round. So of course there are going to be gaps along the way, but such gaps are being filled more and more as science progresses. Religion, however, does nothing but fabricate explanations so as to weasel their way out of giving rational input. So for religion to demand more proof on the part of science, when the religious themselves justify their assertions sheerly on "faith," is an atrocious double-standard, one that should not go unquestioned.
The religious insist that there's actually a controversy within the scientific community about the validity of Darwin's theories. The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank and staunch supporter of pseudoscience being taught in our classrooms, has even started a campaign called "Teach the Controversy." This, again, is basically just another way for creationists to redefine terms to their own liking. Evolution is quite possibly the least disputed theory in the entire scientific community, at least as a whole. The details, of course, such as the patterns that occur throughout evolution, are debated quite a bit, but there's a strong, overall consensus about the theory as a whole. There IS no controversy.
P.S. It's astonishing how most people (or most of my fellow Americans, at least) still believe in "the missing link" of human evolution, when the missing link was actually discovered in the 1800s.