The Incredibly Stupefying "Intelligent" "Design" "Debate"
Yes, those quote marks are there on purpose.
Go ahead - picture me sitting across from you making those incredibly annoying claw-mark gestures as I say the phrase: the intelligent design debate.
Can you please hand me a tissue? I need to clean up some of the disdain leaking from every orifice above my neck. Allergies. I hate 'em.
Perhaps you might have guessed, but I'm loathe to even use the phrase because it gives the morons more credit than they deserve. There's nothing intelligent about it, for one. For another, "design" is a faith-based idea, not at all scientific (you can't test it, you can't disprove it, it predicts nothing whatsoever), and finally - there is no debate, at least in scientific circles, or in regular people circles, or in over-IQ-100 circles, that the theory of evolution is debatable. It's pretty much accepted science because it has as of yet not been disproved. It predicts with accuracy. It's been tested. Even if it's not perfect, nobody's come up with anything better that is remotely scientific (n.b.: this excludes the "theory" of intelligent design), so you kind of have to live with it until something better is devised (n.b.: this excludes the "theory" of intelligent design).
Never mind that Kansas is awash in Wal Marts, many fat people, and apparently a bunch of crackers, it's still a good place. It's a shame that the state has made a fool of itself yet again through the acts of a select few religious nuts.
I have absolutely nothing against people who want to believe bible stories or that something (God, a Supreme Being, The Goddess, Whatever) willed us into being a few thousand years ago, but golly gee whillikers Gomer, there's a heap of evidence to disprove that!
Maybe it is true. It's a nice thought.
But (repeat after me please):
It's not testable;
It cannot be disproved; and
It predicts nothing.
Here are some formal definitions.
Science, n.
1a) knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method; and
1b) such knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.
Scientific Method, n.
1. principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Tell me exactly how you can collect data, observe, or perform experiments to show that the life was willed into existence by some intelligent force, and I'll clean up all that messy egg off my face. Right after I wipe off some more of this nasty disdain.
Tissue, please. Thanks.
posted by MC @ 3:36 PM
13 Comments:
HoooooooYah! When you come back, you come with both barrels blazing.
No arguments from me, and would you like a Puffs Plus with Aloe, or just a regular Kleenex from a pretty box with giraffe spots on it?
The most utilitarian tissue possible, please.
I just hate tissues with designs on them. I find it to be so "new money"ish.
Where can I buy utilitarian tissues? I didn't even know tissues were available in non-decorative boxes! Even hospital tissues come in a pretty mauve box.
Remember the extra-large tissues you bought when we lived on Wildwood? Your mother said something like, "Well you could really assert your manhood with one of THOSE!" Maybe you bought them for their ugly box?
I really need to pay more attention to these things.
Allergies, I hate em too. Honk. I feel like I could scratch my nose off, but instead I will slather it up with mentholatem.
Loved the Gomer comment,
So far I believe in a theological form of evolution…I’m convinced God/Goddess did it, just not sure EXACTLY how. There, ah, I feel better. Where’s my tissue?
Hey I crashed over from Zilla's portal, hope you don't mind...
What is to be made of our "un-intelligent design?" Thousands of people die every year from choking, because of the "intelligence" of having our food and air ways merge. I am told horses don't have this problem; they can drink while breathing through their nose.
There are other imperfections and oddities: the appendix, wisdom teeth, cancer, illness, etc.
FA - welcome. If you can stand to read anything I write, you're a more forgiving person than I am. :)
As to the last comment ... don't they teach analytical thinking in dental school? The "ID" people have you thinking (or not thinking as the case may be) just as they'd like.
Religious teaching doesn't belong in schools.
If you're a religious studies major, you might want to go to a school where religions can be studied. But I agree, I'd rather have my kids not get their religious education in a public school setting.
What I hear you saying, MC is that you are still an atheist, but you have no plans to eschew Jedi-magic (or The Good Thing, I hope) from your daily frame of reference. Whatever a daily frame of reference is.
I'd more likely say I'm agnostic in my more personal moments, but for the record, I'm an atheist.
That isn't to say that believing in the Good Thing is bad, wrong, or doesn't work -- most of the time it works.
Regardless of the Actual Truth of the Matter, we still live in a country whose founding principles were based on the separation of church and state, and I find those who are willing to throw that right out the window foolhardy and very dangerous.
Frightening: we're seem to be governed by a theocracy. A bloodthirsty one, at that.
Miss you.
Happy Thanksgiving.
mc, speaking of a lack of analytic thinking, did you read my comment?
In addition to the "Theory of Intelligent Design" not being a theory with a testable hypothesis, or scientific, I was also stating that it is not "intelligent." That is, there are flaws in the human design.
As for religious teachings not belonging in schools, I disagree. However, religion belongs in a religion class and not a science class.
Sorry, MC. That was harsh. I should have been more clear that I agree with your opinion.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Sincerely, DD.
That's perfectly okay, DD. I was at least as harsh in my original comment -- rude really. I apologize.
I tend to be somewhat pompous and unforgiving when it comes to my political beliefs, or maybe just this one. It's off-putting, even to myself sometimes, but there are a few things I feel strongly about, and the separation of church and state is one of those things; it brings out the zealot in me.
And I hate zealots. I'm zealous about that.
Happy thanksgiving to you, to 'Zilla, to Fineartist, Chika, Segue, and a whole bunch of others, even if you don't know I read your blogs daily. :)
PS - I'm sorry I read your comments so hastily that I misunderstood them, too! I really do have egg on my face!
Post a Comment
<< Home