What is your biggest problem with Intelligent Design? [View All]

[tjwash]

The news article, about the recent foes of evolution in Missouri, have me thinking. There are several things in the ID debate that disturb me, but I feel the need to share the very thing at its center that is my biggest personal problem with it.

Forget the laundry list of problems with this sham, and forget the fact that it is nothing more than a blatant, and arrogant attempt by the Religious Right, to blow away the separation of church and state, and to turn our public schools into little more than religious indoctrination centers. There is a core problem with ID that has been bothering me since the beginning of this “debate”.

First and foremost on my list, is the wording that the proponents of ID are using. People such as Representative Cynthia Davis, from St. Louis County. Last year, she filed a bill that would have required biology textbooks to include “critical analysis of origins.” There it is, in a nutshell. The core problem I have with ID. At the very center of their debate, is the call for critical analysis, even though the very essence of ID, is the antithesis of critical analysis.

Let us remember who we are dealing with here. These are not just your run of the mill religious people like you and I. These are people that are extremely myopic in their views, even if those views have come from a book that is thousands of years old, and gone through several translational errors on the way to its modern format. These are people of ultimate faith, even though it is pretty obvious that in these extreme cases, that faith does not enhance reason, it replaces it. When I read the new testament, and I have several times, I see all of my liberal beliefs. I see love, peace, compassion, mercy, tolerance and sharing the load. What it appears that people who that try to shove ID down our collective throats see, is revenge, sex, hell, damnation, bigotry, intolerance, vengeance, and, what it gets ME.

But, back to “critical analysis.” The very essence of critical analysis is the scientific method (which, by the way, was the basis for the renaissance, and the age of reason). The scientific method is when Scientists use observation and reasoning to come up with a hypothesis, with the mindset from the very beginning, that this very hypothesis is false. Contrast that with the “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” mentality of your average ID proponent. After the hypothesis is created, it is repeatedly verified through experimentation, trying every conceivable method to make it fail. Contrast this once again, with the nodding acceptance of Adam and Eve stories in the modern King James Bible along with it’s over 20,000 translational errors, as the absolute truth. After the hypothesis is repeatedly tested, picked apart, experimented with, otherwise given every best attempt possible to make it fail (and sometimes it takes DECADES to accomplish this), then, and only then, is it considered to be a “theory”. Ahh. The heart of the ID debate right here. Evolution is only a “theory”. Given to us by people that have no clue what a hypothesis takes to become a theory in the first place. People that are seemingly ignorant of the fact, that evolution, as it is called, has undergone HUNDREDS of changes since it was originally proposed by Charles Darwin. That because science actually does employ critical analysis, evolution will undergo more changes in the future. Never mind that there is no possible way to test creationism to find out if it is true or false in the first place. Also drop the fact that there are as many “theories” of religious creationism, as there are religions; literally THOUSANDS. They don’t let a little thing like facts get in the way of their arguments. They want equal treatment given to both theories Well, guess what. The theory that the world is flat is not equal to the theory that it is round. The theory that apples fall up is not equal to the theory that apples fall down. The theory that the Sun revolves around the Earth, which is the center of the universe, is not equal to the Earth revolves around the Sun, and is part of a galaxy. Now don’t get me wrong, you can discuss the validity of the flat earth or apples falling up all you like, but not to our children in our schools.

The Christian Right, historically has tried over and over again, to take over school boards. Once there, the first thing they try to do is ban books. Afterwards, and usually in this order they will attempt to eliminate sex education, drop self esteem programs, and throw away tolerance training. Then of course you can wave goodbye to multiculturalism, and don’t even THINK about gay counseling. At the same time they try, and sometimes succeed, to make laws requiring public schools to force prayer on students and teach creationism as science. In State legislatures they present caning, whipping, and walloping bills and are the strongest voice in America advocating executions. This is the agenda at hand about ID that bothers me the most.