OK, I can’t believe I’m writing about this stuff again (put “evolution” in the search box and you’ll get lots of other posts with related rants), and we’re still in the 21st century.
Why do so many people just want to throw their hands up and give up on trying to understand the world…
‘Intelligent design’ taken to court
Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the latest legal chapter in the debate over the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools is to unfold in federal court.The Dover Area School District was to start defending its policy on Monday of requiring ninth-grade students hear about ”intelligent design” before biology lessons on evolution.
It kind of scares me that the Scopes thing was only 80 years ago, much less that this kind of thing is coming up again now. (Also, I note in the article that the actual legislation Scopes was charged under was left in place until 1967. Wow. That’s kind of like the Church admitting in the 90s that Galileo might have been onto something with that whole heliocentric model…)
As I’ve pointed out lots of times before, it’s not just this little township in PA, it’s happening in lots of places across the U.S. It’s almost as if these people wanted to speed up the decline of the U.S. as a technological power or something. (And having President Dumbass speak out in support of teaching both science and “creation science” isn’t helping. I hope all you people who voted for him are suitable embarrassed.)
And don’t even get me started on the logical fallacy at the heart of ‘Intelligent Design’–if complexity is proof that a designer is required, where does the designer come from? Gah. I am unable to speak with anger.
And, of course, while this goes on the crazy religious people continue to educationally abuse their children in the name of God. Take, for example, this story about people who lead ‘Biblically Correct’ tours that explain where science/art/other religions got things wrong:
Nineteen kids trailed behind Carter on Saturday morning at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, most of them nodding knowingly as their tour guide pointed out flaws in exhibits.
“What do you guys think? Is the world really 4.5 billion years old?” Carter asked. “Nonsense!” one girl called out. The adults in the group smiled.
Carter said demand for his religious tours of secular sites has been continual since the company’s founding in 1988, but the media’s attention has exploded recently as local and state school boards across the country debate how to teach evolution.
So we’ve got Carter (who, by the way runs a flooring business, and is thus eminently qualified to speak on matters of paleontology and evolutionary biology) teaching kids that:
- The Earth is 6,000 years old.
- The fossil Lucy, purportedly a transition between ape-like creatures and humans, is shoddy science.
- Organisms can’t evolve from one thing into another. “You might have a small change, like a tadpole to a frog, but nothing more than that,” Carter said.
Great. That’s great. It’s nice to see kids learning outside the class environment, isn’t it? Gah.
Saddest sentence in that article?
“Come on, put your hands up if you disagree with me,” Carter urged. None went up.
Meanwhile, the Kansas Board of Education is at it again.
Kansas Board Advances a Draft Critical of Evolution.
The draft says the board is not advocating the teaching of “intelligent design,” which contends that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent creator, not evolution. But the language favored by the board does come from advocates of intelligent design.
The worst part of this is the disingenous way that the creationists use the language of science so hypocritically, encouraging the anti-religious people to “have an open mind” about intelligent design–as if it science were just a matter of opinion, and not a process of continual refinement by experiment towards truth.
I guess if you figure faith is a good reason for ignoring the actual developments of science, it shouldn’t be a surprise if you think science should be just a matter of opinion.
Thankfully, there are one or two people (grin) who aren’t afraid to speak up for science.
Take Richard Dawkins, for example. He’s one of the few people who can actually be referred to as “famous scientist”, and is excellent at using words to convey his ideas, as he shows in his Time piece “Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant“. (Plus, as a bonus, he’s married to Romana II!)
Here’s a quote:
The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”
Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”
Just as well-spoken, if less famous outside his domain, is Professor P.Z. Myers (a.k.a. the Pharyngula guy), who lashes out eloquently at the notion that scientists are too boisterous in their rejection of ID “theory” (forgive the long quote–it’s good stuff):
Yeah, I’m afraid the “civilized academic debate” was settled about a century ago. Scientists have been engaging in that ideal, non-militaristic fashion for quite some time, and still are — those discussions go on in the pages of the journals. Unfortunately, while we have been doing everything in the proper civilized way, the forces of ignorance have not; they have lied their way into considerable power.
Here I am, a biologist living in the 21st century in one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the two biology teachers in my kids’ high school is a creationist. Last year, the education commissioner in my state tried to subvert the recommendations for the state science standards by packing a hand-picked ‘minority report’ committee to push for required instruction in intelligent design creationism in our schools. All across the country, we have these lunatics trying to stuff pseudoscientific religious garbage into our schools and museums and zoos.
This is insane.
Please don’t try to tell me that you object to the tone of our complaints. Our only problem is that we aren’t martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough. The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many schoolboard members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians.
That’s the good burn, yes it is.
And don’t even get me started on the guy who wants to cash in on Left Behind’s money with a “christian horror novel” where the monster is evolution…
I swear all this Intelligent Design nonsense is enough to convert a guy to Pastafarianism–I mean, it makes exactly as much sense as any other religion, and it has a beer volcano.
If you want to read up on common creationist / ID arguments, and how to most efficiently point out their inherent silliness, you can visit the Index to Creationist Claims which lists many of the common claims, arranged by subject area, and lists the sensible responses.
For example a claim that “Design requires a designer; contrivance requires a contriver.” might be answered by:
- Design does not require an anthropomorphized designer. Designs appear in clouds, for example, with no more of a designer than uneven heating, evaporation, and other natural causes.
Even an anthropomorphized designer need not be a deity. The atheistic religion of Raelianism, for example, proposes that humans were created by extraterrestrials (Raelian Movement, n.d.).
- Evolution is a designer. Via variation and selection, it serves to favor reproduction and shape things according to environmental conditions.
- If the designer does not need a designer to create it, why should other things?
If you’re braver than I am you can also follow the link to the CreationWiki (find the link yourself) which rebuts the arguments from a “Young-earth perspective”. Wow again. The mere existence of that is almost enough to convince me that I have to keep yelling about this. (Actually, as a parent, things like this are the best argument for being repeatedly shrill about the idiocy of this creationist nonsense.)
As for me, I’ll keep yelling.
I would never, of course, order a bunch of “Charles Darwin has a posse” stickers (high quality vinyl, relatively low price) and make a habit of sticking them on any car that had a Jesus fish, or an anti-evolution bumpersticker or whatever. Because that would be wrong.
