Intelligent [sic] Design?

Even if you've been living under a rock for the past decade, it's likely you've caught wind of the "intelligent design" movement. Essentially ID is a Christian strategy that originated in the '80s with the goal of discrediting Darwinian evolution and pushing the concept of an "intelligent designer" (code for God) into high school and college classrooms (on our dime). The clash between religion and science has been around far before taxpayer money ever got wasted on Scopes, and in reaction to the Scopes trial (the good guys lost that one) biology, or more specifically, the scientific theory (more on this later) of evolution, was glossed over or outright ignored in U.S. schools until the mid-60s. Thanks to a 1987 court ruling, "Creationism," or the story that God created the earth about 6000 years ago, put lots of stuff in it, and then took a nap on Sunday, was legally barred from being taught in public classrooms. Hence, the ID movement. ID is creationism repackaged to hide the overt Jaaaaayzus-factor and has been presented as a scientific theory in its own right, which would mean that it carries the same weight as real, substantive scientific theories.

Unfortunately we now have to delve into semantics and parse some language. What is a theory? I know of a man on the street who's homeless and makes tinfoil sculptures of animals. He says that he can do this because he's been given a gift from God. That's a theory, of sorts. But in the context of science, a theory is a subject that's rigorously studied over many years by a body of people who work to understand the mysteries of the universe. Scientists aren't interested in what's already known - that's boring, and more importantly, uninteresting. Some aspects of a theory lead to dead ends, and those are discarded, while more promising aspects lead to new understands and sometimes groundbreaking discoveries (genetics, for example). To help put this into perspective, gravitation is a scientific theory.

ID proponents (in public) will state that they just want to expose students to a broad range of ideas and let them make up their own minds. Sounds good, right? But the standard that they set for their pseudo-science is so low, that by that definition, by that standard, the tinfoil man would have an argument for equal time in the classroom as well - that children should be exposed to his "theories" and then make up their own minds about what they believe. Of course, all you have to do is follow the money trail to see that the backers of ID hail from enlightened and agenda-free organizations such as the Discovery Institute. But going beyond the agenda to not just Christianize, but fundamentally Christianize (the Bible is the literal word of God) the United States, the amusing, tragic, and pathetic fact is that ID has no scientific conclusions or results. It's negative-science, and you can't prove a negative. I can't prove that God doesn't exist, but the burden of proof is on those that make the claim that God does exist. In short, it's simply a cover - wrapping religion in pseudo-science. It's the equivalent of defecating into a box that's then carefully wrapped in ornate paper, tied with a bow, and given as a gift.

This came to a head in 2004 in the small town of Dover Pennsylvania when the board of the town's high school ruled that science teachers be mandated to to read a disclaimer that, paraphrasing, states that the theory of evolution is imperfect, there are gaps in the science, and that there were alternative viewpoints. This was coupled with a "gift" to the school of 60 "textbooks" that trumpeted creationism as the origins of life on Earth. This resulted in a lawsuit and a fascinating trial. NOVA did a fantastic documentary on the ordeal, and I highly recommend it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/

What inspired this post was the discovery of a pro-ID "documentary" that's being released this month called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," from the production company that was behind the Passion of the Christ. To add even more hilarity, it's narrated by Ben Stein, a man that I found amusing and fun to watch when all I knew of him was his role as a game show host. The guy's brilliant, and a completely fucking crazy right-wing nutjob. I was intrigued by this documentary, and started investigating reviews from screenings that had started to pop up throughout the webs, and I came across some blogs that I truly recommend - they're well written, witty, and intelligent. Both are worth your time.

One is by PZ Myers who is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

The other is by Kristine, a graduate student and science geek (I mean that in a good way): http://amused-muse.blogspot.com/

If there's anything I want to leave you with, it's the realization that there is a small group of highly motivated individuals out there who have an agenda they want to force on the rest of us while we're sleeping. There isn't a lot of them, but they're loud, incredibly committed, and dangerous. Thankfully, they're also relatively incompetent.