Ow, my brain
Aug. 2nd, 2005 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsyth"WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life."
Okay, look. Intelligent Design isn't a scientific theory. It doesn't offer anything that can be proved or disproved, doesn't make any predictions. And it doesn't help us understand anything better. It's watered-down Creationism, with all the references to God removed so they can pretend it's not religious. Basically, ID says "Life is too complicated to have evolved on its own, at least portions must have been designed." (There's also, I suppose, a splinter group that doesn't actually disagree with evolution, and says that God designed the universe, including its rules, and created life by those rules). But there's a problem with Intelligent Design. A very simple, and fundamental one. If something's designed, it implies a designer. Now, Creationists could just say "God did it", but by pretending to not be about religion, ID proponents can't do that, they just leave the Designer unspecified. It could be God, or aliens, or interdimensional mice. But with the exception of claiming God Did It, the next obvious question is where did these Designers come from? If life couldn't appear on its own, and had to be designed, then who designed the aliens? And who designed the designers of the aliens, and then it's turtles all the way down.
So don't let their protests fool you, Intelligent Design is just Creationism all over again, and dishonest Creationism at that. Or it's such a weak version that it doesn't disagree with evolution anyway. But either way, it's not science and doesn't add anything to science classes, aside from giving the teacher a chance to go "And here's why this isn't science." Science depends on things that can be tested and reproduced, and make predictions that can be tested. "Intelligent Design" does none of these.
And it really shouldn't surprise anybody at this point that Bush would push it to fire up his base.
(via Obsidian Wings, see also this New Yorker article and many many other places on the Internets.)
Technorati Tags: SCIENCE!, Religion, Rants, WTF?, Politics
Okay, look. Intelligent Design isn't a scientific theory. It doesn't offer anything that can be proved or disproved, doesn't make any predictions. And it doesn't help us understand anything better. It's watered-down Creationism, with all the references to God removed so they can pretend it's not religious. Basically, ID says "Life is too complicated to have evolved on its own, at least portions must have been designed." (There's also, I suppose, a splinter group that doesn't actually disagree with evolution, and says that God designed the universe, including its rules, and created life by those rules). But there's a problem with Intelligent Design. A very simple, and fundamental one. If something's designed, it implies a designer. Now, Creationists could just say "God did it", but by pretending to not be about religion, ID proponents can't do that, they just leave the Designer unspecified. It could be God, or aliens, or interdimensional mice. But with the exception of claiming God Did It, the next obvious question is where did these Designers come from? If life couldn't appear on its own, and had to be designed, then who designed the aliens? And who designed the designers of the aliens, and then it's turtles all the way down.
So don't let their protests fool you, Intelligent Design is just Creationism all over again, and dishonest Creationism at that. Or it's such a weak version that it doesn't disagree with evolution anyway. But either way, it's not science and doesn't add anything to science classes, aside from giving the teacher a chance to go "And here's why this isn't science." Science depends on things that can be tested and reproduced, and make predictions that can be tested. "Intelligent Design" does none of these.
And it really shouldn't surprise anybody at this point that Bush would push it to fire up his base.
(via Obsidian Wings, see also this New Yorker article and many many other places on the Internets.)
Technorati Tags: SCIENCE!, Religion, Rants, WTF?, Politics
