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Ethics and Morality
The Ghost of Christmas Present
Intelligent Design and the growing hatred of science.
Posted December 23, 2016
Poems are made by fools like me
But only Evolution can make a tree.
—Anon. (reprinted here with apologies to Joyce Kilmer)
In 2002, Mike Pence, now the U.S. vice-president elect, but then a U.S. congressman from Indiana stated:
I believe that God created the known universe, the Earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rationale [sic] explanation for the known universe. (Proceedings and Debates of the U. S. Congress, July 11, 2002, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Issue: Vol. 148, No. 93 — Daily Edition
What is this intelligent design the VP elect speaks of and how does it provide the only “remotely [rational] explanation for the known universe”?
(Before we begin, the word “theory” used in this blog and used in the phrase "theory of evolution” means "explanation." A theory of X explains X via public and reproducible evidence, using public, general, widely applicable principles which themselves are based on further evidence or are obviously true. “Theory” does not here mean "conjecture.")
“Intelligent design,” the term, was first used, apparently, in the book Of Pandas and People by Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon. This book was intended for secondary school students. It was published by the Texas firm Foundation for Thought and Ethics, a Christian publishing house. The term was introduced to replace the term “creation science,” which in turn had replaced the older term “creationism,” which was the name applied to the belief of those Christians who accepted as more or less literal the account in the book of Genesis of how Earth and life came to exist. So, “intelligent design” is Christian creationism dressed in a nice suit. Or better, it is Christian creationism dressed in a lab coat.
Intelligent design, the concept, is the descendent of the fifth of St. Thomas Aquinas's five ways to prove the existence of the Christian god: the Teleological Argument (of course, the notions in this argument go back to the pre-Socratic philosophers). Aquinas held that complex behavior must have a designer, since chance (mere probability) would always result in erratic, unpredictable behavior (this is false, by the way). After Aquinas, the design idea was next taken up by William Paley (1743-1805) and his “watchmaker analogy” from his Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Here’s the famous quote:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. ... There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. ... Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.
Intelligent design, the movement, is run by the Discovery Institute, a conservative, policy analysis, “non-profit” organization based in Seattle, Washington. This movement’s explicit goal is to have creationism and a host of other anti-evolution/anti-science notions taught in U. S. public schools. This goal was dealt a severe blow in the famous case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, presided over by Judge John E. Jones III, who concluded (here I quote at length, italics, mine):
The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the [school] Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents. [...]
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.
To accept ID (as it is often called), is to explicitly deny:
(1) the cosmological theory of the formation of our solar system,
(2) the Big Bang theory of the formation of our universe,
(3) the theory of the geological development of Earth (e.g., Plate Techtonics),
(4) all non-supernatural theories of the origin of life,
(5) most especially, the theory of evolution first developed by
Charles Darwin,
(6) and finally, all the ages given by science – the universe is:
13.7 billion years old,
Earth is 4.5 billion years old,
and life has been has been living on Earth for 3.5 billion years.
All of this hard-won knowledge has to be denied.
In our anti-science age, it is not often noted that denying evolution is denying ALL of science. Why? Because, as an understanding of science reveals, biology rests on chemistry which rests on physics. This “rests on” relation is logical in nature. It looks like this: given that the physics of our universe works the way it does, the chemistry of our universe has to work the way it does, and so the biology of our universe has to work the way that it does. In other words, evolution is entailed by the physics of our universe. So, if evolution is wrong so is all of science — chemistry is wrong and so is physics.
So if someone is an IDer, that person can only go to a modern medical doctor for treatment of an illness under pain of being a hypocrite. For just as surely as evolution is false, so is medical science. An IDer cannot honestly throw a light switch and expect the light to come on, since that requires science. Nor can an IDer honestly drink water to slake thirst, since the reasons water keeps us healthy is explained by science. IDers cannot honestly drive cars, fly in planes, nor use the Internet or computers. All of these require science.
In all of this deplorable hatred of science, it is never asked: Why would a being as magnificent as the Christian god need its existence established by proofs? If the Christian god existed, it should be completely obvious. It isn’t – to put the matter mildly. Childhood leukemia, rape, murder, torture, abuse, bullying, lying, cheating, stealing, degradation, unfairness, and even impropriety are happily allowed by the Christian god, for this god does nothing to stop them. And these evils are only the tip of the iceberg.
How could it possibly have come to this? It is 2016, our entire human world culture owes its current and any future existence to science, and yet science is more threatened now than it has been since the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno by the Catholic Church in 1600 at Campo de' Fiori. Bruno was one of the first robust scientists and theorists. Bruno’s sad murder, by the way, takes place 33 years before the great Galileo was convicted by the Catholic Church of teaching the truth that the Earth revolves around the sun and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals to Scrooge that under his magnificent robe are two emaciated children. But they aren’t just children; they are more. When Scrooge asks about them, the ghost explains:
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
Beware ignorance, beware embracing religion over science, for ignorance brings doom to all, the religious and the lovers of knowledge alike.
