Since we don't get cable, Ruth and I don't watch a lot of television. Many days, the only time we do so is while eating breakfast before work. Even then, it's mostly just something noisy to fill up the room while we wait for our coffee to sink in.

However, this morning a bit rolled past the ticker on the bottom of the screen and caught my eye. Apparently the president held a press conference and spoke out in support of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.

I thought to myself, "My oatmeal needs more raisins." And then, "I can't wait to hear what P. Z. Myers is going to have to say about that."

He seems a bit more incensed than usual, which is saying something.

On Monday the president said he favors [equal time in the classroom] for intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Here's what the debate is about.

Scientists have established the fact of evolution with thousands of lines of evidence and the work of hundreds of thousands of researchers. This idea is based on material evidence and repeated experiment, extensively documented in the scientific literature.

This evidence flatly contradicts literal religious accounts. Religious conservatives have mounted a long running social and political campaign to get their falsified dogma treated as the truth, despite the absence of any material or logical support for their position.

This debate is not about assessing the evidence, but about getting faith-based bullshit taught as science.

And that is what should be taught: teachers, we need to get in front of our students and expose them to both sides. We need to stand up and plainly state that creationism is a lie and any attempt to incorporate faith and the supernatural into science is as destructive to the enterprise as would be requiring religion to provide concrete, repeatable tests of their beliefs.

I wish I understood why religious politicians feel the need to prescribe the course of study for high school biology. There are only two possible outcomes: they create a populace with a stunted understanding of biology and the nature of the scientific endeavor, or they are revealed as single-minded baffoons.

All of this may sound like the hubris of the establishment, and you may wonder why all of the revolutions of science in the past haven't taught us anything. The point is that intelligent design is not science, has nothing to do with science, and cannot be understood as a scientific theory. Even if an alternative understanding of speciation were to be developed (it's not clear to me that such a thing is possible, but I'm not an evolutionary biologist) it would not be a victory for the Discovery Institute.

If they really want to protect their notion of the creation of man, they should be rounding their children up for Sunday school and spoon-feeding them some kind of gobbledy-gook about God setting evolution in motion and leaving fossil evidence to test our faith. Then we would have to pity their children, but at least ours would be safe.

Post a comment