Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.

NY Daily News ^ | 11/18/05 | Charles Krauthammer

[StatenIsland]

Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.

Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous - that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious. Newton's religiosity was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.

Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," wrote James Gleick in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation - understanding the workings of the universe - as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the Earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked on upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical, and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.

Which brings us to Dover (Pa.), Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.

Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" - today's tarted-up version of creationism - on the biology curriculum. Robertson then called down the wrath of God upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.

Let's be clear. "Intelligent design" may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge - in this case, evolution - they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species, but that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science - that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution - or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying - by fiat of definition, no less - that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and to science.

The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernable direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which the Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?

He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions - arguably, the most important questions in life - that lie beyond the material.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Originally published on November 18, 2005

[RightWingNilla]

The table? It's all in my memory banks easily retreivable at any moment. Don't need any talking points.

Isnt it a bit early to be drinking?

[RightWingNilla]

I think we have a great candidate for Virtual Ignore.

[Liberal Classic]

I think tonight I'm in the mood for a little cultural destruction with my wife.

[Dave S]

That's not my quote.

Its the only thing that appears on your Free Republic Home page and you dont attribute it to anyone else so live with it.

[dread78645]

I think we have a great candidate for Virtual Ignore.

Yep.

Only one 2x4" per mule.

[Fester Chugabrew]

. . . the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science - that it be empirically disprovable.

Not so.

What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine . . . ?

Sounds like an "argument from incredulity" to me.

[Dave S]

I think tonight I'm in the mood for a little cultural destruction with my wife.

Go for it. :-)

[Dimensio]

Not so.

How do you evaluate the truth value a statement when there is no defined means of demonstrating that the statement is false?

[Dimensio]

As to trolls, you evolutionistoids are the one trolling and digressing, simply because I disagree with your Darwinist dogma.

Actually, it has more to do with the fact that you are using logical fallacies and false statements in your disagreements.

[Just mythoughts]

I believe you are free to believe whatever you choose to believe.

I also believe there is a reason why in the "OLD" and the "NEW" there are two places written what would happen to those who add and take away from the WORD.

I believe the evidence is weighted that Paul authored Hebrews. I have no knowledge if that original writing survived to this day and if so who has it hidden away.

Christ was to be the perfect last required blood sacrifice and He has whatever knowledge given to him to pass through this flesh age to be that perfect last blood sacrifice.

I had never really considered anyone having the knowledge base during Christ's time to ask Him about quantum mechanics or molecular biology.

However, Christ explaining the requirement of each to be "born again" (born from above) did seem to cause confusion to the man who asked about it. That display upon the mount of transfiguration with Moses and Elijah seemed to be a shocking experience for his disciples. Christ going through that wall was visible for those who were there to see. So I would not consider it out of the realm of possibility Christ could easily answer your questions.

Genesis is focused upon this flesh age yet declaring events outside of the beginning of human flesh age. As we are NOT told about the creation of the devil before he rebelled, nor when each and every soul was created within Genesis. Peter refers to a time (age) that WAS, NOW and WILL BE.

I do not believe that there is NO conclusive evidence there was never a global flood. I believe that Noah's flood happened, however, given what we are told the purpose of the flood was specific to specific peoples for their destruction would indicate to me a specific geographic location.

Christ said He became the Temple and with His death the Temple, Him, was rebuilt in the Spiritual. No longer was it about a building, and Christ said not a stone would lay atop another and that has not happened yet.

[muawiyah]

When it comes to evolution no one is, of course, speaking of you or your family.

[muawiyah]

We would use a "cutting" rather than a "seed" to avoid ending up with an undesirable progeny due to some random mutation.

The very prophecies that announce a Messiah call Him a "scion" or "cutting".

With God Himself taking pains to avoid any possibility that evolution might result in something other than His intended Messiah, I'm not really sure that you can be a Christian and not accept the idea of evolution and variation.

[muawiyah]

Sounds like a bunch of smart guys on those faculties like to live near their mothers. Eventually that will change.

[muawiyah]

You should have asked the rest of us if you had clearance to "accept" him.

You didn't, and we don't!

[donh]

It is contained in quotes - ie, it's a quotation. And, if it is a quotation I cannot be the author.

Of course you can, and, apparently, it was an unattributed quote standing alone on your home page--I guess I'm supposed to assume squirrels are responsible for putting it there?,--& which you subsequently removed before I could examine it...you're quite a piece of work. Since it's a quote--who are you quoting, and where can I find the reference?

[PatrickHenry]

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