Evolution Is Still Right and There's Nothing You Can Do About It

There are these frequent moments when I consider just chucking the music career out the window, and dedicating my efforts to reversing the tide of charismatic religious zealotry in this country. The latest dose of idiocy (that I'm aware of) comes to us courtesy of the Kansas State Board of Education. You're gonna love this:

Perhaps the most significant shift would be in the very definition of science - instead of "seeking natural explanations for what we observe around us," the new standards would describe it as a "continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

In a nutshell: no longer limiting science to natural explanation. So, Aristotle looking up at the night sky and posing the hypothesis that "stars" are actually cracks in the great glass globe that surrounds the planet: That's science.

Or the old lady at the back of the room at a Bertrand Russell lecture: She stood up at the end and said, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." Russell asked, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever young man," she replied. "But it's turtles all the way down!" That's also science. Good, old fashioned, homegrown science.

Another scientifically valid theory of the universe,
according to the Kansas State School Board.

The article regales us with further accounts of the mediocre sophistry these people pass off as reason:

"You can infer design just by examining something, without knowing anything about where it came from," Dr. Harris said [in defending Intelligent Design], offering as an example "The Gods Must be Crazy," a film in which Africans marvel at a Coke bottle that turns up in the desert. "I don't know who did it, I don't know how it was done, I don't know why it was done, I don't have to know any of that to know that it was designed."

Whatever. I can do that too. Douglas Adams told a charming tale [RealMedia] about a puddle who woke one day after a thunderstorm and said "This hole that I live in fits me just perfectly. It obviously was made especially for me." You think that just because something exists, or it's complex or intricate that someone had to be sitting there designing it and making it. And you'll stick with that until science throws overwhelming evidence to the contrary at you, and then you may finally abdicate. To employ a freshly-minted term, yours is a "God of the gaps" - and frankly is a small god designed especially for a very small person.

I'll reconcile science and religion for Dr. Harris right now. It's rather simple, and I've understood it explicitly at least since high school, and implicitly probably as long as I've been conscious. Ready? Here it is:

• "Science" answers a specific set of questions: What, When, Where & How.
• "Religion" also answers a specific set of questions: Who & Why.
• Neither should venture in to the other's territory, as they will always get the wrong answers to questions that they have no business addressing. Rf: Creationism.

Whoa, that was difficult! As you can see, the problem with Dr. Idiot's "The Gods Must Be Crazy" argument is that he specifically sets aside the questions that only religion can answer:

"I don't know who did it, I don't know how it was done, I don't know why it was done..."

and then presumes to answer a question in the realm of science through ideology:

"... I don't have to know any of that to know that it was designed."

That's a big leap. You can know that the thing is there, but to know that it "was designed?" He's trying to answer the "What" question (and in truth the "How" question as well, regardless of what he mistakenly asserted in the previous phrase) by inquiring into the origins of the thing using religious ideology which is ill-suited to questions in the scientific sphere. The most we can hope for out of such disoriented reasoning is an uninformed miscarraige of religion and science that satisfies neither inquiry.

The best story I know of confusing science and religion is of our old friend Pat Robertson who "prayed away" Hurricane Gloria in 1985, and even claimed to have directed it at Fire Island himself. A stunning display of theological meteorology if there ever was one.

Religion needs to learn its place, now more than ever. Fundamentalist Christianity is no more worthy of respect or patronage than fundamentalist Islam. They're both dangerous, and even "evolved" Creationism like Intelligent Design impedes the progress of Evolution. Stuff evolves, that's pretty apparent. Stop making excuses or go away.