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Intelligent Design or Intelligent Deception?
by Charlie Webb
| Evangelical Christians are working diligently these days to remove evolution and insert creationism's "Intelligent Design" (ID) into public school science classes. They perhaps think they are doing "God's work." But while professing to speak the language of science, creationists never show any interest in real science or its processes. Instead, they are just pretending that their religious dogma is really science (wink, wink) and trying to force our civil government to legislate it into the science curriculum. Trying to legislate truth is like trying to steal honesty. |
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself," said Ben Franklin. "And when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." |
'Tis a sign indeed! In the world of science, how much evidence would you guess has been amassed in favor of creationism's "Intelligent Design?" Computer searches of 6000 scientific journals (including hundreds of thousands of reports) failed to discover a single instance of biological research using the intelligent design notion to explain life. |
In other words, religious busybodies are hounding our legislators to force the teaching of a "science" that does not even exist! "It is error alone which needs the support of government," Thomas Jefferson reminded us. "Truth can stand by itself." |
The truths of science must always stand by themselves. All ideas in science are rigorously tested. If any predictions of a theory are found to be false, the theory fails and is discarded. For a century and a half, evolution by natural selection has passed constant scientific scrutiny and testing with an A+ grade, whereas self-proclaimed intelligent design has failed miserably and exists only in religious dogma. |
The only test for dogma is to see if someone else will believe it, which means that dogma is really only a form of politics. And what is politics but "the conduct of public office for private gain" (Ambrose Bierce). |
Our current fundamentalist Administration has trampled on the constitution while striving to give advantage to the desires of evangelical Christianity. But the hard-won lessons of science are worth defending. The next you fly in an airplane or talk to someone a thousands miles away or see your loved one saved by medical science, remember the words of Albert Einstein: |
"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have." |
So-called "intelligent design" is not, and never has been, science. Intelligent Design is merely Dark Age religious wine rebottled with a nifty (but dishonest) scientific label. Drink at your own risk, but please don't force America's children to be so intoxicated. |
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