I grew up with a healthy suspicion of religious extremists and their bizarre concerns. I was raised in South Africa, where the main white Christian church stood solidly behind apartheid. They said apartheid was based on the Bible and ordained by God. Although religion can drive a noble cause, like anti-slavery, it's often used to further all sorts of malevolent agendas.
So naturally, I am no great fan of America's Christian Radicals — Pat Robertson, Dobson, and the like — and their attempt to smuggle religion into our schools' science curriculums under the guise of Intelligent Design. I started nodding fiercely as I read these wise words, excerpted from a piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg (yes, that's really someone's name) in the NY Times:
The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity.
Humans feel much more content imagining a world of more human proportions, with a shorter time scale and a simple narrative sense of cause and effect. But what we prefer to believe makes no difference. The fact that life on Earth has arrived at a point where it is possible for humans to have beliefs is due to the steady ticking away of eons and the trial and error of natural selection.
Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, aka God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer.
Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45% of Americans believe that the Earth — and humans with it — was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - John Bill
Only a moron believes that the universe is 6,000 years old, and the earth is flat.
2 - D L Ennis
Well said!
D L
3 - Steve S
Beautiful commentary.
It's time for our nation to call the Christian Radicals what they are -- people who are as bad for our freedoms as Islamic extremists are for Muslim countries.
I would love for our country to jump on this bandwagon. This has been my primary bitch here for years now.
4 - dave
Both the article and your commentary demonstrate an almost exhaustive ignorance of Intelligent Design as it's actually articulated in the literature. It's out there if you care to educate yourself, Adam.
But the following passage stopped me in my tracks...like a bolt from the blue, unprecedented in modern philosophy, Klinkenborg has cut the gordian knot of modern moral theory with this breathtakingly insightful aphorism:
"There is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life."
Virtually every moral theorist since Nietzsche has treated the apparent fact of naturalism as an unqualified disaster for ethics, but with a few rhetorical flourishes the NYT has rescured us from The Abyss!! Oh happy day! If only Camus were here to see it.
Unite Klinkenborgians, under the banner of common humanity!! Man, we're going to have to revise The Second Treatise of Government to make use of all this "grace and the moral depth." The entire basis of the social contract will have to be rethought. I'm going to have to chuck my library of modern moral thought from Bentham to Foucault...and replace it with a plaque of this op-ed in bold caligraphy!
Thank you Klinkenborg!! The world thanks you!! Humanity thanks you!!
5 - adam
Dave:
Get the Dawkins book I recommend from Amazon before insulting yourself with your own lack of intelligent design.
6 - Leon
It saddens me to see the response above. For one the very tolerance that that you feel the Christians should have regarding evolution evidently doesn't apply to you. As long as you can have your way, you feel free to bash anyone elses opinion, use whatever vulgar hate language you feel like, because you THINK that there is no scientific evidence pointing to anything else but evolution. So now this democratic nation that has grown up in the philosphy that we can be open to look at each other's opinion and respect differences suddenly is no longer valid because it differs with your belief. It scares me when people start agreeing that no one can be exposed to a certain theory. Look at all the evil dictators off the world. This is what happened when certain people decided only they were right and everyone else was wrong and therefore became a danger to them because they might have some valid points that could discredit them. So the result is to hate them, hey, even get rid of them. That's where it gets to by taking your approach. If the ID or Creationism is so obsurd. Then let the facts fend for themself. We're not exactly a primitive people that cannot discern between good and bad logic. But that is what is seems that you are taking us back to. A primitive people, hating whoever doesn't think like us.
Unless you're to scared, look around and examine it for yourself, the cold hard facts. visit www.answersingenesis.org unless that is, you feel to threatened.
7 - adam
Ohmigod, the creationist trollbots have landed.
8 - dave
Adam: I've got the Dawkins, the Dennett, and (hey!) the Darwin. I think I've got a much better handle on Darwin than you do on ID.
9 - gonzo marx
Leon..you make some very good points..but you seem to miss the central tenet of the debate
ID proponents are attempting to redife terms retroactively so they can take their unfounded hypothesis and couch in in scientific language (calling it a "theory") without having to pass the rigors of scientific methodology
as far as the assertation that folks bash who they feel like...well, both sides can get heated, but i have yet to find a scientist that screams on his own television statin that his opponents will be going to Hell to burn for eternity...or even the latest...a "christian" minister calling for assasinations
remember...
evolutionary theory = science
ID = metaphysics/philosophy/theology
and ...gnosis > dogma
hope that helps
Excelsior!
10 - adam
Dave:
Listen, the latest research shows that the same genes that produce flies produce humans. That's why evolution has led to such complicated designs. The "argument" from "complication" seems to be the main "argument" for intelligent design. Well, there it goes. What does your latest research say? And where is the EVIDENCE for Intelligent Design? Have you found any alien fossils that show an alien intelligence "designed" us? Jeez, I don't know I'm getting involved in this, I'm already starting to feel like an idiot arguing on an idiotic level.
11 - dave
Adam: "Get the Dawkins book I recommend from Amazon before insulting yourself with your own lack of intelligent design."
This is lovely prose, Adam, but this little bit of wit escapes me. Maybe you can help me exegete: How does one insult oneself, exactly?
"Dave, you ignorant slut..."
I dunno. I'm not feeling it.
Also, how would I accomplish this belittlment with "my own lack of intelligent design"?
I'll admit, your clever use of "intelligent design" is rapier-sharp here, but not matter how arrange it, I don't seem to be able to insult myself with the phrase.
12 - dave
"Listen, the latest research shows that the same genes that produce flies produce humans."
This would be a fantastic breakthrough. Can you cite the work?
"That's why evolution has led to such complicated designs."
Hmm. Humans came from flies and that's why evolution led to such complicated designs? You lost me, buddy.
"The "argument" from "complication" seems to be the main "argument" for intelligent design."
It's called specified complexity, and it's how we detect design all the time. How would you tell the difference between random bashing on a keyboard and Hamlet? Or between letters spilled on the floor and Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky? Patterns. Specified patterns. Which is what you find in biology -- patterns specified for the purpose of sustaining life. Can you cite ONE example of a Darwinian pathway that has been scientifically shown to have led from one species to another?
"Have you found any alien fossils that show an alien intelligence "designed" us?"
Ummm....no. Damn. You got me Adam. I give.
"Jeez, I don't know I'm getting involved in this, I'm already starting to feel like an idiot arguing on an idiotic level."
Ah, don't beat yourself up.
13 - adam
The work has been going for a number of years now. I heard about it on NPR last week. A biologist was very excited about it.
I guess if you go on NPR, or WNYC.org, you'll find it. It was Leonard Leopate's show. Sorry, too lazy to do it for you.
The whole IDEA of Darwin is that one species leads to another; mutations are a scientific fact, for example. What the hell are you talking about? Read the latest book by Dawkins, where he takes evolution backwards.
Man, I'm beginning to disgust myself. I'm not a scientist, but I tend to believe a century of scientific investigation and thousands of scientists. I wouldn't want to base my science on the Bible. I just can't get behind the idea of God creating the world in seven days. Also, the idea of a God who creates millions of years of fossil record at the same time to fool us into coming up with the explanation evolution, also freaks me out. That's got to be some whimsical God for sure. Like Einstein said, God doesn't play games with the universe. I leave that to creationists.
14 - adam
Here's one Darwinian pathway from one species to another: from a chimp to Bush.
Jokes aside, we share almost a 100% of DNA with monkeys. You don't need much of a pathway between our lot and theirs. Check em out in the zoo, dude: us primates look like the same pathway to me.
15 - Leon
Gonzo Marx . . thanks, I do want to clarify "christian" as it is a label thrown onto about anything these days. However, I do not consider anyone who calls for the assasination of another being, a true follower of Jesus Christ, who by the way didn't use any screaming tactics either.
16 - ss
45%!
I mean, 45%!
I'm going to go ahead and pretend there's a prayer answering invisible man who can answer this plea
PLEASE let 45% be an inflated statistic
PLEASE let 45% be an inflated statistic
Good points all, AA, but, fuck I hope your wrong or the poll was wrong on that 45%.
17 - dave
"The whole IDEA of Darwin is that one species leads to another;"
Thank you, Adam. Truly enlightening.
"mutations are a scientific fact, for example."
Example of what? Cite one example of a sustained, beneficient genetic mutation that has been passed on and become part of a species. All you have are fossils, homologies (similar biological structures) and a bunch of just-so stories connecting them.
Quit relying on secondary sources. Did you really read Dawkins? You obviously care enough about your own opinions to publish it, but you're too lazy to do the work of defending it. I doubt you've done much more than a cursory read of secondary material.
"What the hell are you talking about? Read the latest book by Dawkins, where he takes evolution backwards."
You're the one publishing for all the world to read, Adam. When push comes to shove, you really have not one fuzzy pink notion about the issue do you? All you can do is say "read Dawkins."
I've read Dawkins. Have you read Dembski, or Johnson or Behe? Do you have the integrity and intellectual curiosity to actual inform yourself about issues before holding forth in public, or are you just too lazy?
18 - dave
"You don't need much of a pathway between our lot and theirs. Check em out in the zoo, dude: us primates look like the same pathway to me."
If it's that simple, then it shouldn't be hard to scientifically demonstrate the mechanism at work. This is classic just-so reasoning. A good Darwinian would know better than to just say, "but look how similar they are!" There's much more work to do than that, and if you'd actually read Dawkins with any comprehension, you'd understand that.
So they're similar. Big deal. Lots of buildings are similar and share similar blueprints. And you know what DNA is? A blueprint.
19 - Leon
Adam. . Ah finally someone brings the fossil record to attention. The fossil record is a very good argument AGAINST evolution.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/fossil.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v4/i4/fossils.asp
A couple of helpful guides.
Also you mentioned mutations. Exactly what you would expect in a fallen world. However, where is the documented case of an increase in genetic information. Mutations are an actual loss of information. Not to difficult for even a common man to figure out. Wish you the best in your search.
20 - dave
"The work has been going for a number of years now. I heard about it on NPR last week. A biologist was very excited about it."
Damn, you're good. This is truly exhaustive research. I had you all wrong, Adam. Did you do your graduate work in journalism at Columbia?
21 - Steve S
A lot of the intelligent design threads here aren't so much debates on IF the subject should be taught, as much as they are debates on the possibility of a designer. Meaning these debates are probably the ones that would be going on in classrooms and I can't imagine why anybody would want that, because there's clearly no learning going on here.
22 - adam
Thank you, Steve. Their "scientific" debates should take place in Sunday school, not public schools.
23 - adam
Two more things and then I'll shut up.
1. Intelligent Design is not science. It cannot be verified with facts, like science demands of any scientific theory. ID is faith and speculation. You won't find a fossil record for ID, for example; you won't find EVIDENCE for it, like an intelligent finger of God you can pick up in the jungle, and then touch and weigh and measure and analyze it in the laboratory.
2. Scientists don't insist that preachers put forward the arguments for evolution in their Sunday sermons. So creationists should return the favor and have their arguments in Sunday school, where it belongs -- and not in public school science curriculums, where it doesn't belong.
24 - mark
Indeed, the debate operates on (at least) two levels (its so complex it seems to be intelligently designed). First, on the validity of ID as a theory next to and at par with neo-Darwinist evolution. Bearing in mind that in Darwins Origin Species are numerous references to (a) God (esp. at the end of the book), it seems safe to say the scientific weight of ID is, well, lets just say, not all too impressive. So should ID be taught? Yes, absolutely, but in a Philosophy 101 class - NOT in Biology.
Secondly, on the merits of teaching ID at all. My 2 cents would be, that anything that gets kids critically (not: dogmatically!) involved in thinking actively about who we are, where we came from and why we are here is GREAT - seems like just the recipe to prevent becoming a country of obese morons.
At a third level, I'd be interested in metaphorical comparisons between complexity theory and the discourse of ID, as both start from a sense of wonder about the infinite beauty and complexity of nature (and culture, I hope). Again. what is wrong with that?
25 - Bennett
Great post Adam. I flashed through the comments without reading too much... It's all the same crap with links to Bible Thumping webtrash.
My favorite Creation Webtrash is the museum that shows Adam and Eve frolicing with T-Rex (a vegetatian dinosaur!), and asserts that dinosuars were on the "Arc" during "the great flood"....
Too sad!
Here is the story, an early post of mine, little response due to posting on a holiday weekend, but the single comment amuses me to no end...