The sleaze factor of the Intelligent Design movement is high, but the Discovery Institute is off the charts in this respect. A casual visitor to the Institute's website wouldn't necessarily notice that their goal is to control public education. They try to pass themselves off as champions of free thought, open discourse, and science. Unfortunately, they have no clue what science is, and their real goal is to get back to how things worked before the Scopes monkey trial, when teachers could be fired for teaching the theory of evolution.
The Discovery Institute's attitude toward science is best exemplified by the "Dissent from Darwinism" page that appears on their website. That page lets you add your name to a list of people who don't like the theory of evolution. The page contains two quotes. (a) "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." (b) "Darwinian evolution ... does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology" (Dr. Philip S. Skell). If you agree with those two claims, simply fill out a webform to add your voice to the growing groundswell of resistance to Darwinism.
It certainly sounds democratic, having people vote for their favorite explanation of how the universe works. But voting is a political solution, not a scientific one.
Of course, the Discovery Institute isn't so crass as to ask people to blindly vote for or against Darwinism. They provide rational, logical explanations for their stance on the matter. Under the heading of "Scientific Research and Scholarship," the Discovery Institute's website lists a number of scholarly articles, one of which is "DNA and the Origin of Life" by Stephen C. Meyer. According to Meyer's sixty page article, "the design hypothesis does constitute a better explanation than its materialistic or naturalistic rivals for the origin of specified biological information. Surely, simply classifying an argument as metaphysical does not refute it."
The term "God" does not appear in Meyer's article, and the term religion appears only in the footnote section. The Bible is never mentioned or quoted directly. In particular, references to the book of Genesis are explicitly avoided. This is the level of subterfuge these folks are willing to practice in order to slime their way back into the classroom.
But, as with earlier, more overt forms of Intelligent Design and its predecessor, Creationism, the Discovery Institute's approach still tries to pawn off convoluted logic, five dollar words, and scientific-sounding terminology as science. Meyer sounds reasonable and fair-minded when he says, "Surely, simply classifying an argument as metaphysical does not refute it." Of course, no one is saying that metaphysical arguments are inherently wrong. Science merely says that metaphysical arguments aren't useful for revealing new knowledge or leading us to new discoveries.
When we ask a question like, "Why was Mrs. Smith's baby born without arms or legs?", the simplest, most complete, and most irrefutable answer is, "Because that's how God wants it." Unfortunately, while that sort of answer might lead us to attend church more regularly and contribute more faithfully to the offering plate, it gives us no direction as to how to prevent similar tragedies happening in the future.
A scientific theory isn't something you vote for. It isn't something that wins because it makes sense or sounds impressive. It isn't a mere explanation of existing knowledge. Rather, a scientific theory must have predictive power which leads us to new knowledge and, ultimately, new pragmatic applications. Darwinism leads to the study of genetics, to an understanding of the impact of climate change on ecosystems, to improved agricultural methods, and to a host of other new ideas and applications. This is what makes it scientific, what validates it.
Here's a worthwhile goal for the Discovery Institute, as well as for all other promoters of Creationism and Intelligent Design: instead of funding yet more political lobbying and pseudo-scientific papers, let them find the cure for a disease. If they think modern biology and Darwinism are flawed, let's see them demonstrate a viable alternative. Not in words, not via more sophistry, but through practical application.
Not only has the Discovery Institute never cured a single disease or solved a single pragmatic problem, they never will. In fact, they'll never even make an honest attempt. (Given the sleaze factor, we acknowledge that they might at least pretend.) Why won't they really try? Because, deep down, they know that what they're promoting isn't science. Deep down, they know that Intelligent Design leads people to pray and read The Bible, but doesn't lead to this-worldly, pragmatic solutions.
If you have any doubts on the matter, try it yourself. Take Muscular Dystrophy, for example. How would you use Intelligent Design to find a cure for this horrible disease? Since the universe and all life in it is designed, maybe you'd try to get in contact with the original designer, if that entity is still around. "Yo, dude, some of your stuff is broke. How about a little help here. An owner's manual, maybe?"
Science is about using human intelligence to solve here-and-now problems. Religion is about figuring out how to make God happy, how to live a moral life, and how to get into heaven. When religious people try to undercut science, they do everyone a disservice, because if they succeeded, we would find ourselves back living a medieval existence, where half of all children died before the age of five, and anybody who failed to obey religious dictates found themselves burned at the stake.
The Discovery Institute claims that they are the keepers of superior morality, and that is why they need the political authority to rein in heartless, soulless science.
If you want to see how moral and compassionate a religiously-controlled government is, get thee to Iran or some Taliban-dominated area, and hang out there for a while. If you think Christians wouldn't be as violent or repressive as the Muslims, grab a history book covering England in the late 1400s and early 1500s. If you think Christians have learned their lesson in the years since, check out their persecution of Mormons during the mid-1800s. Or their bigotry toward gays today.
Make no mistake, these people know they're right, and they're not afraid to lie, subvert the constitution, or endanger the health of millions of people by undermining modern science and medicine, in order to get their way. Nor would they be satisfied merely with "equal time" in the science classroom. Their ultimate goal is to do the Lord's work, and if a bunch of people have their rights -- or their lives -- taken away as a result, well, that's just too bad.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Responding to the ICR
According to the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) website:
For nearly 40 years, ICR has been the leader in scientific research from a biblical perspective, conducting innovative laboratory and field research in the major disciplines of science.
Unfortunately, these people don't have a clue what science is. The ICR has been doing scientific research for 40 years? Interesting. What new discoveries have they come up with? What new knowledge have they uncovered? What diseases have they cured? The short answer is, none, none, and none.
While the ICR site does contain several dozen papers that represent the fruits of their 40 years of "innovative research," a closer examination reveals that these papers do nothing but take existing knowledge and manipulate it to support an arbitrary interpretation of The Bible.
Take "Temperature Profiles for an Optimized Water Vapor Canopy" for example. Far from advancing a means of combating global warming or normalizing rainfall across farmland, this paper merely attempts to explain how Noah's flood could really have happened. To creationists, "Maybe all that water was up in the air all along" somehow seems more scientific.
When a skeptic comes along and says, "That much water in the atmosphere would create a greenhouse effect like you've never seen," rather than abandon the water vapor canopy idea, creationists scramble for a come-back. In this case, if the sun's output were reduced to a fraction of its current amount, that would allow the canopy to exist without producing an unlivable Earthly environment. And so it goes.
Not only isn't this science, why bother with such an explanation in the first place? If you believe God created the universe, what's so hard about believing he could make it rain as long and as much as he wanted? Having God just snap his fingers to make it rain is a more consistent biblical explanation, but the ICR want to dictate what gets taught in the science classroom, and so they resort to hypothetical explanations for biblical miracles. When an arbitrary explanation is shown to be all wet, heh, instead of abandoning it and moving on, the ICR goes looking for a second hypothetical explanation that will make the first one viable. And so it goes.
What this shows is that these people are incapable of admitting, "We were wrong." It isn't religion but egotism that is the real driving force behind creationism.
Another article on the ICR website, "The 'Eve' Mitochondrial Consensus Sequence," begins with, "In order to develop a biblical model of human genetic history...." In other words, the authors started with a goal ("develop a biblical model") and then interpreted existing knowledge as required in order to achieve their goal.
Stringing a bunch of five dollar words together, using scientific-sounding terminology, and applying reason and logic to a problem doesn't turn creationism into science. Science must do more than simply justify itself using existing knowledge, it must lead us to new knowledge and, ultimately, new real-world applications.
The ICR is apparently well-funded and actively pursuing its goals. Recently, it created the National Creation Science Foundation (NCSF), whose mission is:
To promote the progress of creation science, ... [including] analysis in biosciences, astrophysics, geosciences, ecology, and technological sciences ... so that such scholarly research is designed and useful for analyzing the biblical account of creation, the Fall in Eden, the worldwide Flood, the division of languages, or other aspects of creation history as it is described within Genesis chapters 1 through 11.
In other words, if you thought the creationists would be satisfied taking over just the biology classroom, think again.
According to their website, "ICR is confident that the NCSF will ... advance the biblical creation model and thus magnify the Creator." The funny thing about goals is, people tend to achieve them -- if they are at all achievable. Thus, the NCSF will almost certainly succeed in advancing a fundamentalist Christian "biblical creation model." Whether doing so magnifies the Creator is, however, a matter of debate.
The universe is a more direct means of understanding God than is The Bible. After all, God directly created the universe, while The Bible is merely a second-hand, and sometimes third-hand, account of what certain people thought they heard God say. Doesn't it make sense, then, to study creation as a means of interpreting The Bible, rather than try to force God's creation to fit an arbitrary interpretation?
But like most religious people, creationists don't really want to understand God better. They already have all the answers and just want to recruit as many people to their camp as possible.
We can only guess how much time and money will be wasted by the NCSF, but we can guarantee one thing: they will provide the world with no new scientific knowledge and above all, no new applications.
If the creationists truly believe their own pronouncements, then let's see the NCSF do some real science, instead of just fund more papers full of sophistry. Here's a worthy goal: let the NCSF develop a cure for malaria. Malaria kills millions of people every year, with children being the most common victims. Surely, God doesn't want people to suffer like this. Surely, God would want us to use our talents (specifically, our intellects) to solve such a problem if at all we can. Therefore, if creationists really believe they're doing innovative science, let them give us a cure for this deadly disease. If they succeed, especially if they can show how creation science led to such a discovery where evil, secular science couldn't, they will get the attention of a lot of people. They will spread the Word, magnify the Creator, etc., etc.
If they fail, it will prove that creationism isn't an effective replacement for secular science. If they fail to even attempt such an undertaking, creationists will prove that they are liars who don't believe their own propaganda. They will show their true colors as heartless egotists, willing to weaken modern biology and medicine, willing to threaten the lives and health of millions, just so they can maintain the delusion that they have all the answers.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Talk
Do you have children heading into puberty, or maybe already there? Have you had "The Talk" with them yet? I didn't think so.
When I asked one of my friends if he'd had the talk with his fifteen-year-old son, he replied that the prospect terrified him too much. Another friend has taken the approach of actively teaching her children that sex is evil, and gleefully acknowledges, "My hypocrisy has no bounds."
Unfortunately, there's a price to be paid for both ignorance and hypocrisy.
Growing up, no one ever told me that girls didn't like sex. I rediscovered that medieval notion all by myself. Where do you think bizarre ideas like that come from, anyway? In the absence of clear information, people make up answers as required. As I got older, more data became available, and I realized that girls did like sex, they just weren't able to admit to liking it. That is, when they said "no," they were just maintaining a pretense....
Comfortable having your kid wandering around with that sort of misconception?
Luckily, I never wound up in prison as a result of my keen insight into human nature, and eventually I realized that, while some girls were repressed, inhibited, and hypocritical, this wasn't a universal condition. Plenty of them could consciously make the decision to have sex and could openly admit as much. It just took me until my mid-20s to complete this evolution of belief.
What scares a lot of parents, I think, is the thought of describing the mechanical aspects of sex with their kids. The good news is, those details are of relatively small importance and can easily be conveyed by simply handing your kid a book like Sex for Dummies.
The more important responsibility that parents have is to overtly make certain statements regarding sex. The two most important statements are: (a) Sex isn't evil, but is a natural part of being an adult. And (b), that masturbation in particular isn't evil.
Failure to come out of the closet on this issue means your kids will approach sex with whatever attitudes they've manufactured themselves or picked up from the locker room. Our sexuality is wired deeply in our brains, is driven powerfully by hormones in our bloodstream. We either consciously control it, or it will control us.
Denial isn't control, any more than a starvation diet is a good way to lose weight. Sooner or later our hunger (of whichever variety) will express itself. When it comes to sexuality, the "binge" that results can be very dangerous indeed.
Is it really so hard, as a parent, to sit your kid down and say, "Sex isn't evil?"
Various other statements might go a long way toward keeping good kids from doing dumb things: (c) Kids who have sex aren't bad kids. Neither are they necessarily cool, hot, hip, macho, etc. Don't expect to counter peer pressure with, "Just say no." If you want traction, you have to establish that you are a believable, trustworthy source of information.
(d) Homosexuals aren't evil. I remember the tough guys at high school talking about their gay bashing forays. No doubt that sort of thing still happens, especially with so many God-fearing religious people wandering around our culture. If you're comfortable having your kid being arrested for assault; if you're comfortable being estranged with your kid, or having your kid commit suicide, because he/she turns out to be gay: fine. Otherwise, you might want to make your position clear on this point.
(e) While the world contains plenty of sexually-sick people, their sickness stems more from how they approach sex than what forms of sex they pursue. A married couple having sex in the missionary position with the lights off still qualifies as sick, if one of them has the attitude of, "You're a disgusting pig / cunt." A another pair of people could be slavered in cooking oil in a room with a Shetland pony, and-- Well, the point is, if two people treat each other with compassion, respect, and empathy, they're going to have a healthy relationship.
By overtly stepping out of the shadows, parents achieve a level of believability when they talk about various caveats to the practice of sex, such as the need to keep one's sexual behavior private, especially with regard to younger children, whether siblings still in the home or neighbor kids. The danger of STDs, pregnancy, and so forth will all be listened to and treated more seriously by your kids if they suspect you of being open and truthful with them. The opposite, of course, is also true.
When I asked one of my friends if he'd had the talk with his fifteen-year-old son, he replied that the prospect terrified him too much. Another friend has taken the approach of actively teaching her children that sex is evil, and gleefully acknowledges, "My hypocrisy has no bounds."
Unfortunately, there's a price to be paid for both ignorance and hypocrisy.
Growing up, no one ever told me that girls didn't like sex. I rediscovered that medieval notion all by myself. Where do you think bizarre ideas like that come from, anyway? In the absence of clear information, people make up answers as required. As I got older, more data became available, and I realized that girls did like sex, they just weren't able to admit to liking it. That is, when they said "no," they were just maintaining a pretense....
Comfortable having your kid wandering around with that sort of misconception?
Luckily, I never wound up in prison as a result of my keen insight into human nature, and eventually I realized that, while some girls were repressed, inhibited, and hypocritical, this wasn't a universal condition. Plenty of them could consciously make the decision to have sex and could openly admit as much. It just took me until my mid-20s to complete this evolution of belief.
What scares a lot of parents, I think, is the thought of describing the mechanical aspects of sex with their kids. The good news is, those details are of relatively small importance and can easily be conveyed by simply handing your kid a book like Sex for Dummies.
The more important responsibility that parents have is to overtly make certain statements regarding sex. The two most important statements are: (a) Sex isn't evil, but is a natural part of being an adult. And (b), that masturbation in particular isn't evil.
Failure to come out of the closet on this issue means your kids will approach sex with whatever attitudes they've manufactured themselves or picked up from the locker room. Our sexuality is wired deeply in our brains, is driven powerfully by hormones in our bloodstream. We either consciously control it, or it will control us.
Denial isn't control, any more than a starvation diet is a good way to lose weight. Sooner or later our hunger (of whichever variety) will express itself. When it comes to sexuality, the "binge" that results can be very dangerous indeed.
Is it really so hard, as a parent, to sit your kid down and say, "Sex isn't evil?"
Various other statements might go a long way toward keeping good kids from doing dumb things: (c) Kids who have sex aren't bad kids. Neither are they necessarily cool, hot, hip, macho, etc. Don't expect to counter peer pressure with, "Just say no." If you want traction, you have to establish that you are a believable, trustworthy source of information.
(d) Homosexuals aren't evil. I remember the tough guys at high school talking about their gay bashing forays. No doubt that sort of thing still happens, especially with so many God-fearing religious people wandering around our culture. If you're comfortable having your kid being arrested for assault; if you're comfortable being estranged with your kid, or having your kid commit suicide, because he/she turns out to be gay: fine. Otherwise, you might want to make your position clear on this point.
(e) While the world contains plenty of sexually-sick people, their sickness stems more from how they approach sex than what forms of sex they pursue. A married couple having sex in the missionary position with the lights off still qualifies as sick, if one of them has the attitude of, "You're a disgusting pig / cunt." A another pair of people could be slavered in cooking oil in a room with a Shetland pony, and-- Well, the point is, if two people treat each other with compassion, respect, and empathy, they're going to have a healthy relationship.
By overtly stepping out of the shadows, parents achieve a level of believability when they talk about various caveats to the practice of sex, such as the need to keep one's sexual behavior private, especially with regard to younger children, whether siblings still in the home or neighbor kids. The danger of STDs, pregnancy, and so forth will all be listened to and treated more seriously by your kids if they suspect you of being open and truthful with them. The opposite, of course, is also true.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Evolution of Religion
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are evolved religions. They all appeared at arbitrary points in human history, have all changed their doctrines along the way, and continue to evolve even today. Although these religions all claim to be the answer, none of them is. At best, they are works in progress, an important point for believers to keep in mind, since absolute certainty has led -- and continues to lead -- adherents of these religions to commit hateful acts in the name of God.
Even if we accept the notion that the Earth is merely 6,000 years old, as Christians once claimed, Judaism didn't begin to take shape as a religion until 4,000 years ago. Christianity, meanwhile, has been around for less than a third of recorded history, and Islam is 600 years younger still. Are we really to believe that God has changed his mind about what makes him happy?
None of these religions, meanwhile, has remained true to its original form. Judaism has evolved partly in response to external pressures and partly in response to the increasingly enlightened cultural environment. For example, after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., animal sacrifice became increasingly difficult to perform from a logistical point of view and was eventually abandoned entirely. However, even if a new Temple were built today, one has to wonder if animal sacrifice would be practiced there, or would Judaism recognize the pointless waste associated with such behavior?
As a species of religion, Judaism has split into several sub-species, including Hassidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews, Reconstruction Jews, and so forth. But Judaism has been affected by more granular examples of genetic drift, most notably with respect to the core document of the Jewish faith, the Ten Commandments. Face it, if God came down and handed you a stone tablet with ten rules on it, would you dare tinker with those rules? Yet this is exactly what Judaism has been doing for thousands of years via the Talmud, a scholarly work that has far more significance for practicing Jews today than the Ten Commandments ever did.
The evolutionary history of Christianity, meanwhile, would require a book all to itself if we were to fully trace the various bifurcations, mergers, extinctions, and adaptive mutations that have taken place. Today there are more than 500 Protestant denominations, in addition to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Catholic variants. At what point does a situation become too ridiculous for even the most ardent adherent? When it comes to religion, the answer is, never. True believers in every one of these religions could explain to you why their approach is the right one.
In 1968, against the generally prevailing trend, the Methodist and United Brethren Churches merged to form the United Methodist Church. Interestingly, you can go into a United Methodist Church and find them singing "Give me that Old Time Religion" or "Rock of Ages," and no one in the congregation will so much as crack a smile at the irony of it.
Some denominations, such as the Church of Christ, try to double-think their way around their short history by claiming to be Bible based. "What makes us the right answer," they say, "is that we strictly follow the New Testament, take communion every week, and practice only full-immersion baptism of people who have reached the age of consent." If you dare point out that the New Testament says nothing about weekly communion or the exact rules of baptism, an astute adherent will reply by saying, "When a scripture is vague, we do things the same way Christians did it in the first century." An interesting answer, except that first century Christians didn't have churches, they met in each other's homes. They also didn't have Hi-C grape juice. Their communion drink was wine.
But such non-sequiturs abound, products of Christianity's twisted evolutionary path and the desire of Church leaders to obfuscate the nuttiness of what they're doing. Christianity, in all its forms, is suffused with petty, pointless, dead-end doctrines that are the religious equivalent of the human appendix.
Islam, for its part, split into three sub-variants before Mohammed's corpse was even cold in its tomb. The burkha is a relatively new development in Islam's history, as is the antagonism between Judaism and Islam. Given that both religions worship the same God and recognize the Bible as divinely inspired, it's clear that religion is being twisted into a political tool in the Middle East.
Suicide bombers, far from being guaranteed a quick ride to heaven, violate two dictates of the Koran: that suicide is a sin, and that innocents should never be targeted in a war. But religious adherents have long been comfortable ignoring scripture when it proves inconvenient -- a clear sign they don't really believe in God, or at least, don't really believe in their religion.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all evolved over time, and they will continue to evolve. Does this imply that these religions are entirely false? No. However, it does show that they are not eternal, immutable, or flawless. Each of these religions has fallen victim to misinterpretations of scripture. Each has been guilty of committing hateful acts in the name of God. Even today, religion continues to serve as a justification for violence, bigotry, and criminal behavior.
Christianity was once used to justify slavery, but do you really think that affected God's opinions on the matter?
Far from being absolutely certain of their own righteousness, religious people should acknowledge that their beliefs were different a hundred years ago and will be different a hundred years from now. As such, believers should be less willing to set themselves up as examples of superior morality, and more willing to question modern interpretations of scripture. Such interpretations have been proven wrong before, and they will be proven wrong again.
Even if we accept the notion that the Earth is merely 6,000 years old, as Christians once claimed, Judaism didn't begin to take shape as a religion until 4,000 years ago. Christianity, meanwhile, has been around for less than a third of recorded history, and Islam is 600 years younger still. Are we really to believe that God has changed his mind about what makes him happy?
None of these religions, meanwhile, has remained true to its original form. Judaism has evolved partly in response to external pressures and partly in response to the increasingly enlightened cultural environment. For example, after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., animal sacrifice became increasingly difficult to perform from a logistical point of view and was eventually abandoned entirely. However, even if a new Temple were built today, one has to wonder if animal sacrifice would be practiced there, or would Judaism recognize the pointless waste associated with such behavior?
As a species of religion, Judaism has split into several sub-species, including Hassidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews, Reconstruction Jews, and so forth. But Judaism has been affected by more granular examples of genetic drift, most notably with respect to the core document of the Jewish faith, the Ten Commandments. Face it, if God came down and handed you a stone tablet with ten rules on it, would you dare tinker with those rules? Yet this is exactly what Judaism has been doing for thousands of years via the Talmud, a scholarly work that has far more significance for practicing Jews today than the Ten Commandments ever did.
The evolutionary history of Christianity, meanwhile, would require a book all to itself if we were to fully trace the various bifurcations, mergers, extinctions, and adaptive mutations that have taken place. Today there are more than 500 Protestant denominations, in addition to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Catholic variants. At what point does a situation become too ridiculous for even the most ardent adherent? When it comes to religion, the answer is, never. True believers in every one of these religions could explain to you why their approach is the right one.
In 1968, against the generally prevailing trend, the Methodist and United Brethren Churches merged to form the United Methodist Church. Interestingly, you can go into a United Methodist Church and find them singing "Give me that Old Time Religion" or "Rock of Ages," and no one in the congregation will so much as crack a smile at the irony of it.
Some denominations, such as the Church of Christ, try to double-think their way around their short history by claiming to be Bible based. "What makes us the right answer," they say, "is that we strictly follow the New Testament, take communion every week, and practice only full-immersion baptism of people who have reached the age of consent." If you dare point out that the New Testament says nothing about weekly communion or the exact rules of baptism, an astute adherent will reply by saying, "When a scripture is vague, we do things the same way Christians did it in the first century." An interesting answer, except that first century Christians didn't have churches, they met in each other's homes. They also didn't have Hi-C grape juice. Their communion drink was wine.
But such non-sequiturs abound, products of Christianity's twisted evolutionary path and the desire of Church leaders to obfuscate the nuttiness of what they're doing. Christianity, in all its forms, is suffused with petty, pointless, dead-end doctrines that are the religious equivalent of the human appendix.
Islam, for its part, split into three sub-variants before Mohammed's corpse was even cold in its tomb. The burkha is a relatively new development in Islam's history, as is the antagonism between Judaism and Islam. Given that both religions worship the same God and recognize the Bible as divinely inspired, it's clear that religion is being twisted into a political tool in the Middle East.
Suicide bombers, far from being guaranteed a quick ride to heaven, violate two dictates of the Koran: that suicide is a sin, and that innocents should never be targeted in a war. But religious adherents have long been comfortable ignoring scripture when it proves inconvenient -- a clear sign they don't really believe in God, or at least, don't really believe in their religion.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all evolved over time, and they will continue to evolve. Does this imply that these religions are entirely false? No. However, it does show that they are not eternal, immutable, or flawless. Each of these religions has fallen victim to misinterpretations of scripture. Each has been guilty of committing hateful acts in the name of God. Even today, religion continues to serve as a justification for violence, bigotry, and criminal behavior.
Christianity was once used to justify slavery, but do you really think that affected God's opinions on the matter?
Far from being absolutely certain of their own righteousness, religious people should acknowledge that their beliefs were different a hundred years ago and will be different a hundred years from now. As such, believers should be less willing to set themselves up as examples of superior morality, and more willing to question modern interpretations of scripture. Such interpretations have been proven wrong before, and they will be proven wrong again.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Responding to FTE
The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) is a proponent of Intelligent Design (ID). They claim that ID is a scientific theory. It isn't. They want to have their bogus theory taught side-by-side with Darwinism, never mind that doing so violates the U.S. Constitution and would distract students from the study of modern biology and medicine.
According to the FTE web site, "As a scientific theory, all ID claims is that there is empirical evidence that key features of the universe and living things are the products of an intelligent cause."
The quote above shows a misunderstanding of what constitutes a scientific theory. A scientific theory must do more than provide a conceptual framework for information we already have, it must have predictive power and, ultimately, practical application. It must give us knowledge we didn't have before, not merely a different way of thinking about things we already know.
The human mind is a powerful mechanism, capable of looking at a cloud or an ink blot and seeing a dragon or a starship. We can look at any piece of information (such as that a rock, when thrown up into the air, falls back to Earth) and come up with any number of explanations for it. Aristotle said that the rock falls because the Earth is its natural home. Religion would say that the rock falls because God wants it to. Though these explanations both "work," neither is a scientific theory, because neither one can lead us to new scientific knowledge or new practical applications.
Newton's Theory of Gravity, on the other hand, is scientific. Newton said that the rock falls back to Earth because of a force called gravity which you can neither see, smell, touch, nor taste. However irrational or silly Newton's idea might sound, it fulfills the requirement of leading us to new knowledge. For example, the Theory of Gravity implies that a rock could in fact leave the Earth, never to return, via a principle called escape velocity. Communication satellites, moon missions, Mars landers, and Voyager spacecraft have done more than "prove" Newton's theory, they were made possible by that theory. This is the critical point.
Darwinism constitutes a scientific theory because it leads to improved methods of agriculture, animal husbandry, conservation, and most significantly, to the study of genetics as the mechanism by which inherited information is passed along.
Where does ID lead? Try this as an exercise: Pick a disease -- Multiple Sclerosis (MS), for example. Now, explain how you would go about finding a cure or treatment for MS using Intelligent Design as your guiding principle. Given that life on Earth is the product of an intelligent designer, what does that say about a disease like MS? Does it mean the design has become broken? How can you be sure? What if the design isn't broken, but MS is in fact part of the design, part of the plan? If that's the case, wouldn't it be impossible, dangerous, or even blasphemous to cure MS?
But the proponents of ID are nothing if not slippery. They've given up explicitly mentioning God in their documents. In some cases, they don't even attempt to promote ID, but merely to undercut Darwinism through creative interpretation of the term "theory" and through outright lies (such as that Darwinism is controversial to anyone but religious fundamentalists). This is unfortunate, since the Theory of Evolution is fundamental to modern biology and medicine. DNA research is uncovering the genetic causes for hundreds of diseases. Study of non-human DNA could lead to cures or treatments for thousands of maladies caused by viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Attacking Darwinism, then, is not a victimless crime. It is, in fact, a heartless endeavor that steals time from educators and researchers and, thus, could delay the arrival of some cure or treatment.
Of course, the proponents of ID are perfectly willing to treat DNA like it is their friend. Of Pandas and People, a book that ID proponents feel should be provided as a supplemental text in biology classrooms, tells us that, "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause" (2nd ed., 1993, pg. 7). First, as we discussed earlier, science isn't based upon experience. It isn't just another way of explaining what we already know. It must lead us to new knowledge.
Second, the claim that our DNA "must have" an intelligent origin relies on a non-sequitur. DNA uses a base four coding scheme that is functionally equivalent to the base two scheme used in computers. Since we can use base two to encode textual information, surely we could do so using base four. And here comes the non-sequitur: the ability to encode textual information using DNA implies that DNA was designed by a higher intelligence.
The gobbledygook nature of our DNA (long stretches that encode for nothing at all, repeated sequences that are highly prone to errors during replication, and the Rube Goldberg convolutions whereby some genes are activated or deactivated) all would get a computer programmer fired. Moreover, human DNA does not in fact contain a copy of the Ten Commandments, never mind the New Testament. Its main job is to encode for proteins. Whatever coding mechanism it used to accomplish that task, we could point to it and say, "Aha. It's storing information, therefore it must have been designed."
Organizations like FTE continue to morph their arguments in an attempt to force their antiquated beliefs into the classroom. For parents, teachers, and school boards, countering this sort of sophistry can become a major time sink. Especially if you happen to be religious, you might feel that the effort isn't worth the gain. After all, where's the harm in having God mentioned (however obliquely) alongside Darwinism? However, there is harm. Even if it only leads one brilliant mind away from a career in biology or medicine, it could thereby delay the cure for some disease. Would God really be pleased by the unnecessary suffering of even a single child, just so a small group of people can continue clinging to a medieval, erroneous interpretation of the Bible? Somehow, I doubt it.
Proponents of ID like to claim they merely want fair treatment for their theory. Equal time, as it were. But equal time for ID isn't fair. To date, no cure or treatment has ever arisen either from ID or from its predecessor, Creationism. These "theories" have been around long enough that they could have produced something concrete, some solution to a real-world, ongoing problem. Not only have they failed, I'll go out on a limb and say that (despite well-funded organizations and think tanks like FTE), there isn't a single laboratory, a single scientist anywhere applying Intelligent Design in a search for new knowledge or some new application.
By their actions shall ye know them. While organizations like FTE devote enormous time and resources to lobbying for their theory, they make no attempt at all to apply it. Until they do, and do so successfully, we have every right to treat ID as religion and politics, not as science, and therefore to totally exclude it from the science classroom. It's more than fair, it's the right thing to do.
According to the FTE web site, "As a scientific theory, all ID claims is that there is empirical evidence that key features of the universe and living things are the products of an intelligent cause."
The quote above shows a misunderstanding of what constitutes a scientific theory. A scientific theory must do more than provide a conceptual framework for information we already have, it must have predictive power and, ultimately, practical application. It must give us knowledge we didn't have before, not merely a different way of thinking about things we already know.
The human mind is a powerful mechanism, capable of looking at a cloud or an ink blot and seeing a dragon or a starship. We can look at any piece of information (such as that a rock, when thrown up into the air, falls back to Earth) and come up with any number of explanations for it. Aristotle said that the rock falls because the Earth is its natural home. Religion would say that the rock falls because God wants it to. Though these explanations both "work," neither is a scientific theory, because neither one can lead us to new scientific knowledge or new practical applications.
Newton's Theory of Gravity, on the other hand, is scientific. Newton said that the rock falls back to Earth because of a force called gravity which you can neither see, smell, touch, nor taste. However irrational or silly Newton's idea might sound, it fulfills the requirement of leading us to new knowledge. For example, the Theory of Gravity implies that a rock could in fact leave the Earth, never to return, via a principle called escape velocity. Communication satellites, moon missions, Mars landers, and Voyager spacecraft have done more than "prove" Newton's theory, they were made possible by that theory. This is the critical point.
Darwinism constitutes a scientific theory because it leads to improved methods of agriculture, animal husbandry, conservation, and most significantly, to the study of genetics as the mechanism by which inherited information is passed along.
Where does ID lead? Try this as an exercise: Pick a disease -- Multiple Sclerosis (MS), for example. Now, explain how you would go about finding a cure or treatment for MS using Intelligent Design as your guiding principle. Given that life on Earth is the product of an intelligent designer, what does that say about a disease like MS? Does it mean the design has become broken? How can you be sure? What if the design isn't broken, but MS is in fact part of the design, part of the plan? If that's the case, wouldn't it be impossible, dangerous, or even blasphemous to cure MS?
But the proponents of ID are nothing if not slippery. They've given up explicitly mentioning God in their documents. In some cases, they don't even attempt to promote ID, but merely to undercut Darwinism through creative interpretation of the term "theory" and through outright lies (such as that Darwinism is controversial to anyone but religious fundamentalists). This is unfortunate, since the Theory of Evolution is fundamental to modern biology and medicine. DNA research is uncovering the genetic causes for hundreds of diseases. Study of non-human DNA could lead to cures or treatments for thousands of maladies caused by viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Attacking Darwinism, then, is not a victimless crime. It is, in fact, a heartless endeavor that steals time from educators and researchers and, thus, could delay the arrival of some cure or treatment.
Of course, the proponents of ID are perfectly willing to treat DNA like it is their friend. Of Pandas and People, a book that ID proponents feel should be provided as a supplemental text in biology classrooms, tells us that, "If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause" (2nd ed., 1993, pg. 7). First, as we discussed earlier, science isn't based upon experience. It isn't just another way of explaining what we already know. It must lead us to new knowledge.
Second, the claim that our DNA "must have" an intelligent origin relies on a non-sequitur. DNA uses a base four coding scheme that is functionally equivalent to the base two scheme used in computers. Since we can use base two to encode textual information, surely we could do so using base four. And here comes the non-sequitur: the ability to encode textual information using DNA implies that DNA was designed by a higher intelligence.
The gobbledygook nature of our DNA (long stretches that encode for nothing at all, repeated sequences that are highly prone to errors during replication, and the Rube Goldberg convolutions whereby some genes are activated or deactivated) all would get a computer programmer fired. Moreover, human DNA does not in fact contain a copy of the Ten Commandments, never mind the New Testament. Its main job is to encode for proteins. Whatever coding mechanism it used to accomplish that task, we could point to it and say, "Aha. It's storing information, therefore it must have been designed."
Organizations like FTE continue to morph their arguments in an attempt to force their antiquated beliefs into the classroom. For parents, teachers, and school boards, countering this sort of sophistry can become a major time sink. Especially if you happen to be religious, you might feel that the effort isn't worth the gain. After all, where's the harm in having God mentioned (however obliquely) alongside Darwinism? However, there is harm. Even if it only leads one brilliant mind away from a career in biology or medicine, it could thereby delay the cure for some disease. Would God really be pleased by the unnecessary suffering of even a single child, just so a small group of people can continue clinging to a medieval, erroneous interpretation of the Bible? Somehow, I doubt it.
Proponents of ID like to claim they merely want fair treatment for their theory. Equal time, as it were. But equal time for ID isn't fair. To date, no cure or treatment has ever arisen either from ID or from its predecessor, Creationism. These "theories" have been around long enough that they could have produced something concrete, some solution to a real-world, ongoing problem. Not only have they failed, I'll go out on a limb and say that (despite well-funded organizations and think tanks like FTE), there isn't a single laboratory, a single scientist anywhere applying Intelligent Design in a search for new knowledge or some new application.
By their actions shall ye know them. While organizations like FTE devote enormous time and resources to lobbying for their theory, they make no attempt at all to apply it. Until they do, and do so successfully, we have every right to treat ID as religion and politics, not as science, and therefore to totally exclude it from the science classroom. It's more than fair, it's the right thing to do.
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Last Straws
On average, Americans use one straw per week per person. That comes to 15 billion straws per year, enough so that, if they were laid side-by-side, they would cover the entire state of Texas to a depth of three miles. (Shakes his calculator.) At least, that's what I think this thing is telling me.
But seriously, do we really need to be dumping that many straws into landfills every year? Sure, for to-go cups and milk shakes, it makes sense. But why do we suddenly become so lazy when we go to a sit-down restaurant, that we can't drink straight from a glass like we do when we're home?
Given that straws are made from plastic, and plastic contains petroleum, by reducing our use of these little gadgets, we would also be helping the global fuel shortage. The impact would no doubt be small, but so would the effect on our lifestyles.
Sure, straw manufacturers would have to tighten their belts, but they wouldn't be forced out of business. They still have the afore-mentioned to-go and milk shake market.
It's time for environmentally conscious restaurants to start offering stay-in straws on request only, and for patrons to begin saying, "No straw for me, thanks," when they order their drinks.
But seriously, do we really need to be dumping that many straws into landfills every year? Sure, for to-go cups and milk shakes, it makes sense. But why do we suddenly become so lazy when we go to a sit-down restaurant, that we can't drink straight from a glass like we do when we're home?
Given that straws are made from plastic, and plastic contains petroleum, by reducing our use of these little gadgets, we would also be helping the global fuel shortage. The impact would no doubt be small, but so would the effect on our lifestyles.
Sure, straw manufacturers would have to tighten their belts, but they wouldn't be forced out of business. They still have the afore-mentioned to-go and milk shake market.
It's time for environmentally conscious restaurants to start offering stay-in straws on request only, and for patrons to begin saying, "No straw for me, thanks," when they order their drinks.
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