Friday, July 15, 2005

 

Creationism and intelligent design

OK, first off, I believe in God. I have no basis in science for this belief. Science would go so far as to contradict a Supreme Being known as God. Frankly, I am skeptical of my belief in God. I am skeptical of a Supreme Being in general. If there is a God, then God knows of my belief because he (or she) built me that way, which is why I guess it is I believe in God. That being said, it is science which is what I believe makes me the skeptic that I am. Creationism was touted a while back as a "science" equal to Darwin's theory of evolution and the true believers wanted this theory taught and given equal time to Darwin's theory of evolution. It was beaten down in the courts and NOT taught equal to the science because there are some facts which make evolution likely whereas there are NO facts (outside of the Bible, which admittedly contains internal contradictions and probably was not even written at the time the events related happened, but many years after the fact from what in court today would be called hearsay evidence.) which point to creationism as to how life got to be on this planet. Now, this same idea of a supreme being is being put forth as "intelligent design" in that there must have been a grand design for DNA since DNA is so complex that it can not have come about without a designer! The intelligent designer folks point to a car and say that seeing a car and not knowing what a car is, would point to a designer or they ask, otherwise, without a designer, how can a car exist? One problem with this analogy is this; a car is a machine. A machine is not alive. A machine is not a chemical being as we are. A car is not aware of its' own existence or mortality. I agree, a machine must have had a designer. However, life is not a machine but a biological organism which is alive and thinking. No designer that we know of has made life as we know it. However, science has shown that the primordial soup which existed way back when the Earth was forming, with a lightning strike can make the necessary amino acids which could combine to make DNA and eventually, life as we know it. Science has shown a possibility that DNA and life as we know it COULD have evolved to where we are today whereas there is no evidence of intelligent design. Here is a link to to what the ACLU thinks of this: http://www.aclu.org/evolution/. Recently, the local school district had a parents meeting on this exact same subject. I attended even though I do not have children in school. I attended because I am a tax payer and part of my property tax goes to schools. In my book, if I'm paying taxes for schools, I have a say what happens in those schools. I say this because I was challenged by some of the people present at the meeting because I am unmaried and do not have children going to school. Anyway, at this meeting, people could comment on the proposal to teach intelligent design in science classes equal to the theory of evolution, and I spoke my piece against teaching intelligent design in a science class. The proponents tried to use the analogy of the car and it obviously having a designer, and I countered with animate versus inanimate objects, living as opposed to nonliving. Manmade as opposed to non-manmade items. In all cases they cited having to do with an obvious designer, they used inanimate objects, the designer of which was a human being, just like you and me. Then I asked, since someone like me created the design of a car, it follows someone like me could also have designed DNA. It seems that would make us, human beings, equivalent to the intelligent designer. If this were a faith based belief as creationism was a few years back, then I would be the equivalent of God. They sputtered on that question, when I proposed that us human beings were in fact equivalent to their intelligent designer. The school board has taken it all under advisement for the time being since there is this exact same issue working its' way through the courts back east somewhere and they think it best to do nothing until a verdict is reached. Creationism was rejected by the courts since it was faith based, religious, and not science. Intelligent design seems to be the same issue, faith based, just not using the God/creator words used by religion.

Posted by: Rowlfe - at: 7/15/2005 09:49:00 PM

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