Quick one and out: The fact that there are people who will argue for intelligent design seems to me to be proof that there is no intelligent design.
Seriously though, I just finished having this argument in my college buddies' listserve, and it boiled down to this:
There is no one who need be taken seriously who argues that there is not change over time. However, evolution does not preclude some degree of intelligent design, and intelligent design does not necessarily preclude results indistinguishable from evolution. The summation I gave was this:
Quote:
Here's the way I see it. You can call them whatever you like: blind natural forces, or forces directed by an ineffable god. Doesn't matter in the end. In the end all we can know is what is knowable, and scientific theories can only attempt to explain the unknown, not the unknowable. Now, if it is knowable, at least knowable in the sense of amenable to logic, then it isn't god by any definition, and if it is unknowable, then it is not science, and shouldn't be taught as such.
I mean, why does the sun shine? Well, nuclear fusion. But why do the atoms fuse? Well, because the gravity puts them together so tightly that it overcomes the nuclear
forces. Well, why is that? Because there are so many atoms in the sun. Well, how come?
It's a 5 year old's game when you get there. Why? Why? Why? Eventually you get to, "Because that's the way it is." You want to call that god's will? I don't have a problem with that. Do it in church. Do it on the street. If one cares to make an abject fool of oneself, do it in court or in congress. But Don't Do It In School. School is to teach kids how to think, not how to pray. It's not a matter of free speech, though it is a matter of no established religion. In a public school with public money, the kids are there to 1) Learn to Think, 2) Socially assimilate, and 3) Stay out from under their parent's feet. If parents really want (and evidently some of them really do) their kids to answer that last Why? with Because God said so, well, I think they're idiots, but I also think it's their right and responsibility to raise their children the best way they know how.
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