We are not in Kansas any more...thank goodness

This is a very minor rant, please skip ahead if such things annoy you.

For the record, I am a tremendous supporter of intellectual debate on virtually any subject. I truly believe that rigorous challenge is the surest way to separate the wheat from the proverbial chaff. That said, spurious debate, while fun, is really just a waste of time. Worse, it is often an attempt to reify an otherwise ethereal concept. Which brings us to Kansas.

The school board there, by a 6 to 4 vote (6 R vs. 2 R-2 D), has voted that the theory of evolution must be challenged in class with the veiled dogma of “intelligent design.” Better, in that slightly masochistic way, they have “redefined” the term “science” so that it is not “limited” to the search for natural explanations of natural phenomena.

Scientific America has taken a reasonably strong position on this, in a post titled: Kansas, Where "Ignorant" is the New "Educated.” The move has also amused such liberal, pro-evolutionary states such as Ireland. Other evals, both internal and external, can be found here, here or here. It is, I think, a great day for shabby politics and bad science…though slightly balanced by the fact that PA managed to oust all 8 school board members who supported a similar proposal in that state…hope springs eternal.

I tend to think that Sam Harris, the author of the End of Faith, has a valid point (or several of them). We seem to have a genuine clash between Faith and Reason emerging…definitely the most significant since the Scopes trial and perhaps since Galileo. Why is it so many of us seem so willing to suspend reason when it comes to religious beliefs. Why is it that we are expected to vigorously challenge our scientific tenets but to vigorously challenge the rational basis of a given “faith” is verboten.

If the President argued that the world was flat and refused to accept any evidence to the contrary, he would be widely and properly ridiculed (more so than already). Yet his “born again” faith and what those beliefs imply can not be addressed as he is “entitled” to his “faith.” Why is that…why are people entitled to believe whatever they wish as long as they wrap it in religious “faith” (as long as it doesn’t involve peyote or human sacrifice, etc.). Why does snake handling, Scientology and Catholicism get a pass while the tenets of virtually all other areas of life and science must survive trial by fire before they are allowed to stand.

The truth is, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with the ID folk if they were not *so* obviously hacks for the religious right…trying yet another means of getting the religious camels nose under the tent of the public schools. Who knows, maybe aliens did seed this planet, it is certainly fun to think about as many speculative fiction writers have leveraged to great effect. But ignoring, for a moment, the foundational issue of teaching creationism in the classroom, does anyone seriously believe that the kind of rigorous debate that is the cornerstone of the scientific method will be embraced by those who are pushing ID? Will my child be encouraged to stand and ask, “Where did Cain get his wife?” or “If the bible is the literal word of God, why did a Papal Council in the 600s give the Holy Ghost a sex change?” I doubt it.

In my opinion, these are the same people who would (and have) burned books that contained theories or ideas that offended them all the way back to Galileo and beyond.

These are the people who Henry Strauss was speaking of when he said, “I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.”

They are the people Anais Nin feared when she said, “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”

It was to these people that Thomas Jefferson spoke when he wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

I suggest that the entire premise of Intelligent Design is most aptly embodied in the following:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [as the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

(Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p. 50)

If only it were that simple.

I preemptively apologize to any who are offended by this minor rant. I am more than willing to engage in debate on any or all of my broad, sweeping generalizations and/or miststatements, here or via email if you feel so inclined to do so. Frankly, I just needed to get it off my chest.