Thursday, October 20, 2005
id? wtf?
And now for something different...
I'm not going to post about boobies. I'm not going to post about my newly lost job (though my co-workers took me out for a good-bye lunch my last Thursday and filed past my desk on my last Friday to say good-bye and express their sadness at me leaving, after only two months on the job - how cool is that?). I'm not going to post about creepy commercials. And while what I'm posting about is politically related, it has nothing to do with my political activities.
So, as y'all no doubt know, there are efforts afoot to have the "Theory" of Intelligent Design taught in classrooms alongside evolution as legitmate scientific theory. I have only one thing to say about this: what the fuck?
I'm into all sorts of spiritual things. I'm fascinated by astrology and Wicca and Science of Mind and all that. I fervently believe that everything and everyone in the universe is connected on a deep level. On a spiritual level, I'm not at all against the thought that there is a greater power at work that may be guiding a few things - though with all the natural disasters happening recently (not to mention the unnatural disaster that has inhabited the White House since January 2002), I have to wonder in what direction this greater power is directing things. I have serious questions about that and may have to take it up with Mr/Ms. Higher Power personally.
But.
None of that can, by any stretch of the imagination, be termed "legitimate scientific theory." Why? Because nothing in the above paragraph can possibly be tested using accepted scientific methods. No way to objectively observe cause and effect. No way to extrapolate logical conclusions based on known evidence. IT CAN'T BE DONE. It just that simple. I don't see what the big deal is, but I'm not a evangelical Christian Creationist wingnut.
Here's the thing. When the main proponent of ID admits, in a court of law, that his definition of the phrase " scientific theory" is so broad that it has to include astrology as a "scientific theory", then, as John Scalzi says, it's time to "stop the trial, find for teaching actual science in biology classes, and then send a bill for the whole ridiculous affair to the idiots that changed the school policy to shoehorn ID into the classroom" - again, where's the disconnect? How fucking stupid are people that it even got this far?
(That's a rhetorical question - I know people can be pretty fucking stupid.)
You want to teach ID? Teach it in the churches. Bring it up in philosophy class, where all the other philosphies about mankind and the universe and our place in it go to live. It has - and let me be perfectly clear - NO PLACE IN SCIENCE CLASS. Stop being so fucking insecure about your own faith that you need to force it on unwilling students in order to validate your own sorry existence.
Don't make me strap you down, hold open your eyelids with clamps and force-feed you the Theory of Pastafarianism until you accept the Flying Spaghetti Monster as your personal Creator, Lord and Saviour. Don't make me teach you Baseball Bat Theory of Argumentation.
I'm not going to post about boobies. I'm not going to post about my newly lost job (though my co-workers took me out for a good-bye lunch my last Thursday and filed past my desk on my last Friday to say good-bye and express their sadness at me leaving, after only two months on the job - how cool is that?). I'm not going to post about creepy commercials. And while what I'm posting about is politically related, it has nothing to do with my political activities.
So, as y'all no doubt know, there are efforts afoot to have the "Theory" of Intelligent Design taught in classrooms alongside evolution as legitmate scientific theory. I have only one thing to say about this: what the fuck?
I'm into all sorts of spiritual things. I'm fascinated by astrology and Wicca and Science of Mind and all that. I fervently believe that everything and everyone in the universe is connected on a deep level. On a spiritual level, I'm not at all against the thought that there is a greater power at work that may be guiding a few things - though with all the natural disasters happening recently (not to mention the unnatural disaster that has inhabited the White House since January 2002), I have to wonder in what direction this greater power is directing things. I have serious questions about that and may have to take it up with Mr/Ms. Higher Power personally.
But.
None of that can, by any stretch of the imagination, be termed "legitimate scientific theory." Why? Because nothing in the above paragraph can possibly be tested using accepted scientific methods. No way to objectively observe cause and effect. No way to extrapolate logical conclusions based on known evidence. IT CAN'T BE DONE. It just that simple. I don't see what the big deal is, but I'm not a evangelical Christian Creationist wingnut.
Here's the thing. When the main proponent of ID admits, in a court of law, that his definition of the phrase " scientific theory" is so broad that it has to include astrology as a "scientific theory", then, as John Scalzi says, it's time to "stop the trial, find for teaching actual science in biology classes, and then send a bill for the whole ridiculous affair to the idiots that changed the school policy to shoehorn ID into the classroom" - again, where's the disconnect? How fucking stupid are people that it even got this far?
(That's a rhetorical question - I know people can be pretty fucking stupid.)
You want to teach ID? Teach it in the churches. Bring it up in philosophy class, where all the other philosphies about mankind and the universe and our place in it go to live. It has - and let me be perfectly clear - NO PLACE IN SCIENCE CLASS. Stop being so fucking insecure about your own faith that you need to force it on unwilling students in order to validate your own sorry existence.
Don't make me strap you down, hold open your eyelids with clamps and force-feed you the Theory of Pastafarianism until you accept the Flying Spaghetti Monster as your personal Creator, Lord and Saviour. Don't make me teach you Baseball Bat Theory of Argumentation.
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