Unintelligent design

The anti-Darwinists are at it again. Evolution, they claim, is “just a theory.” Of course it is just a theory¸ a theory that attempts to make sense out of hundreds and thousands of facts. The existence of dinosaurs, for example, is not a theory. It is a fact. The incredible age of the earth is not a theory. It is a fact. That homo sapiens shares most of their genes with the great apes is not a theory. It is a fact. That our ancestors made and used stone and bone tools is not a theory. It is a fact. Evolutionary theory attempts to make sense of these disparate facts in such a way as to allow further hypotheses that can be put to scientific tests and either confirmed or disconfirmed. It is not all that complicated.

What we are offered in contrast is what the opponents are calling “intelligent design.” This rests on no facts at all, merely the assertion that as things are so complicated they must have resulted from intelligent design (that is, some kind of god who created everything, presumably in 10,000 years or less). In light of the scientific progress that has been made over the last couple of hundred years this is quite simply preposterous. That anyone, anywhere, in the 21st century could believe this is absolutely astounding. And yet I read that some 45 percent of the American public apparently believe this. If this is so, and if they are allowed to force this nonsense on everyone else, there is no doubt that the “American Century” will truly be over before much longer.

And just what is this intelligent design they are claiming? We have a species that is so rapacious, murderous, short-sighted, ignorant, greedy and hypocritical that we have spent all of human history torturing and murdering each other – with no end in sight. This is not, in my opinion at least, a very intelligently designed world. Similarly, would any intelligent power have designed a world in which hundreds of species have disappeared and more are disappearing every day? A design in which even the planet’s temperature is changing because of human activity and those in charge refuse to do anything about it? Would an intelligent creator have created a society in which the filthy rich get richer and richer every year while more and more of their own kind fall further and further into poverty and despair? Would any intelligent design have created a species that presumably has the intelligence and capacity to live in peace and harmony but absolutely refuses to do so? Just what the hell is this intelligent design we are supposed to believe in?

It is all utter nonsense, of course. But in some circles it seems to be making inroads. I guess if some people wish to believe in this total balderdash that is their priviledge (I’m not at all sure I believe they should have this priviledge). I do know they have no right whatsoever to insist the rest of us have to believe it. A very bright woman, Margaret Halsey, once wrote that a society that depends too exclusively on one institution is primitive, and as the U.S. depends so exclusively on business, it is primitive. I suggest that it has now evolved into a two institution society, business and religion. Unfortunately this makes it even more primitive. This unholy alliance, if allowed to continue, will surely doom the American dream into an absolute nightmare.