Much Ado About Nothing
It is a new century so I guess some felt it was about time for another Scopes Monkey Trial. Arguments are underway in Pennsylvania where a law suit has been filed against a school district which is requiring that Intelligent Design be mentioned in science class. It is unfortunate that any time religious belief touches on a topic it is always the loony extremists on either side jumping in and polarizing the issue to the point the constructive dialog becomes all but impossible. It inevitably becomes framed as a fight between believer and non-believer, saint and heathen. Indeed faith and science are often seen as not just mutually exclusive of each other, but actually openly hostile.
Some say that the rejection of religion is a primary step in intelligent thought. Contenders on both sides of the issue will sometimes find themselves retreating into caricature. They will say, for instance, that belief in God and belief in science are mutually exclusive, that the renunciation of one is required in order to subscribe to the other.
Once again, it is the radicals on either side framing the argument in this way, which tires those with more moderate points of view. I, personally, have never seen science and faith as adversarial, but more complimentary. The Bible says that God created the Heavens and the Earth. It neglects to mention how, or to explain the process process by which that occurred. Whether God created the world or it just happened to work out that life exists on our little sphere, it seems to me that atheists and believers could at least unite behind the desire to understand the process whereby our world came into existence.
For many believers, science, the yearning to understand the whys and wherefores, is a threat to belief. The quest for knowledge implies a lack of faith. In my opinion, that's because they have never understood faith in the first place. Additionally they believe in a jealous, petty God who resents his creations trying to obtain more knowledge than He gave them in the first place. Remember poor Prometheus?
Confusing the issue even more are religious nut jobs who really have no idea what they are talking about jumping in and making absurd statements that are specious at best. Utah's most visible nut job, Rep. Chris Buttars, sensationalized the argument to his own ends:
The campaign to eliminate God from the public forum has been going on for decades, having accelerated greatly since the Supreme Court’s ill-advised decision in 1963 to eliminate prayer from public schools. And I believe those fighting against the teaching of intelligent design in schools have an ulterior motive to eliminate references to God from the entire public forum.
We'll just skip Buttars more absurd declarations. If you're interested, Balloon Juice has a a good run down . It's not nutjobs like Buttars that bother me. Idiots will eventually stumble on their own foolishness. Indeed, Buttars has recently dropped the subject. It is the dishonesty of ID proponents that really bothers me.
But proponents of intelligent design have a message for Buttars: Don't help us.
"We get very upset when supposed friends are claiming far more than what the scholars are saying," says John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle.
For one thing, they oppose requiring the teaching of intelligent design. What they are pushing, West says, is a thorough discussion of Darwinian theories which would include criticism raised by legitimate scientists.
...they want nothing to do with Buttars' so-called "divine design."
"We wish [Buttars] would get the name right and not propose something he doesn't understand," West says.
If that's really all that you want, what is the big deal? Isn't that what science is? Wouldn't any honest scientist discuss problems with Evolutionary Theory? Have you ever heard it called anything other than a theory? Isn't it always under scrutiny and refinement as we learn more about our world? What really is the agenda of ID proponents, since, if their claims are honest, they are really agitating for science to be more, well, scientific.
The problem is, their claims are not honest. It is not sufficient to admit there are gaps in the Theory of Evolution. No one has ever claimed otherwise. ID proponents want it to be taught that when man's understanding falls short, it must be because a greater intelligence has outsmarted us. But what does that get us? Absolutely nothing. How far would we be today if we had just assumed that disease was the result of an Intelligent Designer and had not kept looking until we found microbes and viruses mucking about with our biology?
The belief in an "Intelligent Designer" is, in an of itself, mostly harmless, as long as one has enough integrity to continue to question, to continue to search. But that is not what religion, for the most part, is about. Telling is this question from the defense in the ID trial.
"Would you agree that Darwin's theory is not the absolute truth?"
One cannot dispute "absolute truth." Indeed, the radical elements of any tradition, are all about being Right, no ifs, ands or buts. Hence the sacrilege implied in the disinterest of science in truth it cannot validate. Science is about understanding our natural world. Science is about validating assumptions through experimentation and observation, and, frankly, God brings nothing to that table. If you ask me, He doesn't want to be involved. He wants us to learn and grow on our own, without His intervention. To my mind, man's greatest potential is to become smarter, wiser and kinder than he is today. Science belongs in the classroom. God belongs in church. It is up to the individual to find the common ground between them.
I remember the last time I was in Vegas watching the fountains in front of the Bellagio. You've got to admit it's an amazing show. I remember thinking God would be impressed. I turned to my friend who was there with me and said, "You know, sometimes I think God is looking down on things like these fountains and gets excited, saying to Himself, 'Oh, I can't wait to see what they do when they finally figure __________ out.'"