Oh, those crafty religious nuts are up to their old tricks again! A bill is being debated in Pennsylvania to allow public schools to mandate the teaching of �intelligent design� in 9th grade biology classes.
Michael J. Behe, a biological sciences professor at Lehigh University, told the subcommittee that intelligent design has no religious underpinnings. Behe said intelligent design merely contends that evidence of complex physical structures shows that design, rather than evolution, is responsible for an organism or cell.
OK- so is everyone getting this so far? �Evidence of complex physical structures shows that design, rather than evolution, is responsible for an organism or cell.� How? How is intelligent design responsible for this? Got any evidence to back that up? No? I didn�t think so. In essence, �intelligent design� is advocating that since we don�t KNOW how life started, that �someone or something� MUST have started it. There just HAD to be a guiding force. This couldn�t have just happened on its own. God didn�t do it, but something did. Well shit, people! If it wasn�t God, who else would it be? They�re not using any religious language so they can say it isn�t a church vs. state issue, but they�re setting up a fill-in the-blanks question to which there is only one logical answer. Lets try a few more on for size: �I washed my face, and then used my ______ to brush my teeth.� �It started raining while I was driving to the store, so I turned on my windshield _____.� �My father and mother had _____, and that is how I was conceived.� �Someone had to have designed the universe and all of the things in it, so it must have been _____.� Basically, they have built the answer right into the question in an attempt to placate the ACLU and other like-minded groups who are opposing this bill. I find it practically unbelievable that in this day and age there are still people out there who refuse to believe there can be scientific answers to our questions. By adopting stances such as this, we are teaching our children that science doesn�t matter. Mountains of evidence and research don�t prove anything- especially if it still leaves questions unanswered. Look at it this way: 2+2=4, and 4+y=x. We can�t yet figure out what X is because we don�t know what Y is. By using their logic, since we can�t figure out what X is, two plus two doesn�t necessarily equal 4. All the evidence in the world that supports evolution doesn�t matter because we don�t know how it all started. True, we don�t know how life began, but that doesn�t mean God did it. We simply don�t know. Is that so wrong? Is uncertainty such a huge burden to bare that we feel the need to manufacture answers? Hundreds of years ago, people were CERTAIN that the sun revolved around the earth. And why not? It certainly appears to be the case, doesn�t it? From our vantage point, the sun travels across the sky, so it would stand to reason that the sun is circling the earth. Only when you step back and look at things from a different perspective do alternatives begin to look plausible- and in some cases, actually begin to make more sense. We didn�t learn about the earth�s orbit from entering outer space- we figured it out long before by asking the right questions and refusing to remain tied down by old ideas. When looking at the movement of the stars and the moon, the idea of a geocentric universe just didn�t make sense- there had to be another explanation. There was one man with the curiosity and drive to find the answer, and the Catholic Church labeled him a heretic and threw him in jail for the rest of his life for doing so. Now, even in this day and age, there are people- some of them, like this Michael J. Behe, who actually consider themselves scientists- refuse to look at all of the glaring irregularities in their beliefs because they refuse to accept the notion that their preconceptions on religion and the origins of man hold about as much water as the idea that the sun revolves around the Earth.
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