I've been doing some reading recently about Evolution versus Intelligent Design. I've read lots of articles and books about developments in the Theory of Evolution over the years and they are thought-provoking and interesting, but I've yet to see any articles about actual developments in a Theory of Intelligent Design. There doesn't seem to be more of a theory to it than "this looks like it was designed." Apparently, there was a think-tank created to develop this as a theory, but they haven't come up with anything - no scientific papers, no insights or discoveries. In fact, the only success they've had is in the public relations angle.
Granted, PR is much easier to accept than scientific
explanations because it's catchy and doesn't require a whole lot of
thought. If there's anything humans
don't want to do, it's think too hard.
Thinking is work. Reading about Evolution
is work. It leaves some unanswered
questions that might require more work to figure out. The beauty of Intelligent Design is that you
don't have to do that work, so I can see why this is so popular.
Proponents of ID want to have it taught alongside Evolution
(which shouldn't take long: "See this? Someone designed it - just for you!
Pretty, isn't it?") as a preface to eradicating Evolution altogether. Something they don't take into account is
that kids only learn this stuff long enough to pass a test and then most of
them lose all interest in it. The only
ones who will remember are the ones whose interest is piqued and want to pursue
the subject. What do you remember from
high school? The difference between ser and estar? Logarithms?
The names of the nucleotide bases in DNA? (I didn't even remember their
initials - I had to look it up on Wikipedia.)
What are these ID people worried about?
This is my Modest Proposal: It would save money and effort
to have school boards propose guidelines to make science in general as boring
as possible. That way textbooks will not
have to be rewritten or replaced, teachers would not have to keep up with the
latest developments in actual science and could recycle the same lesson plans
for decades, and parents would understand their kids' homework for a
change. Only nerds will have any interest
in science regardless of how lame the instruction is and they tend to be
self-directed about learning anyway. No
one has ever had anything to do with nerds, so the contagion of Interest in
Science will not spread and will be confined to types like computer programmers - who
actually have to design minutiae intelligently.
