No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Unintelligent deceit

Ah, the joys of living in the most powerful and yet most backward country on earth. Every so often there's a flare-up of ignorance, stupidity and superstition that embarrasses all civilized beings. From the Salem Witch Trials, to the riots against Chinese and Irish immigrants, to the KKK rallies and lynching parties, to the ongoing crusade to force the Book of Genesis into the science classroom, USAliens never miss an opportunity to parade, in the most arrogant and aggressive manner possible, their dumb-assery and lack of education.

Creationism, or cretinism as I prefer to call it, is the multi-headed beast that will not die. The scientific debate is settled, and it's no contest - evolution wins hands down. Virtually every scientific discovery over the last 150 years, in the life and earth sciences, confirms and strengthens Darwin's basic idea while extending it in countless new directions and opening it up to vast new vistas of exploration.

But the religious-right flat-earthers, trapped in their fetid swamp of fundamentalist backwardness and beholden to their belief in the word-for-word literal truth of an ignorant screed written thousands of years ago by a bunch of bare-assed savages, simply cannot accept reality. And so they keep on banging the drum for a fairy story that is laughable on its face.

Unfortunately for them, they can't come up with new facts or arguments to counter the dizzying pace of progress on the scientific front. After all, the buybull, the only book in the cretinist library, hasn't changed in centuries. All that has changed is their tactics and the degree of dishonesty which they are willing to embrace to further their agenda.

All through the 20th century, cretinists saw that insisting on the literal truth of the Adam/Eve/Noah story was a losing strategy in the face of rapidly developing scientific knowledge. The kicker was the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Supreme Court ruled that teaching cretinism in the classroom was an unconstitutional advancement of religion.

Cretinists reacted by changing their tactics, and "intelligent design" was born. Although they still believe that "goddidit" is the answer to all scientific questions, they were prepared to dissemble and give the credit to some generic "intelligent designer", who might or might not be the christian god (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Attired in this cheap tuxedo, the cretinists are now trying to crash the ball and take what they consider their rightful place among the scientists and educators. Hey, they cry, we're legitimate now! We deserve equal time! Anyone who criticizes us is a staunch evolutionist who doesn't believe in fair argumentation!

Of course, you can dress a pig in a tuxedo, but he's still a pig, and "intelligent design" is still a hoax. Real scientists have earned their place at the table by putting in the hard work that science is all about - you know, observing the natural world, formulating hypotheses, making predictions, performing experiments, improving or rejecting their hypotheses as the outcome dictates, and so on. What have the cretinists got? Nothing - there's no there there. "These people are ignorant idiots. They are anti-scientific snake-oil salesmen. And they are damaging this country."

"Intelligent design" is as much a religious dogma as old-style Adam-and-Eveism. It has no scientific content. It is simply an argument from ignorance; "I don't understand how such-and-such could have evolved, therefore it didn't. Case closed." Its assumptions and conclusions are one and the same. It makes no predictions, proposes no mechanisms, does not relate known facts to one another, and does not grow from any recognized branch of science. It does not advance our understanding of the universe one iota.

Sometimes I feel that cretinists calling for their religious belief to be taught in the science classroom are like dogs chasing a car - they wouldn't know what to do with it if they caught it. What exactly would they teach? "Evolution can't explain the complexity of nature, so Intelligent Designer did it. Thus endeth the lesson." Cretinists can't point to a single accredited college course, or published paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, supporting their claptrap. That's why they spend all their time filing lawsuits and lobbying politicians, unlike real scientists who do their work in the lab.

In essence, cretinists are spouting William Paley's 1802-vintage watchmaker argument over and over again - an argument which was comprehensively refuted even before Darwin came along. Percy Shelley, among others, pointed out the obvious problem with saying that the universe is so complex, it could only have been designed by an even more complex designer: who designed the designer? How do we avoid an infinite regress? Darwin showed that no designer was necessary in the first place; complexity, and the appearance of design (which cretinists insist on confusing with design itself), can arise from less complex systems. "Modern" cretinism, if I can term it such, totally misses the point when it attacks evolution by bringing up questions evolution has already answered, and ignores 150 years of scientific progress. It is the Rip Van Winkle of ideas.

Anyone who still imagines that cretinists are simply searching for the truth, just like scientists, should read the Wedge Document. This internal memo of the Discovery Institute, which was inadvertently posted on the web, reveals in chilling detail the real agenda behind the "intelligent design" movement. Very tellingly, the document does not offer a single word in rebuttal of evolution - it tacitly accepts that evolution is true. Its real beef is with science in general, which the cretinists fault for leading people away from a biblical worldview. They pick on evolution simply because it is the scientific theory that has the weakest acceptance among the ill-educated US public. Once evolution has been vanquished, the strategy is to pick off other branches of science one by one until the whole scientific worldview has been swept away and medieval thinking reigns supreme once again. In a nutshell, it's a return to the Dark Ages.

Cretinism has no scientific merit whatsoever. What makes it very dangerous is its political power and access to the bully pulpit, its wallowing in ignorance and scientific illiteracy (with which it seeks to infect other countries), and its eagerness to use trickery and fraud to get its way. Anyone concerned with science, with education or with the ability of the US to compete in the high-tech global economy must fight this pernicious crap!