Fort Awesome

Well not really.

I generally try and stay clear of ridiculing people’s beliefs. The whole ‘free-speech’ thing applies to everyone no matter how insane I may find them to be. I also try to steer clear of mocking the American establishment (read: Christian Right) because, well, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But unfortunately I feel compelled now because of an article in this week’s Boar that I’ve just read. A Warwick academic is going to testify in the US defending creationism Intelligent Design.

Now before I continue let me just say that even though I am not a religious person (in fact I would go so far as to say that I believe organised religion has caused more problems for the human race than anything else ever), I am not having a pop at God. I don’t know if God exists. No-one does. Even Bush, although of course God does speak to him and tell him to blow the crap out of another country. But Intelligent Design is just a fancy spin on creationism. And therefore should not be taught in schools.

But lets for a moment pretend that it is a genuine scientific theory. Now I said scientific theory. That does not mean a guess. A scientific theory is based on observation and testing, such that the theory stands up to existing knowledge and can predict the state of a system at a given time. Just because something is a theory does not mean it is improvable. It is just the best guess based on the evidence. It is very difficult to prove evolution because of the time scale involved. However it seems to fit what we can observe from fossil records and in nature. Now take intelligent design. This is a ‘theory’ based on what evidence? It is a guess. It might be true that God is controlling every minute mutation in every cell to produce different creatures, but there is no evidence for it. Therefore by definition of what a scientific theory is, it is not one.

Theories come and go. Some are proved inconsistent (steady-state universe theory), some are adapted to fit more observations (Newtonian to Quantum physics), but these things are done based on evidence. Until Intelligent Design can be shown to stand up to testing it should not be taught as part of a science class.

The whole point of this post is that a Warwick academic is going to defend ID. I really really hope that the court does not cite his workplace as evidence of his experience and knowledge. Otherwise Warwick will turn in to more of an international laughing stock then the whole Singapore debacle.

One more thing. If creationists really wanted to try and prove the existence of God, they might want to think about this, and show that they are not just guessing and know their own religion.

According to the book of genesis: 1st day: Light, 3rd day: plant life, 5th day: marine life and birds, 6th day: land animals, people.

According to present science: Big bang, plants, fish, reptiles, mammals, people.

X-thousand years ago some book predicted the order of evolution. Now there’s a coincidence to think about.