give us, o lord, our daily snark

[eirias]

Need some snark with your toaster waffles this morning? Kung Fu Monkey offers thoughts on intelligent design and a eulogy for the sanity wing of the Republican party.

(both links, through some intermediate waystations, courtesy of Mano Singham)

Comments

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's like looking at what I would write if I had time to do so. Creepy!

I will definitely have to start reading Kung Fu Monkey now.

[sam16.livejournal.com]

Let me see if I've got this right. Intelligent design states that life was initially created, but may have evolved from that point. Is that correct?

Personally, I think I like the concept of a higher being setting evolution into motion, which I think is somewhat different from "intelligent design". I guess the name "intelligent design" is a little misleading - it makes me think more of the idea that the process of evolution seems intelligently designed.

Hopefully some of that made sense.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I would recommend reading Mano's post on why intelligent design is not science (http://blog.case.edu/mxs24/2005/05/25/why_id_is_not_science).

[sam16.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I never intended to imply that the concept I mentioned above is a scientific theory. I guess I just believe that, at some point, as you trace everything back to its origin, you eventually get to a place where there's no logical explanation for how things got there in the first place. Again, this isn't science, just my gut feeling. I like the idea of some supernatural force snapping his/her fingers and kicking off The Big Bang, then going off to do something else and letting everything proceed here according to established natural laws and forces.

The point of my comment was mostly to nail down what exactly "intelligent design" means, which I still don't have a grasp on. Is it "God created everything, then everything evolved", or is it "evolution with God filling in the gaps"? Everyone seems to write pages and pages on intelligent design and evolution, but nobody seems to give a concise, plain-language definition of what it actually means. Dern academic types... ;-P

I would also argue that schools could teach evolution as a scientific theory (explaining the evidence supporting it as well as the parts that we don't fully understand or have physical proof for), but also briefly covering the fact that some people don't believe in evolution. Schools should not "teach" intelligent design, but it seems silly not to at least address it and explain why it is not a scientific theory. In other words, don't present it as a scientific alternative to evolution, but as a belief system that some people have.

P.S. - Do you know of any good resources that explain (in layman's terms) the gaps or holes in the evidence that supports evolution?

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, schools could also teach the heliocentricism of the solar system as a scientific theory and then explain that there are some people who still live in the Ptolemaic universe in their heads, or they could teach the Big Bang as a scientific theory and then explain that there are some people who believe that the universe was created in seven days and that this happened about four thousand years ago... but where's your limit? Once you start allowing non-science into science classrooms, you have two choices:

1) Draw no limit and include a section on the Great Green Arkleseizure, or
2) Draw a crude limit informed only by the religious prejudices of the nation you happen to live in.

I'm pretty sure I know which way our classrooms would go; after all, it's not prayer mats and a compass pointing to Mecca that people are trying to introduce into courtrooms.

Strictly speaking, it is totally true that evolution is compatible with the kind of Deist worldview you suggest where a god of some kind creates life with certain properties, including the ability/propensity to evolve into different forms. Evolution itself doesn't address the origin of *life*, merely the origin of *species*. However, most intelligent design advocates do not understand or acknowledge this distinction, in my experience, which is why they push their worldview as an alternative to evolution rather than as an alternate cosmology. They say, "There are holes in the theory of evolution; therefore we need to fill those holes with an intelligent creator," who is tacitly understood by the faithful to mean their own God.

As for resources on evolution, I have two suggestions:
1) Read stuff by Stephen J. Gould, an extremely popular evolutionary biology writer - it should be fun and comprehensible.
2) Poke ukelele for good textbook suggestions, because I believe her in-laws are both evolutionary biologists.