Darwin crucified

Now and then the theocrats pushing for state-funded theology course in government schools let the cat out of the bag for a few seconds. Creationism-lite, better known as “Intelligent Design” is supposed to replace front-door creationism with backdoor creationism. The ID advocates, who I prefer to call IDiots, will tell you it’s not really theology. Of course it is. What it isn’t is science!

The issue of state forced teaching of a theological concept is in the courts for some resolution. And this case revolves around the dorp of Dover, Pennsylvania. The school board there pushed the measure through to include IDiotic teaching in addition to real science. The official line for IDiotic ideas is that this isn’t about religion. Right! But one of the men who voted this new regulation into place wasn’t so discreet. He forgot his script.

William Buckingham made the theology of IDiotic thinking clear. He said: “Nearly 2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross for us. Shouldn’t we have the courage to stand up for him?”

I find this actually rather odd. I went to seminary! Yes, it’s true. I graduated from a Christian high school as well. And I’ve read the manual these fundies use in both the Old and New versions. I don’t find this Jesus fellow saying one word about evolution, schools, or Darwin. But supposedly Buckingham thinks that to not teach IDiocy in the schools is a betrayal of Christ.

The ACLU is arguing the opposition and I wish them luck. They say: “We’re fighting for the 1st Amendment, the separation of church and state, and the integrity of schools.” I tend to agree. I would also like to see them fight for the separation of education and state.

Lawyers for the school board have a problem. The courts have already ruled that laws requiring creationism be taught on par with science are unconstitutional. The school board argues that Creationism-lite isn’t the same thing as Creationism-Original because the lite variety doesn’t mention God. Somebody forgot to clue Buckingham in on that since his remarks seem to indicate the contrary.

The fact is that science is science and creationism-lite isn’t science. IDiocy teaches that some forms of life are too complex to have arisen from natural processes. They thus require supernatural explanations. But as one scientist notes that whether this is true or not it “is not a testable scientific concept, and so deserves no consideration in science class.”

The article by Prof. Wade Worthen is quite good but I’m not sure of the url for it so I’ll quote him. He notes that the IDiots present their case as one between design or Darwin. And they argue that Darwin is just a theory and may have problems. But of course even if Darwin were disproved that is not a verification of creationism-lite. Repudiation of one natural theory does not validate a supernatural theory. Worthen writes:

“Science has not described how life arose on this planet. However, science and intelligent design address this unknown in dramatically different ways. Science addresses the unknown by making new predictions and conducting new experiments. Scientists will only reach an explanatory conclusion when they understand how something works.


Intelligent design takes the opposite approach. When confronted by an unknown or an apparent contradiction, intelligent design reaches for the most extreme conclusion possible: “I can’t explain this now — therefore it must be caused by an unknown designer using unknown powers.” They reach an explanatory conclusion precisely when they do not understand something.

There are two paths we can take when we are confronted by the unknown. We can throw up our hands and claim that we will never know, and attribute these phenomena to aliens, gods or other unspecified “intelligent designers.” Or we can test physical hypotheses by experiment. Only this latter process is called science.”