Kansas Evolution/Creation debate heats up.

Oh, Crap.

Well, the good thing about all this is that Canada will be about a million miles ahead of the US in the biological sciences in about ten years. Which means that the US will be desperately seeking people who actually have some scientific literacy.

Which means that I, an American citizen who is not required to acquire a visa to work in the states, will be a rather valuable commodity in a few years.

But I'd like to bring up this debate for a moment. I'm not particularly inclined towards any religion (although, I confess, I've been leaning a little in the direction of Taoism lately). I'm not baptized; with the exception of very special occasions (Christmas, Baptisms, funerals), I have never attended church; and depending on who you ask, that means that I'm going straight to hell.

I went to a Catholic school for six years. Not being Catholic, my parents went to a degree which some would call obsessive to protect me from any kind of brainwashing. They encouraged me to learn as much about as many different religions as I could, and they taught me to look at the world with an opened mind. As early as the age of seven, I had a rather minimal understanding of Islam, as well as a very shaky knowledge of Buddhism. My knowledge in either of those hasn't increased significantly since then, but I at least had some understanding of what they taught. It wasn't until recently that I understood why my parents felt, at the time, that it was so important for me to learn these things, to have the widest possible perspective by the time I entered first grade. I think it has a great deal to do with the fact that my parents have possibly the greatest understanding of history, and its lessons, of any people I have ever met. They realized that some of the greatest atrocities in history have been perpetrated over the answer given to one of two questions: 1) do you believe in God, and 2) do you belive in my God?

One of the side-effects of my upbringing is that I claim, with absolutely no vanity whatsoever, that I have a greater familiarity with the Bible than many people who profess to be Christian. And it seems to me that the people who assume that the Bible has a blanked answer for absolutely everything don't appear to have ever read it.

There are passages in the Bible which specifically endorse Slavery; stoning someone to death for working seven days a week; and burning someone for wearing mixed threads. Passages in the bible specifically prohibit the eating of shrimp and lobster, while specifically endorsing the consumption of Locusts (something I don't get, considering that shrimp, lobster and locust all share the same phylum).

The bottom line is that if you read the Bible with the intention of interpreting it in an absolute, literal manner; most of what it says is patently absurd.

Now, although some people are very careful not to say that Intelligent Design or Creation is the way to go because it's what the Bible says; it's pretty clear from their rhetoric that that's the direction they're going.

This is entirely based upon a strictily literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. So not only are they forcing a religious agenda on a group of people who may or may not share their beliefs, but they're focing a religious agenda based upon an absurd interpretation of the text.

Let's start with the facts, shall we? Creationism and Intelligent Design have no scientific basis, period. They make no testable predictions, the present no results, and since they have no results, they have no reproducibility. These are considered to be the defining characteristics of a scientifc theory.

Which brings me to my next point: a great deal of noise is being made about the fact that Evolution is a theory, not a fact.

Well, in this sense, I suppose they are correct. Evolution is not a fact, but like any good scientific theory, it is a collection of many facts. It is not the explanation of a single detail, but the sum of all data; all facts; collected. By definition, a scientific theory must explain all available facts. If data is collected which directly contradicts one's theory, that theory must be changed.

In short, Evolution is not a fact, it possesses far more power than any one fact. It is the culmination of almost 150 years of observable, reproducible data. It is the sum total of all knowledge available to scientists at this moment.

Does Evolution have all the answers? Hell, no. But nobody's claiming that it does. That's why science is a continuous process. Every question answered raises more questions.

The Intelligent Design proponents assume that by casting a shadow of doubt upon Evolution; namely that it doesn't explain everything; then Intelligent Design is the only viable option. This is at the very least a shaky interpretation of the scientific method, and depending on how you look at it, may be manifestly dishonest. No scientist ever claims to have all the answers. No scientific theory claims to explain all observed phenomena. Intelligent Design offers the blanket explanation of "God dun it" to slap a band-aid over any unexplained phenomena. It has not testable hypothesis, it makes no predictions about future data.

Ergo, it is unscientific, and has no place whatsoever in the science classroom.

Now, in the interest of balance, I should also mention that I find pure Athiesm to be an unscientific approach as well. Admittedly, evidence of the existence of a higher power; God, Allah, Jaweh, Vishnu, Shiva, to name a few; is somewhat lacking. However, that a higher being somehow pushed things along is also a hypothesis, and the fact that that hypothesis lacks any experimental data to back it up at the moment does not necessarily disprove it. I point out that many of Einstein's theories lacked any experimental support until many years after his death (the speed of gravity, for instance, was only recently measured); and so far, he's been largely correct in many of his predictions.

The point that I'm trying to make is that science can neither assume nor eliminate the possibility that a higher intelligence was at work during the creation of life on earth. However, science deals with observed facts and evidence. So-called Creation Science has provided neither.