Arguing with God.

Alberta's an interesting province. Our population is somewhere to the right of Alan Keyes; we routinely vote Conservative in every riding whenever we have a federal election; and the scariest conservative MPs tend to run, and win in Alberta.

Yet, at the same time, we have a substantial younger population that has either moved in or has grown up here and is starting to actually vote.

The reason I bring this up is that Stephen Harper has vowed to revisit the Gay Marriage issue if he's elected prime minister. His logic, he claims, is that the majority of Canadians do not want Gay marriage, ergo, it should not be law.

Mr. Harper, apparently, has failed to understand the concept of Tyrrany of the Majority.

But that's really not what I wanted to address. The point I want to get across is that if he's elected, it means that he's going to be elected, at least in part, based on the promise of being the first Prime Minister in the History of Canada to use the Notwithstanding clause. For the non-Canucks of you out there; this means that he could get elected, at least in part, based on a promise to suspend the civil liberties assured by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This is a very scary precedent.

What I don't get, completely, is why this is an issue. The law is very specific that no religious institution will be forced to perform any marriage which is outside their belief system; ergo the Churches have exactly the same leeway as far as marriage is concerned that they did a year ago. All this law means is that the rest of us aren't necessarily required to fall in line with their doctrine.

I recall I was wandering around downtown around about the time that Bill C-38, the Gay Marriage law, was being voted upon in the House of Commons. I don't think anyone seriously believed that the bill would be defeated; but nevertheless you had people out there waving signs, and screaming that allowing people that they did not know and had never met (and, I imagine that it's reasonably safe to assume, had no desire to associate with) to marry would somehow cause society as we understand it to crumble.

This is, clearly, ridiculous; but this is apparently what they believed. Among these people was one woman who was waving a sign which read, simply Leviticus 18:22. First off; if you don't have at least a passing understanding of the bible, you hadn't the faintest clue what the sign meant (incidentally, that passage of the King James' version of the bible reads: "Thou shalt not lie with Mankind as with Womankind; it is an abomination"). Second, as far as this woman was concerned, that one passage of the bible; one line among thousands; ended the debate.

One line of one volume of one book written by people who have been dead for hundreds of years in a different country was the final word on the subject, as far as she was concerned.

Call me crazy, but maybe, just maybe, that might not be the best way of running a country.

That, and, let's face it, it's kinda hard to argue with God.

Faith is one thing; blind faith is something completely different. Belief in something that may not be scientifically observable is fine. I have absolutely no problem with that. I personally believe that there are a number of phenomena which cannot now, and may never be empirically observable. But to blindly take one set of rules and assume that that is the final word on any given subject basically creates a system where you're not allowed to think for yourself. We see that happening far too often in the states, and to a lesser degree in Canada.

The problem with politics is that it's seen too much as a factor of us against them; without much of a well-defined position on who we or they are. The US is divided into "Red States" and "Blue States." In Canada we have our "Liberal Provinces" and our "Conservative Provinces."

Just once, at least in the US, I'd like to see a running team for president throw that whole concept out the window. I'd like to see a third party team stand a solid chance in a run for president. I'd like to see a pair of independent candidates; people with no strong ties to either party... or even better: a bipartisan running team; one former Democrat, one former Republican running for a third party... I'd like to see them run, and I'd like to see them win.

I'd like to see us lose this concept of "Swing States." I'd like to see so-called "Red States" get a little Bluer, and "Blue States" get a little redder.

In short, just once, I'd like to see partisanship become secondary to what's best for the country.

On Intelligent Design, and the Scientific Method

This occurred to me last night: assuming that the state of Kentucky makes Intelligent Design a part of its science curriculum in the coming year (which is seeming increasingly inevitable), can Intelligent Design be taught concurrently with Scientific Method?

The Scientific Method is the basis for all scientific theory. A falsifiable hypothesis is generated, that hypothesis is subjected to a series of experiments which either validate or disprove it; and from that a theory is created which explains the experimental results. Then the process begins all over again.

Intelligent design has never been subjected to scientific scrutiny. No falsifiable hypothesis has been created; no experimentation performed; ergo no theory has been advanced.

So that raises the obvious question of how can we, out of one side of our virtual mouths, tell high school students that the scientific method is the manner in which postulate becomes theory; while out of the other side we promote Intelligent Design as a valid scientific theory? If you can tell me how that is not fundamentally hypocritical, you're smarter than I am.

Now, if someone wants to study Intelligent Design in, for example, a comparative religion course; or a social studies course (the sociology of Intelligent Design proponents is actually quite fascinating), I have absolutely no issue with that. But to present it as a scientific theory is a slap in the face to those of us who do genuine science. Frankly, it's insulting.

I've decided to devote my professional life to the pursuit of scientific knowledge; to understand, through scientific methodology the world around me. To have a small group of people present barely-veiled religion, calling it theory, and teaching it to students as valid science is an affront to everything I have tried to learn in the last ten years.

Not only that, but as far as I can tell, if they want any student to actually believe Intelligent Design; they're going to have to stop teaching the scientific method. In other words, they will be teaching science class, without actually teaching them how to do science.

Now, someone has to have thought about this before me; since I'm not smart enough to have been the first. So why isn't this issue getting far more mention than it is?