Blog Rant #2: Unintelligible design

Is there an editor in the house? Yeah, this is long but I think you'll like some of it. The idea of religion is interesting to me. If you find yourself getting bored, go to Chris Diclerico's excellent blog, where he has video of a tiger fighting a crocodile. Seriously, his blog is amazing.

Onto my rant:

Brimstone and Voters, Over in Dover
In an extraordinary show of rational groupthink, citizens in Dover, Pennsylvania voted a school board out of office last week for its endorsement of "intelligent design," a Conservative Christian counterpunch to just about everything science has ever taught us.

This is a hot topic these days. The Christian Right is trying to mandate that biology teachers in high schools across the country read a statement to their students that first introduces intelligent design as an alternative to natural selection and then recommends Of Pandas and People, a book that explains the theory.

The vote to oust the spineless school board shows that people in Dover understand the separation of church and state. Students can get all the Bible theory they want at church -- schools are for learnin', not prayin'. It also suggests that they recognize this seemingly small concession for what it is: yet another attempt by an activist administration to restore our religious fundamentalist heritage.

Sound far fetched? Let's hear one concerned Christian's reaction to the vote:

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city...And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."

Any guesses who said that? Why, it's none other than one time presidential candidate and resident Torquemada, Pat Robertson, who seems to be calling for a little divine wrath, Bruckheimer style.


Robertson: Making shithouse rats everywhere more secure about their sanity.

Of course, Robertson doesn't represent the views of your average Christian. But he does represent the views of your average Bible, which is full of stats about plagues, murder, hatred and retribution (Sodom had a high Earned Retribution Average). And if the Right has its way, we'll all one day be required to acquaint ourselves with Moses's famous blog, Deuteronomy.

Those crazy Christians just won't give up.

This could become the Scopes Monkey Trial all over again. Only now, instead of trotting out the irrepressibly charming William Jennings Bryan to deliver a hand-fanningly bombastic denunciation of science, the Right is attempting to take on evolution mano a mano in the classroom by turning faith into an academic pursuit. "It's simply an alternative scientific theory," claim vacuously grinning proponents, "and should therefore be taught alongside natural selection."

Actually, intelligent design is nothing more than a 2,500 year-old idea that has been dressed up in a rented lab coat.

Here's why it's dumb.

Intelligent design: What it is and why it's dumb.
Intelligent design is the creationist's argument du jour against Darwin's theory of natural selection and the big bang theory. Not that it's new. The idea started way back in ancient Greece with the Pre-Socratics, was later developed into the teleological argument by Thomas Aquinas and was dusted off and expressed as the watchmaker analogy by 18th Century Christian philosopher William Paley. It has since been resurrected and tweaked by the Christian Right, despite being goofed on by generations of philosophers and scientists. But at its core, the pro-God argument hasn't changed much through the years, and it can be summed up using Paley's definition, which goes like this:

Suppose you are walking through a field and happen upon a watch. After observing it's complexity and function, you would reasonably assume it couldn't have formed by chance -- a watchmaker must have designed it. Similarly, the universe is so complex that it is reasonable to assume that it also has an intelligent designer -- i.e., God.

Any questions? No? Good, now let's all pray to the mighty watchmaker in the sky.

To appreciate the differences in thinking that inform the two ideas, it's worth taking a quick look at how each came about. Here's a quick recap:

Natural selection
1831: Darwin travels to Argentina and the Galapagos Islands, where he studies the resident flora and fauna, interviews natives and unearths fossils. Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that differences in the same species of creature found around the world suggest the idea that organisms adapt to climate, geography and competition. From this he concludes that slowly, over perhaps millions of years, man evolved from a lower life form as a means of survival in an ever changing world. He returns to England and publishes several well-regarded books, earning enough "fuck you money" to take whatever gigs he wants. Then, despite having laid the groundwork for genetics, Darwin marries his cousin and they spend the rest of their lives avoiding awkward family gatherings.

Intelligent design
1802: Paley looks at his watch and comes up with analogy that explains everything in the universe.

Darwin poses for the June 1836 issue of "Great Beards Monthly."

Intelligent design, in all its forms, has been taken on by philosophers, scientists and drunk guys in bars. One obvious problem is that the argument is used by creationists to prove the existence of God as he's known to Christians (White beard, sandals, long robe). Nothing about the argument supports this: it doesn't prove a single god (lots of watches, lots of watchmakers), a being with supernatural powers (when was the last time you saw a watchmaker assail a city with locusts?), a First Cause creator of the universe (someone had to make the watchmaker) and certainly not a being who would want to hang around with guys like Pat Robertson.

A second problem is that natural selection is simply a better argument, since it relies on all that evidence lying around. Where is the evidence to support the claim that watches can't -- given millions of years -- form on their own? Nowhere, that's where, Father.

That should end things: Intelligent design is merely a diverting faith-based brain teaser that has no place in the classroom.

But no. Recently, the Christian Right has adopted the language of science to modernize its argument, introducing the concept of "irreducible complexity." This is supposed to account for the criticism that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance.

The idea is that, even as natural selection attempts to simplify life to a series of naturally occurring causes, at some point you hit a functional biochemical system that cannot be reduced without causing it to cease functioning. Remove one component and the system becomes inert. Add to that the second law of thermodynamics -- that processes tend toward disorder and lower energy -- and you have a problem. How can a jumble of useless gunk assemble and ascend to a state of higher energy on it's own? My mother used to ask me that on Saturdays.

Take a mouse trap, for example, says Christian science guy Michael J. Behe. It has a function: to catch mice. But without all of its parts in place, it's just a piece of wood and some wire. So how could it ever have existed prior to its completed state? How would it have survived? It runs counter to the evolutionist idea that small, successive changes account for increasingly complex life forms.

Kenneth R. Miller has an answer. It might not be a functioning mousetrap in any prior state, but each part could have a workable function: As a paper clip, key chain, fish hook, etc. In other words, as they evolve, organisms change function as well as structure.

Whereas religious fanatics can threaten scientists with God's wrath, scientists have a less effective threat: The wrath of Khan.

There are plenty of other pseudo-scientific claims for irreducible complexity, and an equal amount of superior counterarguments. At the end of the day, irreducible complexity is simply another in a long line of desperate yeah-but-what-abouts from people who want to vote Jesus back onto the island.

And though the argument has taken a more sophisticated turn lately, remember that for every reasonable-sounding creationist proposition, there's a guy who wants to destroy your city if you disagree.