Mexico Medical Student |

The Kansas board of education voted 6-4 (all who voted ‘yes’ were Republicans, but not all Rebublicans voted ‘yes’) to uphold mythology over science. In support of Intelligent Design [sic], Kansas students will be subjected to religion in science class. One insidious problem is that ID on paper looks innocent, perhaps even more educationally inclusive by saying there are problems with some Darwinian concepts and that not all is explained by his theories. Fine. It goes a step further–and this is the main problem–that there must have been intervention of a higher power for things to have turned out so complex yet so functional.

Please tell me how this is different than just a mere few hundred years ago when people had no idea what made the rain fall, so it was a rain god. Don’t know what makes the sun rise in the east and set in the west? 500 years ago it was God Almighty, 2500 years ago it was Apollo and his Sun Chariot with the new shiny Dorian rims. I have no problem introducing the concept of God or Allah or Quetzoquatl into the classroom, just make it history, philosophy, social anthropology–ANYTHING but science!! I understand different areas of the country have different social “norms,” and they need to be respected, honestly, but there has to be a line drawn. Gravity is the same everywhere; F=ma in any school district. Evolution is not a law, but it upholds orders of magnitude more scientific rigor than mystic speculation about a higher power. I can look at a flower and ponder the existance of God in making such beauty and diversity, but I can’t even test it, study it or challenge it.

The scariest quote in a CNN article is the following:

The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

So if God says, “Star, stay!” (I promise on a stack of ID textbooks that this is a true quote/story from a cousin that went to Oral Roberts University for a year), then Kepler’s laws and other physical phenomena are immediately thrown out the window. I repsect someone’s right to beleive that, as outlandish as it seems to me, but again, what everyone seems to forget is that this is science, not mythology or philosophy. The biggest fear isn’t that the schools are required to introduce the possibility of God into the classroom as science, but that there are no limits as to how far it can go, no limits to the length of time, energy, or money spent in such curriculum. Sure they still have to teach Darwinian theory, but what’s going to stop them from spending a day or two on it then moving on to the “real” story and spend three times as long on Genesis? The last time I checked, Moses wasn’t subject to peer review.

What kills me is that the only people pushing ID are Republicans, most of whom are Chrisitan fundamentalists. These are the same people that foam at the mouth with the idea of homosexuality, calling it immoral, derived from Satan. Let me tell you something that you can easily see for yourself by watching TLC or the Discovery channel: nature is beautiful and complex, yes, but she is also a cruel, vengeful bitch. Praying mantis females bite the heads off of their male partners during the act of copulation, their death throes finishing the act of fertilization. Male lions recently overtaking a pride will actively kill the cubs of previous male lion’s offspring while the lioness watches, obviously wating to fight to the death but realizing there is no chance she can win; better to live and procreate more (the basic drive of all life) than waste it in a moment of futile honor. Don’t even get me started on the “design” involved in human suffering, with congenital illnesses, etc.

But guess what else? Most higher mammals routinely engage in homosexual acts. Bonobo monkeys regularly masturbate, engage in oral sex, and sodomize each other just for pleasure…obviously there is no procreative purpose in any of these. So when a monkey is blowing another monkey or a dog down the street takes it in the ass from another, bigger dog just for fun, I have to ask, where are the Intelligent Design proponents looking for God in these places? Perhaps the dog spent too much time watching Hollywood filth that turned him gay because it wasn’t natural and a lifestyle choice…yeah, that’s it.

Speaking of Hollywood, I wonder what movie will be made years from now about today akin to Inherit the Wind? History sure does like to repeat itself.