In a recent blog, Boy Columnist, also known as Larry Keeling and resident guru of the Lexington Herald-Leader, made this mention: U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III nailed it in the Dover, Pa., "intelligent design" case. Creationism by any other name still isn't science. Notwithstanding the claim of a number of respected scientists that there is ample evidence to support the Intelligent Design concept, BC has a point in noting the judge’s statement.
Those who demand that ID be “taught” in public schools may do well to concede that it needs to be handled in classes that deal more with the abstract than with the tangible, i.e., that ID is more readily understood as a “belief” than as a proven concept. Since philosophy, as such, is not usually a public-school subject, and with good reason, there is little opportunity for the discussion of ID. Perhaps it could be part of the sociology/psychology/history curriculum or as part of any classes dealing with the arts – music, poetry, painting – particularly since a huge segment, probably the largest body of works in the arts, has been conceived within the context of spiritual convictions, Christian, Jewish, and otherwise.
On merit alone, Intelligent Design can stand quite solidly. Anyone with walking-around-sense can look at his surroundings and understand ID. Or, anyone who has sat in a physics or chemistry class can hardly escape noticing the intricate design of the planet and its inhabitants, organic and otherwise. Quite aside from this is the fact that scientists held in high repute insist that ID is for real and offer cogent arguments proving it. While there is no argument against the theory of evolution or the fact of it, with respect to things non-human, it has never been established scientifically or otherwise that human beings have evolved from a lower form of life. The “AHA! GOTCHA!” pronouncements that routinely come from the anthropologists who claim to be getting closer to it never eventuate in noting the discovery of that elusive “missing link” that is vital to connecting the long-tailed apes that can eat tree-bark quite well, thank you, with the no-tailed homo sapiens, who gag upon a bit of grass.
Actually, no one who has ever lived – or who has bothered to remark it, in any case – has had a clue as to the actual science or method of the beginnings of things. The “Big Bangers” are silent now, since the Big Bang theory just doesn’t cut it. Neither does any other. For the believer in the God of the Holy Scriptures, there is good reason that no one will ever discover the beginnings, namely that to do so would equate a mere human with God. Such a person could create his/her own universe, a possibility too remote even to reflect upon. For the atheist, there’s no problem, since he/she is interested only in the “scientific process,” if any at all, a process that can titillate at best, but never deliver the eternal answer.
Will anyone ever discover the actual nature of the beginnings? Of course not, but ALL theories should be presented in some form during the educational process, no matter how reasonable-seeming or how silly.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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