In theory...

Intelligent Design was struck its first of hopefully many blows Tuesday morning in Pennsylvania when a judge, using the beautiful phrase "breathtaking inanity", banned its teaching in the Dover school district.

That we're even having this discussion in the first place is frightening, and points to a growing, I don't know really what to call it, maybe willful ignorance, on the part of people who simply refuse to acknowledge the world as it exists around them. These people instead choose to believe whatever it is they want to believe, and espouse those beliefs at an operatic pitch in hopes that by saying it enough, it becomes true.

One prime example of this is the demise of the phrase "Begs the Question". You all know this is a pet peeve of mine; I've actually gotten into arguments with people who have said, "it means what I mean it means, not what it really means." To this I respond, "then what's to keep me from calling you a jackass and saying 'oh no, I mean nice person when I call you a jackass, not what it really means!' " The response was, "Well then how is everyone else supposed to know you don't really think I'm a jackass?"

At this point I had won the argument, but my conversational adversary was never in the fight to begin with since they weren't using any sort of logical progression of thought upon which they could base any sort of real argument, they were just parroting shit they heard from somewhere else. Some people need to spend some time at the argument clinic.

Another recent case in point, Rush Limbaugh gets nailed on the drug thing; his response?

"Just because I tell someone not to use drugs while doing so myself doesn't make me a hypocrite..."

Yes, it fucking does. Have you looked it up, Rush? I do not think it means what you think it means. And yet I heard this same statement repeated in conversation while eating lunch at my favorite eatery by my place of work soon thereafter. People believe what they want to believe.

Not that this is a new thing, but it sure seems to be getting worse.

A part of the problem in the case of Intelligent Design is that its proponents are mis-handling the word "theory". Dictionary.com lists, as its first definition (of seven) of "theory":

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

This would be the case of the theory of evolution. Repeatedly tested, widely accepted, can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena, and in addition demonstrably provable through both short and long term experimentation on both the macro- and micro-biological levels. Doonesbury had a brilliant riff on this very subject.

The last definition (of seven) on dictionary.com reads:

An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

This, I assume, is what most Intelligent Design proponents are taking for the meaning of theory when they try to get it taught in school as an alternative to evolution. Only, and lets be very clear here : Intelligent Design is UNPROVABLE BY DEFINITION. It is not scientific, it isn't even something upon which you could run, or even devise, an experiment to demonstrate any property regarding it. It hasn't been repeatedly tested because there's no test you can devise to attempt to prove it. It isn't widely accepted unless you all those people facing the other way inside of a church, which by definition makes it something you can't teach in a public school. It cannot be used to make predicitions about anything whatsoever, seeing how is "its all god's plan," or "the mind of god is unfathomable" doesn't really point to anything very specifically. There's a theory that god exists, it's called religion, and they apparantly teach it in church far more successfully than students in public schools are being taught critical thinking. This is not to say religious beliefs and critical thinking skills are mutually exclusive (see the companion blog for direct evidence), but the two seem to intersect at appallingly wide intervals. Venn Diagrams indeed!

In any case, it's clear that the two types of theories don't belong in the same sentence, but Intelligent Design spammers would have you believe that because it's the same word it applies identically to both phrases. It's an amazingly thin veneer to spackle over a ridiculous, deeply flawed, and profoundly dangerous idea.

And for those of you who want to get all ecumenical on me (in the 2a sense), look - it's your own goddamn bible which quotes god as saying "proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing," and now you want to go on record as saying that because there's shit out there in the world we don't understand yet, it must ergo mean god exists? Don't you people know what happened to Oolon Colluphid? The self-contradictory nature of the argument would be laughable if people weren't taking it so seriously.

For me it seems even worse - if we start blindly attributing all the shit we don't know about to god, if we just stop searching for the answers to the mysteries, we lose any hope of becoming better than we are; more knowledgable about our universe; more capable of reaching for something better for ourselves than to simply die in blissful ignorance. We give to our children the same world we found, with no curiosity or wonder either implied or applied. We become incapable of evolving.

The people who object to mankind chasing down the answers most vehemently are driven purely by fear. Half of them fear that when we get down to the truth, it will be that there is no god, and so they have spent their whole lives passing on their personal responsbility and never actually taking either a chance when opportunity knocked, or the blame when cards fell out all wrong. The other half fear that there is a god, and his first words to us will be, "Jesus Fucking H. Christ, what took you people so long?"