August 23, 2005


Substance

A great op-ed on evolution and why ID is crap.

Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.
...
It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us.
...
That is a lot to absorb and, not surprisingly, many people refuse to absorb it. Nearly every attack on evolution - whether it is called intelligent design or plain creationism, synonyms for the same faith-based rejection of evolution - ultimately requires a foreshortening of cosmological, geological and biological time.
...
Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence.

Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education. emphasis added

Every time I see the cover of a newsmagazine trumpeting the "resurgence" of gulliable fools, oh sorry, christo-fascists here in America I want to puke. When I hear these people talking, I want to yell "Hey, Look! There's a shiny, pretty thing over there, you morons!"

The public face of these blowhards is Pat Robertson, whose personal christian convictions include relying on the Ten Commandments only when it's time to raise money on the TeeVee, and favoring summary execution for those he personally dislikes..."Thou Shalt Not Kill" is for pussies and wimps, eh, Rev?

Robertson has been a driving force behind this movement to get Religion back into Government at every level, including and most especially public schools. Make no mistake about it, putting the face of someone like Robertson on ID is a good thing for us...it makes it harder for the any christo-fascists to differentiate themselves from the most radical elements in their brood. Robertson has thoughtfully supplied us with a "Spotted Owl" moment on Hugo Chavez...we need to use it for every battle. Just like they do.

posted by Jo Fish on 08.23.05 at 02:01 PM





Comments:

Excellent post!

I agree. Liberals have always taken the higher ground, that of not beating dead horse issues into the faces of or behind the backs of our opponents. We tend to address the actual issues at hand, instead of wasting our think tanks' neural resources on finding the next mudslinging catch-phrase.

That's why talk radio is new for us. We've let the facts speak for themselves.

We tend to step off an issue if it isn't true or if it is too over-the-top. Conservatives never do, and this has proven to their benefit. It doesn't matter if the name they construct to call us is factually wrong or without relevence. The names work. They work by garnering support from the dittoheads and from those new to the issues.

So, I say, Hell Yeah! Let Pat Robinson be the albatros slung around their necks, and let us remind them of him at every turn.

posted by: Huck on 08.23.05 at 04:00 PM [permalink]



The great unenlightenment. Voltaire and Jefferson are rolling in their graves.

Jeff

posted by: Jeff Huber on 08.24.05 at 10:12 AM [permalink]



Great post. Until we get these religious nuts out of our education system we will never be able to compete with the rest of the world in the scientific fields. We are becoming the laughingstock of the international community. We are no better than the "muslim extremist" this administration is so pre-occupied with.

BTW doesn't Pat Robertson's call for a fatwa fall within the definition of terrorism. He should be dealt with just like any other religious fundamentalist terrorist. Give him Timothy McVeigh's old cell.

posted by: Lowell on 08.24.05 at 10:37 AM [permalink]



I guess that Pat Robertson is just like our old friends Jim Baker and Oral Roberts. When it comes down to who they really are, they aren't men of god, but arrogant SOBs so used to getting their way that they think we won't remember things like Jim banging Jessica Hahn, Oral picking up hookers and ole Pat screaming for the assasination of a head of state just because Hugo Chavez called Pat's "fearless" leader on his criminal behavior and said he won't do oil business with facists like Bush.
That is just capitalism at work.
No shirt, no shoes, no ethics, No Service.

posted by: MMichaelAK on 08.25.05 at 05:35 PM [permalink]






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