Jesus Christ

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The last two times I've been to MSNBC.com I've stumbled across articles on Intelligent Design. Both times, I've stewed on the subject for a while, lashing out verbally at random pieces of furniture in my house. So, in the name of catharsis, I'll just spiel here for a little.

Intelligent Design is fucking stupid.

Yeah, I know, that's a bit harsh to say, but come on. It's just another attack on science from Creationists, and it's all starting to get a bit annoying.

First, Intelligent Design explains nothing. It's being pushed out there as an alternative approach to existence -- proponents of the theory say Evolution is full of holes and woefully inadequate, and only after one posits a creator can we fully explain the origin of life. This, though, leaves one with another, equally frustrating question of the origin of God. To (loosely) quote Richard Dawkins,

"[A]ny God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as [life] must be at least as complex and organized as [life] itself. Far more so if we suppose him additionally capable of such advanced functions as listening to prayers and forgiving sins. To explain the origin of [life] by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of a lazy way out, you might as well just say ... 'Life was always there', and be done with it."

For anyone interested in some reading on the subject, and the origins of life in general, I highly recommend Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker."

Outside of this, the argument is usually centered not around evolution itself -- which is finally being regarded as fact by Creationists, who have, for the most part, ignored all that annoying "scientific evidence" for quite some time -- but the very origins of life, saying life cannot spring from nothing. This, of course, was proven wrong some 50 years ago by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, whose experiments have been substantiated by more recent studies. While there are still many things unexplained, science is doing perfectly alright without God.

What's next? Chicken bone divination? Perhaps we should teach the possibility of walking on water in physics class? Or turning water to wine in chemistry? Oh, I know! Proper slave-beating etiquette in Home-Ec.!