Friday, July 16, 2010

Intelligent Design

The Intelligent Design folks are trying so hard to make it into science.

First of all, let's not kids ourselves. Most supporters of Intelligent Design are Christian Creationists wrapped in a cloak of better logic than the talking snake story (Bill Maher's favorite short summary of the Garden of Eden). If they can get their foot in with Intelligent Design, they're one step closer to prayer in school, Adam on the cover of the science textbook, and Stork Theory to explain where babies come from.

Let's review the definition of science. Science "... uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena."

Spirituality is a supernatural phenomenon. Spirituality is inherently separate from science. That doesn't necessarily mean it's untrue, but how can the supernatural be run through the scientific method? If it could, it would no longer be supernatural.

In complete irony and contrast to all of the above, I'm not opposed to the idea that an intelligence created or guided our evolution. I think it's very possible that an intelligent alien race might have seeded the universe with some sort of generic material/code with the ability to take hold and evolve on planets.

I don't think this is what the Intelligent Design advocates mean though.

... and I don't claim this to be anything scientific other than an improbable hypothesis among an infinite number of possibilities.

Some interesting links:
The Short Proof of Evolution

Responses to Some Common Objections to "The Short Proof of Evolution"

Creationism in the Science Curriculum?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm intriqued by your argument. I'm current writing a blog experimenting if an Atheist can be a spiritual being.

Do you believe that spirituality and atheism are mutally exclusive then?

Rob said...

My initial reaction was that they are mutually exclusive, but I thought I'd get some leveling perspective on the definition:

Definition of Spiritual

Based on that (click through to the definition of spirit as well), I suppose one could be both. I don't know what causes life and am unaware of anybody that objectively does.

The causation of life could be an infinite number of things, most of which are not a deity or anything supernatural. Therefore, the pursuit of the human spirit (or the spirit of all living things) does not have to point to a deity.

I've never considered myself spiritual, but I do recognize that we are alive and came from somewhere/thing. In that sense, I am very curious about our "spirit".

Rob said...

One short follow-up ... so, based on looking up the definition of spirituality, I think I misrepresented the word in my blog entry. It's not inherently supernatural, although that's the common practice. I really should have used the word religion.

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