AK Rants logo
AK Rants

Intelligent Design Theory, AKA
Morons Pretending at Science Want to Educate Your Children.

28-Sep-2005

Fighting a rear-guard action against the high priests of Creationism (now masquerading as a scientific theory called Intelligent Design) in their eternal culture war against naturalistic theories of speciation and evolution, eleven parents are suing a Harrisburg school district over its decision to forcibly inject religion into science education.

This must be a heady time for charleton bible-thumpers, pitting their retrograde prejudices against the published output of book-learned scientists.* But participants in (and spectators to) the debate about teaching Intelligent Design Theory in the classroom should know that this is no scientific debate. The scientific debate between evolution and creationism began in 1859. It's over. The debate we are having now in the media and courtrooms is the debate over whether to lie to our children about the results.

Claims that reserving science classrooms for science lessons is some kind of religious repression have got it exactly backward; elevating party-line dogma to stand alongside the results of decades of scientific research is state-assisted evangelism. Don't say I didn't warn you when someday your CongressShamen decides you don't think right. Hey—I'm childless so I don't have to care about the United States eventually becoming another backward, zealot-infested shit-hole peopled by economic and political slaves. You parents might.

 

* statements by real scientists
American Association for the Advancement of Science
"Although scientists continue to make new discoveries about the processes of evolution, there is no doubt that evolution does occur."
American Astronomical Society
"The theory of evolution, like the theories of gravity, plate tectonics, and Big Bang cosmology, explains, unifies, and predicts natural phenomena."
American Geophysical Union
"Scientific theories, like evolution and relativity and plate tectonics, are hypotheses that have survived extensive testing and repeated verification."
American Phytopathological Society
"The evidence for evolution is multifaceted, robust, and congruent. There is no scientific evidence for intelligent design, nor can there be because it is essentially a belief-based concept."
National Academy of Sciences
"The National Academies ... stand ready to help others in addressing the increasingly strident attempts to limit the teaching of evolution or to introduct non-scientific "alternatives" into science courses and curricula."
  Music off

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e37'

[MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver][mysqld-5.5.15-log]Table 'aknapp.stats_pagenames' doesn't exist

/stats/clsLog.asp, line 165