Intelligent Design, Equal Time

I just got a call from the FCC indicating that my blog is showing a pervasive bias against Intelligent Design, and so in deference to the "equal time" rule, I must write a post in favor of Intelligent Design.
Here it is:

According to evolutionists, plants, animals, and humans are well-adapted to their environments and ecological niches by the process of slight mutations over time which favor certain individuals and thus increase their odds of producing offspring who also possess the favorable mutation.

However, there is a fundamental flaw in this theory, which is that all living creatures have full and functional organs. If change comes gradually, we would expect to see Nowhere in nature do you find an creature with a partial heart or half an eye. SUch a structure would be a hindrance to the animal, not an aid, and so certainly wouldn't lead to that individual having more children, as evolutionists predict.

So, where do these organs come from, if not gradual change? Perhaps sudden change? But this seems highly unlikely. The odds that evolution could produce by change a fully developed and functional organ is infinitesimal. We need only look at nature to see this. In thousands of years of human history, there is no record of, say, a dog being born able to walk upright, or a horse born able to grow antlers.

Since evolution cannot explain these changes as either sudden or gradual, we must return to our original assumption, that animals are particularly well-suited to their environments. Sharks have perfect gills and fins. Cheetahs have legs suited to incredible speed. Humans have highly sophisticated brains capable of thought and speech. Since these organs did not arise by chance, they must have arisen by design. Each species was granted by the designer with attributes suiting its environment.

Who, then, is this designer? Given the immense complexities of life, which even humans, the smartest moral creatures on our planet, cannot understand, this designer must be God, the only omnipotent and omniscient being known to exist. The fact that evolutionists deny this conclusion is a testament only to the blind spots that are inherent in secular science.

Intelligent Design Update

In case you missed them, people have posted some very interesting comments to my remarks about Intelligent Design. I have responded at some length.

Coca-Cola Fortune

So, as you may or may not know, an ancestor of mine, John Stith Pemberton (not quite sure how he's related, but that's not important), invented the recipe for Coca-Cola. This is a neat little anecdote, interesting to tell at parties and such. Inevitably, however, someone asks "If your ancestor invented Coke, how come you're not rich?" Well, turns out that he sold it for a only a few hundred bucks. Being not-rich because of this, I've always resented his lack of business acumen a bit.

However, the other night we were watching Antiques Roadshow and this guy brought on a picture of his great-grandfather (or was it great-great?), Asa Candler, and explained that this ancestor of his was the founder of the Coca-Cola Company. The picture turned out to be worth only a couple hundred bucks. But he got the same question I always do "If your ancestor founded Coke, how come you're not rich?" Well, turns out that great-grandpa Coke was a philanthropist, and gave away the fortune.

So, turns out that I don't have to be as bitter about my ancestor's lack of business acumen. No one ended up rich from Coke, after all (except, probably, the other shareholders in the corporation, but nevermind that). Huzzah!

Cindy Sheehan

So I had been feeling pretty sympathetic towards Cindy Sheehan, the mother who lost her son in Iraq and is now camped out near President Bush's ranch, especially given the abuse heaped on her by right-wingers (most egregious was Michelle Malkin, who presumed to know better than Sheehan how her dead son would feel about the protest).

However, it turns out that Ms. Sheehan has a subscription to Blame the Jews Quarterly. Her objection to the war is that it was planned by neo-cons (Jews!) for the benefit of Israel (Jews, Jews, Jews!). It's entirely possible that Ms. Sheehan is not anti-Semitic, nor is she opposed to the state of Israel, nor does she even realize that her statements could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. But her theory is complete garbage. It's just a retread of the classic "enemy-within" view of the Jews - you can't trust them because their loyalty isn't to the country, but only to other Jews.

As long as she stands by the theory, my sympathy for her will extend only to her personal lost, not to her political agenda.

UPDATE: There is significant debate (scroll down to read the comments) as to whether or not Sheehan actually wrote the letter about neo-cons and Israel that Christopher Hitchens has attributed to her. If she did not write it, I retract my judgment about her theory of the war.

+6

In an update to yesterday's post, my net total of boxes indexed for the week was 6. At this rate, I'll be caught up by Christmas.

Intelligent Design, Part Two

If Intelligent Design is so obviously wrong, then what is there to debate? Why did I say that this is not a cut-and-dried issue?

Well, the fact is that just because one side is right doesn't end a debate much of the time. People cling to their faith, beliefs, ideologies, superstitions, etc. against all reason. What we have here is two sides talking right past each other. One embraces reason and one embraces faith, and never the twain shall meet. And evidence increasingly shows that there is little overlap between the two camps. That is, there is almost no room for a middle ground.

So what? Well, here's the bad news - the correct side, the side with all of the evidence, the ones on the correct side of history, my side! - are losing. At least in this country. We're a minority. And unlike other issues (relatively uncontroversial things like gay marriage and stem-cell research), we're not making headway. Why? That pesky talking-past-each-other problem.

Now, I know what many (most?) educated liberals will say - the American people are just too stupid to believe anything other than religion, and to understand something like evolution. This is just further proof that liberals are smarter. A couple problems with that, though. First, support for evolution is far higher in Britain, for instance, but I have never seen any evidence that the British people are any smarter than Americans. Second, support for evolution may have much to do with level of education, but unless liberals want to play the part of the elitists that conservatives already think we are, we'd really better not argue that only educated people are smart. Third, religiosity and intelligence are not mutually exclusive. Many of the greatest minds of history have been very religious.

Finally, and most importantly, no matter what, we still have to share a country with the religious right. That is why I try (though I don't always succeed) to maintain a civil and respective dialogue with conservatives.

Evolution, however, challenges religion in a way that, say, gravity and progressive taxation do not. And I don't know how, in the long term, we can win this fight without escalating the culture wars and further playing into the victimology of the religious right. In the short term, however, we have to fight to keep evolution in the classrooms.

Intelligent Design, Part One

I wrote out a long post on Intelligent Design, which I have decided to split into two parts. Here's the first part:

What is to be done about Intelligent Design, the newest flat-earthism masquerading as science? To liberals and conservatives alike, the answers might seem obvious, but I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as each would like.

First, let me dispense with the obvious: Intelligent Design has absolutely no place in science classrooms, in public or private school. Period. It is not a scientific theory. It is not a theory at all. It is simply the latest faith-based appeal to Biblical literalism.

The arguments of conservatives that it is a legitimate theory that should be taught alongside evolution (in order to expose children to competing viewpoints) are both laughable and sad. These are the same arguments that conservatives deride when it comes to things like history, sociology, and politics. Furthermore, we already had this debate! When evolution was first introduced in the late 1700s, it was wildly unpopular and criticized by most educated people, until 1859, when Darwin came along with a theory so elegant and airtight that it became accepted as fact. Since then, further work has only strengthened the theory, not weakened it. So there is literally nothing to debate anymore (except for the details of the theory). Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, so there is no need to debunk it. For true-believers, it cannot be debunk. For the rest of us, it's just plain bunk.

Second, thought this may seem to be merely another salvo in the culture wars, this is more than an academic debate. The triumph of ID in schools would inevitably lead to a decline in the quality of American science teaching, specifically in biology, a field that underpins modern medicine, including stem-cell research, cloning, and gene therapies. If Americans do not lead these fields, someone else will (already the Koreans, Italians, and others are taking the lead in cloning).

History shows that voluntarily declining to pursue valuable technologies can have devastating effects for nations. In the 15th Century, the Chinese led the world in naval technology, but gave it up right as the European nations (with far inferior ships) ventured out in the Age of Exploration. Similarly, in the 17th Century, the Japanese led the world in the production of firearms. BUt they gave it up in deference to the Samurai class. Ships and firearms, of course, were the two of the prime technologies that led to the nations of Europe controlling the entire world. China and Japan were reduced to a shadow of their former selves, under European domination (from which Japan emerged only once it embraced Western knowledge and technology). This sort of fate is clearly a worst-case scenario, but we truly can't afford to be complacent about science education.

-1

One of my duties here at work is to index the contents of new boxes before they are sent to storage. Lately, there have been a ton of boxes coming down for me (actually, they don't "come" down - I go to the secretaries and pick them up, and they're often very heavy).

Anyway, I thought I had made some progress, as I got 26 of the 90 boxes indexed so far this week. But then, guess how many new boxes I had to pick up today? 27. It's like I'm just treading water.

And the best part of all is that I've already been warned that it's only going to get worse.

Winning the Race

So I'm hardly an expert on African-American history or culture, but I was struck by three separate articles that I saw this morning.

First, the rapper 50 Cent is in a dispute because he apparently stole his name from a gangster who "terrorized the streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s." Noting that admired the gangster and took his name as a tribute, 50 Cent has promised "to pay for a memorial to the late gangster in honor of his violent ideologies." Um, is this sick or what? Why should a gangster be a role-model whose identity you should want to usurp? And why should his family be indignant? If my son/father/brother/cousin was a notorious gangster, I'd like to think that I'd be ashamed of him, not proud.

Second, police in Berkeley, CA have arrested the men they believe murdered a rookie police officer in 1970. The officer was the first Asian-American ever hired by the Berkely Police Department. The motive for the murder? To prove to the local Black Panther group that they were tough enough to join. Again, this is disgusting. I understand that relations in the 1960s between police and African-American were tense, to say the least, but what happened to Officer Tsukamoto was cold-blooded murder, nothing more. That people to this day speak of the Black Panthers as if they were some sort of high-minded social organization is ludicrous (the professor at Oakes College who ran the community service program was a former Black Panther).

Third is an article that makes me far more hopeful, an op-ed written by John McWhorter in this morning's New York Times. McWhorter is one of my favorite writers, and this article shows why, extolling the virtues of the African-American community, rather than its pathologies. McWhorter argues, convincingly I think, that the silent majority of African-Americans agree with him and Bill Cosby and others, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of Blacks now strive for and achieve the same middle-class life as other Americans. But the popular culture perception lags far behind, viewing most Blacks as ghetto gangsters, and celebrating that culture. I think this is starting to shift, thanks in part to people like McWhorter.

UPDATE: Berkeley police don't have enough evidence to charge the men arrested for the murder of Officer Tsukamoto. But my point about many Blank Panthers being little more than cold-blooded murderers stands.

Love Savage

Dan Savage is guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan this week. Most excellent.

Friday = Silly Day?

I just sent my boss an email that, among other things, gave instructions on what to do in the event that I become trapped under the enormous pile of files that is currently on my desk.

Hustle

So I've apparently been reading a lot of ESPN.com lately. Anyway, here's a good article about hustlers and slackers in sports that manages to criticize slackers without blaming it on how "kids these days" don't work hard, etc. The author, I think accurately, points out that most athletes nowadays probably work much harder than the old-timers, which just makes the slackers easier to spot.

Say It Ain't So, Raffy

So, what to do about Rafael Palmeiro? (Aside from the obvious answer - stick him on a rocket ship into the sun, erase all records of his existence, and pretend this never happened.)

Thing is, I've always had a soft spot for Palmeiro. Partly because of his sweet swing, partly because he's got a cool name (he does), partly because he has been a consistent excellent and feared hitter for the last decade plus, and partly because he always seemed like and underdog. I mean, take for instance the fact that until he got that 3,000th hit, there were still people saying that he didn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Hey, it's not supposed to be a Hall for the flashy and famous players, it's supposed to be a Hall for the great players. And Palmeiro certainly is one. Or take his Viagra ads - I mean, that's not the type of endorsement a top-flight superstar does. But that's why I liked Palmeiro - superstar stats without the superstar bullshit.

But, oops. It was all/mostly/partly/slightly steroid-enhanced. How much? We'll never know. But this certainly changes some things. First, apparently the MLB drug enforcement procedures work better than expected. Second, the MLB drug penalties are woefully inadequate (10-day suspension? that's pathetic). Third, Palmeiro is no longer an underdog. Fourth, he's also no longer a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Fifth, he's maybe not a Hall of Famer at all.

It's that last one that's the real kicker. Thing is, I don't know the answer. On the one hand, Palmeiro played in an era when steroids were rampant. He probably didn't do anything that several other future Hall of Famers (McGwire, Bonds, Sosa) and other stars (Canseco, Caminiti, Giambi) didn't do. He just got caught. And, unlike Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, Palmeiro hasn't been banned for life, so he should be eligible for the Hall. On the other hand, eligible for the Hall and inducted into the Hall are two different things. Since we can never know how many of those hits and home runs weren't earned, how can we judge his career against others?