Bad week for creationists and intelligent designers

Evolution was on the march last week, crushing the creationist crazies and intelligent design dogmatists. Will they now give up their anti-science jihad? Not likely.

Unfounded religious beliefs are addictive, like other drugs. They relieve the anxiety that comes from living in a complex, mysterious, uncertain world. When the unknown can be banished with the wave of a faith-filled hand, that’s damn appealing.

It's wrong. But still appealing.

Myself, I prefer reality. And that’s what evolution is: real. More evidence of this has arrived via two breakthroughs: a transitional fossil that shows how fish evolved into land animals has been discovered, and molecular biologists demonstrated that so-called “irreducible complexity” actually can be the result of small genetic changes caused by random mutations.

Life happens. On its own. For the life of me, I can’t understand what’s so metaphysically frightening about this. Nature is natural. The Taoists have been telling us this for thousands of years, as have many other naturalistic belief systems.

Why do so many people feel lost without a belief in a personal and paternalistic God-the-Father who directs every aspect of the cosmos? Grow up. We don’t remain children forever. At some point every human should learn to stand on his or her own feet, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Sadly, though, many young people are being held back by religion from achieving this sort of maturity. In “Testing Darwin’s Teachers” the LA Times reports that biology teachers are challenged by students who unthinkingly spout the Christian creationist party line.

And we wonder why the United States is sinking lower and lower in cross-national rankings of scientific literacy. Nations who are high in religiosity have lower science scores. Blind faith and critical thinking are like oil and water: they don’t mix.

Comments

[Michael]

Brian,

I'm afraid you're right that there's no setback to people who don't believe in setbacks. If one takes the bible as science text, there’s no peer-reviewed journal that makes any difference. The “opiate of the masses” is very comforting to those with un-ambitious minds.

Michael

[Rain]

Good column and so true. Faith-based has gotten this country into a lot of trouble. Base it on faith and you don't need facts-- facts just prove how faithful you are when they contradict you but you ignore them.

Scary times as fundamentalism has been on the rise all around the world. Since all things go in cycles-- seemingly-- I am assuming this one will also change with time-- hopefully sooner than later.

[Tim Landis]

Fact?? Evolution is still an unproven "theory", NOT a fact. More and more evidence is appearing daily that is totally disproving the "theory" of evolution, so believing the darwin theory as fact is simply rediculous. Theory is theory, fact is fact, opinion is opinion, and faith is faith.

[Brian]

Tim, in science a "theory" is a hypothesis that has been confirmed by facts. Thus the theory of evolution doesn't mean it is an unproven hypothesis, like intelligent design is. Evolution is supported by countless physical and biological facts.

You're simply wrong when you say that evolution is an unproven theory. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Here's today's piece of evidence in favor of evolution:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/04/12/fossil.evolution.ap/index.html

The story is called "Fossil connects human evolution dots." More dots are being connected all the time. There may be a design to the universe, but there's no evidence that it was intelligently designed. Nature evolves naturally. Why should anyone have a problem with that?