First, those of you who aren’t seeing the humor in what’s happening on my blog with this topic don’t understand the Dogbert way. That’s all I’m saying. Wag!!!
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Second, allow me to restate that I DON’T believe in Intelligent Design. I’m just fascinated with what the topic does to otherwise rational people on both sides of the question.
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Third, every once in a while the interface for this blog goes nuts and I have to put dots between paragraphs to force breaks. It seems random. Sometimes it changes fonts on me or moves paragraphs around. It even deletes blog entries on a regular basis. And on your comments, you might have noticed that the name of the commenter appears to be associated with the next comment and not your own. No, I can’t fix any of it.
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And now to my blog entry for the day…
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I understand the argument for excluding Intelligent Design from science classes. Most scientists believe it doesn’t meet the definition of science. You can’t argue with the people who MAKE the definitions. If the vast majority say it doesn’t have enough substance to qualify as science, that’s okay with me. But I have to wonder if that’s the real reason most scientists oppose including it in schools. I would expect scientists to welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science, as an example of exactly that.
“Kids, astronomy is science and astrology isn’t. Here are some more examples of things that aren’t science…”
Sure, it might confuse the dumb kids, but they aren’t the ones building the spaceships of tomorrow anyway. I learned about not using “ain’t” in English class and that didn’t hurt me too much. So it just seems fishy to me that scientists are so worked up about Intelligent Design. Could their true fear be the slippery slope argument? If you let ID in the door, before long we’ll all be wearing scraggly beards and beating ourselves with prayer paddles.
I propose a little thought experiment.
Imagine that lightning suddenly carves into the side of the Washington Monument the words “I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut.” And let’s say there are hundreds of witnesses who all have video cameras and capture it from multiple angles.
Now imagine that the same phenomenon repeats every day for a month, each time on a different monument. Scientists study the phenomena and conclude that humans probably didn’t cause it, but beyond that, there are no further scientific clues about how lighting could seem so directed.
If I crafted my thought experiment right, no one would have any idea how to devise a test that would confirm or exclude the possibility that God really did it. Hypothetically, being omnipotent and all, he would be capable of leaving no clues, other than signing his name. Therefore, any speculation as to the cause is not science.
Here’s the question: Should teachers be allowed to tell science students about the lightning messages?
You may commence misinterpreting what I just wrote and attacking that misinterpretation now.
Go.