INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND W

According to news reports, the President recently told a group of Texas journalists visiting the White House that he sees nothing untoward in a local school board deciding to allow the teaching of the Intelligent Design concept. That concept is all the rage among certain segments of the Christian fundamentalist community.

Well, this is too juicy to resist. Where to start is the only problem. But before doing so, let it be stated that this cranky old guy is not just some knee-jerk whiny liberal. He even voted for W in 2000. It is only the incompetence and arrogance displayed in the years since by the winners of the election that have led the cranky old guy to question the wisdom of his vote.

The following is certainly an over-simplified description of Intelligent Design, or ID for short, but if W and his Administration can over-simplify everything under the sun—from war, to taxes, to social security—why can’t the rest of us? This cranky old guy’s understanding of ID is that the complexity of the human animal, and the world in general, is advanced as proof of one or both of the following assertions: evolution couldn’t have occurred, and there is an all-powerful Supreme Being.

Just as an aside, it would seem that if an all-powerful Supreme Being exists, he, she, or it could have arranged for evolution. Some people, however, just can’t abide the idea of a monkey as an ancestor. But we will avoid this line of inquiry.

It can’t be denied that the world is complex, at least to our feeble mortal minds. Anyone who has ever struggled with an introductory course in quantum physics or Einstein’s special or general relativity would likely concede the point. But should complexity really be the focal point of such weighty issues as the origin and development of life and the existence of a Supreme Being? If it should, perhaps Bill Gates is a supreme being. After all, some of his software products, such as Word, are complex enough to keep a mortal busy for years exploring all the nooks, crannies, and perplexing happenings.

The problem with complexity is that it is not—or should not be—an end in itself. Complexity is just an intermediate point to a result. And this cranky old guy would caution the ID crowd about basing theological propositions on results because the results that are before us leave something to be desired.

Let’s just consider one result most of us are probably somewhat familiar with: sex. Here is an activity that produces a few moments of pleasure, and sometimes offspring. The price for those ends is awkwardness, embarrassments, messiness, occasional foul odors, and general yuckiness. If one were starting from scratch to design a procreation system that entailed a modicum of pleasure, one could certainly come up with something more refined and less yucky. Perhaps nothing more than a simple touching of fingertips and then the participants go their merry ways. A lot of approaches would be an improvement over what we are saddled with.

So this cranky old guy doesn’t buy the ID concept as something warranting the expenditure of public moneys to learn about. W and his cohorts have done enough damage in the areas that are their Constitutional responsibility: foreign policy, military policy, and economic policy, for example. About matters such as religion, school curricula, and the origin and meaning of life, matters that are beyond their responsibilities—and obviously more than beyond their competences—they should keep their opinions to themselves.

DSH