Origins

This isn't really a political blog. I intentionally kept it that way so I could lavish all my time on my rather eclectic style of writing, whatever that is. When I started this blog I honestly didn't know what kind of form or direction it would take. But it found it's way and in general I like what I've done so far. But I don't actually jump into politics here and not because I'm not political. I am. Part of the time I work as a political operative, a media flack for Democratic players here in Ohio. So it's not like I'm shy or anything, it's just that I was determined to keep this blog as a kind of oasis from the hardball politics that proliferate on the web.

As many of you already know I enjoy talking about the natural world. It has fascinated me since childhood as I read everything I could about natural history, dinosaurs and astronomy. Why I never became an anthropologist or an astronomer I'll never know. Maybe I was lazy, maybe I had other fish to fry. I can't seem to remember. But now and then discussion of the natural world turns political, especially when it infringes into people's cherished religious world views. This is one of those cases. The topic is human evolution and Intelligent Design/Creationism. I feel the need to weigh in on the issue and what better time than now?

It's quite amazing that Intelligent Design or Creationism can take hold in this country. It amazes me that a sizable majority of my countrymen are either A:severely uninformed or B: complete dolts.

Modern evolutionary theory is strongly supported by 97% of the world's scientists. That's a 9 followed by a 7. It's what we call overwhelming. AKA a slam dunk. The remaining 3% by and large are cranks and frauds who got their "degrees" from diploma mills or by mail order. Yet that doesn't stop the media from giving these cranks 50% of their attention which far outweighs the importance real scientists place upon them. The media is also culpable in this, they actually give these people air time. Long ago the media used to teach and had a sense of duty to inform. But nowadays they simply parrot things in a he-said, she-said manner without discerning whether one side is actually telling the truth. If President Bush were to announce that the earth was flat the headlines would read "President proclaims a flat earth! The debate rages!"

Peer review

It also amazes me that these same people have no problem singling out their own religious creation myth for special treatment while ignoring hundreds of other creation myths, some of which make more sense but are passed over because their supporters aren't numerous enough to garner the needed political support to push their agenda forward. What a surprise! It's political! And there's the crux of it...Creationism and I.D. have NOTHING to do with science. It's a political movement and not a scientific one. The far Christian right treats it like a political campaign complete with talking points. The Creationists themselves avoid the usual path to acceptance by the scientific community ie: you get published, present your findings for peer review and wait to see if your results can be verified. That's peer review. It is an elemental part of the process. If a theory is still standing after the best scientific minds have taken their best shots at it then it is well on it's way to being accepted. But that's not what these people do. They skip peer review altogether and go over the heads of the very scientific community they want acceptance from. Why do they avoid the scientific community? Because they know their "theories" won't hold water and that if any competant scientist gets hold of them they'll be ripped to shreds. Instead they publish their findings in books and sell them directly to the public as "fact" or put them up on Creationist websites. This allows them to skip that pesky peer review thing and go directly to the masses who are ill equipped to distinguish between good science and quackery. There's also a more than a little hypocrisy in the approach of the Creationist community. They claim (wrongly) that evolution is shaky and untested and shouldn't be taught yet they want to rush THEIR completely ridiculous and untested notions into science classrooms immediately.

Teach both

President Bush weighed in on the issue last month saying that we should teach both evolution and I.D. His opinion seemed so fair, so balanced. What could be more fair than giving students the opportunity to hear BOTH sides of the argument? Being fair is the American way, is it not? There's only one problem...there is no such thing as BOTH. There are hundreds of other religious creation myths so narrowing it down to evolution versus only one of many such myths is a false dilemma. There is no BOTH, there is only ONE scientific theory to explain human origins or MANY, maybe HUNDREDS of creation myths that rival the Christian one. There is no such thing as BOTH. It shows that Bush has been co-opted by the falacious argument put out by the Creationists and shows that he hasn't thought very deeply about the issue and has little to offer in the debate.

Words of science

How is it that the far Christian right is able to twist things in the political and religious spheres but not in the scientific milieu? Have you ever wondered about that? These people are able to slowly change the meaning of a word like "liberal" from being... " open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded" to meaning... "America hating, flag burning, tree hugging, granola eating, gay loving, French wine swilling traitor". The reason is because the words of science are very precise. They don't lend themselves to reinterpretation. Take the word "theory" for example. To the man on the street it means conjecture, a flawed fact. I can't tell you how many times I've heard news anchors, EDUCATED PEOPLE, use the phrase improperly. "Well it's only a theory". Only a theory? Even these college educated people misuse the word in it's true scientific sense. The scientist's definition is much more precise. To the scientist it means...

"A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of
facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena".

What the Creationists attempt to do is confuse people into thinking that the words "theory" and "hypothesis" are the same. Hypothesis is defined by scientists as...

"a tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation".

In every day usage they might be interchanged but NOT in the scientific world. We could have called it "Darwin's Hypothesis Of Evolution" but we didn't because a theory is different from a hypothesis. We call it "Darwin's Theory Of Evolution" because it has met the standard of being a viable theory. The Creationists attempt to muddy the water, they try to mislead people into thinking that scientific theories are mere conjecture. They are wrong and should be told so from the highest rooftops.