Debates rage over
Intelligent Designers.
Levi's? Wrangler's? Guess?
I was speaking with a neurobiologist the other day, and the idea of intelligent design just happened to come up (or rather had been destined to come up since the birth of time). This scientist finds the whole idea of an intelligent designer absurd and diametrically opposed to the theory of evolution.
Being the person I am and naturally diametrically opposed to anything said with such passion, I affirmed the concept of an intelligent designer of Ralph Laurenian Proportions, who is constantly stitching creation into a whole that is very good. At this point, our scientist friend explained that evolution is a testable hypothesis while intelligent design is a tenant of faith and cannot be scientifically confirmed. End of discussion.
From my perspective, the scientific community has handled the whole creationist/intelligent design arguments completely in the wrong manner. First, they’ve allowed the Religious Right to hijack the concept of a prime mover from Aristotle, and therefore, have allowed Judeo-Christian mumbo jumbo to enter into the conversation. Second, these same scientists have forgotten that evolution is still but a theory (albeit a compelling one) and needs to be pounded by constant questioning. For it is only through questioning that Truth will be shucked from the Universe like monkeys peeling a bananas.
What I don’t understand is why scientists are so reluctant to test the theory of intelligent design. Study it. Probe it. Our scientist friend claimed it was non-testable. But, that’s crap. Every scientific discipline follows laws, whether they’re gravitational, mathematical, etc. So why can’t evolution? Why does it have to be random? Why couldn’t it be possible that there is an intelligent design behind creation?
I don’t mean some masculine hand pushing monkeys into men, dinosaurs into birds, cockroaches into rats. What I mean are some laws that govern the apparent randomness of evolution beyond the survival of the fittest. Suppose, for example, that DNA mutates in certain predictable ways. To test this, one could bombard simple organisms that have a short life-span with radiation to see if it would cause this organism to evolve into another organism that already exists. Such experiments would have to be more complex than radiation bombardment and may not support the theory of intelligent design but, at least, science explored the possibility.
And what if science affirms such a theory, one not based on chaos but rather order, one in which the Primer Mover still reigns supreme?
Ya boeee!
Posted by: hehe at December 3, 2005 07:41 PM