I watched the Nova documentary "Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" over at CK and Mel's house last night (on their brand new HDTV, which was very impressive) and it was both one of the most frightening and also most reassuring things I've seen on television in a long time. Considering the sort of people in my peer group, I admit I don't run into many people that think intelligent design is anything more than repackaged "creation science" hokum and that tends to bias me even more than I would be already against the kind of people who buy this. The fact that the federal judge in the case, a Republican appointed by Bush, so clearly saw through this mess was the reassuring part.
The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was how this idiocy seemed to be so much like Lysenkoism it was scary. For those of you who don't know what that was, it was basically bad science perpetrated for a political agenda in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- a "scientist" that came up with solutions to the country's agricultural problems with "practical" solutions that jived with the Communist Party's dogma exhorting the common peasant, solutions which didn't work at all, nearly starving the country to death and destroying Soviet progress in genetics for most of the first half of the century. It wasn't until the 1960s that it was finally thrown out by the Communists, by which time the West had left it far behind in the biological sciences.
The most frightening thing about this fraudulent movement is that if they succeed, they want to roll back 150 years of scientific progress in medicine, biology, and chemistry. 150 years that have seen the average American lifespan increase by 30 years, thousands upon thousands of new cures and treatments for disease, a dramatic new understanding of how the human body works and develops, and dozens of other invaluable scientific advances. This isn't hyperbole; this is what they set out to do in the infamous Wedge document. As the judge said in this documentary, with as important as science is in the modern world, especially genetics and biotechnology, this sort of thing seems completely irresponsible. These people would have the United States descend into a dark age while the rest of the world passes us by as it did the Soviets.
Because biotechnology has such a huge business potential, I am actually somewhat hopeful that this movement will eventually cause so much concern to the giant companies that depend on strong science education that they will spend their lobbying dollars to simply make lawmakers that support this nonsense politically irrelevant. The fact that the two groups generally share the same party's favor at the moment is an irony which isn't lost on me. As much as I'm wary of big business, I would much rather the Republicans favor a group which is at least capable of acting on a rational argument in their own self-interest than one which sticks its fingers in its ears and tries to ignore anything said to the contrary.
It's sad really; I consider myself atheist or at the very least agnostic, and honestly the question of whether a God or gods exist is an irrelevant one to me. Whether there is some sort of supreme being makes no difference to how I live my life; if there's a God there, he seems to have given up the practice of dramatic miracles. However, I cannot deny that when I see things like 4000-year-old Egyptian artifacts up close and personal, or when I would hear the priest at my parents' church talk about how he felt visiting holy sites in Israel that are thousands of years old, or when I walk on a Civil War battlefield where thousands of men died, you can feel the weight of history. There is something emotional, unquantifiable about places and things like that. To think that embracing modern science destroys any sense of wonder or awe at our insignificance in the universe, and that because a supernatural force is unnecessary means that life is meaningless -- that must be a frightening way to live.
I hope that people are really smarter than these creationists give them credit for; there is no reason that science and religion cannot coexist, indeed many of the greatest scholars of the last millennium have been profoundly religious men and women who saw their pursuit of science as a way to look upon the face of God. However, we cannot remain willfully ignorant of the universe in order to save the egos and small minds of people who think things were better back in the 15th century.
The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was how this idiocy seemed to be so much like Lysenkoism it was scary. For those of you who don't know what that was, it was basically bad science perpetrated for a political agenda in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- a "scientist" that came up with solutions to the country's agricultural problems with "practical" solutions that jived with the Communist Party's dogma exhorting the common peasant, solutions which didn't work at all, nearly starving the country to death and destroying Soviet progress in genetics for most of the first half of the century. It wasn't until the 1960s that it was finally thrown out by the Communists, by which time the West had left it far behind in the biological sciences.
The most frightening thing about this fraudulent movement is that if they succeed, they want to roll back 150 years of scientific progress in medicine, biology, and chemistry. 150 years that have seen the average American lifespan increase by 30 years, thousands upon thousands of new cures and treatments for disease, a dramatic new understanding of how the human body works and develops, and dozens of other invaluable scientific advances. This isn't hyperbole; this is what they set out to do in the infamous Wedge document. As the judge said in this documentary, with as important as science is in the modern world, especially genetics and biotechnology, this sort of thing seems completely irresponsible. These people would have the United States descend into a dark age while the rest of the world passes us by as it did the Soviets.
Because biotechnology has such a huge business potential, I am actually somewhat hopeful that this movement will eventually cause so much concern to the giant companies that depend on strong science education that they will spend their lobbying dollars to simply make lawmakers that support this nonsense politically irrelevant. The fact that the two groups generally share the same party's favor at the moment is an irony which isn't lost on me. As much as I'm wary of big business, I would much rather the Republicans favor a group which is at least capable of acting on a rational argument in their own self-interest than one which sticks its fingers in its ears and tries to ignore anything said to the contrary.
It's sad really; I consider myself atheist or at the very least agnostic, and honestly the question of whether a God or gods exist is an irrelevant one to me. Whether there is some sort of supreme being makes no difference to how I live my life; if there's a God there, he seems to have given up the practice of dramatic miracles. However, I cannot deny that when I see things like 4000-year-old Egyptian artifacts up close and personal, or when I would hear the priest at my parents' church talk about how he felt visiting holy sites in Israel that are thousands of years old, or when I walk on a Civil War battlefield where thousands of men died, you can feel the weight of history. There is something emotional, unquantifiable about places and things like that. To think that embracing modern science destroys any sense of wonder or awe at our insignificance in the universe, and that because a supernatural force is unnecessary means that life is meaningless -- that must be a frightening way to live.
I hope that people are really smarter than these creationists give them credit for; there is no reason that science and religion cannot coexist, indeed many of the greatest scholars of the last millennium have been profoundly religious men and women who saw their pursuit of science as a way to look upon the face of God. However, we cannot remain willfully ignorant of the universe in order to save the egos and small minds of people who think things were better back in the 15th century.
Excellent post. I'm surprised the (seemingly obvious) connection to Lysenkoism isn't brought up more often in ID debates. The point you make needs to be made more often; it overrules any "science vs. religion" arguments in favor of making it a decision as to wheter or not to willfully diminish our country's place in the world (and not just scientifically, but culturally and economically as well). Seems like that should be an easier argument to win. Then again, I think the "science vs. religion" part should be obvious, too, so what do I know?