Monkey Business

**Warning: Long Post/Rant Ahead**

A couple weeks ago the Daily Show brought to more public light the battle between Creationists/Intelligent Design'ists' and Science in their 'Evolution Schmevolution Week'. Its something that, coming from a science background, and scientific thinking as I do (and so yes this post will infact have a bias to it), I have seen a lot of in the past. Particularly in studying the earth sciences, where all of a couple hundred years of scientific study, predictive models and hypotheses lead to the earth being on the order of 4.6 billion years old, and not truly forming in any habitable way until about 600 million years ago.

Now there are groups of people that exist that believe in catastrophism theories, that suggest that what we currently observe in terms of natural processes of sediment deposition (that is 'making rocks') and erosion (that is 'destroying rocks') used to happen much faster. Infact, nearly instantaneously in a 3000-4000 year calendar for the entire Earth. And fossils that are discovered, and can be dated using the same knowledge that now allows for nuclear power, and nuclear weapons proliferation, back to 100 million year time scales, by methods frequently tested, and replicated under strictly controlled conditions have been placed there by 'demonic powers' to 'throw us off'. Most logical minds, not even particularly scientific minds recognize that things like this cannot be simply thrown away as 'blasphemous'. These tend to be the same people that realize Holy books as roughly translated, non-literal literature.

But the most widely spectated battle for the past 80+ years has been the theory of evolution and its implications against certain religious beliefs, particularly in North America. When Darwin came along and identified 'survival of the fittest' as a means for living beings to better themselves, it offended some people. Now, futher research has only added to the validity of Darwin's evolution theories, there is still some opening to uncertainty, and I'm not claiming it to be 100% accurate...there aren't many things that ever ARE completely right. Nothing is always black and white, mostly just lighter and darker shades of grey. That said, scientists have been taken to task over this theory since the 1925 Scopes Trial, trying to abolish the teaching of evolution in the United States. Most recently, in Pennsylvania the Intelligent Design community has actually forced a trial to deliberate over the teaching of evolution and non-inclusion of Intelligent Design as a plausible alternative.

In the past Creationism was seen by most as a religious belief system imposed as pseudo-scientific explanation. Unfortunately for them, even the politicians in the past looked through the rough, and certainly unproven hypotheses, and recognized the teachings as religious, and thus not allowed by a particular clause somewhere in the U.S. Constitution (hey, I'm not a law student, let alone U.S. law). But with a dying following, a lot of this group has reinvented itself into the Intelligent Design movement who suggest that anything they deem unfathomable within a short timescale must have been put in place by some higher power (i.e. God). And now somehow, despite the complete religious overtone of their belief, it has actually made it to trial to have it be taught formally as a possible alternative.

As I said, no-one in the scientific community is going to swear by evolution as Darwin described it 100%, that's simply not how the scientific process of checking, rechecking and checking theory again works. And I completely agree that, particularly for younger children, it should be emphasized that evolution is a THEORY. While it is reproducable, and fits an explanation with very few wild leaps of faith, it is not a certain concept and should be taught as such. On the other hand, you cannot just decide to emplace some belief system with very many leaps of faith just as something for an alternative.

If there was a founded, logical progression to ideas, and not simply the suggestion that anything we cannot currently understand is too complex for us to ever know, and thus must be the result of some higher power, then by all means teach it. Human knowledge in the past has only benefitted from controversy, difference of theory, and the drive to establish more accurate, thorough descriptions of the way things all around us behave. It makes us get our shit right. We know the earth isn't flat because we've gone around it on planes, trains, and aeroplanes, along with spaceships and the satellites that give us Fox News, CNN et al. 24/7. We know the Sun isn't a god in the sky, because we've sent physical, tangible objects there, and had them give back information on what happens there. We've been on or at least around many of the other chariots in the sky now too, again with objects, that people could touch here on earth, enhanced with technologies like those that let millions walk through malls with annoying ringtones, and take pictures with the same phone.

Somehow though, we are supposed to disregard all the technologies that science has brought us because a couple hundred years has only gotten us wireless technologies, and so we can't possibly understand how a mushroom, tree, or we ultimately came to be. It has been the same all along. When planets and stars were too difficult to understand, they became gods because people could relate. When we needed a way for the earth under our feet to hold us up, and give us food, and for the clouds above to drop rain and fill our rivers, it was Gods. But slowly logical thought and problem solving came along and we had the ability to predict how things would occur.

If its not become apparent in my posts in the past, I'm not a particularly religious person. I take issue with some of the absolutely arbitrary rules and obligations placed on the religions I know a little bit about. And while I digress that I do only know a little of each, I know enough to recognize that the core principles of each are almost the same; they come down to common sense really, but religion serves as an organized means to bring these principles across. I have no problem with people practicing their faith, as long as they don't push it on me, or don't start killing others because of it simply because of their interpretations of many times translated pieces of literature. But when that does start to happen, and when people start trying to force these beliefs on children, or knocking on your door, calling you a sinner, then I start to get pissy, and get ranty like you see here.

Pray to your god of choice, practice the peaceful way of life you choose, have your beliefs about the place in the universe for heavenly influences, or the belief they may not exist at all, but do not start forcing them on groups of people, particularly in the public school system where people of this wide assortment of culture are going to come together.