Author: Greg Saunders

Not that you should be too surprised by the rigged outcome :

The mock trial of Darwin’s theory by Kansas’ Board of Education, which concluded on May 12, included testimonies and cross-examination of and by pro-evolution and pro-creationism experts.

The board’s trial voted 6 to 4 in favour of bringing the concept of “intelligent design” within the methods of teaching science in schools. Over two dozen scientists, teachers and lawyers said the state’s science standards be amended to incorporate alternative thinking.
. . .
At the centre of the trials is Steve Abrams, a veterinarian and Republican, who among other things believes that earth is only 5,000 years old, a view propagated by Christian conservatives, as opposed to 4.5 billion years as argued by scientists.

Abrams as the board chairman has challenged the validity of evolution as the only valid explanation of life. He has said evolutionary biology is inadequate in terms of evidence and there ought to be an intelligent designer at the helm.

Now let’s put aside the obvious fact that the folks pushing intelligent design are the same ones who think the Bible code is real, are looking for Noah’s ark, and think dinosaur bones were hidden underground by the devil. On its own merits, intelligent design is complete horseshit.

First of all, if you’re an ID advocate, stop using the word “theory”. You don’t get to use that word. What you’re trying to push is a hypothesis, which is always trumped by a theory. Just ask one of the kids whose science classes you’re trying to screw up. When scientists have an idea about how the world works, they come up with a hypothesis that they can test. If it stands up to repeated scrutiny, it eventually gets labeled a scientific “theory”. There’s a few decades of research and peer review to do before you earn the right to use that word.

Before that happens, you should also deal with the fact that intelligent design is a crappy hypothesis. It would be one thing if your “alternative thinking” was based on an observation of some sort, but it’s just a half-assed inferrence based on a lack of evidence. Looking at nature’s complexity and jumping to the conclusion that it must have been to the work of a “designer” holds about as much scientific merit and assuming that thunder is the sound god makes when she’s angry.

So if you’re serious about the “Gosh, the world sure is complicated. It must be god’s work.” hypothesis, go back to the drawing board. Stop concentrating on what you percieve to be evolution’s weaknesses and try working on ID’s strengths. Find a way to incorporate your beliefs with every bit of evidence that the scientific world has previously discovered and figure out how to test the damn thing. Submit your new hypothesis to some scientific journals and pray that the free marketplace of ideas favors your side.

It bears repeating that ID advocates already tried to get some respect for their hypotheis in the scientific community back when it was called “creationism”. They failed. This route isn’t about getting respect for intelligent design, it’s about trying to take a short cut (and in the process cripple the next generation of scientists) by appealing to the beliefs and exploiting the ignorance of school board members. As much as I want to religion out of public schools, my big concern here is protecting the integrity of our educational system from being slowly eroded by a flood of pseudoscience.

UPDATE : Reader Tony writes in to point out a mistake in the article I quoted above :

The “trial” was held before a subcommittee of three of the board’s most conservative members. They will supposedly take their findings to the rest of the board, which will vote sometime in the summer about which science standards to accept. The “minority” standards that they are likely to report won’t, as your post claimed, require Kansas teachers to instruct their students in intelligent design. The ID supporters are more subtle than that. Instead, they change the definition of science itself so that it will be open to “objective” approaches (i.e., allowing the role of miracles in the development of life).

Man, this Newsweek story is really setting people off. It’s bad enough that it’s adding fuel to the fire of the right-wing’s hatred for the so-called liberal media, but the magazine’s quickly becoming an Administration scapegoat as well. Here’s what Scotty says :

“This report has had serious consequences,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said today in West Point, Virginia, where the president was giving a speech. “It has caused damage to the image of the United States abroad and people have lost their lives.”

The Pentagon’s spokesman was even more blunt :

“What we know is that the Newsweek story about a Koran desecration is demonstrably false, and thus far there have not been any credible allegations of willful Koran desecration, and Newsweek hasn’t produced any such evidence either,” said a Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
. . .
“The unfortunate part about it is you can’t go back and undo or retract the damage that they’ve done not only to this nation, but those who have been hacked, injured and some even killed as a result of these false allegations,” he said.

Am I the only person who thinks the Bushies are the last people who should be giving lectures on damaging our nation’s image or handing out blame for the resulting violence? If I remember correctly, our reputation in the international community wasn’t exactly stellar prior to the Newsweek piece.

Dan Froomkin sees through the bad dialogue and flashy special effects¹ to see the real story in the new Star Wars films :

“Revenge of the Sith,” it turns out, can also be seen as a cautionary tale for our time — a blistering critique of the war in Iraq, a reminder of how democracies can give up their freedoms too easily, and an admonition about the seduction of good people by absolute power.

Some film critics suggest it could be the biggest anti-Bush blockbuster since “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott gives “Sith” a rave, and notes that Lucas “grounds it in a cogent and (for the first time) comprehensible political context.

” ‘Revenge of the Sith’ is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, ‘If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.’ Obi-Wan’s response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: ‘Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.’ ”

AFP reports that the movie delivers “a galactic jab to US President George W. Bush.”

I’m shocked it’s taken people this long to pick up on the political stuff. As I wrote on my site a couple of weeks ago, the first two movies are basically parables on how democratic superpowers eventually become controlled by despots. Lucas put it well himself in an interview with Time magazine three years ago :

So where does Lucas stand in this political polemic? “I’m more on the liberal side of things,” he says. “I grew up in San Francisco in the ’60s, and my positions are sort of shaped by that … If you look back 30 years ago, there were certain issues with the Kennedys, with Richard Nixon, that focused my interest.” Lucas’ own geopolitics can sound pretty bleak: “All democracies turn into dictatorships — but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea … What kinds of things push people and institutions into this direction?”

In Clones, Lucas goes a way toward answering that question. “That’s the issue that I’ve been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That’s paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn’t that the Empire conquered the Republic, it’s that the Empire is the Republic.” Lucas’ comments clarify the connection between the Anakin trilogy and the Luke trilogy: that the Empire was created out of the corruption of the Republic, and that somebody had to fight it. “One day Princess Leia and her friends woke up and said, ‘This isn’t the Republic anymore, it’s the Empire. We are the bad guys. Well, we don’t agree with this. This democracy is a sham, it’s all wrong.'”

The amusing thing here² is that the plots of these movies were written before Iraq, 9/11, and the ascension of our lovable cokehead preznit. The question shouldn’t be why Lucas is a America-hating liberal who’s making sci-fi movies that slam our glorious leader, but why Bush et. al. are dutifully following in the footsteps of power-hungry lunatics like Julius Caesar or Emperor Palpatine.

^{1 : Which is, admittedly, a very very difficult thing to do.}

2 : By “amusing” I mean “scary as hell”.

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Since this is my first post here, lemme take this opportunity to thank Tom for including me on this group blogging experiment of his. Now there’s a good chance that Bob, Jack, or I will post things that our host doesn’t necessarily agree with, so please do us all a favor of directing your comments to the author in question. I can be reached at TheTalentShow [at] gmail [dot] com. Tom’s busy enough without having to defend something I write.