The International Writers Magazine:REALITY CHECK

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IN PRAISE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN VERSUS EVOLUTION • James Campion "Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." - Mark Twain

Ah...the debate over Creation. This is a good one, and apparently, now a growing topic to be meandered by school boards and the federal government. Just last week our God President chimed in for this new fangled version of Creation Theory called Intelligent Design. The push by Christian groups, now running things around here, is to promote this Intelligent Design alongside Evolution for a practical theory of human existence. I’m not really sure how either theory is necessarily practical; I nevertheless weigh in, and have weighed in for sometime, on the side of Intelligent Design.
Surprising as this may seem to most of the readers of this space, since the Creator God takes more shit than a little here, and the idea of "intelligent design" surrounding any species that considers me a member, there is no concrete evidence human beings came from ape or some kind of slimy creature emerging from swampland. Having stated this, the likelihood of the whole weeklong workload creation thing for an omnipotent deity is slim and none, and in all seriousness, slim just left the building.

But if I may, in my limited capacity for any kind of scientific acumen, let me beat the drum for one of what theorists like to define as two schools of Evolution: Micro-evolution and Macro-evolution. Micro deals with small changes within a species which adapt that species to be better suited to its environment. Macro claims that through major genetic mutations one species can evolve into another, so over a long period of time fish could evolve into insects, birds and mammals. From this concept it's suggested that all life could have evolved from simple chemical structures, thus life could have resulted from natural processes without the need for a creator.

This is silly on principle alone, especially when considering Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states simply that "for every action there is a reaction", or as my good friend and celebrated scientist, Cunliffe Merriwether cited in his groundbreaking work, Quitting Science, "I have some reason to believe that aliens from a certain planet, XPC-25, in the Auroral Cluster, were in fact the ones who fornicated with monkeys on this planet, producing the eohippus and other humanoid ancestors." This is all well and good, but, of course, Merriwether spends good portions of the book dissecting what he claims were Newton’s other lesser-known laws like "Newton’s 4th Law: ‘If You Build It, They Will Come’. Or Newton’s 5th Law: ‘Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind.’ Or his 6th: ‘It’s All Good’". And then there’s my personal favorite, "Newton’s 9th Law: ‘Hey, What’s the Big Idea?’" But crazy as the both of these men seem to you and me, they are scientists, and they live and breath with what can be proven, and not surmised or debated. And these are men who believe, if not in a Creator God, then some kind of source to the universe and existence therein.

Yet most scientists are vehemently opposed to a discussion regarding Intelligent Design, despite the fact that beyond the Big Bang Theory, no one seems to be able to sufficiently explain where the Big Bang came from, or more precisely, why macro-evolution is fancy when suggesting how life developed from one species to another, but not so much on how we jumped from no life to life or from unconscious to conscious. What about the complexity of DNA, anyway? Where’s the solid evidence that this is random? Even in the simplest life forms, we have a number of different and complex components which must all be in place for life to occur. Take any of the components away and you no longer have life. The building blocks of living beings are complex and are not independent. How can these components have been assembled separately apart from pre-existent life? Or as my brother once posed to me over a burrito, "You shift that axis of ours an infinitesimal amount and we’re a dead rock floating through space." This is where science becomes as thorny as religion. It becomes a defacto religion with contradictions and huge holes in the postulate. Hey, believe what you want to believe, but all I’m saying, along with our God President, is consider all of the alternatives to the once unshakably resolute Macro-evolution theory.

Now, chances are we’re not getting to the bottom of how humans came to be in this space today, but we can be certain that to dismiss Intelligent Design as the ranting of religious fanatics is unfair. I am not a religious fanatic, unless you consider Fletcherism a religion. I am wild about Fletcherism. But sticklers would deem it more of a practice, really; specifically the practice of chewing food until it is reduced to a finely divided, liquefied mass, which was originally advocated by 19th century nutritionist, Horace Fletcher. Thomas Edison was a devout Fletcherist, and it’s hard to argue with that guy. But, aside from Fletcherism, I despise religion mostly. However, to reject some of the concepts and theorems based on our superstitions and cultural divides is irresponsibly capricious and hardly scientific.

I think producing, say, the Missing Link is as paramount to the discussion as producing Noah’s Ark or the bones of Adam and Eve.

This reminds me of a more acceptable theory of Creation in the form of Intelligent Design from author and Biblical historian, Elaine Pagels, who recently put forth the once accepted theory among Israelites that one larger, more centralized Source Figure sparked another lesser Creator God, who, by all accounts, screwed the whole thing up. This may help to explain why this lesser, more jealous and spiteful, Creator God runs amok in the Torah flooding and burning and turning humans into salt when peeved in the slightest, while the Israelites continued to insist in literature and oral tradition that the unspoken One loved and nurtured its Creation per se.

Anyway, I’m sure that’s nonsense too, but it is a least an attempt beyond monkeys, aliens, Big Bangs, Let There Be Light, and Darwinism to explain things. Who’s to say who is wackier? Not me, not Christians, not science, and certainly not the US government.
Teach it all, and let the kids sort it out.

© James Campion August 8th 2005
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

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James Campion is featured in Hackwriters monthly - he will return in September

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