:: Scopes2k ::

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

This is great. No really, it is: the mere formation of an organization like the Discovery Institute is an implicit admission that any creationist theories are wholly untenable. Every time counter-evidence mounts to sufficient levels, its strong proponents back off a hair. First, they stubbornly conceded that the world might not have been created exactly 4k years ago. Then it was the begrudging acceptance that it might not have been created in 7 days. Now they've adopted the theory of intelligent design, which accepts the path of evolution, but not the guiding principles.

If you connect the dots, a clear progression emerges towards a sane and rational acceptance of the best available theories (i.e. some form of a secular evolutionary hypothesis) based on the best available evidence (i.e. all logical human knowledge and inquiry... ever), complete with the categorical jettisoning of certain antiquated, vestigial, anachronistic notions regarding the origin of the species first posited around itinerate campfires when the best guess we could muster was to explain our very existence by deifying the frightening noises in the sky that accompanied bright flashes of light during a rainstorm.

If you're on one side of a debate, and you continually reformulate and revise your argument so that each time it appears more and more like your opponent's while they hold firm to (or worse, strengthen) their claim, something's fishy.

Of course, as Kuhn noted, scientific disciplines are fluid, dynamic organisms, undergoing paradigm shifts in mini-revolutions much akin to the biological theory of punctuated equilibrium espoused by Steven Jay Gould and others - in a sense, the body of scientific enquiry itself is always subject to the pressures of evolution, albeit on a much more abstract and intangible level. One (hackneyed) corollary of this progression is that there will be no "ultimate" or final answer (much as biological evolution produces no "final" creature), but instead a continuing path of further investigation and refinement of explanatory schemas. I therefore do not begin to purport that the scientific community will arrive at some all-encompassing and eminently verifiable theory of life, the universe, and everything, merely waiting around and playing MENSA games while the rest of us catch up. I'm just noting that there seem to be a few of us (and by "us", I mean all members of the human race) out there who are lagging by a few millennia, centuries, or decades (not limited to the scope of this particular debate). For every visionary trying to innovate, there's a reactionary trying to stagnate (though this may be a good thing - but I'll save my tirade on the perils of overly-rapid mass change for another day).

Anyway, if Ohio adopts this, then I guess it's time to start saving money for private school.

Posted by morland @ 10:02 PM

:: Comments ::

My Mum was an acedemic as well as a Catholic. I am a product of private school-13 years Catholic (9 Ursuline, 4 Jesuit)-and...I'm from Ohio. Watch out.

Posted by: Al on December 26, 2002 05:22 PM

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