The Great Debate: "Should ‘Intelligent Design’ be taught in public schools?"

Today is the third of a series of cross-blog debates with conservative blogger Mike Waters; who enjoys the challenge of a gentlemanly discussion. Go and read Mike's opinion over on his blog; and be sure to comment on what you read! Today's topic is of interest because of the controversial story that perhaps life on Earth didn't even develop on this planet at all!

In the mean time, here's my two cents:

Should ‘Intelligent Design’ be taught in public schools?

Let’s get something straight. There is no such thing as ‘Intelligent Design.’

So-called Intelligent Design is essentially Creationism – the belief that the planet Earth, and all life upon it, was created as described in the old testament of the Bible.

The only difference between the two is that teaching Creation Theory in school was made illegal in 1987 (in Edwards v. Aguillard and other court rulings) because it fundamentally violated the principle of Separation of Church and State.

Following that ruling, unscrupulous fundamentalists repackaged Creationism in a shiny new pseudo-scientific format and have, ever since, been trying to get it taught in schools.

Nevertheless, it remains every bit as unconstitutional as the curriculum that sparked Edwards v. Aguillard back in 1987.

But for the sake of argument, let’s dig a little bit deeper into why Intelligent Design/Creation Theory should be kept out of public schools:

• It’s unconstitutional: Intelligent Design/Creation Theory stem from a Judeo-Christian interpretation of creation. Therefore, teaching it in schools paid for by the taxpayer, and established by the government, is ‘establishment of religion.’ Namely, it’s establishment of Judeo-Christian monotheism that violates the 1st Amendment rights of anybody who is not Judeo-Christian. Buddhists, Hindis, Native Americans and atheists all believe that life came about differently; so if you force their kids to study one particular religious viewpoint (in accordance with the first chapter of the Old Testament) you’re “prohibiting the free exercise” of other religious or non-religious viewpoints.
• It’s unscientific: Intelligent Design/Creation Theory is not based on any form of evidence whatsoever. You can argue the ‘theory’ that life was created by a single ‘Intelligent Designer’ but that’s no more provable or unprovable than arguing it was created by many ‘Intelligent Designers’ – or just happened randomly, or was the work of hyperintelligent mice, or a Giant Spaghetti Monster. If your theory is founded on the understanding that you can never able to prove or disprove it, it ceases to become a theory and becomes theology instead. That’s absolutely fine with me - it’s all very well to believe in a higher power – but if theology gets taught in school, it should be confined to the Religious Studies classroom, not the Science Lab.

Another argument against teaching Intelligent Design/Creation Theory in school is that I just don’t see the point. The beauty of what we get taught about evolution is that it is fundamentally compatible not just with decades of scientific research, but also with just about every religion on Earth.

Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.

—National Academy of Sciences

We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. Vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the 'project' of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary -- rather than mutually exclusive -- realities.

Pope Benedict XVI

Just because we teach that one species evolved over millennia into another, that doesn’t discount the belief that some mysterious ‘Intelligent Designer’ wrote the blueprint or lit the touch paper.

Nor does it prove that they didn’t. Whether or not there is a God is unprovable, so that's why the question doesn't get asked when studying evolution - not because evolution and atheism somehow co-exist.

Finally, proponents of Intelligent Design/Creation Theory have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Theory of Evolution. They incorrectly believe that the concept of evolution – that one animal species evolves into another - hasn’t been proven, and is somehow up for debate. That simply isn’t true.

Evolution is a ‘theory’ only in the same way gravity remains a ‘theory.’ Or, to be more specific, we know THAT evolution happens, just as we know if you throw something in the air, gravity will bring it crashing back down to Earth. The ‘theoretical’ part is WHY that happens – ‘survival of the fittest’ being the current understanding.

To argue against the process of evolution – that protobionts evolved into bacteria and eukaryotes and eventually more complex life forms – is like arguing that the world is flat. It’s wrong, plain and simple – and if we teach our kids something so mind-numbingly, inconceivably false, even as a ‘theory’, we’re guilty of child abuse on a massive scale.

Why good Evangelicals make lousy Americans

Read Professor Tom's rebuttal here.

That's right, kids. It's time to start beating your head against the table again. The inimitable Siger forwarded this article to me and it makes me want to stab myself in the head with staples:

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America'

A British film about Charles Darwin has failed to find a US distributor because his theory of evolution is too controversial for American audiences, according to its producer.

By Anita Singh

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution. Full story here.

This is so astonishingly depressing. This wonderful nation was brought into being by some of the smartest men ever to breath - but two hundred years after the Founding Fathers left their democratic legacy, it seems the nation's taking a step backwards.

We don't teach our kids about the incontrovertible evidence of evolution because it offends our 'religious sensibilities.' We deny gay Americans their basic civil rights because it offends our 'religious sensibilities.' We're even arguing about giving health care to the poor because our 'religious sensibilities' apparently decry sharing our hard-earned buck with the less fortunate (I think Jesus actually preached the exact opposite.)

This driving demon of extreme evangelicalism is perhaps why America's slipped from its position as the world's most competitive economy. Maybe it's why we're the only industrialized nation in the world without universal health care. Perhaps fundamentalism is why India and China are beginning to eclipse us economically.

This obsession with medieval thinking is, just maybe, the reason why the rest of the developed world is marching inexorably forward and we're stuck resolutely where we were.

What happens to a nation which embraces extremist religion over science, humanism and reason? It becomes a hell-hole like Iran or Afghanistan. What happens to people who believe extremist religion trumps education? They become progressively more stupid as each new generation forgets what the prior generation learned.

The problem isn't Christianity - because Evangelicalism no longer even remotely resembles Christianity. The message Jesus Christ spread was simply to love your brother, something we're increasingly reluctant to do because loving your brother sounds suspiciously like 'socialism.'

Words just fail me. However much I rant, it seems impossible to adequately communicate my deep-rooted frustration with the 80 million or so Americans who believe their God-given purpose is to dismantle everything good, bright, right and sacred about this wonderful country.

It strikes me you can be a Good (Evangelical) Christian, or a Good American. I'm just increasingly losing faith that you can be both.

Video Game Causes Outrage (but not the one you'd think.)

So in the highly popular Grand Theft Auto series of video games, your thuggish main character can cruise up to prostitutes and have a romp with them in the back seat of his stolen car.

[As long as you're parked in a dark alley, of course. The designers didn't want the the game to be accused of not being realistic. - Editorial Bear]

You don't see anything explicit - just watch the car bounce up and down and listen to the suspension squeak. [Actually, that's not true. In the latest incarnation of the game, you DO get to see all the gory details - Editorial Bear.]

But when the Lady of the Night pulls up her kickers and clambers out of your car, you can sneak up behind her and bash her pretty little brains in with a baseball bat.

That, for the uninitiated, allows you to recover all the bloodstained money you'd spent hiring her 'services' in the first place.

For the curious, here's how to do it:

[Warning, the video is narrated by a foul mouthed Scotsman and, being about the systematic murder of a digital prostitute, is unsurprisingly not rated PG-13. - Editorial Bear]


How to Murder a Prostitute for Dummies

Naturally, little side-games like this have caused some outrage amongst the moral majority - who argue that video games like Grand Theft Auto are destroying the moral fiber of today's youth (even though the game has a 18 certificate, so children of responsible parents shouldn't even be playing it.)

Nevertheless, it's not Grand Theft Auto that's attracted the REAL ire of the religious right. It's the G-rated, family friendly strategy game Spore.

In Spore, you guide the development of life - from single-cell organisms to multi-limbed monsters who discover fire, war with other tribes, create cities and eventually travel to space.

"This entire game is propaganda!" One Christian critic exclaimed. "Aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism!"

Cue the collective *faceslap* of every rational person on the planet.

Yes, it's true, the concept of Spore is based on the concept of evolution. However, Spore has about as much in common with evolution as, well, eugenics.

For example, when Spore's creatures 'evolve,' they don't change gradually, over the course of many generations. A fully formed 'new' creature pops out of the egg of an old one - thus propagating that tired line Creationists use: "Find me the proof, oh Godless heathen, that a dinosaur turned into a monkey!"

It's right there on your video screen, buddy. Unfortunately, that's not how evolution happened in real life.

To be honest, I'm surprised old earth creationists and those who believe in Intelligent Design haven't embraced this game, because Spore has far more in common with their philosophy than Darwin's.

For a start, you play 'God' and you 'intelligently design' your creature through each step of it's evolution. Secondly, as God, you 'intelligent design' the facets you think you creature will be best off using. You even guide their existence and philosophy, choosing between being warlike and aggressive, to create fiercer creatures, or diplomatic and peaceful, generating more resourceful critters.

Quite simply, forget about SimCity or Civilisation. There is no more authentic 'God' game than this. Conservative Christians? Quit your whining and pick up a copy immediatement!

[Thanks to Christine for her Spore pictures. - Kitty Copy Editor]

Evolution will be postponed...

After a couple of emails from less-than enthusiastic readers, I've decided to shelve my evolution project. Apparently reading pages and pages of me regurgitating Evolution for Dummies was not nearly interesting as pictures of my baby doing amusing things!

In any event, all that research I did into evolution did teach me a lot of things and really expanded my perspective.

Evolution's a pretty incredibly thing and thanks to more and more fossils being discovered, plus the wonders of DNA, scientists can now plot more and more of the evolutionary path life on Earth took.

It really isn't just a theory. Aside from the fact that fossils have been discovered that show almost all the important transitional phases of evolution, DNA now confirms how life on Earth developed. Doubt that idea that birds descended from dinosaurs? Take a look at their DNA - it proves that they're relatives.

I think the biggest question the doubtful have about evolution is the concept of one creature becoming another. How did a fish become a bird, for example?

Well, it took hundreds of millions of years, but we have fossils that explain the process step by step. How fish became 'tetra pods' and ventured onto land. How those tetra pods became reptiles. How, as the millenia progressed, some reptiles stayed in the form of lizards, while others became more bird like.

Ever seen Jurassic Park? The 'bad guys' in that movie were the man-eating 'Velociraptors.' The movies had made them a bit bigger than they were in real life, but we have fossils of 'raptors in museums to prove they existed.

Although they were bigger and incapable of flight, it was creatures like the Velociraptor that would eventually evolve into the predatory birds we know today - eagles, kestrels and the like (all from an avian family called, just to highlight the link, 'raptor'.)

As I've said before, evolution doesn't rule out the existence of a higher power. Many people believe that a higher power laid a 'blueprint' for evolution that wound up with the development of mankind.

I think that's a valid theory - but my research actually strengthened my belief that there isn't a God. Cornell University, doing a study in a big cauldron, discovered that protobionts, the precursor to life as we recognize it, could spontaneously appear in conditions like those on Earth four billion years ago. There didn't need to be a God to put life on the planet.

Life on Earth might seem miraculous, but it might not be! There are millions of planets in the universe - many others must have Earth-like properties. We might never know for sure, since they're too far away, but it's perfectly possible - even probable - that life exists on them as well.

Life on Earth isn't an incredible coincidence. It's merely an inevitable coincidence.

As for the idea of a heavenly 'blueprint?' Well, there were plenty of evolutionary experiments that failed. Fossils reveal that there were all sorts of 'dead ends' that died out (from early forms of segmented worms to human-like creatures such as neanderthals.)

Darwin's idea of 'survival of the fittest' left a lot of casualties.

There are still unanswered questions - like how the universe began in the first place. But when it comes to the beginning of life on Earth and how it developed, more and more of those questions are being answered every single day.

Evolution is a theory that fits all the observations. Any other theory, like creationism, relies on some of the data being 'false.' If you have to cover up the facts to shoehorn your theory into credibility, it's clearly not a very good one.

But for those of you who still insist that God created the Earth in strict accordance with scripture (like, in six days, six thousand years ago), I'd like you to ponder this question: If we discovered life on other planets, how would that fit in with Scripture?

The Journey of Life Part 1 (Life begins on Earth.)

Scientists have proven that the Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago.

The formation of the Earth was called the Hadean Era - after 'Hades,' the mythical Greek version of Hell. This was because the Earth resembled Hell - with surface temperatures of 230°C. Even as early as then, however, scientists know that Earth had liquid water oceans.

Scientists know how old the Earth was and what it was like in the beginning because of zircon crystals discovered in Greenland. They date back 4.4 billion years and could only have been formed under certain geological conditions.

This was followed by the Archean Eon, when the Earth as we know it today was formed. There is plenty of evidence about this era, as rock formations have been discovered in Greenland, Canada, Scotland and India that date back this far.

The Archean Eon was when life appeared on Earth. Interestingly, it was also a period in which lots of extrasolar debris struck the Earth. Some people have suggested that life on Earth was carried there by a asteroid or meteorite. Others hypothesis like life started with protobionts.

Protobionts are organic molecules surrounded by a membrane. They're not life, exactly, but they mimic many of the properties of life - like being able to reproduce and react to their environment. Most importantly, Cornell University proved that in an environment like Archean Eon Earth, they could have formed spontaneously.

Over the course of 400 million years, protobionts evolved into prokaryotes - bacteria and archeaea. Basically, the first form of life on Earth. We know projaryotes existed on Earth at this time because we have fossils of them dating back three and a half million years.

Now to accept protobionts became prokaryotes, you have to accept that very primitive forms of life are capable of evolution.

Fortunately, that's been proven by scientist Richard Lenski. He took a very simple Escherichia coli bacteria and, in his lab, proved that bacteria is capable of evolutionary adaptions in order to react better to their environment.

Basically, in order to better suit their environment, bacteria adapt and become different. In Lenski's experiment, a culture of bacteria that learned to feed off citrate (which E. coli normally can't) enjoyed a population explosion. In keeping with Darwin's theory of natural selection, had this occurred 'in the wild,' the E. coli that had adapted would have had a distinct advantage over the unadapted bacteria.

The same proof exists in most British hospitals - Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has evolved to become resistant to antibiotics. Because antibiotics kill the non-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' explains the success of antibiotic resistant bacteria, the famous Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA bacteria.

Just like the bacteria we witness evolving today, prokaryotes thrived on Earth during the Archean Eon. As E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus prove, prokaryotes still exist today.

Prokaryotes were one path of evolution. The other path, which separated at this point, were eukaryotes. Whereas prokaryotes were single cell organisms, eukaryotes had more than one cell. They're what would evolve into plants and animals - basically, anything that isn't a bacteria.

The earliest fossils of eukaryotes date back over a billion years. They show that eukaryotes were very similar to prokaryotes. In fact, it was like two prokaryote cells decided to occupy the same membrane and exist in a symbiotic relationship.

Now exactly HOW this leap occurred is open to discussion. Was it a mutation? Perhaps a prokaryote divided itself to reproduce, but the cell division failed and created a 'Siamese' bacteria - one that flourished! However it worked, it worked.

We have fossils that show the arrival of a new form of life that was remarkably closely linked to the form of life that had existed before it. One form of life evolved into another and we have the fossils to prove it!

The next stage of the Earth's development was the Proterozoic Eon, starting about two and a half billion years ago and finishing about a billion years ago.

Life during the Proterozoic Eon consisted of single celled organisms (the bacteria) and the new multi-cellular organisms. Oxygen started to fill Earth's atmosphere (we know from all the geographical evidence) which caused a lot of changes for life on Earth. Oxygen was poisonous to a lot of the existing life forms and a lot of them were wiped out. 'Survival of the fittest' saw the ones that could cope with oxygen flourish.

During this period, hundreds of different fossils were left for us to discover, which neatly illustrated the development of eukaryotes. Fossils exist showing the development of simple multi-cellular organisms into more complex forms of life, like algae, plants, and 'bags.'

We know that this process was evolution because of the fossil trail. The eukaryotes might have become more complex, but they didn't just spontaneously turn from one form into another. The links between the original form and what they evolved into are quite obvious, like fingerprints.

The next stage on Earth was the Palaeozoic Era, which began about 550 million years ago. This was the era that saw life on Earth explode with diversity. It's this stage which makes people query evolution. After all, in four billion years, evolution developed nothing more sophisticated than multi-celled plants and algae. Suddenly, everything would change over the course of a (relatively) short space of time!

But I'll get to that later. The important things to take away from this first of my posts on evolution are:

1. We can prove the Earth is four and a half billion years old.
2. We can prove that life (in the form of bacteria) existed three and a half million years ago.
3. Fossils prove that single-celled creatures evolved/mutated into multi-celled creatures over a billion years ago.
4. Fossils prove that a wide diversity of simple life forms, all with similar roots to the first multi-celled organisms, existed on earth almost a billion years ago.

Next time, I'll take you on the journey that sees a few multi-celled algae and 'bags' become dinosaurs and people...

To Be Continued...

Evolution Prologue

During the Cenozoic Era, the chickens would fry you!

The reason I started my scientific shenanigans was due to enraged arguments I'd been having with some particularly stubborn Christians over on An Uneducated Housewife's Guide to Politics.

The argument was about evolution - something I grew up being taught was a 'theory' only in the same way gravity was a theory.

There is a mountain of evidence proving that evolution was the journey life on Earth took. Yet in America, I'm astonished to find that millions of people don't believe in evolution - and some of them even adhere to the six day 'creation story' from the Bible!

Over on Coffee Bean's blog, things have got pretty heated. One woman dismissed evolution as an "outlandish claim" and another chap claimed: "There is not one fossil that has ever been discovered that supports Darwin's theory. Not a single one on the entire earth!"

Well, that's just rubbish.

So what I'm going to do it tell the story of life on Earth, as I've come to understand it - based on the evidence presented to me.

As I've said before, I'm not a scientist. I might muddle a few things up on the way - but at least what I'll present will be based on science and fact, not the pages of a storybook written two thousand years ago.

Science for Idiots (Idiots like me...)

Over on Coffee Bean's brilliant 'An Uneducated Housewife's Guide to Politics' there is all sorts of angry debate going on, encompassing many topics, including the perennial discussion about creationism versus evolution.

One of the angriest voices has been mine - simply because the whole existence of 'creationist doctrine' continues to astonish me.

Living in America, I'm often astonished at how similar things are to life in Britain. Oh, sure, the accent and the weather is different, but things are largely the same, aren't they?

Well, it stuff like creationism (and maple syrup on bacon, but I digress) that throws into sharp relief how different things in America actually are.

Here in the United States, people - and I'm talking about a lot of people - actually believe that the world was created in six days, exactly as it's written in the Bible.

This truly astonishes me.

For the most part, I like to think I'm fairly open minded and slip quite effortlessly into the conventions of different cultures. However, I find this particular one very difficult to swallow.

Over on Coffee Bean's blog, I haven't been altogether gentlemanly in my discussions. The words 'religious nutjob' and 'idiot' have passed my (virtual) lips more than once. This really isn't very mature of me. I should simply accept that other people have opinions different to my own (and then I should take the time to explain to them, in very simple terms, why they're wrong.)

Which is the point of the next few posts. I'm not a scientist - but I am a reasonably literate human being. I'm going to explain what I believe and why I believe it.

Now, as arrogant and opinionated as I am, I'm not always right. In fact, I'm not even often right! So there may be typos and errors in the next few posts that people should be more than willing to point out (for example, in a previous post I described the Earth as being 150 million years old. In fact, it's more like 5 billion years old.)

However, everything I write is going to be based in fact and science. I'm sorry, but evidence I can see and touch with my own two hands will always trump what's written in a two thousand year old religious text - no matter how 'inerrant' irrational people claim it to be.

Let the fun begin...

The Evolution of Evolution

Back in April, I wrote a couple of posts about Evolution - since I continue to be astonished that there's a movement in America that refuses to accept Darwin's theory and still believes in 'Creationism' (as in, God invented it all over the course of a week.)

No, that's not the astonishing part. The fact that this movement hasn't been ridiculed into non-existence yet is the bit that boggles my mind!

One of the reasons 'Creationism' is still bantered about is because seemingly intelligent, reasonable people advocate it - such as blog friend and commentator CK.

Back in April, he had a few dissenting opinions on my appraisal of evolution - arguing that intelligent design was clearly a better theory since there were 'missing links' that had so far eluded scientists and prevented them from pinning down evolution as anything more than a theory.

As CK said: 'Intelligent Design: No need to see a fish turn to a bird, if a bird was designed as a bird and a fish as a fish. Animals adapt and evolve... but they don't change what animal they are in the process.'

He argued that God invented birds and birds, fish as fish and the rest of the animals started off as what they were and any 'evolution' that has occurred has been purely incidental.

It's a pretty logical argument, which makes sense since CK is a pretty logical guy. The flaw is that these 'missing links' DO continue to be discovered - reinforcing Darwin's theory and punching holes in the idea of Creationism.

In fact, last Thursday saw the discovery of the most convincing 'missing link' discovered yet. 'Ventastega' is a 100 million year old fish with tiny legs - currently the oldest discovered four-legged animal and concrete proof that the four legged mammals of today started their evolutionary journey as fish.

That's what is so comforting about theories like evolution. They start from the assumption that we don't know all the answers - but the more we find out, the more the facts back our theories. Creationism is the opposite - it stems from a belief that we DO know all the answers (or, at least, the Bible does) and it must be infuriating for 'believers' to see their doctrine hammered by reality each time a new fossil is unearthed.

Darwin's Legacy

CK left a comment on this post and pointed out that debating Creationist Doctrine's Ku Klux Klan roots is all well and good - but Darwin's Theory of Evolution didn't exactly bring out the best in some people, either.

In fact, the idea of 'survival of the fittest' inspired many proponents of Darwin's theories to suggest that the human race itself could be 'improved' by directly manipulating the evolutionary process.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, discovered that statistics suggested a congenitally deaf person was more likely to parent a deaf child than somebody with normal hearing. Therefore, theoretically, if the deaf didn't procreate, deafness could be eliminated from the human race. It was thinking like that which was the beginning of Eugenics.

Eugenics was such a popular theory that even Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, advocated it. In 1907, he supported Indiana becoming the first of thirty states to introduce compulsory sterilization of 'inferior' human specimens. Other states, like Connecticut, had already brought in legislation barring the "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying.

By 1945, over 60,000 Americans had been forcibly sterilized to avoid 'polluting the gene pool' with their 'inferior' genes.

Although forced sterilizations continued until 1963, for the most part they stopped in 1945. This is when America was forced to come to terms with the legacy of their experimentation into eugenics.

During the Nuremberg trials, when top-ranking Nazi officers were placed on trial for the shocking and inhumane crimes they committed during World War Two, the issue of eugenics was raised. The Nazis had forcibly sterilized over 450,000 people - many for the genetic 'crime' of being Jewish.

Hitler himself had written: "I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

That was a bitter pill for the American government to swallow. That realisation pretty much ended the experiment into 'social eugenics.'

And not a moment too soon, because eugenics is a quack science.

Some of the basic theories, like Alexander Graham Bell's observation that deafness could be 'bred out' of the human race, sound convincing, but the theory of 'racial purity' flirted with by early American eugenicists (and embraced by the Nazis) is more likely to produce genetic abnormalities than 'cure' them.

For example, observant Ashkenazi Jews tend to marry within their own community (for social reasons) and as a result, have a much higher rate of certain hereditary diseases (such as Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, Canavan's disease and Goucher's disease.) This illustrates that 'racial purity' promotes a less diverse (and therefore less healthy) gene pool.

Most dog breeders have known this for centuries - it's well established that mongrel dogs tend to be healthier than 'pure breeds' and closely bred types of dogs often suffer problems because of their limited gene pool. The effort to breed the 'perfect' Bulldog, for example, results in many animals who have trouble breathing because their noses are so squished.

Eugenics simply misinterprets the theory of evolution. Darwin suggested that 'natural selection' favoured animals who varied in a 'manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life.' His whole theory celebrates genetic variety, while eugenics itself tries to eliminate it.

But in any event, CK was absolutely right when he pointed out that Darwin's theory of evolution has probably had a far more devastating effect on the United States than proponents of the Doctrine of Creationism. That's because Darwin's theory is based in fact - and fact is always infinitely more dangerous than fantasy.

That's the major difference between Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Creationism.

The modern Doctrine of Creationism was the child of the fundamentalist movement (many of whom were documented members of the Ku Klux Klan.) It was based on nothing more than wishful thinking.

Eugenics, on the other had, was created by manipulating a scientifically sound theory. The reason eugenics was such a popular lie - embraced by governments and people alike - was because it was based in fact.

When it comes to eugenics, I think this quote is appropriate:

"The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted." George Christoph Lichtenberg.

When it comes to the Doctrine of Creationism, the classics are always the best:

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what a man wishes, he believes to be true." Demosthenes.

Factual Discrepencies

One of my biggest criticisms of those crazy conservatives is that they refuse to admit when they're wrong - whether it's debating the theory of evolution or whether or not being 'gay' is a liberal conspiracy.

But that being said, it would be totally hypocritical of me to not admit when I'd made a booboo. Like the one I made on Monday, when I complained bitterly about the wretched misinformation site Conservapedia misrepresenting the verdict of a 1986 Oxford University Debate featuring 'Darwin's Rottweiler,' professor Richard Dawkins.

The debate was The Huxley Memorial Debate, a celebration of the 1860 debate between the Bishop of Oxford and Thomas Henry Huxley - debating the theory of evolution.

The 1986 rematch featured widely discredited creationist Arthur Ernest Wilder-Smith debating with Richard Dawkins over the hypothesis "That the Doctrine of Creation is more valid than the Theory of Evolution."

After three hours of debate, the motion was defeated and Richard Dawkins clearly won the debate - but things get fuzzy when people try to work out by how much.

The actual records of the debate from Oxford University have inexplicably gone missing, which means it's pretty tricky to get an accurate gauge of the margins to which Dawkins won the debate. Wilder-Smith claims that 'a third - almost one half - of those attending supported creationism' while the American Association for the Advancement of Science only adds to the confusion by recording 198 votes in favour of Professor Dawkins and only l 5 supporting creationism.

The letter 'l' followed by the number 5. On Monday, I had misread this as '15.'

Because of this typo, I can't really accuse the likes of Conservapedia of misrepresenting the number of 'aye' votes because the AAAS clearly didn't record them accurately.

However, I'm also loath to believe Wilder-Smith's claims that 'almost half' of those attending the debate voted in support of creationism. After all Wilder-Smith was a pathological liar (proven by his involvement in a scam to forge dinosaur and human tracks at Paluxy River in Dinosaur Valley State Park - in order to support the theory than man and dinosaur walked the earth at the same time.)

Fortunately, the correct answer was easy enough to find - on Professor Dawkin's own website.

The adamant atheist provides his own take on the voting - admitting that a significant number of people supported the creationists (far more than the 15 I'd surmised) and then provides MP3 recordings of the debate itself, which clearly feature the votes being counted and 115 'ayes' being acknowledged.

Finally, to support Dawkin's account of the debate, the actual number of voters was estimated to be around 300. If the AAAS had been correct - and only 15 had supported the creationist motion - around 100 voters would have abstained (which is unlikely.)

Therefore, I have to hold up my hands and admit I was wrong.

This doesn't mean I support Conservapedia. I still think they're a wretched mine of misinformation. Their entry on Richard Dawkins, for example, has a single paragraph on the man's belief and background and pages of discussion over whether or not he's a 'real' Oxford Professor (since he's on the Oxford University payroll, listed as a professor, I'd say the answer was 'yes.')

Discrediting Dawkins seems far more important to Conservapedia clowns than actually writing an encyclopedia entry on him.

Just remember...

...evolution is only a theory.

Just like gravity. Sir Isaac Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation

Whatever happened to the facts?

I realise I've been ragging on conservatives for quite a while - but the problem is they drive me crazy! Especially trying to debate something with one.

Because conservative logic is blissfully free of fact. Opinions and decisions are not reached through an objective appraisal of the evidence, but through sheer, pig-ignorant gut feeling. "This is the way I feel," a conservative will argue, "and nothing you tell me or show me will make me feel any different."

It's a condition comedian Stephen Colbert characterised as 'Truthiness.' "We're not talking about truth," he explained, "we're talking about something that seems like truth—the truth we want to exist."

"It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts," he continues, "but that's not the case anymore."

Colbert managed to hit the nail right on the head with his definition of the word 'truthiness.' Because we live in a world now that's moving further and further away from rationality, straight into the lap of blissful ignorance.

And there, facts are totally redundant.

A conservative doesn't base his or her opinions on facts. Instead, they're based on a more nourishing mixture of gut feeling and assumptions. Assumption always comes before fact - whereas a rational person examines the facts first and makes assumptions based on them afterwards.

Take creationism, for example. A creationist makes the assumption that the Bible contains an 100% accurate account of the creation of the world - 7,000 years ago when God made Adam from the clay of the earth and Eve from one of his ribs. He examines the evidence afterwards and interprets it in a way that will match his assumption.

A rational person, on the other hand, examines the evidence first and uses that as a basis for his assumptions. Learning that every tree grows a 'ring' during each year of it's life, he could cut down the oldest tree in the world, count the rings and assume (based on the facts) that the world is 4,000 years old (the age of the oldest tree on earth.) Or he could learn that there's a new layer of ice grown in the North Pole every year, so he could drill through the ice and count the layers to discover that the 'world' (or, at least, ice) was 420,000 years old. Similarly, examining geological evidence suggests the world is half a billion years old. All assumptions are based on physical evidence.

That same physical evidence is open to interpretation - which means a rational person might come to one conclusion, but be forced to change their mind should further evidence disprove their original hypothosis. The problem with conservative is that their assumptions are set in stone - often before they've even examined the facts.

Once those assumptions have been made, a true conservative is incapable of changing their mind - no matter what the 'facts' say. That's my major problem with them.

You can't debate with somebody who's incapable of changing their mind. You might as well argue with a brick wall.

Who's Evolved?

Brazil finds fossil of "missing link" to crocodile
Thu Jan 31, 12:30 PM ET

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian paleontologists said on Thursday they had found the fossil of a new species of prehistoric predator that represented a "missing link" to modern-day crocodiles.

The well-preserved fossil of Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, a medium-sized lizard-like predator measuring about 5 1/2 feet (1.7 meters) from head to tail, dates back about 80 million years to the Late Cretaceous period.

"This is scientifically important because the specimen literally is the link between more primitive crocodiles that lived in the era of the dinosaurs 80-85 million years ago and modern species."

And yet creationists are still insisting the world is only 7,000 years old. Presumably this Brazilian behemoth was just a normal crocodile that ate too much.

Really, in the face of a daily onslaught of credible evidence, a refusal to even consider the scientific facts proves that fundementalist Christians aren't evolving at all.

Which doesn't bode well for them. Look what happened to homo neanderthalensis.

Blissful Ignorance

A very disturbing trend I've noticed regarding the upcoming Presidential Election is the enthusiastic embrace of ignorance.

Some people don't like the horrible truth, so they resolutely refuse to accept it - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I'm afraid to say it's the conservatives who are the most enthusiastically ignorant. Many conservatives claim that their refusal of rationality is a 'political choice' whereas really, it's just bloody mindedness tinged with stupidity.

The most obvious example of this is Evolution.

Many conservatives - including presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee - reject the 'theory' of Evolution. Some prefer to consider 'intelligent design' - which is a not-mutually-exclusive theory in which the development of man was overseen by some 'higher power'

But others, like Huckabee himself, prefer 'Creationist' theory. This is the belief that the world was created exactly as described in the Bible - over the course of seven days, a little more that seven thousand years ago.

The problem with this 'theory' is that it's bunkum. Utter, preposterous rubbish.

Because 'Evolution' is not just a theory. It's also a fact.

Evolution is Here to Stay

The 'theory' of Evolution was not just invented by Charles Darwin while he was in a drunken stupor aboard The Beagle. It was a theory pieced together through objective examination of the evidence.

Further research - which yielded carbon-dating figures and the bones of dinosaurs and woolly mammoths - proved conclusively that animals have changed and developed over the course of the millenia and the world is considerably more than 7,000 years old.

Now whether you believe mankind developed from monkeys via random selection or the work of some 'higher power' is up to you - but it's a fact that humanity as we know it has walked the earth for 33,000 years before the Bible claimed it did.

Evolution is only a 'theory' in the same way that gravity is a 'theory.' We theorise why a ball thrown into the air will be drawn inextricably to the ground. The fact that it happens - each and every time - is a incontrovertible fact.

So people like Huckabee - who refuse to accept concrete, inarguable facts that blow their religious dogma out of the water - are just willfully, gleefully ignorant. And is that the sort of person we want running the country?

But leaving aside Evolution - which at least has the armour of religious dogma to protect it - let's examine some of the other incontrovertible facts conservatives blissfully ignore.

Global Warming

In the past century, the temperature of the world has gone up by a little more than a single degree centigrade. This is an astonishing rise in temperature and has been linked directly to the increase of so called 'greenhouse gases' accumulating in the atmosphere since the mid 20th century.

Given the industrialisation of the world, it is estimated that the planet's temperature could rise by as much as 6 degrees centigrade in the 21st century.

The world is getting hotter. That's a fact.

Unless, of course, you're a conservative.

Because a large number of conservatives refuse to believe the 'theory' of Global Warming and the mountain of scientific evidence linking man-made greenhouse gases to the rise in temperature.

One of the major reasons to be skeptical of the 'theory' of Global Warming is because it's convenient not to believe. If Global Warming is real, we're in trouble. It will take an expensive and inconvenient revolution to transform the world's industries to be environmentally friendly.

No more gas-guzzling cars. No more smoke-churning factories. It will take research and investment and - worst of all - we might have get up off the sofa to take part in it.

So plenty of people choose to be skeptical - and the conservative right (linked to oil industry investors desperate for us not to believe in Global Warming) are happy to swallow up the cynical propaganda pumped out to keep us skeptical.

I stole this cartoon from CK's Blog and I hope he doesn't mind!

I recommend reading Wikipedia's post on the subject of Climate Change denial. It's pretty scary reading.

Is there any credibility to the Global Warming skepticism? Well the most knowledgeable person I know is a friend of mine, energy conservationist Margo Bettencourt - who says: "Denying that global warming/climate change is real is akin to saying evolution is 'just a theory'. In both cases, those who don't know how to deal with the consequences of an issue deny it's truthiness. We'd all be better off if these naysayers could accept that we came from monkeys and are changing the climate."

Margo is the dictionary definition of a 'smart cookie' and if her opinions are good enough for Colombia University and the city of New York, they easily trump any of the cynical oil-industry funded 'strategic studies groups' [Or SUV owning laymen from the midwest - Editorial Bear.]

Why so dumb?

With things like Evolution, we just have to take the scientist's word for it (the thousands of scientist's words for it, backed up with mountains of incontrovertible evidence.)

For something like Global Warming, the evidence is right there in front of us.

I was born on a snowy day in February in 1978. In recent years, England can go for years without snow appearing. The bookies have even stopped running odds on a 'white Christmas' because what was once a reasonably common occurrence has now simply ceased to happen.

In 2002, I spent Christmas day in a New York snowstorm. This Christmas, I was walking around without a jacket on. Global warming is HERE. It's a FACT and we're all living it and witnessing it with our own eyes.

It just boggles the mind why people would make a conscious decision to ignore what they see right in front of them and instead live a fantasy of political expediency.

The problem the conservatives are creating for themselves with this 'embrace of ignorance' is clear. They're pouring their credibility down the plug hole.

If somebody chooses to ignore a fact, like the parallel between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, or carbon-dating proving that rocks are millions of years old, it makes you wonder what other incontrovertible truths they're willing to ignore.

I mean, the conservatives tell us that the 'War on Terror' is helping to make America safer. It's the cornerstone of the Republican presidential campaign (have you heard the presidential nominees talk about anything else?)

But are we any safer? And can we take the conservatives' word for it, even if we are?

The economy is another issue. Most conservatives would never vote Democrat because they're the 'party of big spending and tax increases.' Yet history has illustrated through the five recent terms of Republican presidency that Elephants can't balance a chequebook.

Right now, the Republican nominees are bleating about the wonders of Reaganomics. This 'golden age' of the American economy was a balloon that got popped on Black Monday.

Reaganomics is a myth.

In reality, Ronald Reagan plunged America into three trillion dollars worth of debt. While the President delivered tax cuts to the super-rich (slashing a 70% income tax to just 28%) payroll taxes for the average working man actually increased.

His Republican successor, H.W. Bush, similarly won the election on the promise of 'no new taxes' - but reneged on his promise as soon as he'd got his expensive loafers into the Oval Office.

Yet people keep buying into the dreary dogma!

In Conclusion

The embrace of ignorance has got me deeply worried about the upcoming election.

It's a well known fact that most of America votes on blinkered party lines - it's single percentage points of 'swing voters' who make the difference and tip the scales towards a Republican or Democratic president.

But Democracy is a system vulnerable to stupid voters - and there seem to be more of them than ever!

Maybe it's because I have liberal pretensions, or I'm a writer, or I occasionally watched Will & Grace and therefore contributed to the 'pro-gay biased liberal media' or some such rubbish - but I live with a dream of an election fought through open debate, rationality and logic.

Sure, some of our reasons for picking the president are going to be illogical. Some people aren't going to vote for Hillary because she's a woman. Some people are going to vote for Mitt Romney because they mistakenly believe he's really Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell.

But the big issues? It would be nice if policy was dictated by an objective appreciation of the facts. Unfortunately, there's a powerful movement in conservative America that would happily ignore the inconvenient 'facts' in order to embrace a much more comforting fantasy they call the 'truth.'

As historian Indiana Jones said in The Last Crusade:

"FACT."

"History is the search for fact. Not truth."

"If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."