Intelligent (?) Design

I'm in a state of disbelief that people are still so anti-evolution. I don't understand a faith in God that is so threatened by the principles of evolution. Would a human body be so much "degraded" by having developed through processes of evolution, rather than being created nearly ex nihilo out of dirt? Hmmmm...I don't see the difference. But the key point to me, and the nail in the coffin of teaching Intelligent Design in school, is that it isn't science. The beauty of science is that it is a discovery process, resulting from forming hypotheses, running experiments, making observations, then drawing conclusions from those observations. When we close the door on discovery, saying that the earth was Intelligently Designed, we close the door on inquiry and probing, and therefore close the door on discovery and learning. I refuse to think that God doesn't want us to study his earth and learn as much as we can. To say, well, God designed it and and therefore it is unknowable, that's just rubbish. Seriously, why do people think that the Bible is a science textbook? People don't use the Bible as a medical textbook, or a math textbook, or a cook book, or an economics book. So why do we feel the need to say, "Oh! This science does not conform with the story in the Bible (which we have no actual scientific evidence of), so we'd better just throw it out." No, it flies in the face of science as a process of knowing things. There is just no point in closing the door on inquiry and thought. It does no good, but a lot of harm.

(This rant was inspired by today's Diane Reams show on NPR)

President Bush Strikes again

and another p.s. The speakers on Diane's show are pointing out a key point, which is that evolution should be viewed as an organizing principle for biology. No, we don't know all of the particulars, but who cares? That's why we keep studying.