The other day I noticed an ad for Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled. It had a cute picture of Ben doing his best Angus Young impersonation so I figured I’d check it out. The site begins with a quote from Richard Dawkins which made me think, “Hey, this must be interesting.”
In fact the keywords in this article are probably making the ad show up right above this. Little did I know when I watched the trailer that its just more intelligent design propaganda. Anyone with any knowledge on the subject knows that intelligent design is just creationism dolled up as pseudoscience. When people use God as an answer to unknowns it just spreads ignorance. Just because we don’t fully understand something doesn’t mean that some great, all powerful being is there in the gaps pulling the strings and making things work. Evolution is just a theory but its one backed up by actual evidence. We have fossils showing various stages in the evolution of characteristics. We can look at the proteins in viruses and see how they have changed to serve new purposes over time.
Intelligent design zealots blatantly ignore this evidence and even pervert it for use in their own cause. Expelled claims that science is persecuting new “theories” like intelligent design simply because it gives a new answer to previously held beliefs. Discrediting pseudoscience with facts is not persecution. This is just another in a long line of religious people claiming they are being attacked when they have been the ones doing the attacking for so long. They can’t stand having the tables turned on them especially when the other side has a much better argument.
The intelligent design case of Dover, Pennsylvania did a great job of peeling back the layers of propaganda and showing that it’s nothing more that creationism re-branded. The book that the religious right was trying to have added to the curriculum was called Of Pandas and People. During the trial early drafts of the book were uncovered and what was found was scary and even a little funny. The publishers had simply taken the word creationism out of the book and pasted intelligent design in its place. Sometimes not even totally replacing it thus creating words such as creintelligent deisgnationism.
Yes, people have a right to believe in what they want. That’s one of the greatest parts about living in America. Its when one group of people uses lies to try and force their point of view on people that things go wrong. Go ahead and believe that there is a supreme being controlling everything. I prefer to look at the world and enjoy it for what it is. A beautifully complicated place that has evolved from incredibly simple things over an incredibly long time. Time is an amazing thing and I don’t think religious people give it enough credit. They like the instant gratification they get when they say the world was made in seven days or when they can’t think of a natural reason for something so they instantly jump to “God did it”.
Science is not persecuting the theory of intelligent design. It simply debunking a theory invented to get more people on the God bandwagon. Let people know that this movie is nothing but a bunch of creationist blather and hopefully we’ll end up with a few less people being drawn towards believing in a pure fabrication. I’ll leave you with this quote from one of my heroes, Douglas Adams.
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
January 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Im anti religion when was child,in the school i dont want to go religion class,and the teach put me always in punishment,because i draw the devil -i had very good lack ,the teach music always take aut punishment,did know one teach music in Brasil have more power then religion whem i remember this after so many years i love Brasil. (sorry my english)religion ????????
Regards Nilza