Friday, April 21, 2006

Science Friday

As a genre, arguments against Intelligent Design rely heavily on hard-core science. This piece in the Telegraph by Steve Jones does, too, but in an unusually funny and well-crafted way:

The ID crew, to use Darwin's own phrase, "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond [their] comprehension". The first Hawaiians to cast eyes on Europeans were so astonished by their great vessels that they thought their builders to be gods. The ID argument is just the same. It is the logic of ignorance, idleness and incuriosity: I am very smart, even I do not understand this, so why bother to explain it except by bringing in God (if necessary under an alias)?

Scientists, unlike creationists, do not know everything, but as they learn more, every such claim has been rubbished. Evolution is not mocked but glorified by life's intricacy. ID is a bad idea, but has generated lots of good research, all of which shows how inane it is.
Read the full article to see how Jones uses Queen Victoria's hatred of "flies, turtle soup and Tories" to illuminate the processes of evolution.