Intelligent Design
November 17th, 2005 | The other day, Peter posted something about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the subject of a satirical parody religion created in 2005 to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught alongside evolution (Wikipedia).
Near the end of his post, he wrote, “For those of you who love the ongoing battle between creationism and evolution, and believe science to not be evil, enjoy…”. Now, I just finished writing a paper entitled “Does Intelligent Design Belong in the Classroom?” for my U.S. Schools class1, so I couldn’t resist responding to his post. Before I continue, though, I should say that I talked with Peter about this and mentioned that I had thought about posting it, and he encouraged me to do so. Peter: I love you.
My first response was as follows:
I just wrote a paper for my U.S. Schools class on why I think Intelligent Design (not to be confused with biblical Creationism) should be taught alongside evolution. I don’t think science is evil at all. By the way, did you know the creator of the FSM got an $80,000 advance to write a book about it?
Peter responded:
Jake– This is just more evidence that you actually KNOW what you write about in your blog posts and write intelligent things. I just like pictures that make fun of the Sistine Chapel. But in actuality, I do like the idea of Intelligent Design MORE than straight biblical creationism, but it just seems a bit naive to me, almost that we’re defeated by things we don’t understand. Should we be?
Again, I replied. I actually replied twice because the first thing I wrote didn’t make any sense, so I deleted it and re-wrote a reply:
It’s not that we’re defeated by things we don’t understand, it’s just saying that perhaps traditional science is limited in its ability to provide understanding. Maybe I am sounding too postmodern.
This is where the conversation ended. But it mustn’t end.2 Engaging in conversation is the only way we will get anywhere meaningful in this discussion. We’ll see where this goes. Feel free to leave comments on your particular view.
- You can download the paper in .pdf format here (Adobe Acrobat, 81k). Comments are always welcome. ↩
- Yes, mustn’t. ↩
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Jake, three posts in one day. I don’t really know if I can keep up. I read your paper and I really liked it! I think that it is interesting to think that Intelligent Design is not an exclusive Christian idea. I would agree and say that because of this there isn’t much of a counter in people saying there must be seperation between church and state. Your paper made think of something I have been discussing in my Social Policy course. We were discussing the role of religion in policy making. There are many people that say that religion should have no place in the government and that no one wants to have someone else’s morals and beliefs ultimately pushed on them through law. However, can we find a single law that doesn’t have some sort of values and morals behind it? I think a very easy example is the law against murder. We believe as a society that killing is wrong and that if it happens there are punishments. If I am not correct, isn’t there a commandment in the bible saying thou shall not kill? Of course there is , so does this law pressure people into becoming Christian. I don’t think so. Ultimately, religion and faith have roles in our lives and I think the issue of evolution and intelligent design is an interesting debate that must be discussed.