IDiocy

October 3, 2005

IDiocy

Dear State Senator Mike Fair,

If there were a Dumbass Olympics, you would take the gold in every event. I am referring, of course, to your recent defense of an Intelligent Design curriculum for the State of South Carolina:

We'd like to see neutrality. We'd like to see science speak for itself and not have advocates for a theory of a single cell becoming man, for which there is no evidence.

I'll spare you the zygote jokes, but please answer me this: Are you really that dumb? Is this simply a ploy for the Hicktard vote, or is your single brain cell really that jealous of the other multicelled cerebrums?

Of course, you aren't the only one fighting in this War on Common Sense. Here in Utah we've got Chris Buttars giddily spreading his dementia with gems like "We get different types of dogs and different types of cats, but you have never seen a dat."

But I digress. Mike, nobody's telling you what to teach in Sunday School, so you would be wise to leave science to the scientists. Of course, you've already shown us your position on wisdom and rational thought. If ever there were definitive evidence against Intelligent Design, you and your fanclub would be it.

Sincerely,
Homo Sapiens

Posted by jon at October 3, 2005 3:35 PM

Comments

I agree that we don't want public school teachers attempting to teach religious beliefs on the origins of the things on this earth. Whose beliefs would they teach anyway? No one can agree. I would argue that teachers need to be reprimanded if they take opportunities to attack and belittle religions and religious beliefs when they teach about evolution. It's uncalled for.
I was teaching a class recently about God and it seemed pretty obvious to all of us that whether you know exactly how God created things or not, it's hard to deny that things don't appear to have happened by accident.

Como vai, jensen, ta bem? Espero que ta feliz e tendo muito sucesso.

Posted by: Aaron at November 4, 2005 2:58 PM

E aí Aarão, como é que tá? Tô ótimo. Você ainda fala com o pessoal de São Manuel?

I think often times the reason those in the strictly ID/creationism camp are so anti-evolution is that they misunderstand what it says. Evolution doesn't even attempt to explain the "why" of our existence, only the "how". The former is better left to religion and philosphy.

Evolution, much like physics, is based on observable rules and principles. If you push a boulder from a precipice, it will roll downhill. How quickly it gets to the bottom, and where exactly it ends up will depend on many variables such as its shape, mass, and what obstacles it encounters on the way down. But the main thing is that it is really not by accident; where it ends up will be a direct consequence of everything that happened along the way -- you can go back and say, "The boulder was deflected southward at this point because of this treestump." Evolution works the same way; every major change is a consequence of pressures from natural selection.

Posted by: jon at November 4, 2005 4:29 PM

Converso com Pierre por meio de email de vez enquanto. Estou em contato com Cundick e ele foi la recentemente.

Posted by: Aaron at November 7, 2005 1:22 PM

In all honesty, how anyone can study, I mean really study not just look at a book about the human retna and the incomprehensible
complexity of this ( designed ) mechanism
and come away with a theory that it just happened is istelf incomprehensible. And how did our face know that there would be something for us to see.?
It then just happened to develope these two eyes because ( nature / evolution ) decided there would be light particles that could be parsed and turned into information we could use to further our existence... Good Lord, does anyone else see how crazy this seems. I always hear scientists using the " Occam's Razor " theory to explain things. Well think about how it applies here.

Posted by: james at December 7, 2005 3:48 PM

Well, when you consider that the eye has evolved independently at least 40 different times, and that there are at least 9 different types of eyes found in nature (including pinhole, camera-lense, curved-reflector and compound eyes) it makes you wonder what is so intelligent about that. Why not just use one design?

The evolution of the eye is actually quite simple, if you look at it in smaller steps -- after all, we are talking about billions of steps over billions of years. Simple organisms develop a sensitivity to light... they are drawn to it and subsequently find more food. This process is gradually refined over eons to allow them to distinguish movement, allowing predators to catch prey more efficiently... you get the idea.

To me, that is a hell of a lot more logical and plausible than ID. And it has the added benefit of actually having evidence to back it up. ID, on the other hand, is not scientific in any sense of the word — it is a sort of agnosticism to science and knowledge.

Posted by: jon at December 7, 2005 4:57 PM

It's all about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, man... teach that in schools...

Posted by: gb at December 7, 2005 8:08 PM

Ramen, my pastafarian brother.

Posted by: jon at December 8, 2005 8:10 AM

I actually believe in ID, but I really don't need Chris Buttars being my spokesperson. He's an idiot to put it mildly. He is using this for political gain, to get his name in the papers, to push his own political vendettas, as another reason to attack education which he hates so much (since he didn't get much), and so on. Buttars is proof that intelligent design did not work in all cases. He's not exactly proof of an "evolved" person either though. Maybe that ought to be the big debate--what does Butterboy REALLY respresent? Maybe he's the missing "link" to a whole new theory.

Posted by: jojo at December 23, 2005 10:14 PM