Listics

I don’t know why "Intelligent Design" bothers me so much.  It seemed a reasonable approach to posit a metaphysical first cause in the ignorant Lutheran days of my pre-adolescence.  It all has to start somewhere, I thought.  Most of the other fourth graders in my set agreed with me in those rock skipping afternoons by the river when we would lose ourselves in discussions of the relative merits of GM versus Chrysler and catechism versus Sunday school.

Okay.  I really do know why it bothers me and the matter is complicated.  First, "Intelligent Design" is a disinformation technique, a propagandist’s approach to the introduction of religious beliefs to the public educational systems.  It is, in other words, a lie.

People who lie usually have a reason for it.  The first sentence of this post is a lie, stated for some light-weight rhetorical purpose and quickly acknowledged.  The people who promote the big lie of "Intelligent Design" do so to thwart public policy and democratic process, to pervert religious principles by rationalizing that the end justifies the means, to ultimately betray their own god by denying her place and her name in the structure of their political arguments.

Yet I am not a big fan of "Inherit the Wind" arguments either.  Spencer Tracy dropped the ball when he got into a pissing contest about the length of a biblical day.  We were very much in tune with Tracy’s arguments in the fourth and fifth grade, but since then the kids who were cannon-balling off the old 4-ton Bridge with me have pretty much come to the reasonable conclusion that it’s not about denying literalism in order to come to terms with biblical inconsistency, it’s simply a matter of dismissing theism.  Of course some of those kids grew up to cling to primitive xian beliefs and advocate that "Intelligent Design" be taught to public school children, but when I think of them I’m heartened by these words from Betty Bowers:

Jesus told us that the poor will always be with us. But this simple statement of a thoroughly annoying fact should not be construed as a direction to actually acknowledge them when they wander into your field of vision. I am reminded of the last time this passage from Matthew was quoted to me. It was by dear Juanita after she informed me that she was resigning from Golden Door Spa. As she carefully scraped the deep-cleansing Italian mud off my troublesome t-zone area, she said: "For you have the pores always with you; but me you will have not always."

If, like me, you would like to encounter the bizarre Bush-led Christian Jihadist movement and their Trojan horse issue of "Intelligent Design," you might consider signing up for membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.