Oops--Is That A Thunderbolt Crashing Through My Ceiling?

In a story I missed a couple of days ago (but thanks to Solar for trying to bring it to my attention) the Dover, Pennsylvania school board that last year approved the teaching of intelligent design was voted out of office. This was on Tuesday, ironically the same day that Kansas was revving up its own time machine to return us to the dark ages.

Now loudmouth televangelist Pat Robertson--who a few months ago called for the assassination of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez--is warning the residents of Dover that God will soon unleash his wrath upon them because they have rejected his word.

Wait, I'm confused.... Haven't intelligent design proponents been telling us that their "theory" is not religious in nature? If that's the case, then why do we have a well-known religious leader invoking the wrath of God over the matter?

In the comments to my Nov. 8 post about the 15th century, someone wrote:

"Well, It's simply a matter of theory. Should the theories of evolution be promoted ahead of the theories of creation? Both are unnatural and both are unproven from the perspective of science."

This prompted some additional feedback from Nate, who brought up a good point about the theory of evolution: In science, a theory is much more than just a guess. It's basically one step below being a law. And as another commentator put it, gravity may be just a theory also, but he's not about to stand under a falling boulder.

There's not much more that I can add to that, except to re-emphasize Nate's point: In science, a "theory" is one step below being a law. So is the theory of evolution proven? Well, perhaps not to the extent that the laws of thermodynamics have been proven, but it's damn close. To dismiss evolution as "unnatural" and "unproven from the perspective of science" is indicative of a mind-boggling level of ignorance.

The theory of evolution is also supported by everything we know about continental drift, dinosaurs, biochemistry, asteroid impacts and how they triggered mass extinctions, genetics, and the fossil record. And more recently, a group of scientists constructed a mathematical analysis predicting the number of harmful mutations in the genetic code of chimpanzees. The results supported evolution, and demonstrated how a small group of cells 3.5 billion years ago could give rise to the biodiversity we see around us today.

On the other hand, the best argument that intelligent design proponents can come up with is that the lifeforms on Earth are just too darn complicated to be random. Well, I think trigonometry is complicated and completely beyond my comprehension. But I'm also willing to accept the fact that trigonometry is probably not the result of a divine miracle.

To be honest, I personally believe in neither evolution nor intelligent design. They're BOTH a load of crap. I firmly believe that the world--indeed, the universe as a whole--was created by the flying spaghetti monster.