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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (712883)	11/14/2005 9:50:25 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

What about Vishnu? By Joshua Holland Posted on November 10, 2005 Two points here. First, I don't see the need for a drawn out argument about whether or not "intelligent design" is legitimate science. By definition, it's not. Central to the scientific method is the dispositive principle - every theory can be disproved. Evolution, like gravity, is a theory that has withstood the test of time and numerous challenges. But if empirical evidence (that could be tested repeatedly) emerged tomorrow which disproved evolution or gravity, scientists would accept those data. They'd have to. ID begins with a given that can't be shaken. There's a designer, argue its advocates, and that's the end of the story. It's an article of faith. But more to the point, I've long believed that the way to fight these ID hacks is on their own terms. Allow me to repost part of an old argument, edited slightly: Creationists claim that they simply want a fair representation of the "competing" views of the origins of mankind. It's not that they want to impose the Christian story of Adam and Eve on school kids, they just want Genesis and Darwin to be given equal time. One can counter that by requiring that, say, the Scientologists' belief that we're descended from aliens be included in science curricula as well. After all, just about every religious and cultural tradition has a narrative about how humanity got started. The creationists' inevitable discomfort with such diversity would prove that their agenda is, in fact, about promoting Christianity as a national religion. It looks like that strategy paid off handsomely at the Tulsa Zoo. This is from the New York Times [$$]: Christian creationists won too much of a victory for their own good in Tulsa, where the local zoo was ordered to balance its evolution science exhibit with a display extolling the Genesis account of God's creating the universe from nothing in six days. A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism. After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world's multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa. You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P'an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow? The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora's box. In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration. See, that strategy worked out just fine. Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer. © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: alternet.org