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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Science-Based Faith
All this talk about Intelligent Design got me started reading some of the science blogs. I love those things. Ordinary civilian flamewars have occasional flashes of poetry, but scientists and their hangers-on wield insults like 'lickspittle' and 'homologous' like it was nothing. It's exhilarating.
If you're reluctant to risk your own delicate sensitivities in those waters, I can report to you that evolutionary biologists, mathematicians, biochemists, and their like have completely demolished ID as a legitimate scientific hypothesis, documented the lies and misrepresentations of its proponents, and stripped the thin veneer of respectability from its most cherished arguments. They mop the floor with ID without breaking a sweat.
I predict that it will be a federally mandated (yeah, and subsidized!) high school subject before Bush leaves office.
Well, not predict, I guess, but the Forces of Good only have Truth on their side. The bad guys have [all the stuff that blog-readers are so exquisitely familiar with]. Mandatory ID indoctrination has at least become surreo-bizarroistically possible, like consumers clamoring for limits on tort liability.
Anyway.
It's pretty easy for me to become discouraged in the face of America's latest deeply pathological descent into self-delusion. That being the case, you might wonder why (aside from the exotic taunts) I enjoy earnest but tragically impotent science blogs like Chris Mooney, Pharyngula, and The Panda's Thumb.
Well, I'll tell you. It's because they sometimes offer reason to hope that there are still regular people in the world, and that there's a way for them (us? I flatter myself) to live here.
It's a small thing, but it's something.
P.S. This post was just an excuse to link to Venomous Penguin's Latest Roadtrip.
- posted by de Selby @ 8:44 PM
