Move over Butztown Pennsylvania...

Apparently Kansas is now the laughingstock of the world:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/08/evolution.debate.ap/index.html

Yep, Kansas has voted to redefine standards for teaching science such that these standards must state that "some concepts have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology...The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life."

This really bothers me, for many reasons. I have absolutely no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe. I may make fun of you for it, especially if it's particularly stupid (like that guy on the white sox, Karl Evritt I think his name is, who doesn't believe dinosaurs existed) but in the end you're free to think whatever you like. The main problem I have with all this I.D. stuff is that proponents of it are playing it off as a scientific theory, and people are buying it. Intelligent Design is in no way a scientific theory, however. While much of the I.D. literature sites science, it does so out of context and in a purposefully misleading manner. In general, their arguement boils down to "science can't explain this right now; clearly this means God designed it that way". Logically one would think, hey there's plenty of things science couldn't explain one hundred years ago that we know about now, there's no reason to invoke God. But people for some reason seem to lose site of this when this very basic arguement is cloaked in molecular biology or astro-physics.

The other problem is, I.D. just doesn't make sense to me. If I were God, constantly tinkering around with gaps in evolution would be annoying. I'd much rather just define a few basic laws to govern physical interactions, hit the big bang button to start things up, and sit back and watch. I.D. argues that evolution can explain many things, but that at certain points God intervened to fix things just too complicated for natural selection. Maybe I'm just lazy, but if you were an omnipotent God, would you create an evolutionary system that wasn't good enough to work on its own?