Intelligent design as we know it today is misnomer.

A bold statement only if one ignores the origins of the term “intelligent design” as it is used today.

Creation science

In short, creation science is an attempt to scientifically validate the Biblical account of creation.

Modern creationism emerged shortly after the conclusion of World War I, when Christian fundamentalism was on the rise in the United States.  In 1925, the state of Tennessee passed the Butler Act, prohibiting teachers from denying the Biblical account of the origins of man, and also the teaching of evolution of man.

The Cold War eventually put evolution back into text-books across the country for fear that the Soviet Union would outpace the United States in science education.

Since the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood, by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, the creationist movement has been slowly gaining steam.  The Genesis Flood posits that Earth was created in seven days, and is less than 7,000 years old.  In other words, the authors take a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Bible and examine the scientific plausibility of it.

Creation science by nature seeks to disprove the effectiveness of scientific standards such as radio-carbon dating, as well as accepted scientific facts in cosmology, and biology.

Defenders of creationism tend to be fundamentalist or orthodox Christians.

Creationists were forced to change their tactics when a Supreme Court case ruled that creation science was religious in nature, and therefore could not be taught in public schools.

Edwards v. Aguillard

In 1987, the United States Supreme court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolution was unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment clause of the first amendment.  Which reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”

After that landmark decision, an edited version of Of Pandas and People, the first creationist text-book was released.  The text-book was written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, both of them self-professed creationists.  Percival Davis, when asked about the reasons for writing the creationist text-book, told the Wall Street Journal in 1994:

“Of course my motives were religious. There’s no question about it.”

In what way was Pandas edited?

Every instance of the word “creation” or “creator” or any derivative thereof found in the text was replaced with “intelligent design”, “designer”, or any derivative thereof.  Thus, modern Intelligent Design was born.

Shortly after the case, The Discovery Institute was founded to advertise the concept of Intelligent design, and manufacture false controversy about the acceptance of evolution in the scientific community.

Looking at the history of modern creationism, it’s easy to see that intelligent design is firmly rooted in creationism.  But nevertheless, ID had to be different enough to appear at least slightly more legitimate in a court of law or a classroom, so terms were changed  and “God” or “Creator” was taken out of the picture. Read the rest of this entry »

Thermodynamics is the most fundamental science.  The observed laws of thermodynamics are true across the universe, right down to the the quarks that make up hadrons, and even the the things we know nothing about like dark matter and dark energy seem to follow the laws.

Thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics is what I want to talk about:

The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system always increases over time, approaching a maximum value.

The definition of entropy.

Basically, things will continue to become more and more complicated until an equilibrium is reached.

Just a thought

I’ve suggested in earlier articles that life is the universe.  Humans are not a part of the universe, we are the universe. As Carl Sagan famously said: “We are starstuff.”

The nature of the universe is entropic.

Think for a second about this:  What if survival is a transcendent mechanic?  What if a survival mechanic is prerequisite to existence?

Think about the universe, and everything in it, as one entity.  All the matter, light, life forms, planets, stars, black holes, radiation, and dark matter…everything, as one.  According to the big bang theory, it all had to start somewhere, so it’s not unreasonable to think of everything in the universe, including humans, as related on the quantum level.

So what if the universe has a survival mechanic built into it?

If so, then wouldn’t the emergence of life be inevitable?  Wouldn’t life be a necessary step in the evolution of the universe?  Wouldn’t evolution be an integral part of the universe?

That survival mechanic of the universe is called entropy.  Nature = entropic.

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The renowned biologist Charles Darwin, in his book The Origin of species, pointed to three culprits that make evolution inevitable:

Variation
If you have variation within a species (Different sized beaks, different sized turtle shells, etc.)…

Selection
And if you have a struggle to survive (wonder why elephants aren’t wondering all over the planet?)…

Heredity
And if the traits and/or survival skills are passed down to new members of a species over a time…

Then…
The later generations of a species would be better adapted to the environment then their parents.

If you have these three behaviors, then you MUST get evolution, or as Philosopher Daniel Dennet put it:

“Design out of chaos, without the aide of mind.”

Read the rest of this entry »