The Religious Wrong---Part II Creationism and Intelligent Design

Those in the Religious Right who deny evolution and support either creationism or ID only show their ignorance to science. Many of those who attack the Theory of Evolution have no education on the subject. For instance Ann Coulter makes odd claims that evolution is part of a godless "religion" and claims it is an already falsified and discredited theory, while she has no credentials in biology! I mean she has a J.D., she has no degrees in any of the sciences. Of course she has the right to make a statement about evolution, she also has a right to blantantly lie. I truly don't understand how people like Ann can believe that teaching valid science in science classrooms can topple their religious beliefs. Do they have that little faith? The Catholic Church has no problem with Evolution, the Big Bang, or any other scientific theories as far as I know. Although I may not subscribe to the beliefs of the Catholics I truly love the statement made by the late Pope John Paul II, "Truth cannot contradict truth."

I have communicated with members of the Kansas State Board of Education on the topic of their vote to redefine science in the classroom as to allow Intelligent Design in science classrooms. One who disagreed with the majority vote to allow ID in science classes responded to me, along with one member who did vote for ID to be allowed. The member who believed ID should be taught was extremely defensive and felt insulted after I pointed out that she was ignorant of much of the information supporting evolution, and suggested she was ignorant of anything regarding the topic. Her only response was "everyone has a right to an opinion", but she was unwilling to accept that evolution was more than an "opinion." This just reinforced how ignorant she was of the topic and showed that the people making this decision had no information on the subject, but still voted solely on the basis of their religious belief.

Creationists and IDists both refuse to actually try to support their points of with evidence. They do try to discredit evolution, using a variety of tired arguments. These arguments include such things as claims that the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes evolution, or mathematically probabilities preclude. The Second Law argument is pure non-sense because the Laws of Thermodynamics can only be applied to isolated systems, and the mathematical probability argument is based on flawed statistical analysis and makes little sense considering evolution is an observed process, so no matter the probability it still does occur. No claims made by creationists or IDists to discredit Evolution disprove it, even if the claims did make sense in most cases the claims would still fail to disprove Evolution. The Theory of Evolution and its various components have been tested again and again, and within 150 years it has not been disproved.

Creationists also tend to ignore specific pieces of evidence, like shared endogenous retroviruses, which confirm a common ancestry for many species. An endogenous retrovirus, or ERV, is a "genetic scar" caused by a retrovirual infection which is passed on from one generation to the next. These "scars" are never the same in any two organisms infected with a retrovirus, yet after mapping the genome of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos it has been found that all three species share the exact same "genetic scars." The simplest explanation for this is that some ancestor of all three species was infected by a retrovirus which altered its DNA and this alteration or "genetic scar" was then passed on. Creationists will say "oh well the creator just made it that way" and an IDist's response to would vary from "well the designer just made things that way" to "well the designer designed that ancestor to change and branch off into those species." Alright...and these statements are scientific how? So you can actually test whether or not a creator or designer exists and you can test to see if a creator or designer was involved in anything? The answer is of course no. No one can test a faith based idea, but you can test Evolution, you can test the Big Bang Theory, you can also test many other theories that IDists and Creationists of the Religious Right claim are not science, and they hold after being tested.