Salon.com Books | Assault on evolution

This IDT (Intelligent Design Theory) crap is fantastic. Ask a bunch of questions of evolution that aren't easily explained, or are unusually complex but have a conventional, albeit erroneous, explanation in pop culture and then draw the conlusion that there must be a supernatural master genius behind it all. "We detect intelligent design in events that are highly improbable (thus complex) and that also correspond to some independently given pattern (thus specified)." Something (to our knowledge at the time) is improbable and yet winds up being specifically organized; we must therefore conclude that it was designed by a supernatural being. It's important to test the accepted theories of science, but this doesn't come close. IDT reminds me more of an episode of Star Trek:The Next Generation I saw last week when the crew discovers that all the species of the galaxy are decendant from a single entity which evolved long before everything else in the universe. Upon the realization that they were dying out, they sprinkled their genetic code throughout the worlds that had life-supporting potential. They also encoded a message in the code that revealed a wonderful message once all the genetic strains were brought together. Undoubtedly this is why there is evidence of a life supporting atmosphere on Mars. Now I'm all off topic.
- posted by levinson @ 2/28/2001 07:09:00 AM