Shouzer

No matter what you might think of cloning and whatnot (for the record, I don’t like the idea of clones myself, but this is actually pretty far from it), this is just damn cool.  Apparently doctors have created this thing they call “pixie dust” from pigs, which “encourages” stem cells to do their thing.  If it actually works out, I can only imagine the long term benefits within the health community.  Check out the story right here.

[Edit:] This ended up being a monster post. Despite that, I’d be really happy to hear what anybody else has to say about this. Comments are strongly encouraged!

There was a discussion on an email alias at work recently about intelligent design, and though the original conversation got extremely off-topic, I nonetheless spent quite a while thinking about it. From what I’ve seen, the typical debate seems to end up breaking down to religion vs atheism. Those that support religion are ostensibly religious, and those in favor of evolution or natural selection are typically perceived as atheist. What I don’t understand is why the two groups have to be mutually exclusive.

First–and I want to get this out of the way as quickly as possible–intelligent design is not science, nor should it ever be taught in school as a complement or alternative to evolution as science. Intelligent design’s sole purpose is to bring into science the requirement of a higher being. This mere fact alone precludes it from being science. Instead, it’s a giving up. Rather than actually trying to explain the way things are in physical terms, it’s a weak fallback to an unprovable, untestable, and intrinsically unscientific explanation.

Now, having said that, I don’t know why you have to be atheist to believe in evolution. I’m certainly not. I don’t understand what’s so “unintelligent” about evolution. The idea of natural selection explains a lot of things fantastically well. An organism’s or species’ favorable random mutations will become more common in successive generations furthering that species. It makes sense. It’s almost perfect.

So why can’t a typical Christian, for instance, accept this? Couldn’t it be the case that God created the world in this manner? We don’t have to remove the scientific randomness of it–God doesn’t have to be molding every single human, bug, and bacteria created. He doesn’t have to be actively carrying electricity over copper wires. No, science can explain it. If you believe in God, why not believe that He created things in a rational, explainable way? It would be well within his power.

The problem for me is that convservative religious groups often accept science when it’s convenient and condemn it when it’s not. They’ll write up blog posts from their laptops on their planes about how they didn’t evolve from monkeys. Oh yeah, and I suppose angels are storing those posts magically in the laptops while there’s no internet connection. They’re probably carrying the planes, too. Cell phones? They’re really work through a huge network of angels carrying our voices over vast distances. It has nothing to do with radio waves.

I’m a firm believer in science–real science–though I also mentioned earlier that I’m not atheist. I don’t accept the “general” notion of intelligent design, but I think natural selection is fairly intelligent. I don’t believe it’s too far-fetched to say some higher power designed things to work that way (i.e. it was an intelligent design…). In fact, I think it’s naive to believe that science will ever have all the answers.

The big bang, for example, while a fascinating theory, doesn’t actually explain the beginning of anything. Go far enough in the past and there was a single mass of infinite density, which then began expanding at an exponentially rapid pace? Honestly, what the fuck is that? Where did this magical ball (or point) of mass come from? Even if science can someday explain that, the next question will be what caused the thing that caused the big bang and so on? It’ll be an infinite series of questions and answers with no end.

The existence of life, of our universe, of anything is inherently beyond the realm of our scientific understanding. At the end of the day, taking all real science into account, “Why do I exist?” is still a valid question. That above all else necessitates my belief in a higher power, but it does not negate–nor should it supplant–actual science. And to attempt to do so with frivolous “theories” is a waste of time and a detriment to society as a whole.