Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Intelligent design

Times of India news:

Dover School Board votes to include intelligent design into school curriculum.

I do not know much about the theory of intelligent design , neither did I waste any time trying to learn about it. I never read about theory of evolution after school. At that time I felt that this theory is quite sketchy at least the way it was taught to in those horrible books by even more horrible teachers in our rural school (One day our biology teacher told us that plants don’t need oxygen to breathe, they breathe corbon-di-oxide! I disagreed and so he threw me out of his class and told me that I can attend his class again if I can prove what I said. I did that the next day and was able to hear his invaluable lectures again. I asked another science teacher what is the substance in ashes. He said it is carbon. I asked then why doesn’t it get burned like the rest of it. No answer). I want to read about I sometime in the future. But right now my knowledge is very limited. Then why am I opening my big mouth about this controversy about which so many PhD’s have given their opinion? I have a few points to make.

Dover school board members, who voted intelligent design into the school curriculum, said that they are not trying to promote religion. They want to promote free inquiry into an alternate theory. Fair enough. That is exactly what scientists want to do. They are also not claiming that the intelligent designer is God. According to their own testimony, all of them are deeply religious. So it can be safely assumed that they believe in the existence of God. So that leaves us with a creator and an intelligent designer for this universe. Being an IT slave, it seems me like a designer and a coder (God!). What a fantastic idea. It only lacks the analyst and the tester.

It is so obvious that the members are lying that we don’t even need to prove it, especially since this blog is a not a court of law. That leads me to my second point. The intelligent designer, who designed these school board members, wanted them to lie to spread this theory! I ask these board members do you really want to promote your God by lying, is your God so powerless. And if he has so little power is it worth worshipping him?

To those who want to undermine science and promote faith, I want to make an appeal. Think what science has done for you. Next time you turn on your light or make a phone call, imagine that these things were made possible because people refused to surrender to faith and dared to ask questions. They faced torture, they were killed, they burnt alive by people like you, but they refused to give up. They did not want money, women (most of them were men!), earthly pleasure; they wanted to conquer ignorance and fear. Most of them were did not want people to recognize them, but they did want people to recognize their goal, to know the truth and to dispel fear. Science does not promote hatred, it does not incite violence, and it does not provoke war. Science promotes freedom (freedom from fear, freedom from hunger, freedom from whims of the natures), it promotes justice, it promotes equality and it promotes happiness. Even after knowing all these simple things people choose to promote faith instead of science, I don’t know what to say to their designer or their coder. May be science should work a little harder to create tools that will make them understand this simple fact.

1 comment:

Ron said...

Interesting.

You know, I saw your comment on my Purulia post much later, and just couldnt access your blog from work coz anything with "chat"in the URL is behind a firewall and all that...but anyways, now that Im here..you have a very nice blog..most interesting!! Will keep visitng whenever I can from outside work :)