When I was in the third grade, I was entered into the school Science Fair. To this day, I couldn't tell you why. All I had done was paint nine Styrofoam balls to look like the planets -- in those days there were nine -- and stuck them on Styrofoam disks with some wire. Half of them didn't even stand straight, although I was fairly proud of the cardboard ring I made for Saturn.
My goofy model solar-system was put in competition against the usual assortment of volcanoes, microscopes made from mayonnaise jars, and kit-built radios that picked up nothing but static. The only interesting thing I saw that day was an experiment called "Gravity Doesn't Work." The idea was that the theory of gravity states 'what goes up must come back down' could be easily debunked using a magnet; little things like pins and paper-clips jumped from off the table and on to the magnet. They never came 'back down.'
I thought that this was marvelous! The scientific applications were limitless in my 8 year old mind; with a big enough magnet you could lift a dog, or make an airplane that never crashed, or even fly to the moon!
The judges interviewed me about my dumb planets, and I answered their questions as if they were asking what I wanted for my last meal. Then they all trotted off to interview the brilliant kid with the magnets -- surely a formality, since anyone could see his project was going to rewrite the fundamental paradigm of technology -- and I sank into my chair and sulked.
Turns out that my petulance was for nothing, the kid with his magic, gravity-defying magnet didn't win a single prize. I couldn't comprehend that! Had these judges no vision? Couldn't they see the limitless applications to which this marvelous new device could be put?
I had to know, so I walked over to the brilliant magnet-kid and asked him if they told him why he didn't win, and adding that I thought he should have won. He said it was because the judges said he didn't show that he understood gravity or magnetism, and because of that his experiment failed to support the hypothesis.
At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about.
* * * * *
Minding my own business is a hobby of mine. Like almost anyone who was raised in a big city, I'm pretty comfortable with not going out of my way to find out what kind of trouble I can get into.
Let's get this out of the way up front; I'm an atheist. There, I said it. The dirtiest word in the American vernacular, and I willingly self-apply it. Look, I'm not one of those raving lunatics who rants about how stupid religious people are, or how the Pope is secretly creating a clockwork army of Golden Pedophiles to rid the world of innocent children and thereby bring about the Apocalypse. All it means is that I don't believe in any gods, nor do I put stock in any holy book that any of those particular gods authored as dictated but not read.
Despite what I've heard about myself from others, I live a perfectly happy, well-adjusted, morally centered life. I might not care who fed which apple to whom, but this is America and you can tell whatsoever version of the story you please; there's this little thing called the First Amendment that guarantees you that right.
I'm a fan of the First Amendment. I believe in it. I think it represents the best of what America is. In part, the Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ," which basically means that government can't force religion on the people, and that people can't force religion on the government, or on each other. There's a bunch of boring Supreme Court cases to back up that point; McCollum v. Board of Ed; Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet; Sherbert v. Verner; City of Boerne v. Flores; I'm getting drowsy just listing them! Everyone has the right to be who they want to be.
Another of my core beliefs is in education. The depth of human knowledge is truly amazing, and passing that knowledge to the next generation is important; how else are they going to have time to figure out new things unless we teach them what we already know? It may seem silly to say it like that, but this is the why you don't carry around a portable CD player anymore. We realized it could be better and turned it into an iPod Touch!
Sometimes, my belief in these two things puts me in a unique position. For example; there are a multitude of groups that recognize themselves as Creationists. They are folks who believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Earth (and consequently, everything on it) is only about 6,000 years old. Therefore, it must have been created in its complete, modern form.
Creationists will go to great lengths to reconcile this belief with the world around them. They have been known to use stories of Noah's Flood to explain everything from fossilized dinosaur remains to craters on the moon, but their greatest goal is to debunk Darwin.
The Theory of Evolution has been under attack by religious fundamentalists for almost as long as it has been considered credible by the scientific community; some people find it unthinkable that humans could have arisen from a 'lesser' species through natural processes. Accepting that would undermine their dogma, their faith in the superiority of mankind, and deny them their rightful place as special in the eyes of their chosen deity.
Unable to accept that possibility, Creationists attempt to disprove and lampoon evolution (which they often call Darwinism) at every opportunity. You may have heard of the crocoduck argument. It goes like this; if evolution can turn a crocodile into a duck, why has nobody ever found a crocoduck?
People who understand evolution are quick to point out that the existence of such a creature would actually be the clinching proof that the theory was wrong; an animal of one species will never give birth to a creature that is unrecognizable as a member of that same species. Evolution from one form to another is the sum total of changes to an animal species over a vast amount of time. It is not photoshopping a crocodile's head onto a duck. Scientific people do better work than that.
There's this group called the Discovery Institute, which sounds pretty scientific. Read a bit about them on their website and they seem a pretty reasonable bunch. In their words, "As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education."
If you're not familiar with it, intelligent design (sometimes called ID) is the idea that the universe, and the living things that inhabit it, is too complicated to have arisen naturally, and therefore must have been deliberately, intelligently arranged. If it sounds suspiciously like the definition of Creationism to you, then you're right! ID was put forward as an alternate version of the theory of evolution; it's a theory that is more palatable to the Creationists because it allows for human beings to spring into existence at the behest of their deity in the relatively recent past instead of forcing them to struggle their way up to humanity from a demeaning start in monkeyhood millions of years ago. It's also a theory that has a better chance to worm its' way into public schools, as the overt references to religion have been glossed over.
It seems pretty simple why the Discovery Institute would want to oppose ID; as a religiously inspired idea, teaching it in schools was ruled unconstitutional in the end of 2005; "[Intelligent Design] is not [science], and moreover. . . ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." (Judge John E. Jones III, Kitzmiller v. Dover).
The problem arises only if you read a bit further into the Discovery Institute's website; "Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community."
So, they don't want to require ID to be taught, since it would be illegal to push their religious views into public schools; that might infringe on the rights of people to believe in other religious views. However, they do want teachers to voluntarily spread the idea, since that will squeeze the theory into the school system through a tiny legal loophole.
All this because the theory of evolution doesn't fit into their world view. Which is a shame, because the science of evolution works; if it didn't work, then there would be a slew of alternate theories slugging it out in the brutal peer-review process. In science, people have to agree that something works and it has to be proven to work. Nobody can simply claim something works and be accepted as correct. Moreover, the science of intelligent design doesn't work; in order for it to be valid we would have to completely redefine our understanding of biology, physics, geology, cosmology, astronomy, phylogeny, even medicine!
Which brings me back to my third grade Science Fair. By attacking the theory of evolution, the Discovery Institute has only proved that they don't understand it. By not being able to back up Intelligent Design as an alternate theory, they have failed to support their hypothesis.
I get it now.