There is constant mention lately of "Intelligent Design".
Should we teach
Intelligent Design? Is it even legal to mention Intelligent Design?
Are
American politicians extensions of the Taliban if they support recognition
of Intelligent Design? Does anyone except religious zealots even believe
in
Intelligent Design? What is Intelligent Design? What does this
have to do
with the US and the UN in 2005?
Intelligent Design is the current name affixed by a wide range of folks that
are skeptical of the existence of God to the belief by religious people that
there is a God and that He created the universe from nothing. In the
politically correct age in which we live, the ancient argument that either
there is a God or that God does not exist is reduced to the contemporarily
fashionable argument that an ever-present swirl of matter generated
biological matter that then "evolved" into all that we perceive
today.
Biology became tangled in this affair when Darwin recorded observations
about the relatedness and adaptations present throughout the biological
world. When those interested in "proving" that God does not
exist began
asserting that these adaptations and relatedness' proved that God had
nothing to do with any Creation, those who believed in God reacted and the
argument began. The effect on the "science" of biology was
such that what
had formerly been a "science" like chemistry and physics began to
devolve
into an "art" like sociology and education.
Two definitions from The American College Dictionary best describe this
important distinction:
I.
Science. n. 1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing
with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the
operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
II.
Art. n. 1. a department of skilled performance:
industrial art. 2. a branch of learning or university study. 3.
craft;
cunning: glib and oily art. 4. an artifice or artful device: the
innumerable arts and wiles of politics.
Originally biological study, like other true sciences, was concerned with
discovering facts that when understood and related would increase human
knowledge and thereby human welfare. When the element of
"disproving" the
existence of God through biology was introduced, biologists and atheists
(the correct term) began an unceasing quest for "the biological
proof" that
everything we perceive around us is the result of natural phenomenon with no
"Intelligent Design" role whatsoever.
This quest has affected different aspects of biology in the past 150 years.
There was the still-ongoing argument about evolution. Instead of
scientific
examination and reporting of facts, many biologists and their allies
reported their findings through the prism of pronouncements about the
"Origin" of species disproving the existence of God (something they
have NO
evidence about) and thereby establishing a war with all those who believe in
God. This confrontation was the basis for the "Scope Monkey
Trial" wherein
the "origin" of all life was to ONLY be mentioned without mentioning
God.
More recently the controversy about mentioning, not God, but "Intelligent
Design" as a possible "origin" of life to students in public
schools has
occupied a good deal of public discourse.
If this was all that happened to biology I would be writing this for some
religious publication but I am writing this for everyone harmed by US
Federal environmental legislation and UN environmental programs of the past
35 years. Whether it is the political cry to base the Endangered Species
Act on "sound science", or the claims of biodiversity in Wilderness
Areas,
or the biological "impact" of roads, or the composition of a
"Native
Ecosystem", or listings of "Invasive" Species, or claims of
"endangerment"
or "approaching endangerment": the deference given to such
biological claims
is that they are fixed and immutable "laws" and not terms of
"art". Nothing
could be further from the truth.
As biology began to focus on the "proof" that there is no God: it
began,
like all other persons embarked on an impossible mission, to make what it
believed fit with what it "knew". If men were merely highly
developed apes
then apes should be treated like men and men like apes. If whales or
elephants were constricted by human activities then humans should be limited
so that the "other" animals could prosper. If maintaining large
populations
of dangerous and destructive animals resulted in loss of human life and
societal development in places like Africa, then biologists were willing to
take that risk. While human "use" of other animals is
unacceptable: human
deaths and injury from other animals is "natural". Biologists are
the only
people with the breadth of knowledge and experience to determine where
people should live, what they should be allowed to do, and which lands
should be "reserved" for the exclusive "use" of plants and
non-human
animals. To these ends, an American Constitution, and human groups from
other governments to rural people and users of plants and animals that are
not supportive of these ends must be either modified into supporters or
eliminated.
This nascent narcissism among biologists in search of the disproof of God
was awakened early in the 20th century when population control of
"inferior"
persons was justified by biologists and people like Margaret Sanger.
Later
when religious allowance for birth control was being debated, biological
statements helped overcome religious convictions of the intended result of
sex being children. Nazi extermination policies regarding Jews, Gypsies,
and other "subhumans" as well as the mentally disabled and the sick
were all
underpinned by "biological" laws presented as "sound
science". More
recently justifications for abortion and euthanasia as well as the rationing
of socialized medicine are justified in large measure on biological
pronouncements about "quality of life" or "pain felt" or
the "conscious
perception" of certain individuals. Ongoing UN debates about
"population
control" in poor nations are laced with biological claims of
"carrying
capacity" and "overpopulated" areas per the biologists.
None of this bunk
is "science" it is all self-serving artful claims disguised as
"science".
This "evolution" of biology was mounted and ridden by
environmentalists and
animal rights radicals in the social turbulence of the late 1960's and early
1970's. US and UN bureaucrats connived to revolutionize the government
of
the world by having all-powerful central governments entwined in UN treaties
that regulated enormous land reserves and all human interaction with plants
or animals. To achieve this they enlisted the biologists that were beginning
to believe that their own power quest to replace the worship of God with the
worship of their notions of how the world should be were in danger of
failing.
The university professors and biological bureaucrats knew a golden
opportunity when they saw it. Never ending lists of plants and animals
that
may become extinct and always because of too little government control and
too little habitat were the triggers for new and massive central government
powers. An unholy alliance between radical groups that shared the skepticism
about God and biologists and bureaucrats in search of shared power and
unethical politicians interested in providing "bread and circuses"
to
maintain their power was born.
Nowhere has the "artful" or vacuous nature of "sound"
biological "science"
of 2005 been more evident than in the ongoing pronouncements regarding
"Invasive Species" and "Rewildling". Regarding
"Invasive Species"
biologists tell us they (species introduced either by man or after some
movable date hundreds of years ago) "decrease biodiversity" (the
number of
species present) and "disrupt the ecosystem". Simultaneously
biologists
tell us that they recommend introducing animals from Africa (most of which
never inhabited North America) to "increase biodiversity" and
"strengthen
the ecosystem". Such contradictions are pondered by politicians
with
furrowed brows, heralded by the media, and considered as the "sound
science"
basis for proposed Federal legislation. Amazing!
In short, biological pronouncements are little more than artful dodges.
The
professors get grants and publicity and tenure for being at the forefront of
justifications for proposals. Nay Sayers are shunned, not given tenure,
and
blocked from publishing. Like the hidden political support to
"cooperative"
politicians from rich and powerful environmental and animal rights
organizations: current and future grants to biologists assure justification
and shared agendas. Sharing in the largesse of power and money are the
government bureaucrats from State offices and Federal offices to their UN
cousins in New York and Switzerland.
Examples? Why does no University come out against the forced
introduction
of wolves and protection of other deadly predators by publishing facts?
Why
does no University display the simple and straightforward idea that the
"ecosystem" is what we make it and the notion that it
"must" or "should" be
like this or that is a VALUE JUDGMENT? Why has almost every University
made
the VALUE JUDGMENT shift from natural resource management and use to natural
resource protection from all use? Why is there no University position or
advice on how to best drill off shore or in ANWR or under western grazing
lands with the least disturbance? Why are simple matters like human
deaths
attributable to wolves or the role of wolves in spreading disease or the
effects of unmanaged Canada geese depositing feces year around in urban
parks and schoolyards not only unmentioned but ignored assiduously? When
is
the last time there was disagreement between the animal rights radicals and
the Universities (other than when their labs are destroyed) or between the
environmental organizations and university biologists?
The universities and the biologists they employ are State institutions but,
like State agencies, political control is being steadily ceded to the
increasing Federal funding from Washington and political correctness.
Mixed
into all this however is this long-standing perception that biology will
supplant God throughout society. This latter has caused a great deal of
harm and these environmental/animal rights/governmental shenanigans are but
one aspect of such harms.
Allowing biology in 2005 to be called "sound science" and thereby
make it
the basis of political decisions that affect us profoundly is just plain
stupid. To do so even when it was "scientific" would be
problematic. At
least then it was worth giving serious consideration to: as it is currently
structured we might as well be making such decisions on a roulette wheel.
At least a roulette wheel let's you win occasionally, today's biology is so
laced with these hidden agendas that we never win, we always just lose.
Jim Beers
3 Sep. 2005
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