Clinical Anthropology Copyright
© 2005 John Rush PhD ND
Intelligent Design: The Last Gasp of a Dying Man
Author:
John A. Rush
Introduction
The godliest feature of humanity is
our ability to use logic and reason to solve problems and explain the world and
universe around us. According to “Intelligent Design,” understanding the world
around us is not necessary because it was designed by an all powerful entity
and this is all one need know. The
Intelligent Design community would have us throw away our logic and reason and
replace it with simplicity, faith, and ignorance.
What is “Intelligent Design?” Is this
any different than what has been said in the past? Is this any different than
saying that there is a deity who created all we see and experience, a deity to
whom we should submit and worship? No, this is simply a new method of packaging
Christianity. So, what is behind all the
recent law suits to bring religion into the classroom, disclaimers for
evolution in text books, and attempts by some government officials to combine
religion with the politic?
Science
Science is not truth; it is a process
of discovery. What is there to
discover? Laws of the
natural world. In order to do
this several principles must be applied. First, there has to be a separation of natural from
supernatural phenomena. In order to do
this the scientist has to identify the laws and regularity of nature, which
includes observable or measurable cause and effect both physical and
mechanical.
Second is the development of the tools of logical argument and of
mathematics, and their systematic use. Along with this there has to be rational
criticism and debate, and a general
climate that tolerates skepticism.
Third, there has to be demonstration and proof by empirical observation and
research in order to extend the empirical base of knowledge.
Fourth, and evolving out of the above principles, science has to be self-correcting. When errors are
detected or conclusions are faulty they demand reconsideration and perhaps old
models need to go and replaced with better, more appropriate stories. This, however, is next to impossible unless
there is freedom of speech and freedom of debate. Any discipline or field of study that does
not allow lively debate and free expression, or censors other traditions and
their beliefs and behaviors of others, is a closed system. Closed systems
cannot compete in a modern, democratic, free enterprise system. Monotheistic
religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are closed systems; closed
religious systems either hide from or persecute those of other traditions. In
the social sciences, if our view of history is altered by new information or
insights then our anthropology and history books alter to better fit the new
information. Alterations in our view of the tangible world help us build the
better mouse trap. What science does is help us understand the world so that we
can better cope with the adversities that present themselves. If we have dominion over the land and sea
then we better understand these laws so that we can take better care of that
which supports us.
Religion
Religion has
been defined in a multitude of manners and dimensions, but no matter what
definition we use it does not incorporate the scientific method outlined
above. Belief in God only requires
faith; there is no proof that God as conceptualized in the Bible and the Qur’an
exists. There is no proof that prayers,
donations, human/animal/vegetable sacrifices, or self-flagellation can attract
the attention of this deity; there is no evidence that this energy can be
bribed, cajoled, coerced or other wise convinced to do your bidding. People
speak of miracles and of statues weeping blood (the statue of the Virgin Mary,
The Revealed
Word
But there is
a larger issue: religious traditions once tied to sacred script are no longer
self-correcting. Because these sacred
writings are the revealed word of God or Allah, one cannot simply remove
certain verses and alter others to fit the prevailing social/scientific view of
the universe. Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam are victims of their own success.
The printing press allowed the production and mass distribution of the
revealed word of God—the Bible and
the Qur’an. Prior to mass printing, there would only be a
small number of laboriously hand copied books available to priests and/or
scribes. Pages in these books would wear out with use, for even though the
masses could not read, the book had to be displayed. It is the symbol or the
charter, a set of instructions, “It comes from God and therefore must be obeyed. It says so right here.” Displaying and
fondling eventually destroys the papyrus pages and they have to be
recopied. We see this with the Qur’an, in the Yemeni parchments
(fragments from 1000 warn out pages, recopied, and then discarded) in what is
called a “paper grave” discovered while workers were repairing the Great Mosque
at Sana’a,
Some of the parchment
pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth
centuries c.c., or Islam’s first two centuries—they were fragments, in other
words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What’s more, some of these fragments reveal
small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to
textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief
that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect,
timeless, and unchanging Word of God.
The Bigger Picture
So what is the “intelligent Design” position really
about? Quite simply, because they can’t alter the divine word, they cannot keep
up, and they will be abandoned in time.
Understand what is at stake here—money and political power. Both the
Intelligent Design Christians and the Fundamental Islamites
are expressing a last gasp to force their traditions onto the world, with the
Intelligent Design people attempting to accomplish this with legal tactics,
while Islam, a conquest religion, is using extreme violence. Why the difference? Islam in the
If the Bible and Qur’an are not the
revealed word what are they? They are
constructed stories to justify the beliefs and behaviors of religious clerics
and rulers. Their design was to create an identity for a people (Nations of
