There's a phenomenon that occurs when less technologically advanced cultures are forced to deal with higher technology cultures. The best known cases have occurred in the southwest Pacific area following World War 2, with the sudden appearance of English, French, Russian, German, Australian, Japanese, and American material goods as part of the war efforts of the various counties, among the Melanesian and Micronesian islanders. Having little or no understanding of western-style mass production, or the engineering principles that allow metal planes to fly and metal ships to float, the locals often adopted the belief that the cargo they saw arriving by ship and plane was intended for them, and was taken, by mistake or through malice, by the armies that were passing through when the cargo appeared.
They locals will form something known as a 'cargo cult'. The cult will usually involve a syncretic union between whatever god the foreigners worshiped and the local chief god, and have the cultists attempting to use the methods they observed the foreigners using for calling the cargo to them. To that end, the locals will set up mock airstrips that mimic the ones built by the engineering companies, mock radios made from local materials, and the staging of Armed Forces-style drills and marches. If these rituals are observed assiduously enough, surely the gods and ancestors of the locals would re-route the cargo back to them.
Richard Feynman used the term 'Cargo Cult science' in a commencement address at Caltech in 1974, in reference to work that seemed sound but that lacked "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty". One of the first things a scientist must do is avoid fooling themselves, Feynman said.
"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."
And so we come to Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design appears to be, at it's core, an attempt to redefine science itself to allow a theistic, or god centered, explanation for the presence of life on our world. And while Intelligent Design has been carefully crafted to appear to meet the standards of the scientific method and rational thought, all of the careful verbiage exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: as an attempt to get people to ignore the fact that it is based on the untestable thesis that a deity consciously put together all life according to a plan.
The key there is 'untestable thesis'. If an idea cannot be tested, and if that test cannot be repeated by others working in similar conditions, it is not, and cannot, be science. But the proponents of Intelligent Design, like the Cargo cultists of the south Pacific, truly believe that if they follow the forms and recite the words, this small fact can be ignored. It doesn't matter that there are no planes coming with cargo, and it doesn't matter if your thesis cannot be tested. What matters is that you believe, fervently, without question, because if you do, one day you will be rewarded with cargo. The cargo might be manufactured goods, it might be acceptance by the scientific community, but it will come as surely as the sun rises.
This is all pointless, of course. Belief and faith might be able to change the hearts of men, but they cannot alter the physical laws under which we live. That the cult of Intelligent Design believe their theory, and don't believe in the Theory of Evolution, matters not at all. But these are people of faith, and have been told all their lives that faith can move mountains. And they are all the more misguided because they are not entirely wrong. It does take a lot of faith to move a hunk of rock the size of a mountain, but it also takes a huge amount of hard knowledge and skill, working with forces that can't be appeased or bargained with, but must be dealt with as they are. Faith alone doesn't do the job.
The most troublesome thing, too me, is that there is no inherent divide between the theistic and scientific approach to the development of life. It's true, the idea of a supreme being creating the universe we know can't be tested, but there is no particular reason a person cannot have both a faith in such a being's existence and an acceptance of the truth we have discovered for ourselves. To my mind, nothing shows the truly incredible nature of the supreme being more than the wonders we have observed in a reality that stretches from the tiniest particle to the entirety of the universe, and from today back into the incomprehensible depths of the past. What an amazing being this must be, to have made such a place!
It's true, you can't reconcile the story of Genesis with the theory of Evolution, and this seems to be the great sticking point for most serious Christians. It's not an attitude I can understand, myself, as it paints a picture of God as being rather small minded, and a bit petty. You risk his wrath if you take the stories in this one particular book as anything other than the literal truth.
And so the debate, which is not about the primacy of man of God, but about the truth of one story, and not a particularly original one at that, rages on. One side is forced into atheism and agnosticism, and the other into zealotry and hatred.
And the cargo cult of Intelligent Design stumbles on, making us all smaller with its Calvinist insistence that the man who thinks for himself rises too high, and usurps God's prerogatives.
Such a sad thing.
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