Intelligent Design

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.

Mom Story #3: She's quick, I tell ya...

A good number of years ago, when my family was living in the wilds of Massachusetts, it was decided by the powers that be, otherwise known as my mother, that simplification was the order of the day. And so we embarked upon that grand suburban tradition, the garage sale.

A grand success it was, too. Near the end of the day, as my father haggled with another of the waning stream of customers, Mom and I enjoyed a brief respite from our day of mercantile endeavors. As was sat talking of this and that, a question occurred to me.

"Mom," I said, innocently, "What are you and Dad gonna do, once I leave and it's just the two of you?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Walk around naked."

She's a cool lady, no doubt.

The horror... the horror...

I don't remember when it first began.

I don't remember the first time I caught sight of a painted grin in the midst of a crowd. The first time I noticed that the crowd at a ball game had a few too many fright wigs dotted amongst the spectators, or spotted a polka-dotted shirt worn with a business suit. I remember thinking it odd, though, that baggy pants would become so popular with so many different social groups. Even when I saw three of them in the space of less than an hour, each with sad face and damned eyes not hidden, but accentuated, by their pancake makeup, their weary hands twisting tubes of air into ghastly shapes to be handed listlessly to random passersby, each of whom found themselves caught suddenly in a bitter depression; even then, I didn't realize the truth.

Once it became obvious, it was much too late, of course. Once those of us still unaffected began to mutter about the changes (Models walking the runway in floppy shoes; The President appearing at a press conference with two bright red circles on her cheeks, a bent top hat, and one tooth blacked out), the battle was already lost, and they had taken over.

The streets were filled with dour, dead-eyed harlequins, knocking one another over with ladders, spraying seltzer into each other's pants, and landing their pratfalls with a thud that reminded one of a dead body falling to the floor. The gutters were filled with the detritus of pies flung into faces, and confetti from buckets that should have been filled with water.

The soul of our civilization gasped and choked under the unholy assault. From our hiding places, those few that remained could hear the constant, soul-crushing call of the never-ending calliope, each note just off enough to kill sleep and work itself into a tired brain, until finally, the end came. Time and again, the mind of one of us would finally crumble under the assault, and they would change. Skin would whiten, lips would redden, shoes and pants would enlarge, and finally, some flimsy pretext would cause them to fall backwards, landing with feet raised and legs splayed. I swear you could hear the soul of the person crack, and when they arose, they would follow the sound of the organ, and take their place in the carnival of the damned that our world had become.

Some worlds end in fire. Some end in ice. Our world met it's end in the cruelest way imaginable. Our world ended in...

The Clownocalypse.

Male Intuition

I heard a girl once ask why guys didn't have their own version of female intuition. Well, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. It's hard to recall, as there was a lot of alcohol involved. What the hell, for the sake of this piece, I'll claim someone said it to me, once upon a blue moon.

Ahywho.

Thing is, guys do have their own kind of intuition. Actually, it's like counter-intuition. Guys have a little voice inside them that constantly urges them to do very, very stupid things.

It's the voice a guy hears when he decides it might be fun to wrestle an alligator, just for the hell of it. And because his friends are calling him a pussy. And he's been drinking.

It's the voice a guy hears that tells him that if he gets on a skateboard, builds up some speed, rides this curving structure up until he runs out of wall, and then tries some kind weird acrobatic move, after which he will theoretically be able to land safely, it would be 'cool'. Or, worse still, 'hardcore'.

In case you didn't know, the word 'hardcore', when used by, well, any male, is synonymous with the word 'dangerous'. And the words 'intensely stupid'. It's a way of letting other know that they really should watch whatever this muttonhead is trying to do, as it will likely kill him, and will definitely make a funny story for others.

This is the same little voice that convinces guys that every girl they meet wants them. Nuns, a pal's mom, angry butch lesbians, it doesn't matter. The voice says, 'They need you, you, to straighten them out. Don't deny them your essence. It would be cruel.

This is the voice that whispers, 'If she were awake, she'd say yes. You're fine. Go ahead.'

Believe it or not, male intuition makes most men even stupider than they are normally. Like some kind of genetic herd-thinning instinct, a way to improve the breed as a whole.

And produce really funny YouTube videos. I could watch those all day.

All day, I tells ya.

Mom Story #2: Uh, my bad...

So, I was travelling with the circus. This was back around the turn of the century, of course. Out on the road, footloose and fancy-free, hanging with the clowns and the elephants and the rest of the weirdos that make up a circus. Just rolling form town to town, ingesting various substances, drinking at bars, and engaging in the daily Russian roulette that was eating in the chow trailer. It was glorious.

Anyway, one day, an off day when we didn't have the show going, it occurred to be that I should probably call my parents, just to check in and see how they were doing.

"It's about time!" My mother greeted my call with less enthusiasm than I'd expected.

"Geez," I said, a bit hurt, "it hasn't been that long."

"FOUR MONTHS!", came the rather loud reply.

Really? Dammit.....

Just a thought

Life sometimes overwhelms me.

There are so many nuances to living in our world as a responsible person. So many things one should know so that it's possible to go to sleep at night with the thought that you've at least tried your best to your best. The upcoming election, the War in Iraq and the place of America in the world, finding ways to live that do the least amount of damage to our only home. Eating in a healthful manner, making sure that those you love are taken care of to the best of your ability, trying to help others when and where you can. Knowing enough to be a responsible citizen. Making sure you pay your bills, and trying to prepare for the future. Trying to find ways to leave this world a better place than it was when you started. Taking care of yourself well enough that all of the other things are possible, and tending to your own happiness.

I don't think any reasonable person can look at the scope of what is required to be a good and responsible person, citizen, or friend, without being a bit taken aback at how much there all is.

Perhaps that's why we're all short-sighted sometimes, why we limit our view to only what is close and immediate.

Maybe that's why I like online comic strips so much.

An announcement to my three readers

If my small cadre of readers would take a moment and look in the comments of my last entry, 'Taste the Yellow', they'll see that two comments were left in regards to it. It's actually only one comment, posted twice, but I thought it deserved a rebuttal from yours truly.

The comment reads, in its entirety, 'What the heck is synesthesia?' The comment was also posted by Anonymous. Now, I don't think it was the Youtube group that has declared war on Scientology, and I don't know that it was one of you, dear readers, although I am looking Blake appraisingly, but I would like to pass something on to the person who took the time to comment.

Find a dictionary.

A bitchy response, I'll admit. Nevertheless, I stand by it.

I can almost hear the type of statement my response will evoke. "Find a dictionary? What, you mean haul myself off my avoirdupois (look it up, dammit!), walk across the room, and open a book? What am I, Amish? This is the digital age, buddy! I oughta get my learnin' like I get my porn! With very little effort! And no pants!

"Hell, they oughta mix the two! Call it 'porno-cation', or 'edu-nography' or somethin'! Hell, if they'd had that in my day, I'da made it past fifth grade! Hell, I'da been early every day!

"With no pants!"