If I Had My Way, Dogmatists Would Be Burned at the Stake

Recently I came dangerously close to making a serious point in this blog about the theory of Intelligent Design(TM). Sometimes, despite my best efforts to deliver unadulterated nonsense, a cogent idea emerges, and for that, I apologize. I try to keep my political and religious biases out of these posts. For example, even though I consider a certain political party to be godless atheists who are destroying America with their gay marriages and efforts to keep me from exercising my God-given right to buy an assault rifle, I would never explicitly identify that party, because I don't want to alienate any of my beloved readers ( even if they are terrorist-coddling dope-smokers). Anyway, having attacked the ignorance of Intelligent Design(TM) proponents, I now feel like I have to balance the scales by attacking the idiots on the other side of this issue.

Did I say "idiots"? I meant to say Fearless Advocates of Science against the Creeping Influence of Supersitious Teachings (FASCISTs). To the question "Which should be taught in our schools, evolution or Intelligent Design(TM)?", these champions of reason unhesitatingly answer, "EVOLUTION!" Because they know that science is all about the teaching of a single idea, rather than confusing people with multiple possible "competing theories."

Now I know that you're probably not a FASCIST, but let's imagine that one is reading this article and is thinking to himself*, "Wait a minute, you can't possibly put evolution and Intelligent Design(TM) on the same footing. Evolution is proven fact." And when you ask them how they know it's a proven fact, they'll tell you about all the really smart people, like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Aristotle, who have written books about it and stuff. In other words, we know evolution is fact because respected authorities have told us it is, and our authorities are way more reputable than your authorities, because ours gave us penicillin and DVDs and yours gave us the plagues of Egypt and Pat Robertson. In logic circles, this kind of reasoning is called an argumentum ad verecundiam, which is a nice way of saying that it's based on the idea that you should trust people who are smarter than you to make your decisions for you. Hey, it's easier than objectively evaluating empirical evidence, right?

What? Oh. I didn't realize you were a scientist who has spent your entire life in the Galapagos Islands painstakingly documenting the empirical evidence for evolution. My bad. I guess you're the kind of person who doesn't blindly trust authority, and insists on thinking for yourself. Like, for example, if your fifth grade teacher told you that people were descended from apes, you wouldn't just mindlessly memorize that fact and regurgitate it for the test. In fact, you'd probably resent the fact that your teacher was telling you what to think, rather than presenting you with the evidence and allowing you to think for yourself. I imagine you wouldn't mind being taught that most scientists believed, based on the evidence, that humankind was descended from apes, and you probably also wouldn't mind being told that a lot of religious people found that idea offensive. You'd probably appreciate your teacher acknowledging that you have a brain of your own, rather than being treated like some kind of passive recepticle for whatever dogmatic nonsense was being passed off as fact that day.

On the other hand, if you find supersitious dogma to be so threatening that science doesn't stand a chance against it, just plug your ears whenever you hear anything that you don't agree with and yell "SCIENCE! SCIENCE! SCIENCE!" until the threat of dogmatic indoctrination has passed.


*FASCISTs tend to be male, or females who refuse to shave their armpits.


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