Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Bush weighs in on "Intelligent Design"

I've been trying to say something about this latest in a series of actions (the one-week early nomination of a possible "stealth" candidate as a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor, the recess appointment of John Bolton as U.N.-hating U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) that seem to be designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Karl "Turd Blossom"* Rove is hard pressed to extract any sort of blossom from the ginormous turd that he has turned into. I could sputter something about really not giving a damn about the opinions of a draft-dodging born-again cokehead on matters of science and education, but hell, he is the President of the United States.

If you don't know what the pseudoscientific "theory" of "Intelligent Design" is, I'm not going to provide any links to sites which might attempt to provide it with some legitimacy. Let's just say that 1) it's pseudo-science, not science, 2) it's a religious doctrine formerly known as "Scientific Creationism", 3) it rehashes in a shoddy way arguments that were made much more skillfully many years ago by theologians and religious philosophers who didn't see the need to dress them up and call them science, 4) again, it's not science, and 5) arguments to the contrary are a load of crap.

But I'm sputtering. I'm not making a logical, rational argument here. You know what? This is an emotional issue for me. I've studied science all my life, every day of my life. When someone who has only touched on science in a peripheral, cursory way presumes to be in a position to make declarations about what is and is not "science", I get pissed off.

Adam Felber handles it better. Read his Fanatical Apathy post The Return of the Lobster. He has links to even better arguments, from people who actually know science.

Yet another reason why anyone who voted for this dumbass President, and especially anyone who encouraged others to vote for him, should hang his or her head in shame. This is your fault.

*A nickname coined by George "Dubya" Bush, not Garry Trudeau, despite what a few small-brained folks in Providence and Austin seem to think.

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