Intelligent Is as Intelligence Doesn't

By Will Durst, AlterNet. Posted August 11, 2005.

Taking valuable time from clearing brush on what apparently is the most brush infested ranch in the country, President Bush spoke to members of the press encouraging our country's school districts to incorporate both sides of the debate regarding the development of humanity into their teaching plans: Evolution, the theory that man descended from an infinite number of apes typing on an infinite number of typewriters, and Intelligent Design, the idea that an unseen force (not necessarily God, but not un-godlike either) nudged our genes with big giant invisible fingers to the point where no child is left behind. Or something like that.

This is shocking to the same degree that goats eat shoes. Especially to anyone who's been semi-cognizant the last five years and watched Mr. Bush work his backward magic disproving Darwin with a series of policies stripping workers and minorities and women and anyone who isn't an energy producer (and I ain't talking methane gas) of their rights. Not only does the President not believe in evolution but ironically, he has become his own best argument.

One of the logic wedges Intelligent Designers like to jump into with both semantic feet is that Charles Darwin called his discovery "The Theory of Evolution." "See. It's just a theory!" Oh come on, grow up. What's next? You going to require the Principle of Atomic Force attend PTA meetings? What about the Law of Gravity? Does an initiative for repeal lie in its immediate future? Apparently all we need do is to hire Denny Crain or petition one of those activist judges and voila ... broken vases and scraped knees -- a thing of the past. Hey, it's just a law! And a bad one at that.

The theory of Intelligent Design maintains life on Earth is too complex to have developed through Evolution. Too complex? Oh no! You mean there are things we don't know? Of course there are. We have brains the size of peas. And I tell you, if we keep dumbing down our schools, the concept of fudge will seem complicated. Not to mention innocent before guilty. Wasn't too long ago people thought a solar eclipse was a dragon eating the sun as it rode across the sky on the back of a giant turtle. But that was just my Uncle Bud draining a six-pack on his riding mower.

Now don't get me wrong, the Bible is a great book, but it has as much to do with science as gummi bears have to do with aerospace navigation. How soon before 2 + 2 equals whatever God wants it to be? Back in the 17th century, Galileo proposed the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, and was promptly convicted of heresy and imprisoned for the rest of his life at a time when home detention did not include adequate satellite reception. In response to his pardon from the Catholic Church 400 years later, Galileo conveniently was unavailable for comment.

If these people are really seeking alternative theories as to how life originated, I got one. I got a doozy. Santa killed the evil Martian overlords and flew us here from Pluto on his sled. How about that? Hey, it's a theory! And I want to see it included on the blackboard of every science classroom as part of the new curriculum: Evolution, Intelligent Design and Santa's Sled. At least my Santa Sled Theory is flexible enough to explain the reason for the human appendix -- Martian mark of the insurgent.

Political comic Will Durst still has his appendix.

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