[CanYoAssDigIt] Philosophizing

check out the name of the document.

http://www.enough.org/justharmlessfun.pdf

check out the article itself, and you will see the reasoning of a
bunch of people that believe in intelligent design. The evidence is
all around us - there's more evidence for Stupidity Design.

Superstitious people would say that we are getting half as smart every
18 months because we are made in the image of our creator. Scientific
people do not take a position on why things are that way, they just
agree that it's happening. They do point out that we don't have to be
designed to be this stupid, we could just be that way by accident. We
crawled from the primordial soup, and now we're crawling back in.
Dumbness happens.

Chomsky points out there is "malignant design. Unlike intelligent
design, for which the evidence is zero, malignant design has tons of
empirical evidence, much more than Darwinian evolution, by some
criteria: the world's cruelty."

He has a good point, but I think that there is even more support for
Stupidity Design than Malignant Design.

Something that Robert Heinlein may or may not have said seems
appropriate here: "Never attribute to conspiracy that which is
adequately explained by stupidity."

Einstein may or may not have said, "God is subtle but He is not malicious."

In my opinion, Uncle Albert was batting .500 on that day. Available
evidence suggests that God, if he exists, is neither.

November 16, 2005
Putting Out the Enlightenment
Evolution, Ecology and "Malignant Design"

By NOAM CHOMSKY

President George W. Bush favors teaching both evolution and
"intelligent design" in schools, "so people can know what the debate
is about."

To proponents, intelligent design is the notion that the universe is
too complex to have developed without a nudge from a higher power than
evolution or natural selection.

To detractors, intelligent design is creationism--the literal
interpretation of the Book of Genesis--in a thin guise, or simply
vacuous, about as interesting as "I don't understand" as has always
been true in the sciences before understanding is reached.

Accordingly, there cannot be a "debate."

The teaching of evolution has long been difficult in the United
States. Now, a national movement has emerged to promote the teaching
of intelligent design in schools.

The issue has famously surfaced in a courtroom in Dover, Pa., where a
school board is requiring students to hear a statement about
intelligent design in a biology class--and parents mindful of the U.S.
Constitution's church/state separation have sued the board.

In the interest of fairness, perhaps the president's speechwriters
should take him seriously when they have him say that schools should
be open-minded and teach all points of view.

So far, however, the curriculum has not encompassed one obvious point
of view: malignant design. Unlike intelligent design, for which the
evidence is zero, malignant design has tons of empirical evidence,
much more than Darwinian evolution, by some criteria: the world's
cruelty.

Be that as it may, the background of the current evolution/intelligent
design controversy is the widespread rejection of science, a
phenomenon with deep roots in American history that has been cynically
exploited for narrow political gain during the last 25 years.

Intelligent design raises the question of whether it is intelligent to
disregard scientific evidence about matters of supreme importance to
the nation and the world--like global warming.

An old-fashioned conservative would believe in the value of
Enlightenment ideals--rationality, critical analysis, freedom of
speech, freedom of inquiry--and would try to adapt them to a modern
society.

America's Founding Fathers, children of the Enlightenment, championed
those ideals and took pains to create a constitution that espoused
religious freedom yet separated church and state.

The United States, despite the occasional messianism of its leaders,
isn't a theocracy.

In our time, Bush administration hostility to scientific inquiry puts
the world at risk. Environmental catastrophe, whether you think the
world has been developing only since Genesis or for eons, is far too
serious to ignore.

In preparation for the G8 summit this past summer, the scientific
academies of all eight member nations, joined by those of China, India
and Brazil, called on the leaders of the rich countries to take urgent
action to head off global warming.

"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently
clear to justify prompt action," their statement said. "It is vital
that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now,
to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global
greenhouse gas emissions."

A few months earlier, at the 2005 annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, leading U.S. climate
researchers released "the most compelling evidence yet" that human
activities are responsible for global warming, according to The
Financial Times.

They predicted major climatic effects, including severe reductions in
water supplies in regions that rely on rivers fed by melting snow and
glaciers.

Other prominent researchers at the session reported evidence that the
melting of Arctic and Greenland ice sheets is causing changes in the
sea's salinity balance that threaten "to shut down the Ocean Conveyor
Belt, which transfers heat from the tropics toward the polar regions
through currents such as the Gulf Stream."

Like the statement of the National Academies for the G8 summit, "the
most compelling evidence yet" received scant notice in the United
States, despite the attention given in the same days to the
implementation of the Kyoto protocols, with the most important
government refusing to take part.

It is important to stress "government." The standard report that the
United States stands almost alone in rejecting the Kyoto protocols is
correct only if the phrase "United States" excludes its population,
which strongly favors the Kyoto pact (73 per cent, according to a July
poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes).

Perhaps only the word "malignant" could describe a failure to
acknowledge, much less address, the all-too-scientific issue of
climate change.

Thus, the "moral clarity" of the Bush administration extends to its
cavalier attitude toward the fate of our grandchildren.

Noam Chomsky is the author of Hegemony and Survival.

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