Have You Been Touched by His Noodly Appendage?
For me, one of the most concerning, and unbelievable, controversies we've been having in the nation of late is the growing momentum of Intelligent Design v. Evolution in the science classroom. Being originally from a science background, it is hard for me to find intellectual reasons why some people want to take science education essentially back to the dark ages under all sorts of rationalizing rubrics. Just about every scientist under the sun will tell you that Evolution is the best explanatory model we have about how the world works that we know of. Sure, its a "theory," but everything in science is a theory. Gravity is a "theory," but it works, so we use it.
Intelligent Design is plain-and-simple creationism disguised in scientific terms. And I don't mind if people want to believe in creationism. But it isn't science. It cannot be tested empirically; it cannot be disproven. As a result, I don't think it has any place in the science classroom. That is what church is for.
One of the more favorite web sites (and web stories) I have found is a very snarky, satirical, but above all, correct take on this debate. I found it soon when it first came out in July, and it started with an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education by a former physics student in Oregon. He figured that if Kansas was going to teach theories of Intelligent Design, they should teach all theories of ID, including his own, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holds that the world was created by, you guessed it, a giant flying spaghetti monster. And he built an entire system around this belief, obviously in satirical form. But since he started this, his little idea has spread faster than a California brush fire. Since last summer, his web site has gotten tens of millions of hits, a micro-movement across the country in favor of it, a rather basic cosmology, the attention of journalists literally acrosse the globe, a book deal, and the ire of countless fundamentalist Christians.
It's quite the spectacle.
It's also, for someone like me, incredibly hilarious. So if you want to join in on the "Pastafarian" movement, check out his web site.
Intelligent Design is plain-and-simple creationism disguised in scientific terms. And I don't mind if people want to believe in creationism. But it isn't science. It cannot be tested empirically; it cannot be disproven. As a result, I don't think it has any place in the science classroom. That is what church is for.
One of the more favorite web sites (and web stories) I have found is a very snarky, satirical, but above all, correct take on this debate. I found it soon when it first came out in July, and it started with an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education by a former physics student in Oregon. He figured that if Kansas was going to teach theories of Intelligent Design, they should teach all theories of ID, including his own, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holds that the world was created by, you guessed it, a giant flying spaghetti monster. And he built an entire system around this belief, obviously in satirical form. But since he started this, his little idea has spread faster than a California brush fire. Since last summer, his web site has gotten tens of millions of hits, a micro-movement across the country in favor of it, a rather basic cosmology, the attention of journalists literally acrosse the globe, a book deal, and the ire of countless fundamentalist Christians.
It's quite the spectacle.
It's also, for someone like me, incredibly hilarious. So if you want to join in on the "Pastafarian" movement, check out his web site.
posted by cc at
7:52 PM
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