Two cents worth about Intelligent Design

There’s a little column in the Des Moines Register called Your 2 Cents Worth. Anyone can call the phone number and leave a message – usually a sentence or two. If you are lucky, your comment might be published in the paper. You can leave messages about anything you want. And the great thing is, it’s all anonymous! You can sign off as anything you like.

Annoyed at your neighbor? You might leave a message like this,

To the idiot on my street who let’s his dog poop in my yard – you’re an idiot!
-Tired of dog poop

Cut off in traffic on your way to work? You can have the last word!

Next time you wanna drive somewhere, try getting off the phone first!
-Des Moines driver

But the column isn’t just for the passive aggressive. People do leave nice comments too.

The best thing about the fair this year was the MTA service. Thank you MTA.
- Norwalk man

Most of the time I think the comments are really stupid and yet I’ve gotten into a habit of reading them every morning, which brings me to the point of my post. One of the comments published this week caught my eye….

Is Katrina “intelligent design”?
-Urbandale woman

Have you ever had an “Aha!” moment – a flash of insight so brilliant and unexpected it literally makes you jump out of your seat? Well – when I read this I didn’t have one of those. It was more like the sound of crickets chirping and then a “What the hell?…”

I’m not quite sure what Urbandale Woman was trying to say. Was she seriously trying to ask a thought provoking question? Was this a failed attempt at mockery?

I suspect this had something to do with the recent brouhaha at Iowa State University. There has been a push to allow Intelligent Design (ID) to be taught on campus. In response, most of the school’s academic community signed a petition asking the university to reject the ID proposal. I’m not going to debate whether or not ID is science or religion but it is interesting to note that the biggest supporter of bringing ID to campus, Guillermo Gonzalez, is an ISU astronomy professor, and the biggest non-supporter was a religion professor and atheist activist as pointed out by the letter to the editor below published on Sept. 9.

I found it fascinating that at ISU, the intelligent-design controversy is centered around an atheist professor of religion who is not a scientist and a scientist who believes in some kind of designer.In truth, science has never been about bare fact and observation. As we learned in grade school, science is about observation and explanation. Science isn't only about the "what" - it is also about the "how" and even the "why."The "why" questions unavoidably lead us to the ultimate questions of existence, such as "Why and how did we come into existence?" As the article's sidebar notes, even Carl Sagan, like Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, could not resist the same impulse to answer the ultimate questions of existence, claiming that we are here due to random chance.I wonder if Sagan faced a petition by his colleagues against representing his unprovable "random chance" theory as science?

- Scott Brady, West Des Moines

Bottom line – evolution begins with the premise that there is no God, no one creator, and everything in the universe happens by chance and then ignores any evidence that might point to the existence of a creator. Intelligent Design begins with the premise that there might be a creator because there are many aspects of creation than cannot be explained by random chance.

It seems to me the only reason why the evolutionists are raising such a stink is because they don’t want light shed on the fact their theory of evolution has holes in it they can’t explain. That’s why it’s still called a theory. That’s why we have something called the missing link. They have not been able to scientifically prove man’s direct evolution from apes. A friend once told me, “They’ve proved it enough.” I quickly responded with, “Then why do they still call it the theory of evolution? Do we have a theory of gravity?”

Can anyone dispute gravity exists? No – but we can point to the theory of evolution and say it doesn’t do a good enough of a job explaining creation. So why not have a public debate on evolution and Intelligent Design? If ID can’t pass muster than so be it. But to blindly accept evolution as fact without challenging its weaknesses is foolish.

There was a time when the church charged anyone with heresy if they dare suggest the world was not the center of universe. Now it seems any one who dare challenges the theory of evolution is considered a heretic as well.