Louisiana Governor
Bobby Jindal is often mentioned as a rising star in the Republican Party, a
likely candidate for the GOP nomination for president next time around. He
appears to be a competent and wise administrator. Nonetheless, I will not be
able to vote for him. And that is because of his answer to a question that
did not appear in this week’s Time interview “Ten Questions for Bobby
Jindal,” namely, “Governor, do you believe so-called ‘Intelligent Design’
Creationist apologetics ought to be taught in secular biology classrooms?”
Because his answer would be, has been, an unacceptable “Yes.” Intelligent
Design is merely the latest strategy to insert theology into a science
class. Not only is this a category confusion; it represents an utter failure
to grasp the nature of science and to recognize the war-drum murmurings of
the forces of superstition against science.
The whole idea (and this is not too
strong a way to put it) of “Intelligent Design” is that we should be eager
to admit defeat and to be satisfied with ignorance, the road-block of the
mind. The ID advocate looks at a complex organism like the human eye and
notes its astounding complexity, then concludes, “I can’t see how such a
marvelous device might have developed spontaneously all in one piece, and
yet it must have done so in order to have had survival value for the lucky
creatures who possessed it! Half an eye would not do you much good! And thus
a guiding Designer must have equipped us and the eagles with terrific, sharp
eyes. Right?
Wrong, George Gaylord Simpson (The
Meaning of Evolution, 1949) already exposed this scam. Both creationists
proper and those who believe in a divine manipulation of evolution by an
intelligent Designer agree that since the image-forming eye, so they say,
could not function until complete, therefore it became complete all at once.
It did not slowly change to its present state through the ages but arose as
it is now by one bang. [But a brief examination of the variety of extant]
photoreceptors sufficiently points up the fallacy of these contentions. If
all photoreceptors except the image-forming eyes of advanced mollusks and of
vertebrates had become extinct, there would be an excuse for bewilderment.
In fact, representative stages at every gradually different level happen to
have survived, from diffuse photosensitivity of the whole body through
scattered photosensitive cells to cell plates, basins, basins and vesicles
plus lenses, and so on to the fully developed image-forming eye with lens,
iris, and its other complexities. These photoreceptors function splendidly
at every level and do not wait to start working until the final stage is
reached. They simply enlarge, refine, and to some extent change their
functions as they become more complex.
Yeah, well, so much for “Intelligent
Design.” Bad science and even out of date for bad science! Really not
science at all. Based on “the assured results of ignorance.” The creed of
Intelligent Design Creationism is, “Science can go no further, so let’s
retreat to mythic thinking (personal agents made the world based on a whim).
Why do they bother to deny that it’s all theology instead of science? Saying
that “God did it!” is what we mean by “myth.” Just substitute the
name “Zeus” and all will become plain to you.
How do we account for such chicanery?
Worse yet, chicanery that always mounts its mountebank strategies in the
name of Truth? This is what you inevitably get when you equate “truth” with
some particular content rather than with a formal category. As Paul Tillich
aid, even the inveterate doubter loves the truth. So much does he love it
that he is determined to set some pretty high hurdles that every pretender
to the “Truth” title must jump. He will be satisfied with nothing less than
the truth, so he will not be easily satisfied. And when and if he does
decide to award the palm, it is always provisional. Another contender is
always welcome to challenge for the title. What we call the truth turns out
to be the latest, best-looking working hypothesis, the latest paradigm, not
a dogma.
Nietzsche never spoke in quite these
terms, but I think they are the perfect contemporary equivalent of his
dictum that there is no truth in the proper sense, but rather only fiction,
and that yet we must keep the name “Truth” (whether or not with the Roman
“V” for “U” as Johnny Hart always spelled it in B.C.) engraved over
the empty category if only to remind ourselves that our current fiction,
though the best we can come up with, is not truth. There is no truth in the
old sense. Even this very affirmation is not construed as truth in that
sense.
The genuine scientist, that is, the
researcher, knows the quest for truth is open-ended. He does not yet have it
and will never “know as we are known.” But one may dispel deeper and deeper
shades of darkness. One may eliminate greater and greater errors. The truth
we seek is like the North Star: a conceptual ideal by which we navigate, not
a destination we actually expect to arrive at. The dogmatist, even if he
masquerades as a scientist, instead believes he has the truth in a
particular cherished dogma, and though this dogma grow superannuated,
overripe, rotten and stinking, he is determined to keep patching it up, like
Lenin’s corpse. The crown of “Truth” lies on the narrowing brow of a
moldering lich. The dogmatist escorts ever new generations of uneasy
students into the throne room of this hollow-socketed carcass and teaches
them to bow before it. At lest they need not strain to hear any words from
its dry, leathery lips; no, those guides who shepherd them will quote such
discredited ancient maxims as their festering idol once uttered, and that
shall be sufficient.
Governor Jindal and his Creationist
buddies would love it if our country’s students would rally to meet the
challenge of science education in the coming years. Fat chance with
leadership like this: politicians who don’t even know what science is.
