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Intelligent or Unintelligent Design There has recently been a lot of carry-on about teaching intelligent design (or ID) in schools as an alternative to evolution. The god-botherers have been smarting about evolution for a long time and they have now found a way of stripping away the more bizarro elements of creationism in their latest attempt to create a new breed of evangelists. Let's get things straight, first up - intelligent design is not a theory. Let's look at some definitions of "theory":

'A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organised system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"

Or:

"A statement or set of statements used to explain a phenomena. A theory is generally accepted as valid due to having survived repeated testing."

If ID is a theory, then so is the "theory" that there is intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe. Ironically "intelligent life" in this context is supposed to mean that they are as "smart" as us ... smart enough to go to war because each side believes that the ginormous invisible forces "out there" have a preference for certain cultural group?

If ID is a theory then astrology is a theory too and the fact that I am an Aries means more than the fact that my parents conceived me on a snuggly winter's night. If ID is a theory then Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt demonstrated the Instant Transformation of Humans into Table Condiments Theory. Heck, if I decide I'm really an alien because I'm not quite like anyone else I know then I can jolly well call that a theory too. All I need is a gaggle of other mad people who are incredibly well-connected and rich to do my lobbying for me and the Grea-as-alien theory can be taught at school.

No, my dears, ID it is at best a hypothesis, but it's not even that. Its sole premise is the debunking of evolution, and to fill the hole left by evolution's vacuum with a whoppin' big man with a long, white flowing beard. Since this big man is magic, he can hide himself from us for thousands of years and then - rather unfairly, I feel - consign us to oblivion as punishment for not believing in him. I mean, if the Creator is someone who plays silly games and behaves so vindictively to those who (sensibly) refuse to play, then he can go stuff it up his jumper as far as I'm concerned. But, seriously, is the "evidence by testing" done so far really proof of evolution? To quote Arlene White's immortal words, "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade". The "lemonade" in this case could mean more resources being made available to critically examine evolutionary theory with a view to refining it and filling in the "holes". Of course, if the research funding goes to religious ideologues rather than those seeking to better understand our world, then we'd be better off putting those funds into, well, anything - health, education, (real) research, technological development, the arts, ... or perhaps to fund this website! (dream on).

The media's furphy

However, to put too much focus on the ID vs evolution debate would be to fall for the myopic media's musings. The media love nothing better than to push us back and forth from one issue to another like a fiddler's elbow, delivering brain candy to cater for our diminishing attention spans ... just so they can sell more advertising.

The real issue here is far broader. Ever since Galileo fell foul of the Catholic Church (and later proved right) religious types have been seething in their resentment of science, and vice versa. This ID issue is nothing more than the latest battle front in the broader war between Reason and Superstition, a war that has waxed and waned for millennia. It is a war for the hearts and minds of the next generation. In this context, the so-called War on Terror is just one more battle front in this greater war.

Ironically, those in favour of ID have more in common with suicide bombers than the average secular citizen of either the west or the middle east. We all know how those who are closest to each other wage the most bitter battles - be they warring spouses, siblings, neighbours, Northern and Southern Irish or Israelis and Palestinians.

Muslim and Christian fundamentalists have the same aim - to gain control of the secular, humanist world.

The great thing about seeking power through religion is that you don't actually have to know very much, whereas gaining power in a secular society is far harder. In the secular world tou have to study real things and learn a lot and then successfully network with all sorts of dodgy power-hungry people to gain admission to The Club.

All you need to lead a religious organisation is do Bible studies (where there are no results-driven forces involved) and believe, or at least tell yourself that you believe. Oh, and of course you'll need to network with all sorts of dodgy power-hungry people before you gain admission to God's Club.

As always, it all comes down to power. The dynamic of the war between Reason and Superstition is no more deep or "intelligent" than a battle between two male bull elephant seals fighting so they can spread their genes to the harem. Once again we have dominant males jostling for power and position—the same old story with new clothes.

The storm before the calm

So who will win this battle of hearts and minds? It is interesting to see, in this supposed age of science, how matters of religion are coming to the fore, like a huge pimple that appears on your forehead before a hot date.

It looks to me a lot like a Herx Reaction (full name being the Jarisch-Herxheimer Reaction), where symptoms become worse for a time before healing.

In the case of a Herx Reaction, the body's immune system reacts to toxins that are released after a lot of germs have been killed off, and the body cannot quickly rid itself of the toxins they produce. As a result, a patient feels worse before she or he feels better. The bad feelings (the storm before the calm, if you like) is a normal and healthy reaction to nasties such as viruses, bacteria and funguses dying off.

Doctors are well aware that Herx Reactions can cause patients to stop taking their medication, unfairly blaming their medicine for making them feel bad. By the same token, as society gradually kills off the poison of religious superstition with secular reason, it experiences a painful reaction as the "germs" of dogma effectively make their last-ditch stand. As a result, we are now trying to rid ourselves of secular reason ... yet its actually religion that is making us feel bad.

Sure, secular science plus reason does not equal utopia, but they can take us towards becoming a little more sane and civilised before this tiny rock (in universal terms) is swallowed up by the sun. Using science we can limit population, improve quality of life, work towards preserving the environment, and perhaps even help us colonise another world if we completely mess this one up. These steps will take rigorous scientific analysis to achieve; the space program wasn't created by people who said, "Whoa, this is too complex to understand so we'll just fudge the hard bits and say God will sort them out" (although some unkind souls may suggest that this was the approach of those involved in the ill-fated space shuttle projects).

It strikes me that there are people out there who may take umbrage against my labelling religion as a poison. Oh well, I can quite understand understandable why they may wish to rip my throat out (as long as they join the queue).

Cultural evolution

Believe it or not, I am not knocking religion per se. The development of religion was an important evolutionary step for society. It provided a temper for the law of the jungle, and helped us to develop value systems and the concept of morality. In undeveloped, power-based cultures without religion's influence, women can be little more than chattel - as has been the case in some tribal societies such as the Eskimos. In fact, I think of religion as an evolutionary leap.

However, because of our adherence to the Word, as put down in the Bible or the Koran or on the back of The Cornflakes Packet , religious thought, for the most part, is not growing ... not evolving. Any biologist (or non-biologist such as myself) knows that if a creature does not adapt it will die out. Standing still is going backwards in an ever-changing world. Yet, where is the re-interpretation of Biblical texts? Where is the philosophical growth? Instead, all we seem to have is endless hand-wringing about sex in the absence of deeper debates.

Of course, this is more sociology than science, but the dynamics of life are inevitably analogous. Our cultures behave very much like organisms; they change - they grow, adapt and evolve.

Richard Dawkins' description of what he called 'memes' (cultural genes) in his book, The Selfish Gene, beautifully describes this analogy. Drawing on Dr Dawkins' hypotheses, we can see how religion has become an evolutionary cul-de-sac in cultural terms. So why do we cling on to the idea that some invisible force looks over our every action like a hard-but-fair parent when it flies in the face of logic?

In my last article, Religion for dummies, I talked briefly about those who claim that their faith in God saved them from their demons - alcoholism, drug dependence, crime, problematical sexuality etc.

I suggested that these people use the idea of "God saving them" to allow them to do good things liking giving up drugs. Their damaged self-esteem wouldn't otherwise let them do positive things for themselves so they can only work towards personal growth if they can attribute it to someone else (like God).

While this approach obviously works for a lot of people, wouldn't it be better still if they could drop the superstitious baggage? I guess some people are just too damaged to face their own realities square on; it's all just too painful. Cest la vie. But it's small wonder that the poor blighters cling on like grim death and hate anyone who tries to pull their crutch from under them.

The same goes for people who have been indoctrinated into superstitious religious thinking from childhood. How humiliating would it be to, after years of avid proselytising, to finally admit that they had devoted their lives to a load of hooey dreamt up by primitive people thousands of years ago to keep an unruly populace in line? (See last week's article for more detail on this).

Some other religious victims are people who have felt terribly isolated at some stage in their lives. Then religion "rescued" them by helping them to find connection and fellowship with others. Again, these people will be white-hot in their determination not to allow science and logic to interfere with their hard-won new social lives.

In many ways, life is all about relationships and connection, and to that end religion is probably as good a catalyst as any. Still, you have to wonder about the quality of those connections when they are quickly and ruthlessly severed the minute you stop believing what your "friends" believe. You would probably be better off joining a dinner club.

By now you should be able to see that I am not debunking the religion per se; it has had its uses. To be fair, it seems quite likely that 2,000 years ago there was an exceptional person named Jesus who said a lot of wise things. Apart from that, I'm dubious about other parts of the Bible given the fact that the people who wrote the Bible knew nothing of science and the Church's penchant for rewriting the "Good Book" over the centuries to suit the current climate (such as the deletion of the bit about reincarnation, which meant that people wouldn't worry about what they did since they'd get another chance).

Sure, the book has plenty of ancient wisdom, so in that sense it has some value, although there are lots of other wise writings about that are more focused and less cluttered with junk. The Bible is absolutely chockas with cultural-specific references. After all, is it really such a bad thing to talk to menstruating women or to eat shellfish? Should a woman who commits adultery really be stoned to death for her sins?

Then there are unclear passages which got blurred through translation, such as the so-called "virgin birth" which may well have been a misunderstanding; the Greek word, almah, also means "young woman".

In summary, the Bible lacks credibility because of the lack of science at the time of writing, its many culturally specific references laid down as "law", and all the fiddling and dubious bits added over the centuries by people with a barrow to push.

Mother nature will have the last word

However, no matter how much good it has done, religion has to go. This isn't my decree, but Mother Nature's.

How can human beings progress and transcend some of our more self-destructive aspects until religion is eliminated? Humans, being power-hungry creatures, inevitably abuse their positions of power when they become religious leaders. Even religious people must sometimes notice how closely the behaviour of our current religious leaders parallel that of the Pharisees as described in the Bible. For example, JC was good friends with Mary Magdalene. How many of our current crop of Pharisees have have approved of that?

Today's Pharisees don't like people who see women as deserving equal rights, and they certainly don't like hookers (publicly). It's well-known that our Pharisees, who wear dresses, really hate any other men who wear dresses (territorialism, perhaps?).

This isn't to say that people will stop wanting to understand how the universe came about or to try to tap into the unknown energies we suspect exist. Just that we will eventually discard this mindless, dogmatic approach to spirituality through organised religion.

I think it will be our instinctive drive to survive which will push us to overcome our current short-sighted attempts to use crutches, prove ourselves right, or form fragile social clubs based on myths (although Dungeons and Dragons fans appear quite a hardy breed). After all, we are first and foremost animals (see my article Monkey business for more detail), and animals want to survive, not wipe themselves out over ideology or false theories. If you doubt that we are animals and think humans are somehow different or special, you might like to explain why we spend most of our foetal lives as animals, moving from being a dual-celled organism, through to a fishy thing with gills, growing and then losing a tail, and so forth. Perhaps creationists might like to explain why our genetic makeup is so remarkably similar to that of the chimpanzee. Or even why, when you look at chimps, they seem so very much like hairy little people. This brings us back to ID. I have no problem with science teachers telling kids that science and scientists have a lot to learn about the nature of things. It's a good thing for us to not treat science (or anything for that matter) as the gospel truth. Healthy skepticism in all things should be encouraged.

So if we are so keen to sleuth out flaws in evolutionary theory, why not also examine those unexplained aspects of atomic theory and sub-atomic particles while we're at it? Or perhaps we could further our current imprecise understanding of the relationship between chemicals and energy? How about the rather confusing interrelation of time and space?

Let's question it all and develop an ever deeper understanding of how the universe works, sans the big white man with the long, white beard (no, I do not have anything against Santa Claus...I'm talking about the other big white man with the long, white beard).

In the end, I see intelligent design, as with all creatures with design flaws, going the way of the dinosaurs. If that disturbs you, take heart. After all, the evolutionary-based demise of religion I am describing is - like intelligent design itself - only a hypothesis...

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