Excellent new weblog by J-School student Marcus Wohlsen on the general theme of man and nature — evolution/creation, Huygens, mudslide, Tsunami vs. Rwanda in the public consciousness… Should be a good site to follow.
In the same way, Creationists believe we exist categorically apart from our ape ancestors — and therefore the entire process of natural selection itself. Which makes Creationists a ripe constituency for an administration that tries to bend the rules of ecology to its will as a matter of policy. Since we run the show, how could nature ever bite us back?
Aside: Heard a commentator on Air America today making the point that when Creationists call Evolution an “unproven theory,” they’re cherry-picking one unproven theory from so many in science. Gravity, quantum mechanics, etc. are all unproven theories. Much if not most of science is “unproven theory,” but still strong enough to get work done with, to do an adequate or excellent job of explaining the world around us. In other words, it’s valid to point out that we need to be careful about distinguishing fact from theory, but when ID-ers use this as a reason to put warning labels on textbooks, one has to ask why they choose to warn about evolution rather than any other “unproven theory.” The only explanation is that the “unproven theory” argument is yet another smokescreen, an attempt to legitimize their real agenda.
I actually know Marcus from a previous life – he went to school with Chris Tweney of Strata Lucida — Chris and I worked together at Ziff-Davis in Boston in the early-mid 90s. Went to a Martin, Medeski and Wood show in Boston with him once, never saw him again until he showed up at my office door a few months ago. Full circle (or semi-circle, or something).
Collision Course is running on SquareSpace, a next-gen online blogging/general-purpose CMS space I hadn’t heard of until now – looks promising.
You know, as a Christian (Episcopalian tribe), I lean towards a variety of “intelligent design” myself. Tho’ like the Founding Fathers, I often think of God as “The Great Architect” who in the beginning created things like the physical laws of the Universe. As a matter of fact, also like Jefferson, et al., I lean towards Deism. Just don’t tell any of the more conservative types in our church, they’d throw me out of the club toot-sweet ;)
The thing is, even though I lean this way, I’m completely against adding that stuff to a public school science class. The topics of evolution, physical origins/age of the Universe, etc… can be covered quite well w/o that. The ID design crowd who’re making all the noise recently are really just fundamentalist / creationist types in sheep’s clothing. You know, the ones who think the world is just 6,000 years old, etc…
In the beginning, God said, “Let Force = Mass X Acceleration,” and it was so.
David –
When I was working for Rovia, we had this great marketing guy who constantly asked for a “Go” button. I guess the theory of the “Go” button was that it was the single interactive UI control that the user could push to get whatever they wanted done. We tried to explain to him that our software wasn’t quite psychic yet but he never let up.
Anyway, when I try and fit a higher power into my worldview, it is always a being like you describe, someone who laid the foundation, set up the rules, and pressed the “Go” button. The grand experiment and all…