Molecules

The good news is that "intelligent design" got voted out in Dover, Pennsylvania, where, as one successful school board candidate put it, "there's a church on every corner."

The bad news, according to one numbskull preacher, is that God will surely throw some disaster Dover's way for allegedly voting Him out of the classroom.

This explains the socialist right's frustration with the federal judiciary. They can't apply any retribution on it because the Founding Fathers wisely protected the federal bench from all that. Why does the socialist right hate the Founding Fathers so?

Anyways, back to the issue at hand, the "intelligent design" mess was brought up not just by local election results but by my seven-year-old second grader son on election night. He was asking me how molecules worked. I told him that the protons did this, and the neutrons did that and the electrons did the other side and the whole shebang acted one way when connected with some other atoms and other ways when merged with others.

"Why?"

And there is why "intelligent design" fails as an 'alternative' to science and evolution.

Science and its theory of evolution attempt to describe -what- happens in the natural world. Light travels this way, planets go that way and nature evolves life through this apparent process. It -doesn't- try to explain "why" at the level my son asks.

Why doesn't light travel faster or slower than 186,000 miles per second or so? Why does water evaporate at a certain heat? Science can and does describe the process but no one can explain exactly why it all works the way it does. Nor does science try to.

Theology and belief does. Even early human knew that the sun rose and set by a predictable observable schedule but they couldn't figure out -why-. So they created myths. The sun was a magical creature, or a flaming chariot rode by a deity as his job description. They needed to understand why the sun did what it did. It's a natural desire.

But it's not science. It's theology. Which is what "intelligent design" is, no matter how its proponents try to wrap it. You wanna know -why- animals adapt to changing surroundings? Ask God. Or gods. Or the great Karma. Or no one. Or just ponder it all under a tree. For most of this work, there are religious organizations willing to help you work it out. There are plenty of trees available if you just want to sit and think about it. Finally, there are ballgames to watch if you'd really just not worry about it at all. After all, some might feel that if we're here, we're here, who cares where we came from?

In short, evolution vs. intelligent design is an apples and oranges fight, bad science invented by foolish people for political gain. It's good to see that some solid and sensible people in the heartland see this. There's hope for the Republic yet.