Un-Intelligent Design

By Number Six

Saturday, August 20, 2005 at 08:14 AM

Here we go again, eh? Creationists clowning around?

I feel like that character the late Gilda Radner did: What's all this about un-intelligent design?

Few comprehend the concept, worse, it's a smokescreen for creationism, which isn't science to begin with.

A theory goes like this: The cosmos is so screwball, so strange, that there must be a creator governing the assembly of such. It does, to an extent, seem to make some sense, I'm still rubbing my skull over the early universe doing this bizarre expand-wait-slow-it-down-no-expand again stuff. Why? So far, no clues, other than that's what took place, and here we are today.

So many variables hang in the ether: One minute change during the last 13.77 billion years, and we wouldn't be here to bitch about any of it. Odd stuff. Weird stuff. Stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, but add in some calculus, a few experiments, and everything works, mate.

To that, some have proposed: Suppose the cosmos wasn't an accident? Suppose it's God out there controlling all of this?

Answer: No clue. Too many questions remain between that one and the ones we currently have answers for. The cosmos is a big puzzle, and is not too swift about coughing up an owner's manual. Everything we've learned to date has come with study, experimentation, mathematical reasoning, and just asking "What the fuck does this?"

Sadly, for too many, science does not cover the "why" aspects. Oh, we have the how, when, where stuff pretty well nailed down, unless something really insane comes along, and we end up rethinking, replotting and coming up with all sorts of new ideas to make sense of it all. Newtonian mechanics, for example, works flawlessly, until we get up around cee, then, Einstein's work takes over. Onward and upward.

Some of it's so simple it's painful. Why would God create a creature with sex organs and then tell him not to use them? Answer, God never said that. If God does exist, trust me, an old engineer, He's not into adding turn signals on roller coasters. No way. Clean, simple, elegant, and everything with a usage. Marketing concepts courtesy the Big Three Religions need not apply.

Thus, we could, sort of, say, "Well, suppose it's all by a grand design." Okay, fine, that's possible, but not proveable. We cannot pry open the watch, but we can make attempts at the rules concering watch behavior, hence, if the cosmos is by design, well, boy howdy, it just proves God is one clever genius.

But, those who belch out this Intelligent Design do not recognize evolution, astrophysics, quantum, medical research and everything else we've assembled over time. It would make more sense that ID would be one sentence long: "Okay, maybe God is out there, and this is His great idea." I'd love that, as it would then make more sense, and still follow the scientific bent: So far, God appears to be a lunatic, but His lunacy works, so, don't bitch.

No, it don't work that way: As soon as the door opens, it's back to Genesis and the old wive's yarns. Yeahbaby, another name for creationism, which wasn't, isn't and never will be...a science.

Science requires hard proof, whether a mathematical "proof" or hard evidence. Ideally, we prefer some of both. That's where the rub comes in: Creationists claim stuff, but their proof evaporates against other "proofs", thus, it's hard to believe a 6000 year old cosmos versus the current 13.777 billion year model, harder still to buy into the man-precedes-woman doohickey (guess again), and it's a known fact there ain't that much fucking H2O on Earth for a biblical flood to take place.

So, why not just toss Genesis and go the only way open? Accept that the cosmos is a bizarre mystery, and that if God is plotting and designing, He's very mum about the CAD drawings.

So? You'd think, as the mystics and others long ago believed...just accept it as it is and grin at how incredibly wonderful it works as is...that would be the real basis for Intelligent Design: We're still baffled, questions outpace the answers, and if it's God's doings...why are we complaining? Why make up dopey rules that don't work?

Who knows? Maybe it IS by design. Will we ever prove it? Never. We barely get one question answered and another dozen appear to replace it. God, then, remains a mystery, and according to the wiser ones of our past, it's more fun that way.