The Gum Tree for 2007 September 8

Looks like the people who brought us The Passion of the Christ, Polar Express and The Chronicles of Narnia are making a movie about the scientific community and Intelligent Design. The movie name is 'Expelled' and its chief provocateur is Ben Stein. It is an interesting topic, and one in which I feel that many people misunderstand the roles that science and philosophy play in society (which seems to be more of a problem within the so called ‘soft sciences’ of psychiatry, economics, and political/business administration). It’s the age-old debate about empiricism and reason, but during the age of the ‘death of God’ the rationalists seem to be cross-dressing and play-acting empiricists a lot more frequently. There is the old joke about the physicist, chemist, and economist debating about how to open a can on a desert island. The physicist says that to open the can, drop it from the palm tree 10 ft. high onto a rock; the chemist proposes placing the can in a fire and waiting till it heats up to 100.1 Fahrenheit and explodes; the economist facile retort: “assume the can-opener.” (no offense economist, I really am sympathetic to The Dismal Science) I even remember my BYU biology classes in which we were literally made to repeat after Prof Bradshaw “Phylogeny recapitulates Ontogeny;” a scientific ‘law’ which has no basis in reality or fact. In medical school the scientific community still has trouble getting away from the developmental terms ‘pharyngeal arches’ and using the more accurate term ‘branchial’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchial_arch) even though the evidence is overwhelming that those bumps on the neck never had anything to do will the development of gills in humans. In any case, the Darwinians are fighting beak and hoof to beat back the Intelligent Designers even though the evidence is pretty conclusive that life did not develop randomly since mathematically and philosophically it just doesn’t add up—not to mention scientifically. That’s not to say that natural selection isn’t operative, but there just isn’t any evidence that a bear can fall into the ocean and give birth to whales. It is much more plausible that there are dwindling species (argument for conservation), and that somehow the great number of species that magically appeared during the Cambrian period of development did so through design and perhaps even placement. Unfortunately, Darwinian theory is starting to look even a lot less plausible than Scientology’s Xenu, but at least Scientologist admit there is a form of religious philosophy in their scientism. Resources You can watch the preview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGyMn_-J3c and articles about the ID, Evolution debate here: http://www.discovery.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenu

Kathleen Flake is a theologian whom I like to keep tabs on. Here in the Washington Post she wrote an interesting article outlining the differences between Mormonism and Creedal Christianity in terms of the nature and purpose of Evil in the world. I heard that analogy of the manure and the pony before, but quoted from Ronald Reagan talking about the political process. I think it applys well here too.