Spaghetti Monsterism

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has become all the rage across the Internet. It started out as a satirical letter to the Kansas School Board, demanding that they give equal time in schools to Spaghetti Monsterism if they are going to give time to the theory of Intelligent Design. Naturalistic Materialists worldwide have lauded it as if it has blown the lid off the idiocy that “those hicks in Kansas” have been trying to shove down kids’ throats.

It’s marginally cute and clever for a college graduate's statement about his belief that science must by necessity exclude the idea of a God (unless, of course, God is real, in which case excluding him would be the most grievous error possible...but I digress). However, its success can be mostly attributed to a public lack of understanding of what Intelligent Design really is. Well, that and the fact that there are a lot of people out there who will swallow up anything that makes fun of organized religion, if only just because it makes their mommy mad.

Opponents of Intelligent Design (ID) begin with a strawman and work from there. The strawman is this: “ID is merely Biblical Young-Earth Creationism repackaged for the science classroom.” This is completely untrue.  Many supporters of ID (including myself) find Young Earth Creationism to be rooted in ignorance of both science and scripture.  It also makes Christians look like idiots in the eyes of many.

Intelligent Design merely calls into question Darwinian Evolution due to the overwhelming lack of concrete evidence, and suggests that the odds against even the simplest forms of life arising out of the total disorder that our universe WANTS to be in are too great. Too much faith in random chance (which is actually not a thing or a force that one can logically have faith in, but instead is just a measure of probability) is required to give Evolution any credence based on what we currently know. In fact, the difficulties facing a naturalistic worldview only get worse with each new discovery.

ID makes no claim as to who the intelligent designer might be or how he might have created life. You could believe it to be aliens, creatures from another dimension, Yahweh of the Bible, and yes, even a Flying Spaghetti Monster. So the Spaghetti Monster has already earned equal time in Kansas schools right along side the One True God…his prophet is just too blind to realize it.

Intelligent Design is important to the future of science. It is seeing to it that the outdated theory of evolution is examined as the flawed theory that it is, with no evidence to support it except homology. And homology (similarity among types) does not prove correlation. A spoon, a saucepan, and a kettle are homologous. That doesn’t mean the spoon begat the saucepan. They all simply utilize the same useful features. This is all that homology tells us definitively about the diversity of life.

Darwin admitted that his theory would require future fossil finds to show better correlation between species than simple homology. He truly believed that the fossil record would vindicate him.  Instead, it has only increased the amount of diversity we know of, and has never produced a single verifiable “missing link”. Darwin said that any irreducible system that couldn’t be explained through natural selection would be devastating to his theory, while he believed cells to be “disorganized blobs of jelly". We now know that cells are amazingly complex and organized machines, with tiny motors, gear systems, and data replication facilities far superior to anything mankind can create. In short, Darwin was WRONG about many things his theory's success hinged on (not to mention the fact that he believed Blacks to be genetically inferior to Whites and that they would eventually be wiped out through natural selection).

So perhaps the most important thing about Intelligent Design is that it calls Evolution as we know it into question. Allowing ID to be discussed in schools merely encourages future scientists to not take the word of Darwin as gospel and to explore other, better explanations as to why life exists.

Comments

[Herr Magus Stryx]

You forget the possible implications of a genetic recombination lab in the hands of a band with very bad taste in tupperware hats (Devo).

Let us not rule out the obvious. After all, the humor is similar.

[H.M. Stryx]

After watching DOOM, I cannot re-read the article without thinking of ID Software. Isn't there another acronym available for Creationism that doesn't have trademark infraction issues?

- Legal, *that hot place*
H.M. Stryx, Advocate for the defense