My Thoughts on Religion and Evolution and a Review of “Intelligent Design by Purple Space Squids”

Most intelligent people believe in Evolution over Intelligent Design. This is because once you start actually thinking for yourself, like intelligent people do, then the facts and reason just don't leave any room for an Intelligent Designer.

You have an intelligent person or an intelligent designer, you can’t have both. Or at least, that is how the argument between Atheists and Theists seemed structured on this particular battle-field in the great Wars of Reason. The cliché you don't need to win the battle to win the war, isnt actually true in the case of Evolution. If the godfearin' folk can show there is intelligent design then the Theory of Evolution becomes Falsified. It’s that simple.

This is the other side of the coin from the creationist "It's only theory!" argument. Yes, Evolution  is only a theory. It is there just waiting to be disconfirmed. Nothing can confirm  it 100% but already, in 2010 it’s like, 99.999999% confirmed by science, it really is. All the creationists have to do is find one thing  that clearly disproves Evolution  and that's it, game over, creationists  win. The fact that evolution is only a theory is its key strength, not its weakness.  If you think about the evolution of The Theory of Evolution then it is beneficial that the theory is attacked and questioned, this way, until it is disproved, it can only get stronger.

Until there is this single piece of counter evidence (bacterial flagellum? I don't think so) the only rational stance it to totally accept the immense body of supporting evidence as being more  immensely supporting of the theory, day by day. It was pretty clear cut when Darwin stepped of the Beagle, I expect.  So right now, if you want to be rational and a theist you have to incorporate evolution into your world and theistic view.  You need to make Evolution compatible with god.

Here is one way religious folk could do that, by holding belifes something like:

"I believe that God made the Universe as a vast simulation. Once started, at the Bing bang, God let it run with randomness and laws.  The purpose of God’s universal simulation was, I believe,  to produce intelligent, moral beings with free will. The reasons why God wants moral agents beyond comprehension from within this simulation. I believe that Moral Agents are exceptionally rare within the Universe simulation and when, five thousand years ago in the Middle east of this planet a sufficient moral threshold was passed then God took interest. She started interacting, guiding and judging  the beings of this simulated planet for her own mysterious ways...etc... etc"

Now I don't believe at all that is the case, but I don't have any real reason to believe it is the not case. It seems all phenomenon in this universe could be inside God’s Cartesian supercomputer. I can think of a number of replies to this supposition that I think show the absurdity of the view, like:  Why didn't God interfere over an apple but not over when we got Atom bombs? " Or, “ Why does God care about simulated masturbation?" But these smarter theists will always be able to give the "God works in mysterious ways" response. Note that this is a response that the Intelligent Design people don't have. Their only rational response must substitute “mysterious” with “stupid."

It doesn’t really matter if people continue to believe in intelligent design, nobody  should invest their ego in someone else’s beliefs. I used to be more militant on this, when you are passionate that you are right on an issue as big as Evolution it’s hard not to be, as I am sure many can attest.  But as soon as you take a stance of opposition, there is conflict.

I have a friend who is a Baptist minister and we have had some big chats on these big religious issues. I am as certain there is no God as he is certain that there is.  In our chats we soon realised that there was just no way to resolve that issue without conflict between our two certainties, and that’s not a the conflict between two belief systems, but two people.  I now think, though I didn’t used to, that nobody should try to persuade anybody what they should belief, whether in the pub or a school curriculum.

When you take out the personal belief agendas , from both sides, out of the religious debate you are just left with the Big Religious issues.  Like the concentration of moral, political and economic power and  the use of force in the name of religion. I have digressed, this was meant to be a Video review. Doh!

The Video Review

So... Even if you do believe in Evolution, and especially if you don't, this ten min video is absolutely the biggest butt-kicking Creationism et al has ever got on digital celluloid. It’s like Bruce Lee versus Stephen Hawkin in a fight that needs no equations.

How much of a butt-kicking is it?

Imagine all of St Dwarkin and Hitchen's eloquences on biology and reason being condensed into a ten minute video written by Jon Ronson and directed by Oliver Stone with the single brief: "Display the biggest butt-kicking, by reason, of Intelligent Design, ever".

Even then, you would not have a ten minute video as butt-kicking as this video.

Review over. Roll the projector.

'nuff said.

+:)=:):):)