Good evening audience,
For those of you who don't know him, Nono is my oldest friend, and one of the great thinkers of our time. We are but a few privileged ones to know that however, we can only hope that his glory will not come post mortem. There is a link to his blog on the right, for all the French speakers (or readers) among you.
His latest ramblings concern an article published recently in a French 'volume' magazine about 'Intelligent Design'. This article apparently proceeded to mock and discredit the 'Intelligent Design' theory, all the while putting forth the unshakeable virtues of 'Science', which should be held as ultimate Truth.
Nono didn't like that. Not that Nono believes in any way in 'Intelligent Design', far from it. But the outright refutation of anything 'non scientific' seems wrong to him. All science-head that I am, I agree with him here, if only on the premise that 'just because it's not a scientific subject yet, it doesn't mean it never will be'. (For having studied advanced maths myself - and not even that advanced - I know that you can quickly reach a point where matters become almost more philosophical than mathematical. Maths then simply adapt and adopt new models to cover the new ground and be able to deal with it scientifically.)
I do however have several problems with I.D. being taught in school - which fortunately should not happen in the foreseeable future.
The first one being that evolution - Darwinistic or other - as is it taught now is not incompatible with the idea of I.D. . There is a point beyond which science says 'we don't know' where ID could find a very comfortable spot. Most religions so far refuse to go that far; after all, they have been preaching for several thousand years that Man was created 'as is' and hasn't changed since. Old habits die hard, but the world is changing, and slowly even the most conservative are becoming more flexible as their followers' faith is being shaken - mostly because of eduction and science, actually. So who knows...
The second problem that I see with ID being taught in school, is that it comes from a movement that is almost entirely catholic. Had it come from an oecumenical body, I might have shown some - not much! - more leniency towards it. It didn't, and I am certain that divergent views would clash very rapidly and create yet more tensions between religious communities. All that the world needs, really...
One thing about the push for ID being taught in school leaves me wondering: why? Why is it so important that ID be taught in school? School doesn't categorically refute religion, it simply does not teach it. On top of that, the idea of evolution as presented by Darwin is presented as just that, an idea: 'Science says evolution blahblahblah, because suchandsuch...' (well, that's what my classes were like). It does not say: 'Religion is wrong, and that's how it happened...'. Since there are plenty of places to learn about the creation theory of a particular religion - church/temple/mosque/other for example, text studies classes, etc... - why is it so important it is taught in school? I don't know...
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