The Homunculus
Jackie Robinson wasn't the first black man to play in major league baseball.
The reason you don't know that is because it would never be acceptable to teach it in school. Our schools foster the illusion that in race relations, as in everything, our society is constantly getting better. We used to have slavery; now we don't. We used to have lynchings; now we don't. Baseball used to be all white; now it isn't. It is deeply embedded into our cultural mythology that things are always steadily improving on their own, and this couldn't be more dangerous, and more untrue. In 1929, for example, in a series of race riots across the country, a white mob dropped dynamite from airplanes onto black families in Tulsa, killing over 75 people and destroying 1,100 homes.
Case number two.
When sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. The conclusion? Scientists revived the old idea of the homunculus, in which each sperm cell contained a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum.
Now, of course, we know how humans really got here, and we're going to use our high schools to share this new discovery with our young. I'm talking, of course, about intelligent design.
HARRISBURG, Pa. - School boards would be allowed to require the teaching of "intelligent design" - a concept that is the subject of a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania - as part of science lessons under a bill that has been introduced in the state House of Representatives.
Ok, first off, let's establish the intentions here. Antievolutionists such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit why they argue so vehemently for their theory. They intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of god.
Their kind of "creationist science" is a contradiction of terms. The central tenet of modern science is "methodological naturalism" - it is designed to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. When it's not based on methodological naturalism, it's not called science. St. Thomas Aquinas sharply opposed the division of science from religion. He did not accept the theory of the double truth, not only because of its irreligious consequences regarding the mortality of the human soul, but because he was convinced of the blatant falsity of such a theory.
Physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover, their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down.
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Maybe the homunculus. Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion... that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
In the end, the result is the exact same thing as telling us time and time again that Jackie Robinson was the first black allowed in the major leagues. It provides an inadequate framework for observing the world around us, appreciating our history, and learning from our past.
The truth isn't always the easiest, but it does have the added benefit of being true. Jackie Robinson wasn't the first black man to play in major league baseball. The truth? Blacks had played in the major leagues throughout the nineteenth century, but by 1889 whites had forced them all out.
The reason you don't know that is because it would never be acceptable to teach it in school. Our schools foster the illusion that in race relations, as in everything, our society is constantly getting better. We used to have slavery; now we don't. We used to have lynchings; now we don't. Baseball used to be all white; now it isn't. It is deeply embedded into our cultural mythology that things are always steadily improving on their own, and this couldn't be more dangerous, and more untrue. In 1929, for example, in a series of race riots across the country, a white mob dropped dynamite from airplanes onto black families in Tulsa, killing over 75 people and destroying 1,100 homes.
Case number two.
When sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. The conclusion? Scientists revived the old idea of the homunculus, in which each sperm cell contained a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum.
Now, of course, we know how humans really got here, and we're going to use our high schools to share this new discovery with our young. I'm talking, of course, about intelligent design.
HARRISBURG, Pa. - School boards would be allowed to require the teaching of "intelligent design" - a concept that is the subject of a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania - as part of science lessons under a bill that has been introduced in the state House of Representatives.
Ok, first off, let's establish the intentions here. Antievolutionists such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit why they argue so vehemently for their theory. They intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of god.
Their kind of "creationist science" is a contradiction of terms. The central tenet of modern science is "methodological naturalism" - it is designed to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. When it's not based on methodological naturalism, it's not called science. St. Thomas Aquinas sharply opposed the division of science from religion. He did not accept the theory of the double truth, not only because of its irreligious consequences regarding the mortality of the human soul, but because he was convinced of the blatant falsity of such a theory.
Physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover, their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down.
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Maybe the homunculus. Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion... that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
In the end, the result is the exact same thing as telling us time and time again that Jackie Robinson was the first black allowed in the major leagues. It provides an inadequate framework for observing the world around us, appreciating our history, and learning from our past.
The truth isn't always the easiest, but it does have the added benefit of being true. Jackie Robinson wasn't the first black man to play in major league baseball. The truth? Blacks had played in the major leagues throughout the nineteenth century, but by 1889 whites had forced them all out.