There it was, glinting in the sand, something catching the searing sub-Saharan sun. The half conscious, desperately thirsty British airman first thought he was hallucinating. As he staggered toward the shiny object, he prayed it was something liquid, something that would cool his parched throat. But it wasn't; as he grasped it in his hand and shook the sand away, he realized he was holding a watch.
A watch!
And not just a watch; soon after, when he'd been rescued and returned to England, he showed it to his superior officers and then to scientific experts. At first, no one could identify the maker or even how old the timepiece was. Nothing quite like it had ever been seen. It was fashioned of finest 24-karat gold, the design magnificent, the face a gloriously transparent crystal, the wristband intricate and obviously very expensive. And the most amazing feature: The sweep second hand was moving gracefully in one fluid motion around the Roman numerals – keeping absolutely perfect time – and it seemed to need no winding or even motion to keep it running!
Eventually, Darwinian scientists concluded that this exquisite artifact had not been manufactured; it had evolved, starting as a primitive sun dial from prehistoric times, swept and carried along and burnished by howling winds and abrasive sands, colliding over the millennia with other whirling objects and substances, melting and freezing and morphing finally into this magnificent timepiece, purely by happenstance. And, because of its primary ingredients and millennial buffeting by the elements, it now was so in tune with the universe that it kept atomic clock-type time!
Anybody gullible enough to believe that sappy saga? No? Well, how about one even more farfetched and absurd?
The vast universe, operating in such dependable precision we can confidently send human beings a quarter million miles into space, all the way to the surface of the moon, and back, safely. Our earth, moving in quiet orbit around the sun, so perfectly placed that life of all kinds flourish, while just a little distance closer or farther away, and the globe would not support life at all. And the human body, to say nothing of the mysterious brain, is made of such a myriad collection of mechanisms and infinitesimal organisms, all functioning in unexplainable synchronicity, that all the scientists who've ever lived have yet to understand more than a fraction of its workings. And all of this just "happened." No blueprint, no design, no intelligence, no creator or creation process. Just blind chance, and something called "evolution".
As absurd, as nonsensical as this concept is, it's being swallowed whole and taught to our kids by college-educated, highly intelligent professors, encouraged by the National Education Association and militantly defended by the ACLU. Not one of these Ph.D.s can explain what started it all, where the mass and energy (the basic ingredients of which all things consist) began or came from.
...And not one Ph.D. I've ever heard – totally aware of one of the basic laws of science, "every action creates an equal and opposite reaction" – can hope to explain what the "action" was that created the "equal and opposite reaction" we call matter.
As opposed to your thoroughly researched argument, an invisible astronaut. I'd like to think that Pat's use of the watchmaker trope was indented as a subtle, if stupid, jab, but I really don't think he's that smart. Also, he fails to note two important problems with his analogy:
2- Watches are inorganic, and therefore cannot evolve. A watch also can't reproduce, does that disprove the claim that humans make babies?
In 1925, in the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial," ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow took the position that it was bigotry to teach just one view of human origins! He was defending the right of the science teacher to offer the theory of evolution as an alternative to the long-accepted account of creation. And now, that same ACLU is instituting lawsuits all over America wherever anybody dares to offer Intelligent Design or any other alternative to the theory of evolution! What blatant hypocrisy!
Wait, hang on. There are OTHER alternatives you guys have been dreaming up, too? Man, this should be good (or frightening). But there's a problem here, Pat- once you come up with more "alternatives", it's going to be even harder to ensure "equal time". "Now we were supposed to be discussing geology today, so we're going to have to study about eight different theories of the geologic timetable."
This should also result in some pretty fun Pop Quizes:
Is the earth:
A- 8-6 billion years old.
B- 6,000 years old.
C- 5 minutes old (thanks Flying Spaghetti Monster!/Martian Warlock Overlords!)
D- My religion says time does not exist.
E- All of the above.
And if anyone gets the question wrong, they can sue.
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