As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution. On Monday the president said he favors the same approach for intelligent design “so people can understand what the debate is about.”

- from Knight-Ridder

Somewhere on a hillside of such unimaginable size that it is dotted with “dandelions” that are in fact galaxies, stands a gargantuan, omnipotent lobster. The light of a billion suns sparkles off his benevolent thorax, and his cosmic antennae receive the information from a trillion worlds at speeds that make “light” look like the crosstown local. He is looking at us right now, and if you were to look closely you’d see that a single tear is currently dropping from one all-loving eyestalk.

Prove that it’s not.

-me, from here

————–

I’ve already posted things about Intelligent Design a couple of times. The admirable evolution group-blog, The Panda’s Thumb, manages to keep an eye on the subject as well (though they do so without any mention of a benevolent, all-knowing super-lobster, which sadly betrays their ignorance of the burgeoning field of Scientific Crustaceanism. Nobody’s perfect.).

So you’re thinking, “Hey Adam, isn’t Bush’s recent statement just a revivification of the whole “Scopes Monkey” thing? Is this somehow different? Should we be any more upset than if Bush was once again advocating teaching creationism? Isn’t Intelligent Design more or less the same thing as creationism from an educational perspective? Are you keeping track of all your rhetorical questions so that your number of answers matches up with your number of questions?”

In short: No, yes, yes, and no.

What it comes down to is that the President, like so many other God-fearing Americans, has jumped on board with the program of exploring the new “science” of an intelligently-designed universe. The debate always goes more or less like this:

GOD FEARING GUY: Clearly there’s a debate, so we’d ought to teach this “Intelligent Design” stuff alongside evolution in the classroom.

SCIENCE NERD: There’s no ‘debate!’ It’s not science! See, a scientific paper must adhere to certain standards, have a clear logical structure, and be submitted for peer review before it can -

GOD FEARING GUY: There are a whole lot of scientists who don’t agree with you on that, pardner.

SCIENCE NERD: Not really - see, those guys are either fake scientists or real ones with religious agendas. Not a single paper about Intelligent Design has stood up to -

GOD FEARING GUY: This is getting complicated.

SCIENCE NERD: [pause] Well, it is science.

GOD FEARING GUY: Okayyyy… [pause] So… clearly there’s a debate, so we’d ought to teach this “Intelligent Design” stuff alongside evolution in the classroom.

[repeat and fade]

I’ve covered this before, so I’ll try something new. What would a real science of Intelligent Design look like?

It would have to define what is meant by “intelligence,” first and foremost. It would then have to scientifically prove the term: What are things that are designed by intelligences? How are they different from things that are not? What tests definitively differentiate a designed thing from a non-designed thing? Having established that, it would then look at living things and see if they met those criteria.

Intelligent Design hasn’t gotten that far. It doesn’t have to in order to get what it wants. ID goes about it this way:

Imagine that there are a bunch of rogue “mathematicians” who question whether long division really works. “Probably not,” they posit. “The real truth of how many times one thing can fit into another can only be known by a gigantic, omnipotent, and all-dividing lobster, and its existence ought to be taught alongside so-called ‘mathematical’ division.”

Your real mathematicians would point to the many, many instances where long division works. “Look at 1150 divided by 3,” they’d say. “Long division tells us that it’s 383 and a third, and if we count out 1150 lima beans and divide them into three equal groups, you’d see… oh, damn, dropped a bean, let me start again. Okay, here we go…”

Forty minutes later the mathematicians would have three piles of 383 beans and a single bean left over. Wiping the sweat from their brows (they really ought to get more exercise), they’d point to the beans and say, “Ha! See? Long division works.”

The Divisional Crustaceanists would look down at the table and say, “Not bad. This ‘long division’ seems to work for that particular case, at least in theory. But what about 41,547 divided by 16? That’s a toughie. Surely that amount can only be known by the Lobster. Only the Great Eyestalk could see that.”

There would be a dangerous silence. “Let me get more beans,” the youngest of the mathematicians would say finally.

“Fine, fine,” our Lobsterticians would reply. “But while you’re doing that, let’s agree that the jury’s still out on this one…”

Science is a little more complicated than arithmetic. Most people can understand basic arithmetic without their eyes glazing over, which is why we Lobster-worshippers haven’t make any inroads into the math textbooks (not yet, in any case…). But if you accept that science works at all, the actual progress of this “debate” isn’t much different from the above.

And as the President so cogently pointed out, having a “debate” is the whole point. As long as the Lobsterticians don’t accept the logic underlying long division and insist on taking it case-by-case, they can contend that it’s still an open question, knowing that they’ll be able to keep suggesting numbers long after the mathematicians have run out of lima beans. Meanwhile, our kids will be taught that a prayer to the Divine Thorax might be as effective as division when budgeting their allowances.

This may not be a completely accurate method, but it’ll stand the little tykes in good stead when the Time of the Hatching comes about. Which is what’s really important here, when you think about it.