Hi All
Yes, lets expose kids to both sides of the argument. If the arguemt is
conducted fairly (and we can make deciding if it is or not part of the
process) then evolution has noting to fear from the so called Intelligent
Design hypothsis as this latter is so full of holes as to be basically
meaningless. It can also, and this is my main point, be shown to be
internally inconsistent as much of the supposed 'design' of organisms is
anything but intelligent.
As someone who earns a crust by (mostly) intelligent design of hands-on
interactive exhibits and other things I find the 'Intelligent Design'
hypothesis to be insulting as it is clearly advanced by people who do not
know anything about how human intelligent designers work.
Leaving aside the many examples of crass bad design in the human body, such
as the shared gullet and windpipe, non repairing dentition, and the blind
spot in the eye one of the most amazing things about all organisms is the
amount of detailed 'design' they share across large groups of very different
organisms.
Designed artefacts don't have this characteristic - its quite common to find
that different solutions to the same problem have no common components, and
that in producing an improved vesrion of a particular product the designer
has gone right back to basics and reworked the whole thing from scratch. So,
two succesive models may bear the same name and come from the same
manufacturer but they don't have any components above the nuts and bolts
level in common. Good examples can be found in things like cars, where a
late model Ford Escort (front wheel drive), has nothing physically in common
with an early model Ford Escort (rear wheel drive) at all.
Now as I understand things the living world isn't really like this at all -
if it were then surely things like using mice as test-beds for human drugs
would be much less successful than they are- and it seems to me that this
similarity across huge ranges of species actually argues against there being
a designer, at leats in any terms we can understand, because a designer
would have been able to start from scratch to produce improved forms on
several, if not many, occasions.
Hope this is interesting and not too off the point
Cheers for now
Richard Ellam
L M Interactive
3 Winterfield Road
Paulton
Bristol
BS39 7RF
e: [log in to unmask]
tel/fax 01761 412 797.
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