Intelligence Re-Designed

This morning, I awoke to read this startling headline from the Associated Press:

Pitt, Jolie Visit Canada Dinosaur Exhibit

Goodness!

That's fascinating news!

I can't tell you how much my life was changed and informed by reading that Mr. and Mrs. Smith were checking out a T-Rex in Canada, while avoiding pesky fans and autograph seekers.

Talk about the perils of paleontology!

With that subject in mind, I decided to do a little research this evening about dinosaurs.

And guess what I found?

Those two are so un-American! There are folks who have built and are building exciting and new Dinosaur Museums right here in the U.S. of A.

Now, now, I know that's not nearly as interesting as whether or not Brad and Angelina got it on in the gift shop...but I admit that, sometimes, I try to keep up with what's new in the world of science and learning and stuff.

Much like Brad and Angelina, I like learning about dinosaurs, too.

With those two in mind, I'm planning a trip to the Museum of Earth History, one of the newest dinosaur museums in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

I expect I'll learn a lot on my trip! According to the museum, most of the dinosaurs featured in Jurassic Park died after they escaped the Great Flood on Noah's Ark.

It's a really sad story that I somehow missed the first time I read the book of Genesis in the Bible.

I was enthralled reading this passage from the Museum of Earth History's website:

There are some indications that dinosaurs lived after the flood. For example, in the Book of Job, the author discusses the behemoth in chapter 40. The animal described clearly matches the description of a Sauropod (commonly known as a Brontosaurus). However, the Book of Job was written about 300 years after the flood; the present-tense description of the beast indicates that the animal alive at the time had to have descended from the survivors on Noah’s ark.

You can also read more here in case you need more information. It's real cute!

The way I look at it, information is the foundation of understanding.

This article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website explains why places like the Museum of Earth History are being built in the first place: to promote dissident thinking! Yay!

Proponents of intelligent design challenge Darwin's theory of natural selection by arguing that some organisms are too complex to be explained by evolution alone, pointing to the possibility of supernatural influences...

From its nondescript office suites here, the [Discovery] Institute has provided a home for the dissident thinkers, pumping $3.6 million in fellowships of $5,000 to $60,000 a year to 50 researchers since the science center's founding in 1996. Among the fruits are 50 books on intelligent design, many published by religious presses, and two documentaries that were broadcast briefly on public television. But the institute has staked out safer turf in the public policy sphere, urging states and school boards to include criticism in evolution lessons rather than actually teach intelligent design.

Since the presidential election last fall, the movement has made inroads, and evolution has emerged as one of the country's fiercest cultural battlefronts.

Discovery leaders have been at the heart of the highest-profile developments: helping a Roman Catholic cardinal place an opinion article in The New York Times in which he sought to distance the church from evolution; showing its film promoting design and purpose in the universe at the Smithsonian; and lobbying the Kansas Board of Education in May to require criticism of evolution.

These successes follow a path laid in a 1999 Discovery manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which sought "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies" in favor of a "broadly theistic understanding of nature."

Wow! That's a lot to think about, huh? Especially all that overthrowing stuff.

I'm guess, after all that, I'm just left wondering how broadly this theistic understanding truly is?

Are we talking progressive, Unitarian, every-religion is good theistic understanding?

Or something quite, quite different?

There's an overthrown religion-based government that publicly executes teenagers just for being gay for example....

Oh...I'm just being a silly gay looking out for my own hedonistic interests.

We're Americans!

We're Christians, here....And there's that whole separation amendment thingie between the Church and State in the Magna Carta, or whatever it's called....

And Christians don't advocate killing people just for having different opinions!

And c'mon, seriously....why worry about what goes on in the Middle East? Isn't having an opinion about what goes on over there kinda unpatriotic?

There's no need for me to worry about any of this science, religion or government debate. I'm sure that my President is looking out for my best interests, anyway.

Those crazy religious-fundamentalist folks are just a bunch of pea-brains, anyway...What kind of influence can they really have over America?

I have nothing to worry about in the least....

Except what Brad and Angelina are going to be doing tomorrow.

Posted August 24, 2005 08:24 PM