I worry about Kansas. They have decided to judge the validity of the Theory of Evolution versus "Intelligent Design" (Creationism by another name) in a series of public debates, I guess because of the way the issue of slavery was settled so conclusively by the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Thank God they didn't have to fight a war over that one. And besides, who needs to sit around for a century or so of patient investigation and peer review when you can vote one theory off the island by the next commercial break?
Let's admit it - debates are an intellectual form of professional wrestling, except debating is less honest. That's why politicians debate each other so eagerly. But this is Kansas. Why don't they just let the cows decide.
I make no claims to be a cow expert but I can say from personal experience that cows are dumb. It's not their fault. Humans breed cows to be stupid. The last thing you want when you are leading a cow into the slaughterhouse is a moment of inspiration and insight on the part of the cow.
The original God made cow was smarter than that. It was called an Aurochs - pronounced R-rocks. Humans painted pictures of Aurochs on cave walls seven thousand years ago. It was Aurochs that pulled the plows of Babylon. And it was Aurochs that were slaughtered to feed the armies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. But almost from the moment they first met, humans struggled to "improve" on Aurochs. The last pure bred Aurochs was killed by a poacher in Poland in 1627. That was a long time ago, but it was well after the flood.
The Angus, the Ankole Watusi, the Belgian Blue, the British White, the Cash, the Devon, the Normande, the Norwegian Red, The Red Angus, the Red Brangus, the Scotch Highlander, the Texas Longhorn, the White Park and the Zebu (to name but a few) were all bred originally from Aurochs by people who never read Mendel, because he hadn't yet been born when they started. They wouldn't have known Darwin if he owed them money. But they knew what every breeder has always known - if you take a cow with lots of beef on her and breed her with a bull who's mother had lots of beef on her, their offspring will probably be even beefier.
This ain't rocket science. It's humans tinkering with the mechanics of evolution - which is how you get from slime to Einstein in a short four billion years.
Evolution is officially called a theory, which seems like a silly way to refer to a science which supports and is supported by several entire fields of science, such as Geology, Biology (both molecular and genetic), Paleontology, Chemistry, Nuclear Physics and most recently Astronomy. The entire petrochemical industry spends billions of dollars every year using this "theory" to find oil. And they have for the last sixty years.
Creationism, by contrast, stands like an isolated bridge with only one support, leading from nowhere to nowhere, unconnected to any other science. It can neither use nor confirm what other fields of science have taught us, nor add to our understanding of those fields. Which, by definition, means that creationism does not function as a science.
But that isn't my biggest complaint about Creationism. I get most exercised because Creationism doesn't seem to function as faith, either. In fact it seems to deny the very concept of faith. If you do not have faith then all the evidence in creation will not convince you, nor should it. Because to have faith means that no evidence is required. And to require evidence means there is no faith.
Science, after all, is only what you know. Facts. Data. Evidence. New facts and new data means that what you know changes. Science can be disproved. Argued about. Debunked. It requires logic, passion, discipline, hubris and skepticism.
Faith, on the other hand, cannot be disproved or denied. Faith is what you believe. It requires courage and humility and offers in return insight and inspiration.
I don't mean to imply that faith and science are equal. They are most definitely not. Science never turned a bad kid around. It never comforted the parents of an injured child. It never guided a tortured soul to peace.
And I can't figure out why so many people in Kansas want something as noble as their faith reduced to something as mundane as science.
This worries me.