Kukla: Intelligent design and evolution of chickens
Kukla: Intelligent design and evolution of chickens
The Grand Rapids Press, Thursday, Feb 02, 2006
Scientists and individuals who believe that the universe was created by a power greater than Wal-Mart recently suffered a setback in getting their Bible-based intelligent design theory taught as an alternative to evolution in public schools.
A Pennsylvania federal judge recently ruled that intelligent design -- a concept that says humans are way too complex to have developed from single-celled creatures -- is not science, but the Bible with a textbook cover on it.
Now, I can't verify if that's true.
Having been brought up old-school Catholic, we were not allowed to have Bibles. The church would hand out something called missals -- basically, Bible lite -- which contained just the parts of the Bible we were allowed to see.
The rest of the Bible was kept locked up in Rome. Therefore, I don't have a clue as to what's in it.
Evolution design flaw
So, I'm not sure why people are so passionate about having the Bible version of creation taught along with Darwin's theory of evolution. But, I'm not against it.
I mean, intelligent design makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it. For example, no one is going to convince me that Jessica Simpson is a second cousin to an amoeba, which, if I remember correctly from biology class, looks like a squashed caterpillar with an eye in the middle.
I will concede that Steve Buscemi -- the inept kidnapper with the wandering eye in the movie "Fargo," who appeared last season on HBO's "The Sopranos" -- may have developed from an amoeba, but not Jessica Simpson, who we all need to give our love and support to after her breakup with Nick.
Competition
Besides, I think the theory of evolution could stand a little competition.
Basically, evolution is boring. It's all this stuff about how everything on Earth developed over millions and millions of years of natural selection and adaptation, trial and error, blah, blah, blah blah.
Intelligent design is much more succinct. The Earth is not 60 million years old. It's just 6,000 years old.
School kids will rejoice. That's about 59 million years of history they do not have to study.
Students will not have to learn about "Jurassic Park Period" or the "Crustacean Days" because they don't exist under intelligent design.
For the birds
Unless you are going to be a paleontologist, evolution really doesn't have any place in our world today.
The only way I suspect evolution is impacting my life is when I get my cable television bill.
I can't be certain, but I think I'm paying a charge for evolution in there somewhere. I'm sure it comes with the HBO package.
I haven't had an intelligent conversation about Darwin and the origin of the species since I was in college.
I remember it well.
My roommate and I were sitting around eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on some old newspapers that were lying on the kitchen table.
On one of the pages was a picture of some scientists holding up a bone and declaring it was the missing link that proved man evolved from lower life forms.
My roommate looked at the bone in the picture and a chicken bone he had in his hand.
Setting the bone down next to the picture he said, "Look. It's the same bone. We're not descended from monkeys. We came from chickens."
I looked at the bone, then at my roommate and replied, "I wonder if Col. Sanders knows about this?"
About 40 years later, Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC.