I stopped by the Ohio Citizens for Science barn yesterday to see how the door repairs were going. There was a lot of celebrating going on about some 11-4 vote, and then someone showed me a postcard that had just arrived in the mail:
Told you that latch was broken. Margaritas unbelievable here. Sweet little Mexican filly teaching me Spanish. Ola. Hey, no hard feelings, OK? Use what's left in my checking account to pay for the repairs. And get yourself that Carole King ringtone we talked about.
You know the song: It's too late, baby, yeah it's too late...
I suppose I should be dismayed (like some of my colleagues) by the Ohio school board vote yesterday, but somehow the comic operetta aspects of the whole situation keep breaking through. Yes, I know horses can't write postcards, but nevertheless that big Clydesdale got his hoof around a resort hotel ballpoint to send a message back home. He even managed to get the stamp on straight.
The time to worry about intelligent design would have been, I'd say, about 10 years ago, before Darwin's Black Box was published and went on to sell over 250,000 copies. (True story: A few years ago, I was sitting in the green room of WGN Radio, the biggest AM station in Chicago, with Phil Johnson and a former professor of mine from the University of Chicago. Johnson and this professor, who knew each other slightly, were about to appear on the Milt Rosenberg show. They got to chatting, and in response to a question, Phil mentioned the number of copies in print of Darwin On Trial. My former professor blanched visibly.)
But now? School board policies, despite the attention they receive, are neither here nor there.
If you're reading this -- and you are -- you're in Cancun, baby, and that horse over there just offered to buy you a drink.
I know you're skeptical, so here's an exercise to try. Go to Amazon.com, and enter "Singularities, Christian de Duve" in the search box. When the book comes up, use the Search Inside the Book (tm) command. Type in the phrase "intelligent design," and see how many hits you get.
Now, Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate and leading origin-of-life theorist, is a skeptic of intelligent design. But he felt it necessary to frame his latest argument as a response to design. Singularities has a QH 325 Library of Congress call number, which means that the book will be shelved right next to Darwin's Black Box in any school library.
Let's suppose you're a bright, science-curious 16 year old Ohio public school student who reads a lot. You find de Duve's book. You find Behe's book. The two authors are clearly debating the same subject matter. But you're only allowed to talk about one of the books in class.
What do you think the effect of that asymmetry will be on your thinking?
Horse gone. Sending home postcards. Door fixed, 11-4.
I hear Carole King singing...
