Intelligent Design and Ben Stein

So Ben Stein is supposed to be a real smart guy. He goes on TV talking about intelligent design like it has anything to do with anything besides religion. Now as a philosophy major I have a major beef with this. The intelligent designer guy wants this stuff to be taught in science class but it is clearly not science. I feel like I shouldn't have to say this to a smart guy like Stein because anyone who has ever taken a freshman year philosophy class knows that intelligent design is Metaphysics. He has every right to pursue this theory. He has every right to say that this should be taught in a theology class or a class on metaphysics. Science is concerned with phenomena in the physical world. It does not study that which takes place beyond the physical world. That is the job of Metaphysics which is Greek for beyond or after physics. If you talk about an event like the Big Bang you are in the realm of science because you are describing a physical event in the universe that involved a certain amount of matter that transformed into what we know as the universe now. If you ask "Who did that big bang?" then you are clearly entering into another discipline that is outside the realm of science.

Now i don't want to say that science is infallible, like-ah da pope-ah, but it does correct itself when new information comes to light. The scientific method is the built in bullshit meter that science has adopted to make sure we are all observing the same thing and some dude didn't just go into the desert on a spirit quest and observe talking kumquats that told him the blackness of space is the inside of a drug rug.

I may be crazy to think that religion and science can get along together but if you look at what they are concerned with they really don't over lap. For instance, evolutionary theory talks about the physical phenomena that took place on the planet by which life went from its single celled form to its current state as we know it. Never once has it ever asked who did the cambrian life explosion. That is up to religion. They can say that Jah or Jesus or Muhamed or Zeus or Buddah or Ben Stein ripped open the kool aid packet of multi-cellular life and stirred it around in the oceans of 450 million years ago with a giant crucifix and viola, life. That's fine because that is metaphysics and not science. Frankly science doesn't care.

There are plenty of scientists who are religious, like Einstein. They believe in God because they explore all the mysteries of the universe and are left with a sense of awe. It seems that religious people who don't know anything about science are the ones who are pissed off at science. To them, if they ever put down the Bible and read this blog, I say lighten up and rent the cosmos by Carl Sagan. It might just make you more religious and inspired by mysteries of universe. And hey, any question science hasn't answered yet you are free to say God did it. No one can really prove otherwise, until they do, then you can still say that God did it because, like i said before, no one can really prove otherwise. See how fun Metaphysics is?

BTW i just typed this whole thing completely messed up on cold medicine. There's one thing i wish science could cure, the common cold.