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MOST OF THE TIME, I could not
But science has nothing to do with it--especially the facts of evolution, which Buchanan mislabels "Darwinism."
Intelligent Design is not science, never was science, and is just a baloney sandwich used by religionists to inject religion into science. The court in the Dover case saw that clearly, and the people in Dover tossed out the religionist politicos that foisted such lies on innocent schoolchildren.
The plain fact is that science to date finds not one single shred of evidence suggesting nature is designed. That does not mean they won't in the future--just that today they haven't.
Buchanan makes the absurd claim that Aristotle was a scientist. Aristotle, the pseudoscientist, at one time concluded men had more teeth than women because they were bigger.
He could have just looked in the mouths of both, but he made his "deduction" from his formal logic.
Aristotle was first and foremost a logician, giving us deductive logic--which is pretty much useless in science that uses inductive methods. He lived long before scientific method; scientific method in fact developed to counter the Aristotelian methods that dominated the ancient and medieval ages of magic and superstition.
Aristotle's notion of the First Unmoved Mover is a comment on the inherent flaw of causal reasoning-infinite regression. In other words, if God caused the universe, who caused God, and who caused the cause that caused God, ad infinitum.
Science so far does not show the universe had a "cause." The Big Bang is an expansion theory of what was already there. There is no evidence that what was there came from anywhere or anything.
The universe is what we call a Causal Primary--but new evidence from science may change that.
Buchanan claims Darwinism cannot say how life began. Darwinism, or evolution, is not about abiogenesis or how life came about. It is about how life forms develop over time. How life forms from lifeless matter is still mostly unknown territory--but science does not make up a myth about it; it simply doesn't know enough yet.
But Buchanan and the creationists want to stick a god in the gaps of science--which just insults God.
He talks about the lack of missing links and the fossil record. That is another lie of creationism that is simply not true. Missing links labeled as transitional fossils by creationists are bogus issues--all the fossils are transitional; that is what evolution shows and means.
The science departments of the world's universities are crammed full of transitional fossils.
What the Dover School Board tried to do, and what Buchanan wants to do, is lie to children in school about science to foster a religious agenda.
Their motives are to prevent a slip into moral chaos in a world with no moral values--but that is not science's fault or doing. It is religion's failing to move from medieval times to postmodern times.
What Buchanan and the creationists do is turn children of faith into young adult atheists when they find out he, and others, have been feeding them baloney about creation all these years.
Young adults leave the church, leave the faith, throw the compass overboard, and wallow in a chaotic social sea that drowns many of them in drugs, alcohol, divorce, crime, sexual perversion, dishonesty, racism and other moral failings.
Why? Because they were lied to about science and religion as children.
The very spiritual nature of humans (that neuroscience finds evidence for, incidentally) has been destroyed by creationists lying to children about science, instead of promoting the spiritual development and moral fiber religion can foster--and leaving the lizards to evolutionary science.
Creation is a poetic expression, not
Science also shows that monogamy and monotheism lead to social and individual success and fulfillment better than any other value system. Buchanan and other creationists turn the young away from the spiritual and moral compass by a mutiny on the boat that forces the young overboard into putrid waters that drown them morally.
In their effort to save religion, they drown the faithful.
J. BOLTON MADDOX of Spotsylvania is a former Washington police captain, and has taught and written about public policy and criminal justice issues.
