Creationists? Buy a Clue

One of the more amusing things about watching creationists (aka Intelligent Design Specialists) refight a war they’ve lost over and over, even with its destructive effects on our national intelligence and economic competitiveness, is their complete obliviousness to the real academic/research threats facing them. Complexity theory, of which evolution is an example really, poses far more danger with its demonstration that complex things don’t need a magical divinity, just simple rules leading to emergence, feedback loops, tipping points, power laws, and patterns and flows to produce what simple little minds (like humans’) can’t really comprehend much. Yet where are the protests, demonstrations, and talking heads?

Even more of a problem for them is cognitive science, which will lead to displacement of “soul” and “mind” as special characteristics of very special humans worse than Copernicus or Darwin have ever done. Anyone who has watched loved ones die from Alzheimer’s can testify (and please don’t try to sell us “intelligent design” either). US News & World Report has a surprising and surprisingly good article on what’s happening with “soul” talk in this coming world. There are still the human exalters quoted, trying to save human divinity and uniqueness, but the article overall will give you a nice sense of both the material basis of human “specialness” and the momentum that’s cutting the legs out from under the creation-types while they flail away at Darwin.

But don’t tip them off. They like their world simple.