The Argument for Intelligent Design...or Not.

One of the things that inspired me to be an anthropology major was my desire to dispel myths perpetrated by books such as Chariots of the Gods and others of that ilk. Such theories claim that ancient monuments and building projects must have been built by aliens because those civilizations simply could not have done it on their own.

Well, I say horse crottin. That attitude goes back to the Western European superiority complex which states that people who are not as "advanced" as they were couldn't do amazing things. How could the Egyptians build such massive pyramids? How could primitive tribes in ancient Britain build Stonehenge? How could a civilization who didn't even invent the wheel, build a city like Tenochtitlan?

Well, they did. There were no aliens. There was no "advanced" civilization like Atlantis. There were simply people. Amazing, intelligent and innovative people who deserve our respect and awe for their wonderful accomplishments. Just because they lived before us makes them no less "civilized." So we have cars and go to the moon? Big deal. We can only do that because they were our ancestors and gave us the foundation on which we built our accomplishments. And that's why I embarked on the study of man; to learn about them and spread that knowledge to others.

Today the Nasa site reported in an article called How Round is the Sun? that scientists have measured the roundness of the sun and discovered that it is not perfectly round. This concept utterly delighted me. Delighted, I say! Because it proves that intelligent design cannot possibly be a valid theory.

Why, you ask? Because any god or superior being such as that proposed by the intelligent design theory would not cause an amazing thing like the sun to be less than perfect. That's why. And just like "primitive" civilizations were able to do amazing things with what they had at hand then the universe is a amazing place that is full of chaos and random elements out of which amazing things come about. Things like the less than perfect sun and the less than perfect human race.

And that is where the wonder of life won't let us sell ourselves, or the universe, short with a flawed theory which I hope one day will lie on the ashes of enlightenment among those of the heliocentric or flat Earth theories.

--->Susan