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One Time in Paris The Prosecution of George W. The Eye of Icarus Prodigal of the Pecos Dolphins Under My Bed Hermetica Stolen Fields Eleven Roses What the Hell Is a Liberal? The Trail The Shadow Factory Soaring Soul A Cross Estate The Woman Who Wrote Hot Issues, Cool Topics The Art of Conscious Creation Presidential Brainiac The Mental Environment The Energy of Belief Definitions of Some Mathematical Terms Trust in the Lord The New IQ: How Integrity Serves You, Your Relationships, and Our World El Zarco: The Blue-Eyed Bandit Channeling the Apocalypse: From the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Current Incarnations Liberal Hearts and
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Dubious Design By Michael Parenti What is called "creationism" is the belief that in six days the Judeo-Christian god created the universe and all the earthly species including humans in finished form much as they exist today. For centuries this view prevailed throughout the western world. Even after evolutionary science had emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the scenario sketched in Genesis remained the only one acceptable for most of Christendom. Not until the early twentieth century did Darwinian science enjoy a fully receptive hearing in the scientific and academic communities of the United States. But today, rather than riding triumphant, evolutionary science seems to be barely hanging on in the arena of public opinion. A 2007 Gallup poll reported that only 49 percent of the US public accepted evolution and 48 percent did not. Another survey found 42 percent of Americans held strict creationist views. And various school districts throughout the country have experienced furious dust-ups over the teaching of evolution. Of late there has emerged a more refined offshoot of creationism called intelligent design (ID). It argues that living organisms are so irreducibly complex they could not have evolved haphazardly over the eons from more primitive forms but were precisely created in one fell swoop by a higher intelligence. In their assault on evolution the creationists and ID protagonists summon an urgent refrain. To quote from a statement by an anti-Darwinian school board in Dover, Pennsylvania: "Darwin's Theory is [just] a theory. . . . The Theory is not a fact. Gaps exist in the Theory for which there is no evidence. . . . Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. . . . Students are encouraged to keep an open mind." Critics of evolution almost have a point. There certainly are "gaps" in an evolutionary theory that is neither fixed nor final. But the same holds true of all scientific theories, be it nutritional science, meteorology, astronomy, biology, geology, or physics. Science frequently produces theories that contain unanswered questions and invite varying interpretations. Truth be told, there are no fixed and final scientific laws. Many scientists do not even like the term scientific laws, preferring to speak of "scientific theories." For it is in the nature of science--when practiced at its best--to keep everything accessible to further investigation and conceptualization. Seemingly triumphant scientific breakthroughs can open up additional areas of inquiry that lead to still more unanswered questions. Be this as it may, an established body of science is not something to be dismissed out of hand just because it harbors unanswered questions. That a scientific theory is incomplete does not give us license to ignore all the evidence it has accumulated. The data provided by paleontology, geology, zoology, entomology, molecular biology, and other fields make a strong case for evolution and have yet to be explained away by the intelligent designers. Scientists have been devising new ways of charting how life develops from simple to more complex forms, which is the essence of evolutionary theory. By reconstructing ancient genetic materials from long-extinct animals, they have been able to show how evolution created a new and more complicated component of molecular structure from existing parts. By its very nature, life depends on adaptability. This means that change, complexity, and development are inevitable components of the natural world. Not all organisms reproduce with uniform success. Reproductive capacity arises directly from how well creatures (including human ones) are able to compete for resources, both against other species and against other members of the same species---and against problems presented by the natural elements themselves. Read More Permanent Wars for Oil and By Rodrigue Tremblay "Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian [now Iran] and Mesopotamian [now Iraq] supply....Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim." -- Sir Maurice Hankey, Britain's First Secretary of the War Cabinet, 1918 "Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy." -- Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman 1987-2006 [We cannot leave Iraq because] "extremists [may] be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West... and they will do so unless we abandon Israel." -- George W. Bush, November 1, 2006 "When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add 3 million to 5 million barrels of production to world supply," -- Lawrence Lindsey, former George W. Bush's then-chief economic adviser, 2002 "Secure supplies of energy are essential to our prosperity and security. The concentration of 65 percent of the world's known oil reserves in the Persian Gulf means we must continue to ensure reliable access to competitively priced oil and a prompt, adequate response to any major oil supply disruption." -- U.S. White House, "National Security Strategy of the United States", March 1990 When the Bush-Cheney administration took over in January 2001, the international price of oil was about $22 a barrel. Now, nearly eight years later, the price of oil is hovering around $120 a barrel, a more than five hundred percent increase. Thus, as far as oil is concerned, things have not unfolded in Iraq as planned and expected by the Neocons in the Bush-Cheney administration. First, they thought that gushing Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion and occupation of the country. Instead, the cash outlay for this adventure is likely to reach one trillion dollars, and the total cost to the U.S. economy will likely surpass three trillion dollars. Second, the price of oil is reaching record levels with no top in sight and this is threatening to tip the U.S. and the world economies into a protracted economic recession. This is partly due to the fact that Iraqi oil output has not increased as planned and is rather below where it was when the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. From a macroeconomic point of view, this ill-advised and illegal war has been an unmitigated disaster. Read More
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