Intelligent Design

Been a little while since I've popped in over here, I must admit. Perhaps it's fear of admitting aloud what a terrible slacker I've been lately in terms of writing. Although, I have a new driving impetus to get things written--I have a beta-reader. Well, more of a very good friend who is interested in my work and offers endless amounts of support, so I've been bouncing ideas off of him for awhile now and finally have started sending him chapters. Which means I have to go fill in sequential passages between what I've currently got written, so he can read it in a more or less linear fashion. It's a good deal for me and he seems to be enjoying it (which is unnervingly flattering, let me tell you), so I'm at least getting SLIGHTLY more done.

There are a handful of stumbling blocks that have shoved my self-esteem in the way of my productivity. The first is the general annoyance that nobody's ever going to read this; I know it's coming from trying to control the story rather than let it take its course, and I know that never leads satisfactory results, but I can't help but think it's genre-confused crap. I want to write serious fiction that will be received by a large audience...but the more I write it, the more it's starting to sound like YA fiction. Now, I like writing YA fiction, it's my preferred genre--which is probably why this is sounding like it--but I'm not sure if that's the right market for this, and I'm not sure if the tone is fitting to the piece.

The next stumbling block is that I have a hard time portraying the CSG & co. in any kind of sympathetic light, because they're just so ridiculous to me. And to an extent, they're supposed to be ridiculous, but at its core this is *not* a satire, and my characters are getting flatter than I should like. The Underground has appropriate depth--it reaches a point of darkness mid-book that's absolutely wicked, and they have ideals that are simultaneously respectable and brutal--but the CSG is lacking in that depth. There are some things about it that are alluring, which I will have to play up in the subsequent chapters of the book that run parallel with the mass of the romance plot, but I still have a hard time taking them seriously. To some extent, like I said, they're meant to be a bit goofy (to contrast The Underground's somewhat pompous attitude), but....I think it's too obvious from reading that I don't understand their thought process.

So I'm attempting to do some research into modern Christianity and get enough of a compassionate understanding about it that I can at least give it due respect. There's nothing worse than arguing a point when you're ignorant about the other side--which is, in fact, exactly what annoys me about Christianity vs Science. Take Intelligent Design, for example:

"The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion."
--http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/

Clearly, by that definition, they've already lost logical ground with the scientific community, because they obviously don't actually understand the theory they're going against. To say that natural selection is an undirected process is pure ignorance--it IS the direction. It's a cause-and-effect relationship between genotype, phenotype, and reproduction. Let me explain evolution by natural selection to you very simply:
--All organisms have genotypes that determine their phenotype, or physical characteristics.
--Changes in organisms happen when there is a mutation which alters the genotype, thus making a change in the phenotype.
--Some phenotypic characteristics make it easier to breed; for instance, being faster, or having an opposeable thumb, which makes you capable of accessing more and better food and thus out-competing organisms without that particular trait.
--All phenotypic characteristics are products of a particular set of genes; these genes are passed on during breeding, so the offspring are likely to also develop that phenotype.
--After awhile, the genes of the stronger organism will flood the breeding market because they'll out-compete other genotypes (live longer, attract a mate) and the species will change in appearance because of the genotypic change.

See, there you go. NOT THAT DIFFICULT, and not that hard to accept. Hell, some of the Intelligent Design people seem to agree with that--yet turn around and then insist that natural selection is random. Um...how exactly can it be random, if the entire POINT of it is that things compete, and the winners breed to produce children like themselves.

But no, you'll hear the Intelligent Design people babbling about putting all the pieces of a clock in a shoebox and rattling it around until you get a working machine. I don't know what they're talking about, because it sure as hell isn't evolution.

"We believe objectivity will lead not only to good origins science, but also to constitutional neutrality in this subjective, historical science that unavoidably impacts religion. We promote the scientific evidence of intelligent design because proper consideration of that evidence is necessary to achieve not only scientific objectivity but also constitutional neutrality."
--http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/

Now, if you re-interpret this out of the fancy talk it's been put in--basically, they're trying to make a politically-correct version of events that tallies with both religious and scientific desires. But here's the thing, kids--science isn't politically correct. You can't make 'neutral' science, because it deals in facts; it's not subjective. History, to some degree, is subjective, because it's filtered through the eyes of the people who wrote it down, but science's very core goal is to be as objective as humanly possible. This means that science is not a democratic process. You can't vote on science. You can only observe it and dervie the best possible explanation from the evidence. Which is why scientists have been burned as heretics--because your findings don't always tally with popular opinion, which can make you damn unpopular.

So a search to make science fit into the mold of history is ridiculous, ignorant, and cowardly.

Wouldn't it be easier to change religion to make it tally with fact?

But I suppose that's just my logical atheist POV. I'll never be able to understand these people to whom dogma is more important than fact, people who can exist on faith to the extent of rejecting knowledge.

Which is the ultimate theme of my story....
.....but also one of the downfalls in writing it.

I'll report back later. I think I might--just might--be able to resurrect the Punctuated Equilibrium chapter tonight.