Scott Adams over at the Dilbert Blog keeps posting about his thoughts on the “debate” of Intelligent Design over the science of evolution. This most recent post goes into the hypothetical debate on what could happen if a lightning bolt shot out of the sky one day and wrote “I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut.” on the Washington Monument. This activity continued for a full month on various monuments everywhere. There was plenty of eye-witness accounts and video footage of the event happening.
Now imagine that the same phenomenon repeats every day for a month, each time on a different monument. Scientists study the phenomena and conclude that humans probably didn?t cause it, but beyond that, there are no further scientific clues about how lighting could seem so directed.
If I crafted my thought experiment right, no one would have any idea how to devise a test that would confirm or exclude the possibility that God really did it. Hypothetically, being omnipotent and all, he would be capable of leaving no clues, other than signing his name. Therefore, any speculation as to the cause is not science.
Here?s the question: Should teachers be allowed to tell science students about the lightning messages?
The thing that seems most interesting to me though is that we can think up this seemingly impossible idea that lightning could write words onto an inanimate object that everyone could read. I mean that’s pretty amazing right? In Scott’s example, the only attributable reasoning would be a higher power right?
Yet, we walk around and see humans being born, monkeys still swinging in trees, the vast splendor of nature around us, lightning itself and anything else in this world and think it just happened because chance and time go together and came up with it?