Ben Stein and High Heels: Evolution's Intelligent Design

First, on the surface, this may not appear to be a marketing related post. Sue me. IF you dig a little deeper, you might just change your mind.

Second, this is a LONG post, because it deals with evolution, Ben Stein, and me, learning how to walk in high heels. All of those are complex issues, and take more than a few words to illustrate.

Here we go...

This past Saturday, I was treated to a Division sales rally for one of the direct sales companies I work with. I gave a short talk on the importance of your 60 second commercial (aka your elevator speech) and received positive comments all around. I'm preparing for my first ever training "tour" and this was a small practice step for me.

At the end of the afternoon, I was to go shoe-shopping for a nice, "power shoe" as my friend Ruth calls them.

I ended up learning how to walk.

I know, I'm 33 and walking should have been one of those early mastery lessons, but I've never in my life worn a show that stands higher than 2 inches. Ruth and her daughter put me in 4 inch heels. We must have tried on 20 pairs of shoes by the end of the day. I settled on a nice pair of patent leather shoes and a fun pair of wedges. Before Saturday, I wouldn't have known a wedge from a slingback or a mule, so this was my first lesson in being "more girly" in a businesslike way.

The second, was learning to walk. My normal gate is wide, manly, and I lead from my shoulders, giving me an almost slouchy appearance. And I walk FAST.

Not in 4 inch heels, that's for sure.
I was tripping over my own two feet, falling out of shoes, feeling pinched, poked and clutzy in more ways than I can count. I was so afraid of how ridiculous I must have looked, but my friends were very supportive.

And I evolved. By the end of the evening, I was walking with my head more upright, more slowly, with more purpose and power in my step.

I was even kind of graceful by the time it was all said and done. It was humbling to think that as a grown adult, I needed to re-learn what seemed to me to be a basic skill. In heels, walking is not just a skill, it's an art. It takes balance, timing, and poise. Something I very much lacked before Saturday.

On Sunday, my husband and I took our "Date Night" out to see Ben Stein's new documentary movie, Expelled. In classic Ben Stein style, he explores the neo-Darwinist movement, and all the possible implications of suppressed freedom in the US.

It was very much a thinking film - and entirely entertaining the whole way through.
The film hinges on how great intellects of our time are being ex-communicated from the scientific community - some for just mentioning the concept of intelligent design.

I'm no scientist, and don't pretend to be, but the way I understand it, Intelligent Design suggests that Darwin's theory of evolution is flawed and is missing the definition of the exact Origin of life. Because of this, there exists a thought concept that somehow, someway, there is an intelligent designer - an intentional creation of this existence on this rock hurtling through space.

Stein interviewed names and faces on both sides of the debtate, and near the end of the film, one of the biggest proponents of Darwinism and anti-creationist activists speaks of the possibility that life was "seeded" here on Earth by some other highly evolved life form - but that they MUST have evolved from some primordial oooze somewhere.

At this point, Stein makes a narrative comment about how this guy really does believe in Intelligent Design, it just depends on who "the designer" might be.

And that, my friends, is where the REAL friction on ID begins.

FEAR.

Fear of being wrong and having to give up their position.

Atheists in the Science realm are scared that if the designer really IS God, then they've been wrong - so they don't want to do the work to disprove the theory and instead just shoot it down as "a bunch of crazy creationists" trying to put God in the classroom again.

Heaven forbid.

But just as distressing is the fear that Christian supporters of Intelligent Design face whenever the potential of losing their job, their livelihoods or their credibility just for mentioning the possible existence of a grand designer in the scheme of the world. As a result, they're being labeled as crazies or ignoring the calling that could bring the truth to light.

What if the missing link IS God? Is that so bad? Why does science and God (not church or "religion", but the existence of another intelligent creator) have to be mutually exclusive?

Instead of pursuing science for the sake of discovering truth, people on both sides are afraid - paralyzed by what the "real truth" might be.

As a card carrying Christian, I'll get hate mail. I'm sure. As a lover of research and the desire to learn, I hope that people take this for what it's for - an honest expression of frustration at the FEAR that pervades an organization designed to pursue truth.

To me, that's what science is. Learning what's true. I intentionally didn't include theorems, postulates or other "data and errata" to cloud what I see as a clear cut case of fear in action.

Let's stop being afraid.

In science, we create a hypothesis, we test it, and explore it until we either prove it or disprove it based on experiential data.

My personal hypothesis is that God created the heavens and the earth and all the good things we get to experience around here. And until I'm proven wrong, that's how I'm living my life.

If you have a different personal hypothesis, that's your choice, and I respect it, even if I don't agree. It's in the testing of those hypotheses that we discover the truth - both our personal truth and the truth of our world.

Will I be a fool because I believed in God? To me, it's not about being foolish. That's not my place to make that judgment call.

Look at it this way, if the ultimate truth is that we DID evolve from some primordial ooze on some planet somewhere, am I worse off for having had a hope in a divine creator? Will they string me up for believing in God?

Heaven forbid.

On the other hand, if God DOES exist, and He DOES have final judgment, what will HE say to all those that were afraid to test the personal hypothesis? What will He DO to all those that rallied around Neo-Darwinism?

This is not to say that we DIDN'T evolve in some manner. As one scientist pointed out, variations occur in nature over time. That is, in the roughest sense, what evolution is about.

I don't think that evolution and creation need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I assert that they're not. Further, I think that my Creator gave us free will so we COULD evolve and improve, grow and expand our horizons, to overcome our fears, face our obstacles and learn new truths daily.

And I have the high heels to prove it.