People are not often as bad as they are made out to be in acrimonious divorce proceedings. Alec Baldwin may be one of the exceptions. If you heard the whole tape being aired of Baldwin going off at his daughter you can understand a judge barring him, at least temporarily, from having any contact with her. “An enraged Alec Baldwin unleashed a volcanic tirade of threats and insults on his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, calling her a ‘thoughtless little pig,’ and bashing her mother Kim Basinger—and TMZ has obtained the whole thing unfiltered and raw. And we’ve learned, a family law judge was so alarmed after hearing the tape, she has temporarily barred Baldwin from having any contact with his child.”

Listening to the tape, I heard Baldwin also telling his daughter she was stupid and didn’t have any brains. Folks, most of you would agree it doesn’t take a Ph. D. in Human Behavior to know you don’t tell any child they are “stupid.” As adults, we know people do stupid things, and none of us are immune to doing stupid things. But for any adult to call a child stupid is something really stupid, in fact, it is an uncivilized thing to do and not confined to the vulgar and profane passing itself off as “entertainment.”

It is usually a mistake for outsiders to judge what goes on in a marriage, or to make judgments about what happens between people leading to divorce. However, many of us also realize things can get really ugly in some divorces, even to the point of the adults abusing children involved, trying to gain some advantage. But whatever the circumstances between Basinger and Baldwin, there is no excuse for his barbarous tirade against his daughter. It was a most uncivilized thing to do no matter what, and his daughter should never have been the target of Baldwin’s outburst. No civilized person would ever want such a man or woman around their child.

But bitter divorces are not the only place we find Baldwin’s brand of incivility; it even occurs in the most academic environments as well. Which emphasizes Thoreau’s observation the civilized man is only a more knowledgeable savage, and oftentimes the thin veneer of civilized good manners is the only thing that keeps us from coming to blows with one another. And in many cases, humor can take the sting out of acrimonious arguments.

For example, Democrats doubtless have their own version of this: A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on I-95 south, just out of Washington, DC. Nothing is moving north or south. Suddenly a man knocks on his window. The driver rolls down his window and asks, “What happened? What’s the hold up?” The fellow replies ”Terrorists have kidnapped Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and John Kerry. They are asking for a $100 million ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them with gasoline and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, taking up a collection.” The driver asks, “On average, how much is everyone giving?” The fellow answers ”About a gallon.”

Intelligent Design: It is fascinating to find words like “fuzzy” and “ghostly” being used by scientists in attempts at understanding the universe. But if you read the entire transcript of a recent interview with theoretical physicist Paul Davies you will find such words being used by him. The following is a brief extract of the interview:

Cosmic Log: Why does the universe seem so fine-tuned for the emergence of life – including intelligent life capable of asking that “why” question? Believers simply say that God did it, while scientists are trying to come up with complicated extradimensional multiverse theories to explain our lucky break. Theoretical physicist Paul Davies takes a completely different tack in a new book titled “Cosmic Jackpot.” He argues that the cosmos has made itself the way it is, stretching backward in time to the very beginning to focus in on “bio-friendliness...”

Q: One of the issues you’ve been looking at over the years is the intersection of science and religion. Do you find that these new ideas – about the cosmic landscape, for example, or the quantum nature of the universe – are informing religious or spiritual thought as well?

A: Well, they clearly impacted greatly, because we’re talking about why the universe looks like it’s been fixed up for habitation. For most people, the first interpretation is, “Well, God did it.” What I’m saying is that gets us nowhere at all. It just shoves the problem off to some other realm. But saying “God did it” is no worse than saying “the laws of physics did it.” They both basically appeal to something outside the universe. The problem with saying God did it is that God himself or herself is unexplained, so you’re appealing to an unexplained designer. It doesn’t actually explain anything; it just shoves the problem off. But to say that the laws of physics just happen to permit life is no explanation either. What I’m trying to do is to go beyond this rather sterile back-and-forth between religion and science on these ultimate questions. We’re trying to come up with a new set of ideas, in which we try to let the universe engineer its own bio-friendliness. So we try to find the explanation from within the universe. Now, that’s perfectly consistent with having a universe that has some sort of deeper meaning or purpose, but that meaning or purpose is intrinsic to it. It’s not imposed upon it by an external deity. So these ideas obviously have theological implications...

That comment by Davies “the cosmos has made itself the way it is” falls far short of the answer he says he is seeking. In fact, after reading the entire transcript of the interview it appeared to me Davies was more engaged with metaphysics than science. So I am not surprised at his inability to answer the hard questions by resorting to the very same subterfuge of which he accuses theologians. And I find his avowed goal of seeking answers by the scientific method highly suspect. I believe his acknowledgement of the “unexplained” will remain just that: Unexplained. In the meantime, he may sell a few books. But then, books about angels continue to be a hot market item, though Billy Graham did not do himself proud with his which I found to be an embarrassment those years ago. Many other authors since have proved equally embarrassing on the subject.

It is unfortunate that even in the most civilized environments that word “stupid” has been used on both sides of the debate over ID. Granted the shadow of the Scopes’ Trial overhangs some of the debate, but to use only a simplistic evolutionary theory as the catch-all for what is only theory in too many cases is at the very least intellectually dishonest. But one does not have to look far to find such dishonesty on both sides of the debate.

As science does make progress in giving us more understanding, one of the more uncomfortable things being discovered is the fact the universe is not bio-friendly. Because of this, people like Davies resort to the metaphysical attempting to make an argument for the universe being bio-friendly when the facts thus far would seem otherwise. But to accept the facts of a universe not being bio-friendly is not where some of those in science want to go. And for most hoping life exists elsewhere in the universe or our own galaxy, even our own solar system the results thus far are disappointing to say the least. In fact, it seems scientists are inclining to the idea our solar system is an anomaly that more readily falls into the Davies’ “Cosmic Jackpot,” more of luck than anything scientific leaving only the metaphysical as an alternative.

Failing any answers to life and death, the two greatest mysteries of all, it would be well for those engaged in debate about origins to at least be civilized and leave the name-calling to the really stupid people like Alec Baldwin.