Friday, October 14, 2005

more intelligent design

This scenario is from the New Yorker, by way of Falafel Sex (yes, you read that right). I have a friend at the New Yorker who should've told me about this, but didnt, and so gets no credit. (no, just because I have a friend at the New Yorker does not mean I should have a subscription and have read it myself)(shut up!)
A sample:
“No, design some creatures with legs,” said Allah. So the Lord God, nodding, designed an ostrich.

“First draft,” everyone agreed, and so the Lord God designed an alligator.

“There’s gonna be a waiting list,” Zeus murmured appreciatively
I'm also going to tack on this link to a Pharyngula article about "Idiot America" quoting Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:
On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."

A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. This sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news is where it appeared.

On the front page.

Of the New York Times.
But for me, the best quote was this one:
...by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an environment where idiots thrive unchallenged.
Yeah, Baby!

1 comment:

United We Lay said...

GREAT POST!!!!