Intelligent Design
(with apologies to Joyce Kilmer)
I think that I shall never see
A theory dumber than ID.
It says that God can make a tree,
A beaver or a honeybee—
That God can simply get a whim
To make the small E. coli swim;
He waves his hand through Heaven’s air
And lo! Flagella everywhere!
But sometimes even God falls down
And makes a poor pathetic clown:
Yes, poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make Behe.
Brilliant, thanks for that! 🙂
Will your next book be a collection of ID Poetry? Will a ‘net cartoon appear entitled The Poet of ID?
If you are interested in a good subject for a comment, take a look at Jeff McMahan’s Opinionator post in today’s Times, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/?hp. He advocates the deliberate elimination of all carnivores from the world on the moral grounds of preventing suffering. I am not qualified to comment on his total ignorance of evolutionary biology, but you are. That is ignorance both in the sense of not knowing the facts and of not paying any attention to them. He is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers. Could the Bio Dept. offices be so far away?
I hoep Dr. McMahn likes mosquitoes, flies, rodents, etc. because he’ll soon be up to his ass in them.
He could start by eliminating human weapons perhaps – it would be a whole lot easier & properly ‘moral’ – how can one describe an animal as moral or immoral?! Clearly Rutgers has a very low bar to hop over to become a professor of philosophy!
Besides, suffering is Good – for religious people – see Job. As the cenobite in Hellraiser says, “No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”
Serious academic study relates to such philosophy as sex relates to masturbation, you know.
Most modern philosophers work to support this dictum.
Interesting analogy, but masturbation is still empirical you know. Or if you don’t know, you should perhaps find out. 😀
Maybe a better analogy would be that philosophy relates to science as free erotic fantasy relates to sex. (Again, fulfilled or parallel erotic fantasy has its sexual uses.)
Heh! Taking that on board would mean a philosophy vs science difference as increasing “frustration” vs decreasing it. Which is my feeling exactly.
[This rant service was provided free by the “Habitual Always Pound Philosophy Yahoos” (HAPPY) Foundation.]
This brought a huge grin to my face.
Terrific!
Purr-fect!
I happen to know Michael Behe, and know that he is not a deluded person with a weak understanding of evolutionary theory. He is, in fact, a very sharp guy who, with intelligent design, is engaged in deliberate intellectual fraud. I caught this from his diavlog with John McWhorter. McWhorter has just asked him about claims that bacterial flagella share features with type III secretion systems. Behe:
That, of course, makes no sense, and it would make no sense to an undergraduate biochemistry student. Behe says it, knowing it makes no sense, because he thinks he can get away with it while talking with a linguist. Honest scientists don’t behave this way.
But he’s no fool, just a liar.
Yes, but when he was forced to admit in a court of law that in order to classify ID as science, he had to weaken the definition to the point that astrology was also science, he certainly looked like a fool.
And the human immune system, blood clotting, tie clips…
Ha! (*clapping*)
Besides Youtube polemics and science paperbacks, perhaps amateur creative writing should be incorporated more fully into the repertoire of the freethought advocates.
Here’s a piece inspired by such a worldview, penned while waiting for a paleontology lecture during the Year of Darwin celebrations last year.
http://bit.ly/dhEMGD
If you want to eliminate suffering you’re going to have to eliminate life, they are co-terminous.
Those last two couplets are frickin’ priceless!
Bravo!
I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair when I got to the end.
Basically right through the day? to me. Our work in addition includes the net.