NationStates Jolt Archive


Best Argument Against Intelligent Design

Deep Kimchi
06-12-2005, 16:15
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0511060230nov06,1,5704905.story

Probably the funniest argument as well...

The author hits on a few other points besides intelligent design - family values, gays, etc. Well worth the read.

On the other hand, when I went to see the film, I left thinking: How could there be a god that would subject the poor penguin to such horrendously difficult reproductive technology? Couldn't an intelligently designing God have provided at least a pouch for the penguin to keep the egg in instead of having to shuffle along with an egg on his feet for a couple of months?

As for monogamy, the idea that birds are faithful is lovely. But what kind of monogamy are we talking about? The penguins mate and stay together for all of a few months. After that, it's a new mate next year.

As for family values, we see that some of the females who have lost their eggs because of incompetent husbands or sloppy footwork have no compunction about coveting and trying to steal their neighbor's eggs, definitely violating the Mosaic code, but not the harsher laws of nature. Then again, these loving families have a strange denouement. The mothers and fathers abandon their chick to return to the sea when the chicks seem knee-high to a grasshopper, never to see them again.

And when it comes to gay marriage, I just don't see what this film has to say about that. If you can tell the straight penguins from the gay ones, you have better gaydar than I do. The family values crowd has seized on the supposed straightness of penguins because of bad memories of the well-publicized news story about two gay penguins in the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn and two more at Central Park Zoo. If you did the math, it would show that in New York, 1 out of 25 penguins is gay. So when you see the film, look again and see if you can spot the odd couples.
Bolol
06-12-2005, 16:17
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0511060230nov06,1,5704905.story

Probably the funniest argument as well...

The author hits on a few other points besides intelligent design - family values, gays, etc. Well worth the read.

I do believe that at this point Jesus would say...PWNED...
Deep Kimchi
06-12-2005, 16:19
A similar argument from Scientific American

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00039664-6A56-137A-AA2083414B7FFE9F

Penguins are not people, despite their natty appearance and upright ambulation. Their traditional norms include waddling around naked and regurgitating the kids' lunch. But it would be as absurd to castigate them for those activities as it is to congratulate them for their monogamy. Besides, the movie clearly notes that the penguins are seasonally monogamous--like other movie stars usually reviled by moralists, the penguins take a different mate each year. And there are problems with them as evidence of intelligent design. While caring for the egg, the penguins balance it on their feet against their warm bodies; if the egg slips to the ground for even a few seconds, it freezes and cracks open. A truly intelligent design might have included internal development, or thicker eggshells, or Miami. Finally, penguin parents take turns walking 70 miles to the sea for takeout meals. The birds have to walk.
Silliopolous
06-12-2005, 16:26
Scientific American's tongue-in-cheek April Editorial was also a beaut - although I don't think that it's online.

An excerpt:

Okay, We Give Up
. . . In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it.

Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong.
Deep Kimchi
06-12-2005, 16:28
Scientific American's tongue-in-cheek April Editorial was also a beaut - although I don't think that it's online.

An excerpt:
Too slow!
Anarchic Conceptions
06-12-2005, 16:31
Scientific American's tongue-in-cheek April Editorial was also a beaut - although I don't think that it's online.

An excerpt:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E555C-4387-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F
Silliopolous
06-12-2005, 16:33
Too slow!

Different article :p
Silliopolous
06-12-2005, 16:34
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E555C-4387-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F


Dang it.... that would have saved me a shitload of typing from the copy on my desk!
Anarchic Conceptions
06-12-2005, 16:37
Dang it.... that would have saved me a shitload of typing from the copy on my desk!

I couldn't have done it without you ;)

I put "Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood" into google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Why+were+we+so+unwilling+to+suggest+that+dinosaurs+lived+6%2C000+years+ago+or+that+a+cataclysmi c+flood%22&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Nipeng
06-12-2005, 16:43
I do believe that at this point Jesus would say...PWNED...

Jesus would laugh his ass off at the ID crowd naivety if He weren't busy crying over their pagan vision of Christianity.
Pantycellen
06-12-2005, 16:54
very good article its always fun when they do stuff like this

and if you think about it emporer penquins are very gay, they spend almost all their lives with the members of their own sex