« ‘I Will Eat Your Dollars’ | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Political double speak »
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject
[Quote:]
Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the “naturalistic” explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible — it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can’t rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn’t prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let’s not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That’s a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we’ll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it’s so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.
|
Excellent! I could not have bashed an idiot’s kneecap (or argument) better myself.
You forgot an important point. Since the knee cap is under the skin, and all evidence points to the scientist striking the surface of the knee, but not the knee cap itself, it can be argued that the scientist may have bruised the skin, but the knee cap was broken before he got there. I mean really, how can anyone be sure they broke the knee cap when you can’t even see the knee cap without slicing open the leg and checking, and even then, how can you establish the time of the actual break? As the saying goes coincidence does not necessarily establish causality or any other relationship other than dumb luck. Just because the ID advocate’s knee looks like a mass of strawberry jelly and he is in excruciating pain doesn’t mean he wasn’t walking around with a broken knee for weeks without knowing it. I’d say the scientist did him a favor because otherwise he might have been driving down the road when his stealth knee problem decided to flare up and make him loose control, running down multiple pedestrians before plunging over an embankment to his firey doom.
All you bloggers miss the point regarding the knee cap and scientist.. Of course, the knee was broken. And it was broken by the bat. But “why? is the question. You think that bat just evolved? Hell no! That bat was a “bat out of hell’ designed by anti-intelligent design, sometimes referred to as the antichrist. It went and attacked the knee as that knee was the product of its sworn celestial enemy, Mr. Intelligent Designer himself and minions. Think big picture here folks. Score 1 for the bat as it proved that the knee was breakable and therefore proved that the knee had a design flaw. This means, by extension, that the Intelligent Designer is flawed. Yeah? And herein lies the problem. What we are dealing here is very product liability issue. We humans should file suit against the Intelligent Designer for making such crappy error prone set of products that are buggier than Windows 98. In fact let’s make this class action and drag in any number of species and natural systems that have flaws. Onward friends to demand justice from the celestial courts!
It’s obvious that the knee cap wasn’t designed to be smashed with a baseball bat…. I guess next time God should consider the ravings of mad atheists before he designs anything….
How can anyone but the “intelligent designer” be sure whether a knee cap was or wasn’t designed to weather assaults from baseball bats? Just as how can anyone but the “intelligent designer” explain why the human optic nerve connects to the eye through a hole (and subsequent blind spot) in the back of the retina rather than through the outside of the eye (as is the case with other creatures not created in “His” image). Maybe next time “God” will consider the ravings of mad physicians who wonder why anyone would design something so prone to retinal tears and lesions, not to mention the aforementioned blind spot and complex mental visual processing to correct it. Why give the better eyes to the lesser beasts and saddle human beings, created in “His” image remember, with the inverted and injury prone model? Just wondering.