September 15, 2007

The Return of the Intelligently Designed Banana

Isn't it interesting how Creationists never, ever come up with new arguments, but instead constantly spew the same ridiculous, moronic, stupid, unfounded, ignorant, ludicrous nonsense while claiming to speak for "real science?"

Why look, here's an example right here! This is a letter to the editor from the Durham Region News of North Carolina. It's written by one Sharon Thompson of Courtice. Sharon is a researcher at the Institute of Learning How to Dress Myself in the Morning, if I'm not mistaken. Her latest refereed article, "Look Ma! I Tied My Own Shoe!" appeared in the highly esteemed Journal of Brain-Damaged Gibberish last May. Let us examine the informative insights of this cutting-edge innovator in the life sciences, shall we?

Mark Robinson states "evolution is a fact and should be taught to every student."

In fact, evolution is a theory, so full of holes it is nothing but a sieve. If it is taught at all it should be taught along with other theories. There is more scientific evidence to support the creation theory than to support evolution.
Of course, there is no scientific evidence to support any creation theory and not a single hole in the theory of evolution. There are, of course, gaps in certain lines of supporting evidence because nobody other than a Creationist dolt is so arrogant as to claim that they know everything, much less that they know it by reading just one book. Of course, we can't expect someone with such a profound knowledge of science and all the evidence available in the many disciplines that compose it to bother actually knowing the difference between a theory, a hypothesis, and evidence. Such a pathetic level of detail is not necessary for someone of Sharon Thompson's calibre.
The theory of evolution requires that atoms organize themselves into increasingly more complex and beneficial arrangements. However, in the laws of science, the opposite is actually true. Complex ordered arrangements tend to become more disorderly with time. No scientific force has ever been found that causes increasing order and complexity to appear in nature.
Wow, I must have missed that in my studies of evolutionary theory. See, I thought that it was living things that were involved, not everything and anything from gum drops to garbage cans. And I really should go back and read the works of Darwin, Gould, and Mayr more carefully, because I missed the parts where they mentioned this need for atoms to spontaneously arrange themselves into living things every time a new organism is born. Thank DA LAWD for Dr. Thompson's taking the time out of her busy schedule of fishing lint out of her bellybutton to inform me of all of my carelessness and erroneous thinking. Why, I had actually been under the impression that we see the spontaneous creation of complex ordered arrangements in nature all the time. Silly me, going around believing that ice was more ordered than liquid water and that the crystallization of dissolved ionic compounds produced more complex arrangements of those ions than existed when they were dissolved merely because of simple electrical charges. I am so embarrassed right now.
Think about something as "simple" as fruit. What force of nature could possibly have caused it to evolve into such wide varieties as cherries, oranges, strawberries, etc. -- all so appealing to our taste buds and just happening to meet so many of the nutritional needs of our bodies.
OH NO! NOT THE BANANA! It's the evolutionist's worst nightmare! I must seek shelter immediately from this horrific, fruity vision put forth by Thompson. Why, there is absolutely no explanation whatsoever in all of modern biology for the existence of strawberries and oranges. We scientists cannot possibly fathom how such simple organisms evolved over billions of years, leaving a trail of fossilized and living intermediate forms and a molecular history that reads like a book! Phenomena such as conserved regions and pseudogenes are of no use to us now, for Sharon Thompson has hurled a cherry into our path and we cannot explain why eating food should result in nutrition. Woe is us.
The complexity of a single organ of our body, such as the eye, is enough to make a critically thinking person realize this world did not happen on its own.

Sharon Thompson

Courtice
Ah, you see all that Michael Behe has done for the world? There's no way that eyes could have evolved on own their own, despite all of the evidence that they did and the fact that parts of the eyes serve the organisms that have something less than the full complement of tissues found in the human eye quite well for their own needs and in their own environments. Planaria, having only eyespots that are capable of sensing intensity and direction but unable to form images due to their utter lack of lenses, have long since become extinct. Only humans, with their perfect, Gawd-sculpted optical organs, survive in the real world. Everything else is obviously a hoax. What would we do without "critical thinkers" like Dr. Thompson to tell us about how the world really is, ensconced as she is in the bosom of the research community of Courtice, North Carolina
Seriously, though, there is a simple reason that the people who Thompson believes in with such blind faith, and Thompson herself, never come up with anything new. It's because they don't give a damn about real knowledge of the world as it is, let alone the scientific inquiry that ferrets out all of the details of how the universe actually works. I can say with all certainty that Sharon Thompson has never so much as opened a scientific publication, has never read a single reviewed and authoritative paper from any scientific discipline, cannot explain the mechanisms by which her much-vaunted fruits produce or provide nutritive compounds to those who consume them, and wouldn't be able to tell me where her jejunum was if her head was lodged in it.

It's everybody's right to be as ignorant as they want to be about any subject about which they care nothing. We are all entitled to this basic freedom. I care nothing about football, and so I could tell you nothing about it. Consequently, I don't give my opinion on the matter because I know that my opinion is utterly worthless in that domain. I couldn't tell you what brand of golf clubs to buy and I have absolutely no idea of which season is best for planting acorn squash. You see, part of being an adult — not just a reasonable one, just a relatively mature one — is knowing that there are some things that one knows and some things that one doesn't. When the matter under discussion is one about which one has some knowledge, it is perfectly all right to voice one's opinion. When the discussion turns to that about which one is completely ignorant, however, one has several options. One can politely excuse oneself from the conversation if the topic is uninteresting, or one can shut one's mouth and stick around and learn something if one is interested.

The term generally applied to someone who voices opinions on topics about which he or she has no knowledge, on the other hand, is "idiot." It is alright to be ignorant, and it is even better to admit one's ignorance. What Sharon Thompson has done here is none of that. What she has done is expressed to the entire world her opinion on a subject about which she clearly has no knowledge whatsoever. What term, then, is best applied to her?

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