Chickens, roads, crossing thereof

If you can only read one thing today, make it Skeptico's answers to Why did the chicken cross the road?

It's dead-on funny—read the hypothetical answers from all the skeptics and loons like John Edward and O'Reilly and Icke and many others, which are just perfect—I'm stealing Behe's answer!

A chicken crossing a road has:

eyes

legs

a road

the other side

If any one of those irreducibly complex parts is missing the chicken will be unable to cross the road, so if it looks, walks (across roads) and clucks like a chicken, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, it's an intelligently designed chicken. Its legs are molecular machines, literally outboard motors. Look at Mount Rushmore…

And then he takes it up a notch and starts poking fun at his fellow skeptical bloggers. Fantastic!

More like this

tags: politics, humor, satire, why did the chicken cross the road A friend set this to me, asking me if he was the last person to read this important philosophical essay. Well, apparently not, because I have never read this, either. But I found it amusing anyway. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road…
Well. It was a strange event. Kittywhumpus and Greg Laden have good detailed breakdowns of the debate, so you can always read those for the audience perspective. As for me, I've learned that you can never prepare for a debate. I tried. I had a focus — the topic, chosen by Bergman, was "Should…
Why is it always 10 questions? Couldn't they just ask one really good question? I'd prefer that to these flibbertigibbet deluges of piddling pointlessnesses that the creationists want to fling at us. I think it's because they want to make sure no one spends too much time showing how silly each…
Over on Twitter, I was startled by the assertion that many scientists convert from evolution to creationism, convinced by the evidence. https://twitter.com/Prophecy_YEC/status/680891955233079297 What was startling about it was that I'm getting used to mainly hearing from atheists calling me a…

Are we sure that Dembski's answer wasen't really personally answered by him?

He left out a few though.

Dispatches from The Culture Wars:

Timothy Sandefur has done an excellent job fisking Robert Posner's analysis of why the 14th amendment protects the chicken crossing the interstate re the commerce clause...

The Intersection:

Folks, I'm travelling through El Pollo, Tx, and blogging is going to be light for the next week while I slowly drive through all these chicken-crossings...

By fake ed brayton (not verified) on 03 Feb 2006 #permalink

hahaha, priceless.

By Geral Corasjo (not verified) on 03 Feb 2006 #permalink

Fake Ed Brayton - those are funny. Although I thought that the chicken crossed the road in order to attend a reading of "Republican War in Science"...

As for myself, it is not important if and whether the chicken crossed the road but at what time of day it did so. And since crossing roads is a symptom of psychopathology, I conlude that the chicken is a conservative. And it is NOT in the chicken's genes - it is a developmental response to the environment.

Doesn't saying "the chicken crossed the road" assume a special frame of reference, without taking into account the relative speeds of the road, the observer of the chicken and the road, the rotation of the planet holding all three, and its revolution around the sun... Could the road have moved beneath the chicken?

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: I find it IRONIC that so-called 'tolerant' liberals would make fun of chickens.

By Dr. Retarded (not verified) on 03 Feb 2006 #permalink

Q. Which came first - the chicken or the egg?

A. Surely there were fishes that produced eggs hundreds of millions of years before birds even evolved. So, clearly the egg came first. Ha.

George Bush:

In the spirit of respect and decency, Americans on the Internets can agree: chickens have crossed the road at some point. I know. I have a ranch...with chickens....and shrubs...and a road going to it. I have it under good authority that chickens have made it across roads in Crawford.

But this should not deter us from meeting our destinatious goal: The unending tide of poulty must be seen as a threat to our country's asphalt.

By BlueIndependent (not verified) on 03 Feb 2006 #permalink

This is right up there with Ted Barlow's lightbulb jokes.

***
Q. How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Only one, but when has that ever stopped us?
***
Q: Ari, does the Administration have any plans to repair the growing number of broken lightbulbs?

A: I reject the premise of the question. They could be better described as opportunitybulbs.
***
etc.

Re: funniness of this bit.

I have to respectfully disagree. The reason it is so "on target" is that the author has simply taken the exact words of these people and simply substituted "chicken" for the original subject. It's not very funny and anyone can do it:

Abraham Lincoln -- Fourscore and seven years ago, our chickens tried to cross the road.

By CrackWilding (not verified) on 03 Feb 2006 #permalink

Sociobiological explanation

The chicken crossed the road to improve access to food or mate sources. Perhaps other chickens find road crossing sexy. Otherwise, the behaviour would not exist.

CrackWilding- what a party-pooper. The brain-deadness is part of what's funny. I like your Lincoln one.

*burp!*

What chicken?

By Roadtripper (not verified) on 06 Feb 2006 #permalink