Posted by Josh Rosenau on November 20, 2006 Brad Delong has some excellent nominees, but Casey Luskin takes the cake.
Casey culminates a three part critique of an article about evolution in a popular magazine by asking:
Was the Ford Pinto, with all its imperfections revealed in crash tests, not designed?
Apparently, the vertebrate eye is backwards because God decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than make the cheap fix earlier implemented for the cephalopods.
Young Casey is merely recycling Behe’s argument that “intelligent design” need not be “perfect design.” In other words, the IDer (aka “God”) might have been a bumbler.
That doesn’t really cohere with most people’s notions of “God,” but hey, whatever works for Behe. And keeps criticism of ID at bay.
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is formerly a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not battling creationists or modeling species ranges, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
November 21, 2006