Pharyngula makes you smarter. For instance, because I read Pharyngula today, I have managed to store in my tidbittial lobe a couple of esoteric factoids about the chimp genome that go beyond the predictable "Yay Men!" Y-chromosome fetish exhibited by all the papers.
PZ Myers also comments on a sanity-affirming essay by Richard Dawkins (da man!) and Jerry Coyne on the loopiness of the Intelligent Design fluffernuts who want to redefine science as baloney.
One thing that especially cracks me up about the creationist "argument," and Dawkins and Coyne touch on it, is the loony idea that just because a thing is "too complex" for the born-again Xian brain to grasp, the immediate default explanation is that it has to be the work of a mysterious and vengeful male ghost who dislikes Louisiana abortion clinics and uses fetus-shaped hurricanes to make his point.
Dawkins and Coyne reiterate one of my favorite arguments: "…[A] moment’s thought shows that any God capable of creating a bacterial flagellum (to say nothing of a universe) would have to be a far more complex, and therefore statistically improbable, entity than the bacterial flagellum (or universe) itself – even more in need of an explanation than the object he is alleged to have created."
Thanks, Pharyngula!
5 comments
Sylvanite
September 1, 2005 at 5:44 pm (UTC -6)
I ALWAYS read Pharyngula. He’s how I found your blog!
PZ Myers
September 1, 2005 at 7:50 pm (UTC -6)
You’re welcome. And I always read I Blame the Patriarchy!
Victoria
September 2, 2005 at 2:28 am (UTC -6)
I love your blog, girl.
Finn
September 2, 2005 at 7:55 am (UTC -6)
“any God capable of creating a bacterial flagellum (to say nothing of a universe) would have to be a far more complex, and therefore statistically improbable, entity than the bacterial flagellum (or universe) itself – even more in need of an explanation than the object he is alleged to have created”
Beautiful! I’m cutting and pasting that one for future use.
Thanks!
Fred
September 5, 2005 at 12:06 am (UTC -6)
Well, we finally agree on something! Huzzah! Break out the bubbly! I can’t stand fundies or Republicans myself. Fuckers are destroying this country.