It’s no fun blogging about creationists when all they do is repeat stupid arguments they’ve copied from other creationist websites, or when they ask what they imagine are profound questions, like “Were you there?” or “Where’s the missing link?”
So we like it when creationists show a bit of flair — not necessarily intelligence or comprehension of the subject matter, but at least some originality. That’s why we’re disappointed today with what we’ve found in the blog of the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute‘s creationist public relations and lobbying operation, the Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids, a/k/a the cdesign proponentsists).
The item we’re speaking of is by Klinghoffer. Almost all of our readers know who that is, so they can skip the next indented paragraph:
David Klinghoffer is proud of being a Discoveroid “senior fellow” (i.e., flaming, full-blown creationist). He has previously posted a series of essays attempting to link Charles Darwin to: Hitler, and communism, and Stalin, and the Columbine shootings, and Charles Manson, and Holocaust Museum shooter, James von Brunn, and the Ft. Hood Massacre, and Mao Tse-tung, and Dr. Josef Mengele, and the Occult, and The Dark Side of Darwinism, and most recently James Lee, the Discovery Channel Terrorist.
Klinghoffer’s newest is Praised be Darwin! Do Fruit Flies Bust Behe? It’s about some research into genetic changes in fruit flies. To no one’s surprise, Discoveroid “senior fellow” Michael Behe is in disagreement with just about everyone else.
Klinghoffer doesn’t get into the details, and neither shall we. His article is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to criticism of a fellow Discoveroid. The best thing we can say about his blog post is that it’s not very long. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
Fruit flies are a cherished subject of such investigations because of their rapid reproduction, going from birth to death in thirty days. This avoids the uncomfortable problems posed by, say, whales.
Yes, that’s right. Also, they’re not expensive to acquire, they don’t take up a lot of space in the lab, and — at least so far — there are no fruit fly protection societies demanding humane treatment for our insect brethren. Let’s read on:
With their far slower maturation and smaller populations, whales succeeded in accumulating all the tens of thousands of wildly prohibitive and interdependent engineering modifications entailed in the transition from land-based ancestor to fully equipped sea creature. Under the Darwinian mythology, they accomplished this feat through blind, undirected searching of evolutionary pathways, all in a twinkling of as little as 10 million years.
Isn’t that cute? Klinghoffer takes a quick shot at the evolution of whales. It wasn’t relevant to defending Behe, but he couldn’t resist that clever little zinger. Okay, we’ll devote as much time to Klinghoffer’s whale remark as he gave to formulating it — which is none at all.
Whale evolution is interesting, however. If you’re curious about it, see Wikipedia’s evolution of cetaceans, and also this from TalkOrigins: The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence.
But Klinghoffer started out talking about fruit flies before that silly whale digression, and now he gets back on topic. There’s only one more paragraph to his blog article, and here it is:
Fruit flies are supposed to show us how quickly evolution is accomplished. Perhaps it depends on what you picture when you hear the word “evolution.” For all Drosophila‘s history of hyperactively cycling lifetimes, providing near limitless fodder for natural selection to do its work, for all the new “essential” genes, the upshot of the article may be summarized as follows: 35 million years later, it’s still a fruit fly.
Okay, dear reader, that was exciting, wasn’t it? Take all the time you need to recover, and when you’re feeling up to it, we have a challenge for you. Tell us, please, in what way Klinghoffer’s fruit fly remark is different from someone’s asking: “Why are there still monkeys?”
See also: ICR: But They’re Still Fruit Flies!
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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Imagine Klinghoffer and Luskin in the same room. The volume of stupidity generated would be enough to suffocate a small wildebeest.
‘…enough to suffocate a small wildebeest.”
What! Are you kidding. The vacuum in their heads would be enough to suck all the air out of the room. On second thought, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I bet that argument would have sounded great a couple of billion years ago or so – “yeah, but it’s still a eukaryote.”
Klinghoffer misses the point again!
The point is, “Why are there not flying monkeys?” Or flying whales for that matter.
Whales are the DI’s latest shtick to promote their nonsensical mantra “blind, undirected searching of evolutionary pathways.” Of course, every word in their mantra is wrong except, perhaps, “of.”
Coyne’s article is quite excellent – worth the read.
Obviously he was writing well above Klinghoffer’s grade level – it’s understandable to the average educated layman, but evidently not to the ‘hoffer, who missed the point entirely.
Yep, after 35 million years, the numerous species of fruit flies with all their genetic diversity are, still, fruit flies. And, primates are still primates.
The Discovery Institute is, itself, a fine illustration of the argument against irreducible complexity. While the institute is composed of several interdependent individuals for it’s operation, removal of any one of them would result in an organization just as stupid as it was before.
So are you saying the Discovery Institute is fractally stupid or Intelligent Design as a whole is fractally stupid?
The fruitfly niche didn’t disappear in 35 million years?
Well, that disproves the power of natural selection if anything does!
Because natural selection would, you know,
drive them from their nichepreserve their adaptation to their niche.@Ogre – I was not thinking of the DI in the fractal sense. That would mean that they were all stupid in the exact same way, being fractals of the larger DI stupid. That’s not a bad hypothesis, however, now and then one of them spouts some inanity that clearly would not have passed review by the others, so they are probably not entirely identical.
They are all equally entertaining, though.
Oh, as to the Curmudeon’s request. I don’t think that K. is saying, “why are there still fruit flies”, what I think he’s saying is “inspite of these change, they are still fruit flies” (i.e. they aren’t some other kind of fly (i.e. ‘macroevolution’ hasn’t taken place)).
Of course, they still won’t admit (actually they do, but don’t realize that they do) that these new genes add information and create irreducible complexity.
I think Nick Matzke has it right… this DI post won’t be up for long.