Curmudgeon’s Creative Challenge #11

It’s time, dear reader, for another Creative Challenge. But first, you need to be stimulated.

Therefore, we remind you of all the intellectual thrills we’ve provided in the past. Our earlier contests were: #1 (Creationism is to evolution as ___ is to ____), followed by #2 (The typical Discoveroid’s next job will be _____), and then #3 (The Discoveroids are the dregs of _____), and then #4 (The creationists’ biggest lie is _____), and then #5 (Can _____ be defended using only scientific terms?, and then #6 (What shall we call a creationist toilet camera?), and then #7 (Credible evidence for the intelligent designer’s existence would be: ____), and then #8 (Devise an acronym — the individual letters of which are the initial letters of words that disparage the Discoveroids’ theory), and then #9 (The only thing less interesting than news of the Discoveroids’ Censor of the Year is ____), and most recently #10 (The expression that best describes the Discoveroids or their “science” or their methods is _____ ).

Today’s challenge is inspired by this post at the Discoveroids’ creationist blog: Postcard from Edinburgh: A Towering Likeness of James Clerk Maxwell. It’s by David Klinghoffer, the Discoveroids’ journalistic slasher and poo flinger. He says, with bold font added by us:

Our friend and colleague Michael Flannery is, as you know, in Edinburgh, Scottland, conducting research on Wallace and Darwin.

We didn’t know, and we certainly don’t care. Flannery is an incurable quote-miner — see More Discoveroid Quote Mining by Michael Flannery. Klinghoffer gives us this quote from a letter Flannery sent home to Discoveroid headquarters:

One of the giants of 19th-century science is James Clerk Maxwell, a mathematical physicist who discovered the theory of electromagnetism, which arguably founded modern physics.

[…]

What is less known is that Maxwell believed strongly in nature’s design. [Links to two Discoveroid blog posts.]

Fascinating! Maxwell was a Christian, although his religious beliefs had nothing to do with his work on electromagnetism. He certainly wasn’t a biologist, and he died in 1879, twenty years after Darwin published Origin of Species. During the last two decades of his life, he probably didn’t spend much time thinking about Darwin’s work. Nevertheless, the Discoveroids have inducted him into their ghastly Hall of Ancestral Carcasses so they can claim his essence as their own — see Invasion of the Discoveroid Body Snatchers.

Anyway, Flannery is at it again. His syllogism works like this: Maxwell was a great scientist. He discovered a relationship between electricity, magnetism, and light. And he was religious! Therefore, Maxwell believed that intelligent design is great science.

That’s the setup for today’s challenge, dear reader. Let’s see if you can some up with something better than that. The form of the challenge is this:

Scientists have discovered that X and Y are related phenomena. Therefore _______.

We’ll offer one example to get your creative juices flowing. Creationism and minimal education are related phenomena. Therefore education should be minimal. Or you can go in the other direction and find some crazy justification for the “theory” of intelligent design. A successful entry should be self-explanatory, but it’s quite all right to elaborate on your proposals.

You know the rules: You may enter the contest as many times as you wish, but you must avoid profanity, vulgarity, childish anatomical analogies, etc. Also, avoid slanderous statements about individuals. Feel free to comment on the entries submitted by others — with praise, criticism, or whatever — but you must do so tastefully. That’s the challenging part of these contests — being tasteful.

Your Curmudgeon will decide if there’s a winner, and whenever we get around to it we’ll announce who the winner is. There is no tangible prize — as always in life’s great challenges, the accomplishment is its own reward. We now throw open the comments section, dear reader. Go for it!

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