As a parody of “Intelligent design”, Keith Gilmour, a UK-based secondary school teacher set up a website called “The Centre for Unintelligent design” last year.

In response Creationists have been popping up and scribbling a few daft claims to him to put him right … except what they are claiming is simply making them look even sillier (which is what happens when you assert stuff that has no actual science behind it al all).

The latest epistle comes from Casey Luskin who started a dialogue with Keith on 28th Feb, and yes, it is the “Casey Luskin” from the Discovery Institute (kook central for the intelligent Design community). I’m sure Mr Luskin is indeed a very nice chap, but unfortunately science does not appear to be his strong point …

Mr Luskin argues that Keith is really talking about “undesirable design” and since that is really “theology” and not science, it does not count as an argument against ID, which he claims is scientific.

Keith points out …

I will be entirely happy to start labelling unintelligent design as “undesirable design” just as soon as ID proponents start labelling intelligent design as “desirable design” – unless, that is, you really, genuinely are suggesting that (e.g.) a worm burrowing into a child’s eye is as good an example of ‘intelligent’ design as you imagine the eye itself to be.

I will in fact give Mr Luskin an A+ for being very very verbose, one can only wonder if the strategy is to simply beat his opponents into submission with a storm of words. I must admit though, Keith has a considerable degree of patience and persists with the dialogue, advising …

I made clear that the 139 examples on the C4UD list are ‘unintelligent’ in both senses of the word. “Either they imply a designer who is ‘not very bright’ or ‘a bit thick’ or else they imply a designer that is ‘literally mindless’ – as well as blind, purposeless and directionless.” What part of that don’t you get?

If curious, and up for some entertainment, Keith has the entire dialogue available for all to read (and laugh at) here. He does a fine job slicing and dicing each and every point of ID silliness served up by Mr Luskin.

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