Lawyers say "When the facts are in your favor, pound the facts. When the law is in your favor, pound the law. When neither the facts nor the law is in your favor, pound the table.
Rob Crowther and Casey Luskin are frantically pounding the table over at the Discovery Institute.
Here's a nice letter to the editor of a Florida newspaper pointing out why Intelligent Design is not science. The letter writer accurately observes that ID is disguised creationism lacking factual support.
Not surprisingly, the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther objects to the letter. Why? Was the letter writer mistaken? No. It seems the letter exceeded the newspaper's maximum word count by 153 words! That's right. Rob himself can't succinctly demonstrate the letterwriter is wrong. Instead, Rob pounds the table mightily, convicting the letter writer of verbosity, not inaccuracy. Well struck, Rob.
Casey Luskin goes Rob one better.
Creationist Casey doesn't like Tiktaalik.
He shouldn't. Tiktaalik is a creationist's nightmare. Tiktaalik is indeed an important transitional fossil. But all fossils are transitional. Tiktaalik is important because was a predicted transitional fossil. Evolution predicted both the fossil's existence and its current location. Not bad for a theory in crisis since 1986.
Casey's creationism flatly predicts that Tiktaalik cannot exist. Yet, there it is in all its undeniable splendor.
How does Casey handle this unfortunate fact? Does he claim the fossil was faked? Nope. It seems Tiktaalik was discovered by the dreaded elite scientists! Not your ordinary run of the mill scientists and not some schmuck scientists from Bible college either. Certainly not any of the hardworking Discovery Institute hacks feverishly working on, uh, Intelligent Design science. No, elite scientists.
Casey uses elite as an epitaph. Now, personally, I think "elite" is a good thing. I suspect Casey would prefer an elite cardiologist should he ever require open heart surgery. Maybe he'll really will try to get by with any name from the yellow pages, but I doubt it. When the chips are down, Casey will go for an elite professional every time--except, that is, when he needs to "pound the table."
In case you miss the point, Casey blames the "scientific elite" three times for the discovery of Tiktaalik. Casey doesn't even pound the table creatively. Can't he come up with a different term of derision? Somebody get Casey a thesaurus.
To the portion of the population who feels they're being "attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture", "elite" is indeed an insult.
by the way, would you happen to know if Casey Luskin is in any way related to the economist Donald Luskin? I thought I read somewhere that he's Donald's son, but I can't find any verification.
Great stuff; keep up the good work.
Posted by: Mister DNA | January 26, 2008 at 07:40 PM
Ron Paul's economics advisor?
No comment.
Posted by: JRM | January 26, 2008 at 09:45 PM
I'm always glad to read your postings, Joe!
Accurate and well written.
Posted by: Bill | February 01, 2008 at 05:14 PM
"Epitaph?" I think you meant "epithet." Damn spellcheckers.
I can imagine a version of ID that fits the evidence: Something (might as well call it God) wrote the rules, set the initial conditions, and pushed the Big-Bang Button. He then sat back to see what would evolve, careful not to contaminate his experiment by sticking his hands in the works. It's not a theory, because it's untestable. Note that the observable universe is finite, so its creation would not require infinite resources. We could be a minor side effect of somebody's Science Faire project.
Posted by: Steve | January 13, 2011 at 07:43 PM