a living argument against intelligent design
Everyone's favorite creationist punchline Ray Comfort decides to weigh in on swine flu. It went about as well as you'd expect.
They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But, it seems that creationist and professional sophist Ray Comfort, goes out of his way to be wrong every time he voices his opinion on anything scientific. Recently, he decided to mouth off about the outbreak of an H1N1 influenza strain known as swine flu and how it relates to the theory of evolution in his meager understanding…
The spread of the so-called ‘swine flu' demonstrates yet again how useless and sometimes deadly a mutation can be.
I don't know, I would think a mutation that allows the influenza virions to find new hosts and reproduce is rather useful for the virus. Maybe not for us, but the that's not the point here. And yes, mutations can be useless and sometimes deadly. That's what happens with a random and undirected process. What's his point?
Furthermore, as the infection spreads around the world, the search for an antidote is desperately sought…
Um… It's not exactly spreading across the world like a firestorm with some 2,500 estimated cases and it's not a venomous snake bite for which you need to find an antidote. Poisons need antidotes. Diseases need either cures or treatments and since swine flu is not very different in its potency from seasonal flu, we already have medications that can treat it. The panic we see is mostly media induced and has more to do with the novelty of the strain than it does with its potency.
… in evolutionary terms, why don't humans simply resign themselves to it and allow the strong to survive?
Because getting rid of a virus allows more of us to survive and continue the species. Did Ray even think for a picosecond before spewing this weapons grade stupidity? If the world is truly made by an intelligent designer, this designer needs to go back to the drawing board with Ray.
Something went wrong in the implementation stage of the process and the result was a creature not just devoid of intelligence, but a one arrogantly proud of this fact. In less than three of the opening sentences of his swine flu post, he made no less than six mistakes.
When I tried to review the first few pages of his book, every phrase was a jaw-dropping display of complete and total scientific ignorance of the highest caliber. Countless blogs which cover evolution have accumulated volumes of his patently ridiculous anti-science inanities. And yet, ironically, this witless salesman of snake oil for the soul fancies himself a scientific myth buster, keeping modern biology and cosmology in check with his photoshopped images of crocodile ducks.
But maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe, someday in the future Comfort will come out like Leo Taxil and thank us for helping him make a mockery of creationists the same way Stephen Colbert does with right wing pundits on a daily basis. Perhaps then we can look back at his arguments about the impossibility of evolution based on a series of arguments so bewilderingly asinine, you want to start looking for the hidden camera or dial the local psychiatric ward, and have a good, long laugh about it. Of course, I've always been a bit of a dreamer…
