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Attack of the Super-Intelligent Purple Space Squid Creators
Reason ^ | 7/15/08 | Ronald Bailey

Posted on 07/16/2008 1:01:17 PM PDT by steve-b

...Near the end of the silly new anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—in which fellow panelist Steve Meyer appeared—host Ben Stein asks Richard Dawkins, who is arguably the best-known living evolutionary biologist on the planet, if he could think of any circumstances under which intelligent design might have occurred. Incautiously, Dawkins brings up the idea that aliens might have seeded life on earth; so-called directed panspermia. This idea was suggested by biologists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel back in the 1970s. In the film, Stein acts like this is a great "gotcha," like it's the silliest thing he's ever heard. Of course, the irony is that this is precisely what proponents of intelligent design are claiming—that a higher intelligence has repeatedly created life on earth.

So, since our esteemed opponents are agnostic with regard to the "source of design," and because intelligent design cannot rule out the hypothesis that super-intelligent purple space squids are not the "source of design" of life on earth, I will provisionally accept that hypothesis for the remainder of my talk.

As I understand it, intelligent design proponents—such as our distinguished Discovery Institute panelists here—fully accept the fact that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old and that some form of life has existed on earth for about 3 billion or so years. If that is the case, it would seem the record shows that the intelligent designers—which I am hypothesizing are super-intelligent purple space squids—evidently spent more than 2 billion years tinkering with single-cell algae and bacteria before they got around to creating multi-cellular species. Do intelligent design proponents have a theory to explain that? Were the space squid creators just lazy?....

(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...


TOPICS: Religion; Science
KEYWORDS: benstein; crevo; evolution; fsm
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To: steve-b

I want to see this movie.


21 posted on 07/16/2008 3:09:14 PM PDT by wastedyears (Show me your precious darlings, and I will crush them all)
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To: steve-b
Oh, boy!


22 posted on 07/16/2008 3:13:48 PM PDT by Lady Jag ( I dreamed I surfed all day in my monthly donor wonder bra - https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate)
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To: the_devils_advocate_666

And not that intelligent either.


23 posted on 07/16/2008 5:06:13 PM PDT by Oztrich Boy (In Cleveland: No one may kill a mouse in the streets without a hunting lisence)
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To: Lady Jag
Day Of The Tentacle

So, is that an anime title?

24 posted on 07/16/2008 6:33:02 PM PDT by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: steve-b

It’s an old video game.


25 posted on 07/16/2008 6:42:48 PM PDT by Lady Jag ( I dreamed I surfed all day in my monthly donor wonder bra - https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate)
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To: steve-b

Purple space squids? Oh, PLEASE.

You know it was really some ‘mice’ trying to build a big computer...


26 posted on 07/17/2008 7:44:16 AM PDT by Hyzenthlay (I aim to misbehave.)
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To: steve-b
I thought it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
27 posted on 07/17/2008 7:53:26 AM PDT by Little Ray (I'm a Conservative. But I can vote for John McCain. If I have to. I guess.)
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