Clowns of Death

Jeff Jacoby carries water for the Intelligent Design lunkheads.

PZ Myers completely dissects this article, like any qualified scientist, efficiently splitting Jacoby's seams, pinning his eviscerated husk to a board and neatly labeling all the shriveled arguments. It's beautiful.

But not least for his dismissal of JJ's deliberative capabilities as... wait, let me just get the quote:

In the first sentence of his paragraph, he says that ID is a “restatement of a timeless [religious!] argument” implying the existence of a “higher intelligence”, which he identifies as “God”; in his third sentence, he says “It doesn't make a religious claim”. There is a space of 14 words between those two contradictory statements. If nothing else, this essay establishes an upper bound on the length of a train of thought that Jeff Jacoby can maintain. I suspect that he might be able to compete with a caffeinated gerbil.

... It uses scientific data, it's not a scientific theory, it implies God, it doesn't make a religious claim, and now it's science again. I think I'm going to have to test his attention span against that of a caffeinated gerbil on meth.

Exquisite. The Caffeinated Gerbil is now the standard against which wingnut commentators must be judged.