I am obviously delighted by the volume of comments, I expect to the propelled to the height of blogdom any day now. Although, as a form of communication between 3 people who I could alternatively email/phone/visit, this method of communcation sucks!

And as you for Douglas, when did you last see my in my Y’s? I’m buff me…

He quite obviously knows me if the “small fat man in his y-fronts” description is anything to go by.

Congratulations on getting into double figures for comments on a single post.

You must be delighted.

Plus, of course, Bill Hicks is the most over-rated comedian since Lenny Bruce.

[pouts unattractively, storms off in the huff]

I thought the “put there to test our faith” line was a bit too obvious even without the Mr Hicks soubriquet.

I’d have put money on anyone of reasonable intelligence and of leagal voting age to be able to quote Bill Hicks routines chapter and verse.

It appears I was wrong.

Well done “Mr Hicks”. Trolling of the highest order.

What you seemed to be saying is that any instance of evidence which contradicts the theory of ID can be explained away by the simple expedient of saying that it’s ‘a test’. This really isn’t a sustainable position to take in any discussion as it serves as a form of magic bullet, allowing you to ignore any inconvenient evidence on grounds which are incapable of logical rebuttal because they are based on a spurious and flimsy premise.

It’s one thing to say, as the review did of March of the Penguins, that the survival of any eggs is evidence in favour of I.D (it is an enormously weak argument, however, since having the eggs hatched somewhere less hazardous would, obviously, be considerably more Intelligent).

It’s a wholly different thing though to avoid providing a counterpoint at all, by simply saying ‘it’s a test from God’, as though Man’s relationship with any potential creator can be reduced to some celestial version of The Crystal Maze.

Indeed, the fact that proponents of I.D feel the need to fall back on so weak an argument actually demostrates – far better than the original blog post – that Intelligent Design is a redundant and discredited theory, incapable of rational support and with a gaping fallacy at its core.

Throwing up the strawmen of world wars, mayhem and death* is a nice attempt to deflect attention from this fallacy, but I’m afraid doesn’t cut the mustard.

* I challenge anyone to demonstrate suing actual figures that ‘liberal rationalism’ has caused one ten thousandth of the amount of desruction and death caused by religion (or politics, for that matter, which was the actual major cause of both World Wars).

The former, I accept, has brought mayhem and death to the world. However the latter has brought the industrial revolution and two world wars.