Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Just So Evolution

Just finished reading this story about the evolution of bearded lizards.

This kind of story is precisely why people find it hard to take evolution seriously. It reminded me of a bureaucrat I once knew at the University of Illinois. At every hour-long meeting, she would begin by saying why some plan of action was never going to work, and end the meeting an hour later by explaining why it absolutely would work. Then, no matter what happened as a result of the action, she would later claim to have predicted the result at the last meeting.

The other bureaucrats thought she was very smart.
Which, I suppose, was true in its own way.

The "scientists" in the linked article above do the same thing. No matter what ends up happening with the lizards, the article will have "predicted" the result with a proper "just-so" story of evolution.

I guess that's why the people who support evolution are considered very smart. Which, again, I suppose they are, in their own way.

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