Denialism

Boing Boing strikes gold – a new name for evolution denialists

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by

MarkH
in

Mark at Boing Boing proposes an excellent new name for Intelligent Design creationists – “cdesign proponentsists”. It’s in honor of this wonderful observation from “Of Pandas and People” the creati … I mean cdesign proponentsists textbook:

i-5f4c45938438b9ec630bd8677e0eb2a9-slide69.jpg

This is one of numerous examples of their dishonesty in suggesting that they’re anything but creationists in disguise.

I like Mark’s this idea, this should be their new name. It’s a bit of a compromise. They don’t want to be called creationists, and we don’t want them to get away with lying. It’s perfect!

Now as to the pronunciation. How about “see-design proponent cysts”?

Comments

  1. Blake Stacey

    I’ve seen folks at the Panda’s Thumb use this one for months, now, so it’s not exactly new. I still like it a lot, though.

    Reply
  2. Aaron Lemur Mintz

    I’ve wondered something about this ever since I’ve heard it.

    Ok, so clearly there was a search&replace happening here. But what was it? The direct replacement that this implies, assuming they were trying to change things to ‘design proponents’, implies that they has the assignment rule:

    reation -> Design Proponents

    Why would that be chosen? What’s going on here?

    Reply
  3. Johnny Vector

    Aaron Lemur:

    It wasn’t just a global replace; that would be too likely to result in errors. You have to manually go through and replace each instance with the appropriate word. This error was almost certainly a failed double-click. Move the mouse accidentally between clicks, hit paste (cause you know “Design Proponents” is in the paste buffer), and move on to the next without noticing that you hadn’t selected the entire word. Presto! Instant evolutionary history!

    Which of course is what makes it so delicious. Just like with biological evolution, it’s the mistakes that let us trace the history.

    Reply
  4. Dave S.

    Aaron –

    My guess would be that it was a manual cut-and-paste job that went awry. Someone had typed ‘design proponents’, highlighted it, and and hit ALT-C to copy. And when they saw the word ‘creationists’ in the old text they intended to highlight the whole thing and hit ALT-V to paste in the new word over it, but had only highlighted the ‘reation’ part in the middle instead by accident. Probably they were rushed and missed it.

    Reply
  5. John Lynch

    That picture looks horribly familiar 🙂

    Reply
  6. Aaron Lemur Mintz

    @ Johhny, Dave –

    Thanks, that does make more sense. Although Johnny, your first sentence, It wasn’t just a global replace; that would be too likely to result in errors, was very cruel and mocking of the people that wrote this text.

    Good job.

    Reply
  7. Jim Ramsey

    Personally, I prefer the label “Johnsonite”, after Philip Johnson of course.

    It’s an obvious parallel to the label “Darwinist”.

    The clear intent of the labels Darwinism, Darwinist, etc. is to take a working scientific theory and paint it as a cult of personality.

    I feel it’s only fair we return the favor.

    There’s also the added bonus that with William Dembski’s ego, this will royally piss him off.

    Reply
  8. Bob O’H

    Move the mouse accidentally between clicks

    In 1987? Oh, you youngsters! 🙂

    Bob

    Reply
  9. Davis

    Move the mouse accidentally between clicks

    In 1987? Oh, you youngsters! 🙂

    Hey, some of us had Macs even back in ’87. 🙂

    Reply
  10. booger

    Man, I had one of those “see-design proponent” cysts removed from my butt a while back. Took forever to heal.

    Reply
  11. Booger

    Kept me out of ‘Nam, though. Me and Rush.

    Reply
  12. TomS

    Your “explanations” of the expression “cdesign proponentsists” are only theories!

    Reply
  13. Julie Stahlhut

    “Johnsonite” is actually a registered trademark for a brand of industrial flooring. There might be a joke in there somewhere.

    Anyway, there’s an interesting discussion of the cdesign proponentsists transitional fossil in this thread at the Thumb:

    http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing_link_cd.html

    Reply
  14. Billy (A Liberal Disabled Vet)

    Design Proponents – DPs. Pronounce Dips. Or, if the want the ‘c’ in there, cDPs. Pronounce See Dips.
    See Dips Lie.
    See Dips manufacture evidence.
    See Dips ignore evidence.
    See Dick vomit.

    Reply
  15. blog responder

    OneGoodMove blog has a clip with the cut-and-paste explanation–referring to it as a “transitional form,” a “missing link”…
    http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/11/cdesign_propone.html

    Reply

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