A Giant Turtle

I read this at Corner just now (a man’s gotta take a break for lunch and there’s only one place to go for stuff that’s reliably funny):

I’m going to have to wait to see Expelled before making a final judgment about agendas—hidden, shifty, or otherwise—but I have to say I continue to be troubled by the fervency of anti-ID commentary. I don’t have a dog in this fight—well, maybe a small poodle regarding the misuse of Darwinian concepts in social science and politics by the so-called “Progressives” 100 years ago…

And then there’s this:

But what exactly is the real world threat from ID people in the academy? (Or elsewhere?) Is there a technical issue, like stem cell research, where the ID argument is relevant? Is ID really the scientific equivalent of Naziism or Communism, which should rightly be proscribed from a faculty and curriculum? I have to agree with Ben Stein in the trailer that people who are confident in their views should not feel threatened by heterodox views.

Wonderful. I understand that at one point, people thought the earth sits on top of a giant turtle shell. For the heck of it, let’s assume its true. Here’s the way I think it works… the giant turtle (note – I’m not naming the giant turtle, so this is not religion or mythology!) is actually very smart, and he knows how to do his job and still avoid detection by satellites or telescopes or anything else. In addition, while it may look like the earth rotates around the sun, and the solar system around the galactic center, etc., its all because the giant turtle is making it look that way. In reality, he is moving the sun and the moon and the other celestial bodies around in a way that makes it seem like the earth is moving through the solar system, and the rest of the galaxy doesn’t really exist… but the giant turtle induces hallucinations in us to make us feel they’re there.

Now, can anyone think of any problems with giving this equal time? After all, it doesn’t affect the way people do science at all. The giant turtle is trying to fake a system that behaves a certain way, and as long as we are able to noodle out that certain way, we will know what is going on. It doesn’t matter whether we spot the underlying fraud by the giant turtle or not.

I might add that we can apply the giant turtle theory (again, this is different from the Giant Spaghetti Monster theory – we haven’t named the giant turtle) to medicine, physics, engineering, architecture, or even economics. So, who’s with me?