The Mistakes You Make When You Can’t Read

by tristero

One of the most astonishing things about rightwingers is that, despite an often-professed interest in the time-honored classics and the like (the “Read Shakespeare, not Toni Morrison” crowd), many of them just can’t read. And that’s at all levels. Here’s a rather esoteric example having to do with gene expression, the genome, and differences between placentals and marsupials. I’d be the first to admit this is not the easiest of going for us civilians, but even before reading the explanation of the mistake, I could identify exactly how the creationists on the Uncommon Descent blog had thoroughly misunderstood and misrepresented the point of the article.

That’s how profound their literacy problem is (assuming it’s an honest mistake, and not deliberate propaganda, not an assumption I’d care to defend for very long). Even a total amateur can perceive they didn’t get it.

And that’s what makes “intelligent design” creationism so boring: taken purely as an idea about the way the world works, there’s absolutely nothing there but fundamental misunderstandings. As a scientist once said in a different context, it’s not even wrong.