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Comment by alecdibble | Hacker News Reader

I really didn't expect to read a conclusion like this in an article about prairie dog linguistic research:

    This article has summarized groundbreaking research that reveals sophisticated language use by the prairie dog. Their ability to coin new words has thus far defied reasonable explanation. To us it indicates that a divine Creator was required to endow these rodents with this language gift. Surely, even a higher level of design and intelligence would be required to enable the incredibly more complex linguistic abilities of mankind as spiritual children of the Living God.

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Well, to be fair, there's a fair amount of goofy Biblical quoting at the beginning. Really, that article is hilarious, you should read it. Complete with pseudo-information theory bullshit -- it's INCREDIBLY COMPLEX, says the title of one section--, artificial intelligence from the sixties (I guess if SHRDLU couldn't do it, then GOD must have done it), and just general obtuseness from a pair of pompous fundamentalists. Come on, the conclusion of this religious tract disguised as scientific paper is, literally, "we don't know why this happens, so GODDIDIT"! Got to laugh at that :)

Were the authors catholics, they'd be either hypothesizing the existence of a Prairie Dog Jesus, or contemplating whether to send missionaries. I can't decide on what would be funnier.

Were the authors Roman Catholic, they would not be citing this or anything else as evidence for intelligent design.

Book of Mormon mention suggests not Catholic. :-)

Oh wow. I didn't actually read it all the way through. That was kind of... jarring.

It'd be nice to blockquote this. I can scroll much slower than I can read, or I can scroll much faster than I can read, but I can't scroll at a pace approximating my reading speed.

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