He invited "intelligent design" proponent (i.e. – creationist) Michael Behe to chat over at Blogginheads.tv and was in full sycophantic right out of the gates. He remarks that he found Behe's latest collection of nonsense, The Edge of Evolution, to be "shattering" and a "very important book" deserving of a wider airing. While McWhorter professes that Darwin is great, he's "always seen a certain kink in the whole Natural Selection argument". What is this kink?
Yes, the polecat has caused a perfectly good linguist to lend credence to ID. Because McWhorter has some personal incredulity, therefore Yahweh must be behind everything.
Jerry Coyne, a professor of biology down in Chicago, calls this the Mephitological Argument for the existence of God.
What I find funny is that it's the skunk that causes such cognitive dissonance for McWhorter. He describes the animal as if spraying predator repellent was the most exotic adaptation ever seen in nature. If he'd expressed some incredulity at self-destructing ants or the sea cucumber which eviscerates itself when dealing with predators, then it might be another matter…
The McWhorter-Behe lovefest proved to be the last straw for physicist Sean Carroll who has opted out of Bloggingheads.
I couldn’t listen to too much after that. McWhorter goes on to explain that he doesn’t see how skunks could have evolved, and what more evidence do you need than that? (Another proof that belongs in the list, as Jeff Harvey points out: “A linguist doesn’t understand skunks. Therefore, God exists.”) Those of us who have participated in Bloggingheads dialogues before have come to expect a slightly more elevated brand of discourse than this.
The video was taken down briefly with the following explanation:
John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.
So he had it taken down because it didn't represent the participants "usefully". You'd think that, being a linguist, McWhorter could find a better euphemism for "Holy crap! I just went before the entire world and said that the skunk proves the existence of God."
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