Apparently, some Progressive Bloggers aren't all that "progressive."

I'm used to criticism from various citizens of the wankersphere for my writings on evolution and "Intelligent Design" and high-falutin' sciency stuff like that there. I'm not so used to taking that kind of grief from members of PB.ca, and I'm a little worried about what might be the start of an ugly trend.

Over here, a Mr. Paul Vincent from PB site "Youth in Canada" takes issue with a recent post of mine slapping around Intelligent Design. Sadly, he starts off badly and it just goes downhill from there.

Vincent opens:

I had the privilage of reading a blog entry by Canadian Cynic who proposed a theory written by Davie Smillie of the Toronto Star.

Sigh. First, it's "privilege," not "privilage." Yes, it sounds picky but, really, if you want to be taken seriously, you can at least use a spell checker so as to not look like an illiterate buffoon. (Personally, I never use one myself as they all keep insisting that I have somehow misspelled "dumbfuck." Stupid, stupid programs.)

Not quite as forgivable is that it's "David," not "Davie", and, even worse, I'm not sure how it is that I could "propose" a theory that had already been "written by" Smillie. Three screwups of various degree in the first sentence -- not an auspicious beginning. And it only gets worse, as Vincent writes:

As a non-religious man (an atheist in fact) ...

Dude, if you're "non-religious," you are by definition an atheist. At the very least, if you're going to take a stand for a lack of religious belief, you could understand how to define it. But it's where Vincent starts to wax philosophical that he descends into pure absurdity trying to defend Intelligent Design:

Who is to say that sickness isn't invented to create human ambition into medecine [sic]? Who is to say lightning doesn't exist to create courage? Who is to say we don't have wings so that we could build flying machines? Who is to say we do not have gills so as we could build ships that could cruise across the sea.

Along the same lines, who is to say that if pigs had wings, they couldn't fly? What nonsense.

Vincent is indulging in an endless stream of "What if" conjecture. Now, there's nothing wrong with this -- scientists ponder "what if" scenarios all the time. But, unlike Vincent, they don't stop there.

If a scientist is sufficiently intrigued by a particular "what if," he or she will then try to rephrase it in terms of a hypothesis, then follow that up with an experiment to test the scenario in hopes of turning it into a theory and perhaps making a new discovery of some sort.

See the difference? For scientists, "what if" is just a starting point for some scientific investigation. For Vincent, it appears to be the goal -- a handful of pointless conjecturing which is no more useful or informative than arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. What Vincent is describing is not the foundation for any meaningful research program; it's just worthless Christian apologetics. But that's not even the worst part.

It's grating enough that a fellow Progressive Blogger would appear to be taking a stand in defense of Intelligent Design. But it's Vincent's blogroll that's real cause for concern. Down the right-hand side of his home page, we learn that three of Vincent's five favourite blogs are the thoroughly right-wing "Pajamas Media" member "Angry in the Great White North," the rancidly dishonest "Strongworld" of Bill Strong and, most frightening of all, Kate over at "Small Dead Animals."

This is a progressive blogger? Since when? It's not as if I have any say in the membership at PB.ca but, with a blogroll like that, Mr. Vincent might want to rethink his commitment to actual progressive values. And Scott Tribe might want to rethink the PB membership criteria.

And Mr. Vincent might want to rethink his aversion to learning some actual science.