Friday, February 09, 2007

David Allahnborough

Allah's Artistry is the name of a Friday night feature on the Islam Channel. Tonight they showed some leaf-cutter ants doing their thing in the rainforest whilst the narrator asked "how come one thousand ants can behave as if they had the same purpose?" The answer broadcast to the devout was of course that this provides "clear evidence" of Allah's micro-management of the natural world. Yet of course the answer is the same as that to the quite similar question of how come all the cells in our body behave as if they have the same purpose. Because they all have the same genes.

Only religion seems to retain this freedom to misrepresent fact on our TV screens; there really ought to be a way to safeguard our citizens from this kind of nonsense. What is intolerable on traditional terrestrial TV should be equally so on niche digital channels.

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