UPDATE:The Bad Idea Blog takes issue with Berlinksi's claim that he calculated at least 50,000 changes were required to change a cow into a whale (he stopped counting) [Berlinksi, whales, and why Intelligent Design can’t get no respect]. If Berlinski took ten seconds to write down each of these changes it would take him 5 days, assuming he wrote for 24 hours each day. How's that for a mathematical calculation!Here's one of the chief IDiots, David Berlinski, expounding on how difficult it must be to change cows into whales. Berlinksi has a Ph.D. in philosophy and has written several books on mathematics. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Science & Culture (CSC).
Here's a free clue for the IDiots: cows didn't evolve into whales. Instead whales are the modern descendants of a primitive carnivore that lived over 50 million years ago. See the video at the PBS site for basic information on the evolution of whales—the sort of information that you'd expect anyone to know if they were going to criticize the scientific explanation for the evolution of whales [Whale Evolution]. Berlinski knows some of this history but he's missing the big picture. Berlinksi and most of his fellow fellows at the CSC don't know much about evolution and how it works. It's all a big mystery to them; but then, that's why they are IDiots.
[Hat Tip: The video was posted on the Discovery Institute website by Robert Crowther, who presumably believes that the evolution of cows from whales (sic) is important.]