Intelligently Designed Film

So now some conservatives are arguing that March of the Penguins is, at it's heart, a conservative film that demonstrates the validity of Intelligent Design.

Let me pause for a second while I cry "Bullshit!"

Yes, the film does demonstrate the wonders of penguin monogomy, which allows for the division-of-labor necessary to allow their young to survive. But to claim that this is relevant to human relationships is ridiculous, unless you also believe that we have something to learn from elephant seals, who manage to reproduce through violent polygamy - they engage in brutal combat to win the right to copulate with the entire harem of females in the group.

These conservatives also claim that the fact they these penguins manage to survive in the one of the harshest environments on Earth is proof that they must have been designed by a creator. But as the (conservative) columnist George Will points out:

If an Intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?

Their success at breeding in such a seeming impossible environment is much better explained by evolution. The Antarctic was an open niche which these penguins evolved to exploit.

Finally, shouldn't it bother these conservatives that they are noticing such similarities between people and penguins? Doesn't a large portion of the resistance to evolutionary theory come from the fact that people are disgusted by the implication that people evolved from "lower" animals, thus violating the idea of man being created in God's image? If people and penguins are so similar as to invite comparisons, doesn't that show a good likelihood that we share a common descent or at least a common mechanism for the creation of our species?