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Creationists Violating Copyright
The_Rook writes "The Discovery Institute, more a lawyer mill than a scientific institution, copied Harvard University's BioVisions video 'The Inner Life of the Cell,' stripped out Harvard's copyright notice, credits, and narration, inserted their own creationist-friendly narration, and renamed the video 'The Cell As an Automated City.' The new title subtly suggests that a cell is designed rather than evolved."
Harvard was created so that they would be able to copy it. You know part of a bigger plan.
It's a good thing they're a lawyer mill. Because Harvard's going to sue the shit out of them.
Now, I'm not going to say all Creationists are dumb. I've met a few who aren't. But what in the hell were these guys thinking? "Oooo... let's use their video. They'll never catch on, and even if they do, what are they going to do about it?"
Dumbasses.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
(C)Copyright 4000BC God
All rights reserved
Reproduction other than by the means provided for in your licence agreement is prohibited
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Doesn't it make more sense to believe that Harvard stripped out the creastionist commentary from the video and slapped on a copyright notice? It would be far too complex to edit a Harvard video to add commentary, thus I must go with this simpler explanation and blame Harvard.
God created everything.
Trev - used to be interesting. Honest.
The topic should be "Are Creationists Violating Copyright?" Unless a Judge has ruled
They ignore common sense, who could have guessed they would ignore other peoples copyright?...
that's what she said.
And God also created this video for us. No, really. What? Of course we didn't copy it from someone else!
I'll probably go broke from the number of times they'll force me to watch Golden Compass, just to make them unhappy.
...the film was originally intelligently designed. Then it evolved.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Fuck the creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches, ...
every time I think of them, my trigger finger itches,
They want to have their bullshit...taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass!
Yes, but parody is fair use. What else could one conclude other than that the laughably ridiculous antics of Creationists are nothing more than a parody of science?
I can already tell we'll see the double standard from people commenting on this story: people who download music and other copyright material every day without paying but will somehow be outraged by this terrible display of disregard for copyright. How dare they!!
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
What to choose, what to choose...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What's worse than peddling religion in the name of science? Doing it badly! Come on, at least believe strongly enough in your own message to articulate it clearly.
They are creationists: that's what they do. Take the work of one and claim that another had created it. Haven't you hear what they're claiming about mother nature's creations?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The whole agrument is nuts and in truth doesn't justify a response. "God made it that way" ends all arguments for them so there is no rational thought behind their position. The real fact is there's an ocean of evidence for evolution and the true age of the Earth on one side and "God did it" on the other side. Where's the debate? The only evidence presented is heavily distorted scientific evidence. Gee sedimentary layers were left over from the great flood. Why are there different layers and different forms of life in each layer? No good response. Cells are very complex highly organized and self repairing, only a genius could have planned them. Or maybe it took a few billion years of trial and error? Why is this fictional date that some one came up with hundreds of years ago so important? It's not mentioned in the Bible he deduced it by adding up ages of the men listed in Genesis, some of them living nearly a thousand years which presents it's own set of problems. There is no form of evidence that will ever change their minds so there's no debate. They can complain all they want that science won't change but that's like trying to talk some one with a winning poker hand into the fact they just lost. Science doesn't need faith they have something far better, the facts.
I have used this video in my intro biology class, telling them it is an absolutely marvelous video and that by the time they graduate they will understand the complex processes depicted. I have spoken through it, thereby adding my own narration. Does this mean I am going to get sued too? In finding this video for my class I noticed many versions out there on youtube and other video sites, ones which had the copyright notice absent already, so does this mean I would get sued for showing those instead of the original? It's not like they posted the video on a site representing it as their own, it was part of a powerpoint presentation and I really doubt there is solid grounds to show they did anything wrong. Just because they are pushing their own agenda which the poster disagrees with does not mean they are any worse than other people making up a powerpoint presentation and not citing every graphic and video they find on the web.
Those Bastards!!!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Unfortunately, you'll have to find someone else to do the ass-kicking. Stephen Jay Gould hasn't gone to see his maker, but he is dead nonetheless.
also, i cannot be sued for illegal downloading because i simply have no money to buy this amount of movies (by your logic, not the MAFIAA's).
I'm going to give you what you so desperately want: 30 seconds of someone else's time. However, that's not even enough time to finish more than one se
Isn't it better that they removed the logo?
Otherwise it might appear to some person watching that the ramblings were actually created by harvard.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
They are obviously blinding themselves to the true nature of the Universe! God didn't create it, we did about 7.2 million years from now! And I can't believe nobodies brought up the instrument of the creation, his noodly appendage himself!
Shh.
There might be some claim of fair use for parody or for educational purposes.
... A topic I find boring.
Showing that you can stick a different narrative to a data set or to a film is a standard part of discourse. Even if intelligent design is fake science, putting a different narrative to data sets is part of the way real science works.
Scientist A says, "I have a data set and this is what I think happened." Scientist B might take the same thing and say "This story works as well."
Scientist B's showing that a different narrative works for the data is neither plagiarism nor copyright violation. It is discourse.
The article in the link was just about the utter contempt the writers feel about any ideas that fall outside the scope of their narrow little minds. I didn't bother watching the videos, but from the info in the blog I wouldn't say Harvard has either a slam dunk case on proving plagiarism or copyright violation. The fact that a copy exists without citations does not mean that the people doing the parody were passing off the work as their own. The parody clearly is not depriving Harvard of anything, which is the real kicker in copyright cases.
If this video simply exists to show that you can put a different narrative on a piece about cells, then it probably would pass the balancing test. If they were trying to sell it as their own research, it probably would not.
Of course, what people really want to talk about is how much they hate creationists
Creationism is not science, it is a religious belief. God reportedly laughs at false prophets like this and is amazed at how stupid people can be.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Man, the RIAA will be PISSED when they figure out those Harvard guys used Yanni's music without his permission...Oh what a wicked circle of lies and deceit!
"Information wants to be... specified complexly!"
Seriously, though - it's one thing to argue that people should be free to distribute a message to all who want to hear it. It's quite another to argue that it's okay to chop up, re-arrange, and misrepresent the message for propaganda purposes, and call that "freedom."
Our position is that:
1)Despite the godless, secular nature of Harvard, God none the less inspired them to create the original video
2)Through means of divine communication assigned us the copyright and moral rights, as only the progenitor of the universe can.
3)With His assent, we subsequently created a derivitave work without blasphemy.
4)Profit er...
To call the Discovery Institute's use of the Harvard video merely "copyright violation" overlooks the more fundamental problem, because the DI did not just copy and redistribute the content without permission, but in fact (a) distorted and misrepresented the meaning of the content via overdubbed narration, and (b) knowingly misrepresented the authorship of the content. The former is fraud (though perhaps not in a legal context), and the second is plagiarism (which does satisfy the legal definition).
Violation of copyright is really only the superficial issue, and only addresses the ownership of the original work.
The creationist/intelligent design cabal is successful because since the time of Darwin, they have understood that their views cannot be defended through legitimate scientific inquiry, and can never be by definition. Therefore, they attack evolution by natural selection by appealing to and exploiting public passions, fears, and ignorance, and cloaking themselves in psuedoscientific legitimacy. They hope to insinuate themselves into rational discourse by invoking a false sense of objectivity and open-mindedness, appealing to the public to "hear both sides," which is merely a sophistic tactic to put their position on equal footing with decades of confirmed and verified scientific theory.
In the end, what I truly don't understand is why the creationists are so hell-bent on disproving evolution. History has shown us time and time again that when religion fights science, religion ends up with egg on its face. (Galileo and his support of Copernican heliocentrism comes to mind.) If I were devoutly religious, the last thing I would want is to try to prove God's existence, because then such a proof would obviate the need for faith in the first place. Such a desire to enshrine one's belief in the language of science seems horribly misplaced at best, and ultimately, is a far greater detriment and threat to religion than science. Meanwhile, the scientists can only follow the path that nature reveals.
Actually, no. You won't find ANY supporter of the "information wants to be free" idea arguing that taking somebody's work, striping the copyright, modifying parts of it and selling it as your own product should be somehow acceptable. Quite the opposite is the case: information DOES want to be free, but the COPYRIGHTS have nothing to do with it. Check tha recent law suits of BusyBox authors, or the numerous suits on behalf of the author of the netfilter software for example.
But I suppose you already know that and you were only trolling, correct?
This is a slippery slope my dear friends!
If they get away with copyright infringment, they'll be just like the vast majority of slashdotters, and we can't have slashdotters and creationists sharing any similar traits!
no wait, I have a better one...
first copyright infringment, then TERRORISM! Lets nip this in the bud right now! Sick the RIAA on them!
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
God spontaneously made the copyrights disappear.
They could make that argument work for 45% of the US population.
Ed
Your post isn't going to be modded down because the rest of us are bigoted (or even merely biased) against your viewpoint, but because it fails to address the reality of the situation. (1) The Discovery Institute did not secure permission to use the video. (2) The video was shown with the copyright removed. (3) The substance of the video was changed by overdubbed narration that implied that the video depicted evidence of intelligent design in biochemical mechanisms. (4) Through the removal of copyright information and failure to refer to the actual source, the DI plagiarized the video by presenting it as its own original work rather than a derivative work. This action is not covered under fair use.
I would also like to point out that complaining that your post will be modded down is not somehow a sort of magical incantation to prevent it from actually being modded down. That sort of reverse psychology does not work, especially when you fail to have any legitimate points.
Not a bad idea. You'd have to provide some sort of exit strategy for those that see the light though - "I'M AN ATHEIST GET ME OUT OF HERE !!".
What should we call it, Israel?
God's on their side, so it's okay!
You keep using the word 'parody'. It's not a parody. And it's one thing to borrow someone else's data... quite another thing to borrow their artistic representation of it.
Not only that, but there is clearly a morality issue here, as well. The Discovery Institute sounds like only one of a number of such right-wing "Christian" organizations, who try to lead people to "truth" and to "god". Now, I know not of the DI, but I have knowledge of several similar groups who claim Evolution, secularization of the public sphere, etc. are the root cause of urban/moral/societal decay. Most of these groups champion a return to biblical teachings as the route to a moral society.
Now, name for me what document these groups want prominently displayed in schools, courthouses, capitals, etc?
The Ten Commandments.
For a group as "devoted" to the Bible as this, for them to lie and steal just goes to show you to watch out for con-men in a Shepard's guise.
Disclaimer: all material in quotes is because I find the right-wing distortions of said quoted items to be gross perversions of said subjects.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
up to now, they were in the bad role, the attacker, and the scientists the victims. Now if "Science" attacks them in law, they will posit as victims :(
Herve S.
Oh wait. Oops... I forgot that this thread was about copyright issues and not about the "inherent dishonesty" that creationists/IDists are allegedly full of. My mistake.
Seem some thin skinned bible thumpers are at work here. Wonder if there's a link war going on. I also think the headline misses the real crux of the matter and that's the plagerism and misrepresentation. Copyright is just the icing on the cake. Let's see what score I get in my own little experimental post.
Please give an actual example of where a high profile darwinist copied and modified something from a creationist, modified it, and tried to pass it off as their own.
Your post seems to reveal a total lack of understanding with regards to fair use.
Spelling, grammar, punctuation? We need something that checks logic.
Great job giving a quacky research girl - who fights the creationists more vitriolically than they fight evolution - the status of "source" for this article. She's obviously smarter than I, since I can't figure out what it is she does, other than "biology research". She also has obviously already made up her mind (as is typical of any 24 year old grad student) that she has to work in "the right" field.
I, on the other hand, can be perfectly content in the knowledge that the earth is billions of years old (and God created it in 6 days some odd thousands of years ago), that the expanding universe is indicative of the big bang (and God was around before that, if it happened), and biological evolution is definitively stated (though possibly not on quite as macro a scale as a proponent of natural selection would have you believe). I'd like to be able to logically explain how all those beliefs can coexist, but since my primary job is to pay the mortgage and not reconcile conflicting philosophies, I'll leave that to someone else.
Still, it always boggles my mind when I hear researchers fighting about their beliefs. As a researcher you should be preaching a very teeny portion of the time and searching a great majority of the time. Also be sure to let me know when this girl moves out of the blogosphere and into the peer-reviewed journal stage. Maybe then slashdot can link to a real source article.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
If you're a creationist, everyone in here is a troll. What, with the science-voodoo and all.
My UID is prime. Hah!
I truly want to apologize for the criminal stupidity that perpetrated this.
No, I don't work for DI or have any association with that particular group. I've been down this road before on Slashdot, but it bears repeating: I am a religious person. But I am not a "Christian", in fact, I am scored by Christians for the most part. I don't particularly believe in "intelligent design", because it doesn't make sense to me. I prefer to see God as a scientist rather than a "Creator". Anyone who has studied any kind of religion in college (most people at my old community college took comparative religion for an easy humanities credit) will realize that the Bible is full of allegories and euphemisms. Who are we to say that Adam and Eve were the first creations of God? Maybe they were the end result of an experiment being run by God; the first to understand, so to speak, what they are and their place in the natural order of Earth.
To think that we sprung up out of the ground is preposterous to me. Fundamentalist Christians will point to the Bible saying "God created Adam from the dust of the earth" as proof of intelligent design. Is it at all possible that "the dust of the earth" is the primordial ooze scientists refer to? Could, as Robin Williams said, the passage "God said 'Let there be light'" be a euphemism for the Big Bang?
I do believe in science as well; we have made some amazing advancements in the last 20 years. I am excited to read of a new scientific breakthrough or a new understanding of something that seemed miraculous not 10 years ago. Now, if you will all excuse me, I'm going to go back to reading. Putting something as ethereal as my religious beliefs into words is not nearly as easy as it might seem. And thank you for reading what to most would probably seem to be a psychotic episode put into words.
"Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
First I'd like to apologize: this is my third comment on this post. Second: no offense, but that's a lame statement. Scientists borrow representations from one another all the time...so does media. This video is taken, re-edited, and applied in various courses and disciplines all the time as well. It also permits, by its license, educational use: and it was a presentation at a university organized by a student-group. I don't know enough about DI to dicuss their merits or pitfalls, but nevertheless I've seen this video around for a little over a year now and have never seen anyone get attacked for use until this controversial group used it in a standard presentation...to an unsympathetic audience no less. My major is biology, but I'm a guy considering such polemical rhetoric against those who disagree (however ignorant or idiotic they're perceived to be) as represented in the comments on this post and the blog it refers to as a good reason to switch BACK to business...at least there there's (sometimes) some remnants of professionalism (unless you're Jobs--though Macs themselves do rock). The representation of this piece of art is that of standard knowledge: I would have been more concerned if they'd misrepresented Harvard by leaving the logo/narrations intact: which I've never seen even in evolution, genetics, or physiology. So everyone: no grasping just to get kicks to attack somebody. Discourse rationally and with respect.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
From the video on TFA it seems that the video is being used in some sort of lecture. From that isn't it legal for schools and universities to use copyrighted material with out permission as long as it is being used for an educational purpose? Let my repeat myself I am not a lawyer. I believe the only thing they needed to do was put in the source if even that but I am not sure. Is anyone familiar with this?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
> Tolerance is a funny idea. You ought only tolerate what doesn't harm you or others.
Well put. I find the emphasis that some place on tolerance to be a bit, well, misplaced.
However, I don't really see where creationists are harming anyone, really. I mean, yeah, I think they are (grossly) misinterpreting Genesis, but I don't see where anyone is going to go to hell, prison or even the unemployment line on the basis of that. I confess to not paying much attention to them, and maybe they're doing something I don't know about (totally possible), but apart from the copyright infringement + plagiarism case (for which they ought to be ashamed, since it strikes me that it probably falls within the bounds of "Thou shalt not steal"), I'm not sure that they're actually harming anyone. Are they?
Your post is misleading, because the controversy over intelligent design, and the problem that scientists have with it, is not that it is true or false. The creationists/ID proponents would like people to frame it in such a context, because it pits scientists against dogmatic faith in a supernatural creator. I will only say this once, because it is so obvious that it is a wonder that it needs to be said at all:
The problem is that the theory of Intelligent Design* is not science.
Note that this statement does not say anything about the truth of ID. It merely states that ID as a proposed explanation of the origin of life does not satisfy fundamental criteria necessary to be called science. I cannot tell you whether ID is true or false, because I DO NOT KNOW. But I can tell you that it isn't a scientific theory. Why its proponents seem so desperate to enshrine it as science and somehow believe that shrouding it in the mantle of science would increase its legitimacy, I cannot understand. I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion that the universe had a divine creator, as I am also willing to entertain the notion of a supernatural origin of life, as are many scientists. But as scientists, none of us can rationally place those notions in a scientific framework.
*Note that I use the phrase "Intelligent Design" here in its broadest context--that the origin of life is supernatural, rather than in its specific statements that strive to demonstrate this claim (e.g., the argument of irreducible complexity).
I recommend you go watch the documentary Jesus Camp and then decide for yourself if they are "harming" anyone.
Just to give one example from the documentary, the (Christian) woman depicted throughout is quoted as saying she is raising an army of devote followers that will lead a revolution to salvation or some such thing. We can just look at history and see how wonderful all those religious wars turned out so far.
I see a few people are adhering to the meme under the American definition of "freedom," i.e. 'free' to do what you want within parameters defined by what you personally find acceptable.
You know they're going to try it.
No. This is something completely different.
It would be right if we found the video without any narrative buried deep in the remainings of an ancient civilisation or something else. Then both narratives would be part of a discourse how to interpret the video. Then the video would be the raw scientific data, and both narratives had their rightful purpose.
Here it is different. The video is in no way raw data. It was choosen, cut, mounted together to help explaining something. In this case the narrative is the core of the video, and the pictures are merely there to illustrate. As someone who routinely draws comics as a hobby I always was playing with the possibilitiy to erase all words in a comic strip and then fill in something else which narrates a completely different story. Misinterpretation of a sequence of pictures is thus no "scientific discourse", it is always possible. At most it shows that the pictures alone are not enough to make the case for what Harvard wanted to explain with the video (but Harvard added the narrative anyway because the knew it was not enough). If the Institute wanted to show that, they might have a case, albeit a weak one.
But in this case it is just making a derivative work of someone else's work without a) getting a permission and b) without attributing it correctly. This is purely a copyright case, nothing else.
I dont know which jerk modded parent troll but s/he should go in and reply to this thread to nullify his/her point. if s/he has a brain, of course.
in case you didnt understand, the parent is an excellent post on arrogance and self-centeredness of mankind. We are as such to the extent that we can think that an entire existence, zillions of galaxies in an expanding universe were created 'in the image of' and 'for' some obscure primate specie on a rim planed in a single galaxy. compare earth to milky way galaxy, and you'll see that even at this scale that 'in our image' crap is totally null. dont even dare matching up tiny earth against the entire universe.
Read radical news here
Either you're a scientist, or you're religious. You cannot be both.
./ joke? Whatever, I screengrabbed it for posterity! :)
Either you are committed to the scientific method, or you accept things based on faith. Again, no room for both.
If a hypothesis cannot withstand the rigours of scientific method, it must be discarded. When somebody refuses to let go of a cherished belief that has no basis in fact, they cannot justifiably claim to be a scientist.
No doubt I'll be pummelled here by the Christian Scientists for the "sin" of mentioning the bloody obvious, but that is their problem, not mine: I'm not the one pretending to be a scientist while professing belief in superstitions.
CAPTCHA = atheism. Some kind of
> Scientists borrow representations from one another all the time
Yes, with citing the correct source. Without it, it is plagiarism, which can easily mean the end of a scientific career.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
DI didn't copy the narrative. They didn't copy the "core" of the video, by your argument. (Indeed, who owns the copyright to the images and animations? Is it all Harvard? Or a mix? This seems to weaken any argument they violated copyright -- by your assertions as to the "core" of the item in question.
It may or may not be valid scientific discourse (I lean to no), but if your argument is that someone making a mistaken (or even flawed or foolish argument) is therefore guilty of copyright violation when someone who does exactly the same thing but makes a valid argument isn't, then that would place a very unhealthy chill on free expression.
You seem to argue that we should then ultimately accept endless litigation (or would you posit some Scientific Council to decide what is valid?) in order to determine what is valid science and what isn't. This seems antithetical to free speech, good peer review and well established journals.
If I'm misinterpreting you, my apologies.
My own view is that we should be very careful about attacking even foolish, stupid and wrong people using legal tools if their actions would otherwise be legally and constitutionally protected if they happened to be correct, or at least possibly correct.
(Many European countries believe differently; Holocaust denial, for example is illegal and unprotected).
Turn it around another way. Suppose you are a physicist and I am someone who believes that Newton's Laws are incorrect, ditto General Relativity. I assert that the movement of planetary bodies (for example) is not explained by Relativity and Gravitation, but by the fact that large invisible angels carry the planets about on their backs.
I'd be a fool, a crank, or both. But if I then reproduced a paper you wrote on gravitation, and annotated it copiously (especially if I didn't reproduce the "core" of your paper) with my arguments significantly outweighing yours in space consumed, then I don't think one could make the case I was violating copyright. This would be a classic example of fair use/fair dealing, particularly given that large portions of your paper were not being reproduced.
Regards,
Holmwood
If they can be fined per infringement, does that mean that if all slashdotters download it they have infringed tens of thousands of times and will get sued out of existence?
Wouldn't that be nice...
Indeed. Look at all those Grammar Nazis who modded you down in a complete lack of appreciation for your creative use of Genitive.
And what you decry is a vital part of freedom, in my view.
In the film "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore chopped up (and spliced in) copywritten videos of Charlton Heston speaking a set of words he actually uttered months apart.
This was a distortion, a misrepresentation and, yes I suppose it could be said to be propaganda. It also made the point that a lot of people believe the NRA is too cold and uncaring about things like school shootings.
He won an academy award for that film.
Whether one is pro or anti Moore's arguments, surely we could agree that what he did should be constitutionally protected?
And yet he did exactly what you decry.
I'm not sure that what the DI did meets that test though. They apparently reproduced nearly the entire film, stripping out the narration. Unless we accept, as one commenter above argues, that the narration was the core of the copy written material, I don't think their actions pass muster.
But I think that's because it's reproducing too much of the copy written material and not putting in enough of their own.
If you don't agree with me, think about it like this. If you "chop up and re-arrange and 'misrepresent', what I've just said to argue against me, then you would, by your arguments, be breaking the law. This post, after all, is copyright and owned by me. It says so right at the very bottom of this page!
Regards,
-Holmwood
Discovery Institute didn't do so. They took a prefabricated sequence of pictures. They didn't change their order. Their narrative might be their own and probably is entitled to its own copyright. But everything else violates Harvard's copyright to the collage of pictures.
Considering that current law states that copyright is valid until 70 years after the author's death, that copyright will expire in 2036.
Of course, since there's this other person who also died in 1966, the copyright period will probably be extended before it expires.
May I suggest a firefox plugin for your needs?
Perhaps some kind of DRM on harvard's videos is in order ?
Are slashdot writers truly this hypocritical ? If nobody gets to enforce copyright (especially not riaa) then why does slashdot get to ?
Considering that the vast, vast majority of creationists are not members of the Discovery Institute, this headline seems slanderous.
This is a little like having the local Atheists Club killing puppies, and running the headline, "Atheists Kill Puppies".
If you think the DI is evil for doing this, then you'll agree that all the clips of it on Youtube have to be removed, right? right?
...not that these people had anything resembling a scientific career to begin with, of course.
OSx86 FTW
It's so hard to tell what would be true here. Logically, it seems to me that putting effort into creating a derivative work should be more supportable than simply pirating other people's work without doing anything to it.
But I suppose nobody knows better the feeling of wanting to eat their cake and have it too than defenders of entertainment piracy.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Another example of copyright as an obstacle to innovation. Even pygmies should be permitted to build on the shoulders of giants. Keep that copyright off our backs and let the conversation develop.
Are you this dumb? Seriously, are you? Or just serves your purpose? You forgot to mention that Michael Moore tried to get Charlton Heston to comment on that, and he declined (as shown on Bowling for Columbine).... Not to mention that they didn't insert any narration to what was said by Charlton Heston, so it was the raw material that was shown.
You muppets get dumber by the second if you truly believe that going from mentaly challenged propaganda to half truths takes you anywhere.
Have a look for The staggering stories of Ferdinand De Bargos.
It was inspired by a BBC(?) Saturday morning kids show redubbing of The Flashing Blade. Corking stuff.
Mind you, that was done with the acceptance of the copyright holders or used PD material
So that's good right? This is a tough one. They're violating copyright but they're also creationists. If only one side was a little darker so I could tell who to root for.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
That depends on your definition of harm.
To keep this somewhat on topic, suppose the reverse situation had happened. A creationist group funds an educational video describing some aspect of their theories. An academic group then strips the copyright and dubs new dialog into the video which reverses it's meaning and purpose. This video is then played, with no attribution of source. Said creationist group would sue, and the academic community would be shocked and appalled when they discovered such gross dishonesty.
Is the scientific method a reasonable, rational approach to understanding reality? I believe that it is the best method we have available, and I am not alone in that belief. I believe that undermining that method, the very foundation of our modern technological society, causes great harm to logical and rational abilities. Someone who has been taught ID methods as though they were science is at a disadvantage when actually performing science. The ultimate cop-out (God [or a higher intelligence such as the FSM] designed it that way, and we simple creatures will never understand how or why) is where it all fails. Science doesn't just give up; you prove something true, false, or untestable. You never simply abandon a line of investigation because it is too hard or because it goes against established research (or even a collection of stories from our past that have been given special status). This approach to science is inherently flawed, hobbled, and damages the practitioner's rational faculties to the extent that all of their scientific endeavors are suspect. I think that qualifies as harm.
If there exists an intelligent design argument that does not involve an unknowable intelligent designer and does not simply comprise challenges to cited evidence used in evolutionary theory, I would love to hear it. Seriously. So much so that all of you can have my personal email account to tell me what that argument might be. (my_/._username_at_yahoo) Try to write an email that doesn't use the word God (or equalivent concept), says something other than a refutation of some piece of evolutionist evidence, makes a rational argument without recourse to scripture, or maybe even actually posits a hypothesis that cannot be explained by evolutionary theory.
I do believe in higher powers. I also believe in quantum mechanics, genetics, evolution, and the scientific method in general. I'm willing to examine any evidence provided with an open mind. Come, ease my boredom, give me a laugh at work, and just maybe give me something to think about. Consider it an easy challenge: I already believe in a higher power, so the hard part is done. Now just convince me that science and the scientific method is wrong, and you're in business. Best of luck, you're going to need it.
(footnote: Gujo-Odori, this rant isn't aimed at you. Sorry if it came off that way. It's directed at anyone who thinks they have valid evidence of intelligent design that supercedes any possible logical or rational counterargument.)
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
Did anyone stop to think that they may have intentionally done this? (1) To take real science and slap a creationist's context on it and (2) any legal action taken is publicity and an attempt to "silence" "alternative" "theories" of the origin of man.
Most eloquently put. That pretty much makes my day and this session of
lord help us all ...
DI must be the premiere creationist org today - right?
some "Atheists Killing Puppies" != all "Atheists Kill puppies"
It seems DI is using Harvard's picture of a tomato and pointing out 'they say "tomayto" and we say "tomaato"'.
god did not hold the camera, not did he hire the narrator nor he spend time editing the video. guess who created the hammer? MAN .. so he can hammer out these /god/ ideas out of the people that annoyed him in his thoughs.
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
Anyone can make up any idea and call it science. Are there any peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals about intelligent design? Have any experiments to test intelligent design been designed and carried out to see what the result is?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Go re-read the post you are replying to ... and again ...
He already anticipated your argument. Look at this bit:
You're a bit outmatched in this battle, when he doesn't even have to reply ...
Why all the righteous indignation, heinousjay? Did a bully copy your CD collection when you were in grade school?
Can we expect Slashdot to report every time someone gets caught violating copyright, including P2P file-sharers?
One look at who posted this tells me all I need to know about why this is on the front page. *yawn*
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Oh the whackos are good at piracy. My ex wife is a right wing Christian loony evangelical umm I ran out of adjectives, anyway, I remember her spending hundreds of dollars buying CD's loaded with Christian music - every single one of them a pirated copy.
But I guess if you're doing "god"'s work, it doesn't matter if you rip people off. Funny how the pastor drove a mercedes and the wife was always going around in gucci and luis vuitton stuff, though. Especially in this poor country.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I can't remember if the Harvard copyright notice was in there or not. Not much reason to edit it out, since the short video doesn't say anything one way or the other about evolution, and Harvard was found as a religious school. There was some guy who gave the introduction to the video, who talked about how wonderfully complex cells were. But obviously looking at this video, most of the things that we see are extremely simplistic caricatures of stuff that actually happens in a cell. I mean come on, some stick figure with big old goofy shoes hauling a big bag up a pipe? That doesn't scream evolution at me.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I thought Slashdot was against copyright protections, so what do you guys care? You've never cared about private property or intellectual property rights before. Or have the Nerds-On-High decreed that you should make exceptions for religious groups?
Don't get me wrong, I think these people clearly ripped off someone elses work and should pay out the ass, but I don't think this community has any credibility on this.
If nobody gets to enforce copyright (especially not riaa) then why does slashdot get to ?
Harvard can enforce copyright through the traditional means. They can initiate a lawsuit against the Discovery Institute for infringement of copyright and violation of Harvard's exclusive right of distribution.
Enforcement of the law is handled by the legal system. DRM is not enforcement of copyright law. It is the use of technological means to limit the replication of media files.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think you're the only replier who understood the point. Theft is theft, copyright violations are violations, yet fair use is fair use, no matter what one believes. It is sad that when someone like me posts a point, others just assume that I'm on one side or the other, and the side they assume is the one that they are against. I realize I could have worded that differently about the "I wouldn't be surprised", what was really meant was that I expected a ton of flaming because of that post. I should have changed that to something like, "This post is now open to flaming" or such.
For some of the replies, other than yours, I will say that those who follow darwinism call themselves evolutionists, those who follow creation call themselves creationists, this does differ from Christians, and Muslums, Atheists, as well as Scientists.
I do think that Slashdot should post stories that prompt an intelligent discussion on the front page. Articles that will cause immediate flaming wars should be left in the background. Articles that place groups against each other need to stay on the poster's blog page.
Next time I'll try to make my point a bit more clear.
Thanks again for your reply.
From TFA, they stripped out the original copyright notices.
If a scientist who believes in Evolution and breaks the law, can I say Evolutionsts are to blame? Holy flame content batman, I did'nt realize me sitting at home being a creationist caused me to break the law.
Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it so well: "How dare we be so arrogant as a species to assume we are the only intelligent ones in the whole vast universe?".
As to the modding, the fundies got in here early and mod-bombed most of the intelligent posts (which were the non ID ones, natch).
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
When I read the title "Creationists Violating Copyright", I thought to myself "I'm a creationist....I violated a copyright? Did someone patent a holy book?" Then I read the headline. I'm so relieved I wasn't actually violating any copyrights.
Slashdot editors: please be more careful with the titles. I know the majority of slashdotters don't care for Creationism, but one can infer from the title that there is a level of zealotry against Creationists that isn't really there in the whole majority (I would think).
How relevant is this post outside of the context of making fun of religion and religious people?
Take a Michael Moore movie. Let's take Sicko. Now reedit it, redub it and use it to prove that the health care system in the US is on top of the world. It's possible, no problem.
That's the difference here. How'd you feel if you make a documentary, then see it turned inside out and upside down to "prove" the opposite of what you documented?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One thing I am invariably confused by whenever Slashdot posts an anti-ID story is whether the commentators here believe Intelligent Design/ Teleology is *necessarily false* and logically impossible because it is non-materialistic and invokes an external teleology to explain what is happening in the natural universe, OR whether Intelligent Design has been proven wrong by the cumulative empirical evidence gathered in the last two hundred years? (In my opinion, Darwin's Origins inaugarated a research program rather than definitively proved anything at all. After all, how could a primitive pre-critical biology prove anything without getting into the nitty-gritty of biochemistry, microbiology, and laboratory experimentation?)
In other words, do we need to leave our armchairs in order to figure out the Neo-Darwinian synthesis is true, or could we figure that out by a mere deduction from the philosophy of science we have chosen? Cuz, sometimes it sure sounds like teleology is ruled nonsense/pseudo-science before it even gets out of the gates and says anything about alternate interpretations! Which is remarkable to me. I am not sure how we can justify eliminating a Designer/Creator from the get-go, if that is what some are doing.
Why do you think he created Earth in the first place? In fact, we're just here for his entertainment. To quote Ephraim Kishon: "Lord, are we still the chosen people?" "Why sure. You're funny."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ID arguments fall apart under their own theory. Their theory basically states that some things in nature are too complex to have come about randomly, therefore someone must have designed them. It's notable that this is a logical argument, not a scientific one. There is no testable statement here. The only valid test would be to put an empty jar in a room and wait for "the designer" to place a new form of life in it. I haven't heard of any successful experiments of this type :).
Their current argument though would look at a tree's cells and all of the complexities that go on and say that there is no way it could have evolved. ID just says evolution is false, it doesn't try to explain anything itself. Take just the leaf of a tree though. If you just look at it, you would say someone designed it, placed everything exactly where it was and made this beautiful design. If you know anything about biology, or if you just watch a leaf grow from spring to summer, you will see that it wasn't placed there, it grew out of the tree. ID proponents would say that is hogwash. There's no way that a seed could turn into a tree. Just look at them, the seed is so small and the tree is a complex structure with many types of cells. Someone had to design each leaf and place it there, there's no way a single seed could become a whole tree with all the different leaves.
ID proponents don't claim this that I know of because they can see it happen. Everyone can observe a tree growing and we know that it ends up the way it is because of a natural process that begins with the DNA encoded in the seed and that is modified by the environment the tree grows in. They can't 'see' evolution occur so they dismiss it in favor of something written in a book thousands of years ago with no proof that most of the world's population doesn't even believe. In reality, we've observed DNA mutations and even speciation events. They can't comprehend the size of the Earth and the billions of years that it has existed, so they claim evolutionists just "throw billions of years at the problem" to explain it.
My favorite is when an atheist in a debate claimed that our large brain size was proof of evolution because prior to modern medicine, 20% of women died in childbirth due to the size of the babies' heads. The "true believers" claimed this was proof that natural selection was false because it caused the woman to die. If a larger brain gave even a 10% advantage to survival though, it would prove to be a total benefit to the species, and we can see now it has worked since we've become the dominant species on the planet due largely to our intelligence. If you look at it from a designer's perspective though, there is no plausible reason not to just make the woman's hips a little wider. From an evolutionist's perspective, the change just hasn't happened yet. Now of course there is little selective pressure since we have modern medicine and C-Sections available.
There's a major difference between parody and outright misrepresentation. When John Stewart puts up a phony news announcer and a phony news cast it's quite clear it's a comedic act and not representing itself as the real thing.
Taking a published scientific work, editing it and inserting your own material which subverts the purpose of the original and marketing it as THE ORIGINAL work is outright misrepresntation and actionable.
[...]
Unless we accept, as one commenter above argues, that the narration was the core of the copy written material, I don't think their actions pass muster.
But I think that's because it's reproducing too much of the copy written material and not putting in enough of their own. Copywritten? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Dear Slashdot community,
The Discovery Institute would like to thank you for raising the visibility of our organization and our fight for justice. For many years we have fought to enable creation theory in the classroom alongside evolutionary theory. Your efforts have assisted us greatly in getting the word out on our issues. It is important to acknowledge that for too long, Christians have lacked legal representation. Now our law firm 'The Discovery Institute' fights for them in the courtroom. We would like for everyone to think of us as like the MPAA/RIAA, but motivated instead by "heavenly profits".
Sincerely,
Fun. D. Mental
Esquire
Director of Outreach
The Discovery Institute
* disclaimer - I love the potential for satire in this situation but I think darwinian evolution is a seriously flawed theory *
It may not work on us. But, it does work on him. Now he can rationalize all the critisism of his argument as the hateful retaliation of irrational bigots. He imagines himself to be some kind of defender of the truth, making anyone that tells him otherwise a lier by default.
The dumbasses you referred to and creationists in general are dumbasses for a reason. While most of humanity has continued to evolve, for some reason, it does not appear to have happened with creationists. Perhaps all their praying has resulted in them being granted the right not to evolve. I sometimes ask evangelicals "Since you don't want to have the ability to evolve, would you transfer to me your rights of evolution? But I haven't yet had any takers.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Get the DI version. This time give it a narration about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and name it something like "Free Sex Money" so that everybody downloads it. Credit it to the Descovery Instantoot to make it obvious (at least to DI) where it was taken from. Add a text file to the torrent saying what was done and why.
Since it's making fun of an existing work (whether stolen or not) it's a parody, and so protected as free speech from both Harvard and DI.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So they used a video in some crappy PowerPoint presentation? Looks to me like the blogger went ahead and posted the entire thing to the internet, potentially reaching a much larger audience. Just let the idiots have their fun without getting the collective geek panties in a bunch.
Given the options of
a) sheer bastard luck, or
b) an omnipotent, omnipresent being that by its very nature surpasseth all understanding...
I'll choose a) every time, as I can see with my own eyes examples of sheer bastard luck every day, while the evidence for b) is so far lacking in my life.
:P
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
The ex-MST3K guys seem to have had no problems releasing riff tracks for movies, so why didn't the creationists just do that? And if they advertised their mods as riff tracks, they might have gotten a wider audience for their product.
Marketing it as the original work would be a violation of copyright and would be plagiarism. The article did not really make that case. The case they made was simply that the the writers of the article hate the group in question. Hating somebody does not make their actions wrong. The fact that this group does junk science does not make what they did illegal either.
On the parody front. There is a whole bunch of really crappy parody. Most people who attempt parody fail at it. Most parodies aren't funny. Most if it is mean spirited and cynical. In most cases, a person engages in parody simply to shoot down the arguments of their opponents. The fact that something isn't funny doesn't mean the person wasn't trying to parody.
Speaking of parody, this guy spaff is funny. He puts silly lyrics a top famous pop songs. The funny lyric songs are often dead ringers for the real songs. The courts have ruled that Spaff's sophomoric behavior is legal, although some singers really dislike being spaffed.
It is possible that what this Discovery group did was illegal. Sticking a different narrative on a set of pictures is not illegal. Now, Publishing the new work and saying that the pictures were the creation of the new author would be wrong.
Simply the fact that something exists does not show if the person who created it was doing something wrong. It would be plagiarism if the guy passed off the underlying work as his own. It would be copyright violations if he were selling it. In this case, the question would be about how the creationist group was marketing the piece. But that really is not what the linked article was doing. The linked article was full of people who wanted to express their hatred of the Discovery group. There was speculation on the intent of the Discovery group, and it is possible that the speculation is correct.
Simply hating someone does not make them wrong. The people writing in the article clearly hate the group they are writing about. My life experience is that you really shouldn't trust such groups when they decry the intent of the person they hate. You need to find other sources to find out what is really going wrong.
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
And if you're going to do propaganda then make it good AND make it digital.
No doubt some legal hassles will ensue for the "Discovery Institute" -- however any legal dust-up just allows them to get publicity ect.
The motive here IMHO was to create this video and get it out on the web - where hundreds of thousands of their devout followers can download it for their own use. Case closed - this video will now live on as a "educational" tool to be shown in bible clases etc for years to come. Bits are bits - and if you can steal them and "repurpose them" you now have the web as your world wide delivery system.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Hi,
./ like or are in favor of ID, but in order to criticise it, check the facts first. It's OK to be critical of new ideas and I'm very supportive of critical analysis of scientific theories, but check the facts before posting a story.
I'd like to clarify this thing a bit: Discovery Institute does not actively support creationism, it is common institute for advocates of Intelligent Design. This is a common misunderstanding to think that ID == Creationism, but when you study its past a little better, you see that first active proponents had no connection to creationist movement. I admit though that creationists may have used ID material to boost their program, but ID does not rely on Creationism, it's different and focuses on the scientific side of the evolution debate.
I'm completely sure that very few of the readers of
Check tha recent law suits of BusyBox authors
Ah, you mean the authors that stole the name of a baby toy?
Depends... Did the viewers understood it was taken from two different footages? You since to, I certainly did, and so did the OP to whom I replied. So yes, it is raw material as in no external factors were introduced to that scene. Let me ask this, if you only saw that footage, and playing on another tv side by side was the same scene from the original one, would you see the difference? No? There you have it. And was Michael Moore film done only with that footage, but changing it's meaning? See the difference between the topic and the example given? If you don't, you have bigger problems then that.
The big difference here isn't some cut&pasted scenes. The Discovery Institute didn't cut&pasted the scenes... they striped the film of Harvards narrations and copyright info, and placed instead their own narrations, with no reference to the original author. So, for the Bowling for Columbine example to be comparable, Michael Moore would have to: have done the entire film on top of the original footage (all of the film, nothing more, nothing less of), and dub Charlton Heston voice so the content of it would be completely different from what Charlton Heston originally said.
P.S. - I tought I wouldn't need to explain all this in my original comment... Tought I wouldn't have to explain everything like done to little kids... I was wrong.
I would actually go as far as to say that Science is largely built by people using the representations of others.
If one scientist reads about a scientific experiment of another scientist. The scientist decides to try the experiment. The scientist sits down and repeats the experiment and carefully writes down each step he takes in the experiment. When he is done, he has a notebook full of information and test results that are surprisingly similar to the first scientist.
So, we now have the case where scientist A has a notebook that says I did this and got these results. Scientist B has a notebook says I did this and got these results. The two notebooks are surprisingly similar.
Is Scientist B a copyright violating plagiarist?
There is one very subtle point to be made. Yes, there is an argument that Scientist B should cite Scientist A. However, this is countered by the idea that nature is the source of the information. Scientists may intentionally distance themselves the original experiment to make sure that information from the first experiment does not affect the second experiment; in which case it is easy to accidentally lose the citation.
Science was built by people repeating the same experiments over, over and over again. When they repeat the same experiments, they come up with the same results. If we had a lawsuit every time one scientist repeated an experiment of another simply because the notes on the experiment came out similar, then science would halt dead in its tracks.
Lets say Scientist A and Scientist B had different theories about what caused a result set. In that case the two scientists would have different narratives for the existing data. They then would put together a third experiment to test different predictions.
It sounds likely that this Discovery group is engaged in crap science. There really is no experiment which can ever prove of disprove the disagreement between evolutionists and creationists. The fact that creationists can stick their narrative on the works of other scientists proves this point.
We may hate creationists with every fiber of our being. They may be a thorn in our sides. But do we really want courts controlling the natural give and take that exists in the scientific community because we hate creationists? Do we really want science to be driven by our hatred of a group that is on the fringe?
Mod down every comment that refers to its own moderation.
Sort of - Moore didn't substitute someone else's words over what Heston was saying. Nevertheless, I couldn't condone this cinematic example of out-of-context quoting or "quote mining," which is never rhetorically valid whether it's legal under copyright or not.
If Harvard's lawyers send the DI a cease & desist letter then I'm sure the DI will spin this into another fable of how the "big bad Darwinian dogmatists" are persecuting them. It's the way the DI has been spinning things since Kitzmiller v. Dover; play the victim. It's all about public relations with them, not science.
Why do you think they made talk-radio host/movie critic/culture warrior Michael Medved one of their senior fellows just recently? It's not like they are going to put him to work in a lab looking for God in a bacteria's tail.
Can some body mod this up? How come it is modded troll?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
However if your contribution in the lab was as a tech running the experiments that people like the author of TFA designed, I could easily see why you wouldn't catch that link. So your bad there... but hey, awesome job showing yourself to be an ignorant tool who thinks he can argue vaccine science because he once had a summer job washing glassware and running the autoclave in a lab near folks who understand it. Just because the lab where you worked did research that doesn't mean you did.
And it shows.
I know, there might be some 'splaining to do to the big G man in the sky when their time comes (something to do with a few sentences beginning "thou shalt not..."), but they do it all the same anyway.
'Got milk?' idea? Steal it, stick it on a t-shirt, then sell it for profit. Got Jesus? And while you're at it, why not do the same with SubWay, Ford, Superman, even Watty Piper's 'The Little Engine That Could'.
That was just one Google Images search and (consequently) one t-shirt seller. Going to a second site, there's theft from Spongebob Squarepants, Abercrombie & Fitch, Jim Bean, Deal Or No Deal, Pepsi Cola, Reese's Peanut Butter, Hot Topic offensive cute animal, Desperate Housewives, Hershey's Chocolate, Lost, Staples, Heroes, Pop / American Idol, and an Apple theft with iTunes.
Thou shalt not steal? Screw that, that last paragraph's output even had the audacity to put its OWN copyright notice on many of the t-shirts!
As their site says...
Ever wondered What Would Jesus Steal? Everyone else's ideas. Because when I want to do something socially abhorrent like force my ideas down someone's throat, I like to be a hypocrite when I do it too. And stealing someone else's hard work is just the way to do it. Hey, it worked for Eostre / Easter...
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
"Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: " 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" Mark 7:5-7
"Intelligent Design = Rules taught by men
"Evolution" = Man's attempt at understanding the rules put in place by God.
~Sticky
/All the same mistakes, 2000 years later.
Painful childbirth was eve's punishment for eating the apple, I love pointing this out to pregnant Christians when they discuss epidurals. I once pointed it out to a Christian obstetrician, that was priceless.
Try it sometime, you'll see a perfect example of the cognitive dissonance Christians undergo when faced with some of the less savory aspects of The Bible. They've got prepared excuses for things like creation, but not childbirth pain.
"It's SUPPOSED to hurt, and you're SUPPOSED to suffer. Epidurals are in direct defiance of god's wishes and you'll burn in hell."
In fact...most of my arguing with Christians works this way these days. I've long given up trying to educate them - it's futile. Now I just point out flaws in their "Christian" behavior. A good one is to point out the bit where they're not supposed to own cars or TV sets, that they have to give everything they own to the poor and let god provide for their basic needs (Matthew 19:21).
No sig today...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
And people wonder why I, an athiest
Nah, if you were, you'd spell atheist correctly. I'll wager you're a religious nutbar trying to toss doubt into science.
Trolling is a art,
I agree that the claim that macroevolution was driven by God or some other intelligent designer is inadequately supported by reproducible evidence. However, the claim that it was driven by random mutation is equally inadequately supported by reproducible evidence. If you are aware of evidence that directly reflects on the mechanism of macroevolution which the scientific community is not aware of, won't you share it with us? If you are not, aren't you indeed a bigot?
I thought the whole point of creationism was the deliberate ignoring and denying of prior art?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Pray tell, what makes the theory that macroevolutionary changes are caused by random mutations "science", and the theory that macroevolutionary changes are driven by some non-random intelligence "not science"?
The problem with your statement is that (at least as I defined them in the above), if neodarwinism is true, then ID is false, and if ID is true, then neodarwinism is false. Thus they are equally falsifiable theories. If neodarwinism is a scientific theory, then so necessarily is ID.
I certainly agree that the supernatural cannot be a subject of what we normally consider "science." However, the work in ID that I've seen, such as that attempting to show "irreducible complexity," is an attempt to show the impossibility of the neodarwinist mechanism of macroevolution. That is certainly a legitimate goal of science. Saying that falsifying the neodarwinist mechanism is unscientific is saying that the neodarwinist mechanism is unscientific. Trying to prove that the actual, non-neodarwinist, mechanism is of a divine or supernatural nature, is, as I'm sure you'll agree, beyond the scope of science; and to the degree that ID proponents take it to that extreme, they shouldn't. That's probably why they called it "intelligent design" instead of "divine design." That the intelligence is divine will obviously be assumed by theists, while others will form their own theories on the source of the intelligence.
information DOES want to be free
Information wants you to stop personifying it already! Anthropomorphism really makes it cranky and it hates that!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it so well: "How dare we be so arrogant as a species to assume we are the only intelligent ones in the whole vast universe?".
That's only necessary if you take an overly literal view of "in the image of God". Mainstream theology doesn't exclude the possibility of life on other worlds. Since man was made in the image of God, asking what that means is like asking "what does it means to be human?". That's a deep question but I suspect most people's answers wouldn't focus on the biological details.
Something that fundamental? Well, I suppose there are people who genuinely don't know. The more the explanation is repeated, I suppose the better the chance that the "swing" demographic may come to realise the difference between them. The answer, then:
The first hypothesis can be tested, whether by observation or by directed experiment. (In particular, it is possible to check for contrary evidence: if any is found, there's something wrong with the hypothesis, and it can be either revised or rejected.)
The second hypothesis can never be tested as it is in principle impossible to do so. (In particular, it is impossible to check for contrary evidence as there is no phenomenon that would ever weaken the hypothesis in the eyes of any of its adherents.)
By virtue of these facts, one is science; the other is, at best, a distraction. QED.
Their main argument is that the cell is an engine, just like a boat engine (which is designed). The cell has a tail (flagellum) that spins like a propeller to make the whole cell mobile. This propeller-tail needs gears and other parts for it to be operational. They argued that evolution favors working parts over non-working parts, and a complete and functional motor could not be useful until all the parts are there, therefore a cell could not have evolved.
Their other argument (I'm not making this up) is that you can tell just by looking at an object that it is intelligently designed. When you look at Mt. Rushmore, writing on a beach, and (sigh) life.
They had smart-looking people with impressive titles.
The theory of evolution proposes a mechanism for the way that species change over many generations, and there are specific details of that mechanism that were not known at the time of proposal of the theory of evolution.
For example, one of the critical parts of the mechanism for evolution proposed by Darwin's original theory is that there must be a mechanism of inheritance of characteristics from parents down to progeny. Many years after Darwin proposed his theory, DNA was discovered. DNA is that very mechanism of inheritance of characteristics predicted by Darwin's theory.
At the time Darwin's theory was proposed, known biological life was organised by the scientific community into a hierarchical "tree"
After the discovery of DNA itself came the discovery of the "twin hierarchy". This turns out to mean that there is an entirely similar hiearchial tree of life according to similarities and differences in the DNA of species.
The predictions of Darwin's theory of eveloution (namely the existance of a mechanism of inheritance of characteristics within the process of birth) have eventuated.
Darwin's theory is testable (in that it made predictions) and it has passed the tests (predictions have been verified).
Intelligant Design makes no predictions, and it is inherently not testable. Therefore, Intelligent Design, unlike Darwin's theory, is not a scientific theory.
Even further, there are recent examples of similar systems of "inheritance of characteristics plus random small changes with selection of the ones that work best" that have produced astounding outcomes in a surprising and counter-intuitive way. A chess program is one such example, "evolutionary algorithms" is another, Wikipedia is yet another and the "GNU/Linux/FOSS" collection of software is perhaps the best example. Each small change is insignificant, many changes are inane or counter-producticve, but as these systems reject minor changes which don't work well and inherit minor changes which do work well and progress over time over a large number of generations, eventually a large and very functional new "creation" emerges from seeming nothingness.
Theory of evolution = Makes predictions, is testable, predictions have come true, is tested, mechanisms are demonstrated by other examples. A scientific theory, and a good one.
Intelligent Design = "Magic happens". A belief system, and a silly one.
a creationist?
Novel concept.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Oh, btw, if you go directly to Harvard to view this video, you will see this notice:
Gee. For educational use only. I guess by the definition of our submitter, a conference which includes a session led by a Ph.D. couldn't possibly be for educational use.
And did you know that the initial versions of this video only had a music sound track? The creator of this video talks, David Bolinsky, talks to an early version of this video here. And it is very possible that the sound track used at the Dembski presentation pre-dated the later soundtrack(s) added by Harvard. In any case, this would not have violated the "For educational use only" policy.
But don't let the facts interfere with your smear campaign.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Funny how it's fair use when you like the cause and copyright violation when you don't.
because religion is, basically, silly - like taking the tooth fairy seriously. So, the religious have resort to arguments that are alogical, like believe or i will kill you, or, since I don't understand it, it must be the majesty of god.
So, everytime science gives something an explanation, the argument that god exists cause we dont understand something is reduced a little. That is why the religious are aways against science - cause it always reduces the range of "fantastical" things they can point to as unexlained, and therefore evidence of a diety.
(BTW, the fact that someone can believe in silly nonsense (religion) and be a good person or a good scientist just shows that humans are complex, not simple )
Of course, those aren't being sold. But neither is this creationist video mashup. Apparently they're just posting it to youtube, and showing it at their little conferences or whatever.
What bothers me about this story is that if the Discovery Institute was pro-Darwinism, this would have been at most a minor footnote. Someone would have said "hey you need to attribute this you bonehead" and they would have fixed it and all would have been well.
... even in the name of "science."
But because they have unpopular conclusions, well, that makes what they did a terrible thing. But their conclusions are not the point: if they had properly attributed and followed fair use rules, then this would have been legal. Of course, people STILL would have complained. It's the DI and their views their views that are the perceived problem, not that they violated intellectual property. And I find that to be just a wee bit dishonest, personally.
Not that I am defending DI. If they messed up, they messed up. I don't care either way. I just hate witchhunts
For the record (for those that haven't read the bible) Mark 7 talks about men not wanting to stone disobedient children so they find a loophole, like most people use Galatians to pick and choose what bigotry and hatred they like and discard the rest.
Intelligent Design = for idiots dumb enough to take the bible literally/authority
Science = for people that have enough of a brain to realize bronze age mythology provides the secrets to the universe.
Intelligent Design is just old school creationism wrapped up in a cheap tux and filled with big scientific words to make it look scientific despite it being absolutely stupid.
These creationists will use any means to get their agenda across in which the scientific method is used as cannon fodder and truth is collateral damage (when christians say "Jesus said I am truth and thats the truth" is when truth becomes the cannon fodder but thats for another time)
Intelligent Design and its bastard father fundamentalist Christianity does more than contradict biology which is its target... it also goes against geology, physics, linguistics, zoology, chemestry, mathamatics, anthrapology, history and proberbly more areas of study.
For the record this isn't the first time creationists have violeted copyright law. Me and colleagues have refuted Kent Hovind videos that he openly stated were public domain and yet got YouTube to remove videos filing copyright claims (while yes, Hovind himself was in jail). We also did parodys of Hovind which were protected under fair use, CSE flagged those too. It took a while for YouTube to restore our content but they really tried to pull out all the stops to silence all critics. It was almost like they really belived the law was what they wanted it to be because "god was on their side"
Make SELinux enforcing again!
The DI stole someone else's work, "tweaked" it a bit and passed the entirety off as their own. Theft is the issue, not evolution, Darwinian or otherwise.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
You DO remember that recently, Creation Science Evangelic Ministries (Kent Hovind et al) had filed DMCA complaints against the Rational Response Squad (a militant atheism group) for using CSE videos on their youtube accounts and deriving works from them? However, in that case, RRS had a clincher: Kent Hovind specifically said, on video, that all CSE videos were copyright free and could be used by anyone. I guess he never thought they'd be used to debunk the CSE's claims! So no -- it's not an issue of bigotry. Creationists try to do the same thing, except they do it wrong. I think the real root of the problem is that Creationists (and their ilk) don't believe in the myth of "observable reality" and so they frequently get things that are within said reality totally cockeyed.
Let he who has never violated copyright cast the first post.
Oh, too late.
In general, we don't tend to actually care about legality. We do care about rules, though, just not necessarily the rules that are currently law. For instance, in this case, they didn't attribute the source - in fact, they spent extra time removing attributions that were once there. In contrast, the Grey Album went out of its way to tell you exactly where everything was from, thus making it, in many peoples' minds, entirely an entirely legitimate form of art, even if it's technically copywrite violation.
Scientists observe existing systems and try to describe them. The concept of an scientific experiment only makes sense when there is a pre-existing system to run the experiment on or within. Such a concept is at odds with an all-powerful, omniscient Creator.
Perhaps it would be better to say engineer--someone who applies tools to design machines, or solve problems. Or perhaps even better, an artist--someone who brings something new into existence through their own creativity.
You say you are not Christian, so perhaps you believe that God does exist within a pre-built framework, and thus can run experiments. But that raises the question of what created the system and what created God. Such a belief is indistinguishable from atheism...all it does is introduce a middleman and displace the really fundamental question by one level of abstraction.
I pick this nit because "science", "scientist", "experiment", "theory", etc. are all words that have very specific definitions, and a lot of the confusion/hype/bullshit today results from mis- or vague understandings of these definitions. Too often people just slap scientific or scientific-sounding words on their chosen subject matter as a way of conferring legitimacy. IMO it is not so different from a Pacific cargo cult building runways to call back the planes of WWII. They go through what they think are the right motions, but don't understand the concepts.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Always a classic, but if you're going to quote the good MC, the least you could do is link to him as well. (And obviously, you know how to link since you linked to Wikipedia.)
http://www.mchawking.com/
That sort of response elevates dialog everywhere.
Now, take a deep breath. You evidently didn't read the post -- mine or the one above it. I'll try and refrain from casting sneering aspersions on your intelligence, but I certainly will raise an eyebrow at your limited reading comprehension.
That OP (above my OP) made an argument that people who aren't having valid debate (in his view) aren't entitled to the defense of fair use in copyright. To cite again, since you must have missed it even though I quoted it right at the top of my post:
My argument was very simply that freedom depends on people being able to do precisely that. (I also noted that I don't think the DI passes as they didn't engage in fair use as I see it).
I cited the Moore example: by sneakily chopping up entirely separate speeches of Heston's and splicing them together (with a cut in between the two sentences to obscure the fact that Heston was wearing a different tie in the second).
It surely would be a bad thing to declare that Moore is "violating freedom" and deserves some judicial sanctions for that, would it not?
Now, in your continuing effort to entirely miss the point, you say:
"Depends... Did the viewers understood it was taken from two different footages?"
This utterly irrelevant to the argument above, and shows an appalling degree of cluelessness, but ok, I'll bite. No, the viewers did not understand this. You know, I know, and the GP knows because we've read about it. I didn't notice the first time I saw the film because of the clever cutting of scenes.
And you're still entirely missing the point. For a sneering fellow who calls others dumb and muppets and dumb kids, you are remarkably dull-witted, aren't you?
Read what I wrote above. No, go back. Read it ten times if you have to.
The Moore response was not to justify (or attack) what DI had done. It was to comment on the item I quoted at the top of my post which was the original slashdot conversation, now repeated here, again:
Moore did exactly that: chopped up, rearranged, and misrepresented someone else's message for propaganda purposes (possibly good propaganda purposes if you happen to agree with his views). And that is indeed freedom. He has a right to take copyrighted video and do that; You and I have a right to take copyrighted words, statements and of Moores and present them to make our point.
It's called fair use and the First Amendment.
The clue to bad speech isn't to silence it by making it unprotected by fair use doctrines, it's to have good speech countering it.
Yet you failed utterly to grasp this point, and instead launched off into a set of ad hominem sneers about the intellects of those adults around you.
I agree that the Discovery Institute seems to fail, because it took an entire work and ran it in sequence. That doesn't look like fair use to me.
The analogy is exact. And I am stunned that you are not only incapable of seeing it but that you fee
Of course it's not rhetorically valid. I quite agree. My argument is simply that it should be legally valid for people to make fair use of copyrighted work, even if they are making polemical points.
And note, I wasn't trying to justify DI's use by noting this; I was simply responding to the poster who argued "It's quite another to argue that it's okay to chop up, re-arrange, and misrepresent the message for propaganda purposes, and call that "freedom."".
DI fails that test in my view, because unlike Moore's brief snippets, they reproduced virtually the entire video, substituting their own narrative. That doesn't strike me as "fair use" as I understand it.
My sole point was that simply because someone indulges in what might be odious propaganda to many people (DI for some, Moore for others) is not on its own any reason to deny them "fair use" protections under copyright law.
If this were a debate over whether one scientific theory has more substance than another then it would just be business-as-usual, and most of us could happily sit back and wait for further evidence and research to divine a dominant theory. However, this is not a battle about theories but about ideoligies. The whole basis of modern science is that any theory is open to interrogation and disproof, and is only accepted as long as it makes more logical sense than anything else - it is, if anything, an exercise in lack of faith.
ID is founded on pursuing evidence of a theory which only makes sense when the whole body of scientifically sound knowledge is considered worthless, even though there is a much better-fitting and better-supported theory available - and this practice is the opposite of science.
People are "bigoted" against ID because it is anti-science, not because it is anti-evolution.
And, in a similar fashion, you were modded down because you're an idiot with a bag full of opinions and nothing by way of supported rhetoric. Your post was anti-debate, not anti-"Darwinist".
Meta will eat itself
I did reread (to see if there was something missing), and still fail to see how "One man's propaganda is another man's truth." and Moores example as anything to do with the case. Sure, you can always spin everything and have a great comeback talking about the first amendment and freedom of speech, but I still fail to see how can that have anything to do with copyright infringement/plagiarism. I fail to see how, on your first comment that I replied to, putting more of their own work would make it less of a copyright infringement or plagiarism (by your own words: "But I think that's because it's reproducing too much of the copy written material and not putting in enough of their own."). So, by that logic, I would be ok if I stripped the narrations, and made a 2 hours movie with only 4 minutes of copyrighted material (still without making any reference to the authors of said copyright material)? Is that enough material? Would it then be considered freedom for you? You have so many examples of musicians that got sued for not having permission from the copyright holders to use some samples. Is that an attack on whos freedom?
/. posts and remove something you wrote that might contradict what you write now isn't it? (the part about the problem being that they might not have enough of their own work in there, without saying, you implied that it would be ok if they had enough work on top of the copyrighted work). /. conversation, I replied to you... I have no problem with what he said. For all I know he could be refering to this specific case (where it wasn't chop off and rearrange... not even rearrange, they used several minutes of someone elses animation, without the sound, and placed their own narration). And you did pointed some valid arguments that would be valid in most cases... just not in this one. What I commented was the comparison made between the topic and the example. Not only that, but the remark you made that it seems it would be ok for you if they had more work on top of the copyrighted material, the copyright wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter, it still would be copyright material used without a reference to the original author, and without permission. And I'm no expert or lawyer, but fair use doesn't apply for plagiarism (at least), does it?
It's a pain that you can't edit
And I didn't replied to the original
Oh, and it's actually "Argumentum ad hominem" (in english is called "fallacy"), and actually what I did is called "sarcasm". The first implies a flawed logic, where the second it's exaggeration and logic-linguistic distortion. The difference is basically in content and form. It would mean that my reply was intended to change the subject, which we see we're still on the subject (except for this part, but this isn't the whole reply, is it now?). But then again, since you brought that up, you might look up what it means, and find out that it applies to your comments, since one of the things it's used for is to take two separate and unrelated premises, and end with a faulty logic conclusion (invalid conclusion in syllogistic logic). Ofc it doesn't justify my tone, but I couldn't care less.
Darwinists do not exist.
Of course we exist.
By the way, I am also a Galileoist.
And an Einsteinist.
And a Newtonist.
And a Maxwelist.
And an Archimedesist.
And, and, and, and, and.
(Chuckle)
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
As I understand it, they are changing or adding material to try to make as if the scientists are presenting supporting evidence for Creationist dogma. Technically this might even spread into considerations of libel.
who tagged a story about creationists science? Shame on you.
There might be some claim of fair use for parody or for educational purposes.
It was absolutely no parody, and it did not fall within proper educational bounds either. They copied an entire purely creative work for the sole purpose of not bothering to make their own creative work. (Contrast this with a case where you are copying Charles Dickens for the purpose of teaching about Charles Dickens' literature.)
Showing that you can stick a different narrative to a data set or to a film is a standard part of discourse.
This was absolutely not a "data set", and they were certainly not presenting a critique of the original film at a scientific symposium.
This was absolutely not about fair use copying for "discourse". They copied the graphic work for the sole reason that it was prettier and more professional looking than their own work (or what they could afford). Fair use is about the reason for the copying, and here the reason for copying fails completely.
The fact that a copy exists without citations does not mean that the people doing the parody were passing off the work as their own.
Again, it was absolutely not a parody. A parody inherently needs the intended audience to be aware of the existence of the intended target of the parody. They simply filed off the original identifying information and made absolutely no reference or comment on the original work. Their expectation was that the intended audience most likely be (and remain) completely unaware of the existence of the original.
the utter contempt the writers feel about any ideas that fall outside the scope of their narrow little minds
Well speaking for myself, I have utter contempt for Flat Earthers who have seen the evidence and should know better....
I have utter contempt for Flat Earthers who may (innocently) be unaware of the evidence, but who are willfully blind and and no interest in looking or understanding anything and actively persist in trollish behavior making wild proclamations and wild uninformed claims and no intention of rationally discussion their wild arguments.
However I do not have contempt for an innocently uninformed Flat Earther who has HONEST questions and HONEST challenges and who is genuinely seeking understanding and open to a reasonable rational exploration of each other's ideas and evidence.
A lot of people think evolution is false because the evolution they have been taught *is* false... they have been told that evolution says things it does not say. A lot of people have been (falsely) told that science and hard evidence to back up evolution *does not exist*. A lot of people have been (falsely) told that evolution is anti-God/atheistic. A lot of people have been (falsely) told that evolution does not work, cannot create information and complexity.
NONE of those points presents a problem, so long as someone is genuinely interested in mutual communication and understanding and evidence. If they say "I think evolution is wrong/impossible because X", I am perfectly wiling to explore and try to understand their reason X, so long as they are honestly interested in the answer.
However if someone simply grabs a junk psudoscience argument off of a junk website, and I address the issue and literally get them to admit the argument was invalid, and they go back to the SAME junk website and grab another junk argument and again I show them (and they literally admit) that the argument was invalid, and then go back to the SAME junk website and grab a third and then a fourth junk argument and they KNOW and DO NOT CARE that the website is feeding them junk arguments and they DO NOT CARE about the answers to their "challenges" and they just keep flinging random crap that they DO NOT CARE about simply because they WANT and ASSUME that something will stick sooner or later, then yes that has happened and yes I have utter contempt for that person.
And just the other day I was going above and beyond all reasonable rational polite effor
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
fundamentally the underlying mechanism of evolution is genetic mutation which occurs because of well known mechanism like point mutations and frame shift mutations and selection which is very well understood as "die before you have kids". Mutations occasionally change the phenotype. Taxonomically if there occurs any mutation which which break computability with the previous genome and if it isn't a one off occurrence then we ought have speciation. Simple point mutations can have drastic effects on phenotype. Protein shapes determine function. Mutations change the function by changing the shape. If it happens that a particular mutation occurs withing a important or active area of a protein then it transforms the protein. Proteins determine phenotypes. There are documented cases where a single point mutation changes the color of size of a organism. thus a single mutation could change it's ability to breed and thus ought to change it's species.
What the "macro evolution" camp is saying is nonsense. One species is incredibly unlikely to mutate into another existing species which seems to be what they want us to show. It's gibbrish. A cat will not become a dog but a cat could gain dog like traits through mutation and selection (size, fur length, snout size). They want us to show it can become a dog. They don't understand evolution and what it is. Mutations + selection. It's a meaningless idea because it's used entirely as a red herring. What exactly do you need to prove? We've documented mutations, we've derived where and how it happened, we've witnessed speciation due to mutations, we've seen animals adapt drastically different phenotypes features in human time scales, we've seen population separate and cease interbreeding, but we will never seen a cat become exactly a dog because that is not evolution thats an idiots idea of evolution.
the evidence is legion, it's the bulk of biology, subscribe here to pull up examples.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Let us worship Aphrodite
Even though she's rather flighty
She may not wear her nightie
So that's good enough for me!
Give me that Real Old Time Religion....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Would you want your townhall decorated with satanist art, possibly with "abandon all hope ye who enter" written on the front door?
That's not so much a religious endorsement as it is truth in advertising.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...
Ok I'm done with my Ad Hominem attack. Now on to the post. I think that it is not logical to say that biology cannot be understood without understanding evolutionary theory. We are talking about mechanics here. Can you learn how to work on a car without knowing with what processes it was built? I did take Biology both in High Shcool and in College and had no problem whatsoever understanding anything without for a second even entertaining that Evolutionary theory was true in the way it was presented to me. Bear in mind that we where not discussing how bacteria mutates or how plants "became" the way they are. We learned about how cells are made up, how they reproduce, how ADP and ATP works, amongst other things. None of those things require knowing how the cells came into being. Besides, evolutionary theory doesn't even tackle that. It just states that things evolved from other things which were less fit and that the new mutation was more fit. It also sometimes takes on out origin within the species stating that we evolved from some kind of chimps or monkeys. It does not however deal with the mechanics of biology.
Uhm, no. Trying to explain biology while denying the existance of DNA would be a problem. Trying to explain biology without playing tribute to Evolutionary Theory in all its incarnations is not troublesome at all. In fact I would argue that it is better to not muddy the waters by espoising one point of view of evolutionary theory without spending the time to talk about the rifts within it and within the scientific community when it comes to it. Like for instance, how far does evolution go? Does it even explain our orgin or is it just another piece of the pie? Is there such a thing as Macro Evolution and Micro Evolution. Does everybody who beleives in evolution also beleive in speciation (that is one species evolving into an completely different species, not able to reproduce with the first species)? It's all very complicated but doesn't really help me understand the wonderful world of biology.
Pray tell, what makes the theory that macroevolutionary changes are caused by random mutations "science", and the theory that macroevolutionary changes are driven by some non-random intelligence "not science"?
Hm. Interesting proposition.
The problem with your statement is that (at least as I defined them in the above)...
Then perhaps you've defined them improperly?
For instance, evolution is not about "random mutations." Mutations themselves are selected upon from viability through adaption. This isn't just white noise. It's white noise with a selection filter that is always changing.
The causes of mutations are much more complex than the old "cosmic rays fucking with your DNA" model a lot of us were taught in secondary school. There's viral genetic migration (in which bits of working DNA are moved from one species to another via a viral vector) to transcription errors (where bits of working code get shuffled around like a deck of cards during meiosis, for instance) to cosmic rays fucking with your DNA. There are probably hundreds of ways DNA can get shuffled and moved and otherwise... well, mutated.
Note that many of these are not purely random. They start from the point of working information getting mixed up. Sometimes that leads to noise, and the resulting DNA is not viable. Othertimes, it might result in cancer, as the resulting cell is no longer capable of restraint of replication. Sometimes else, it might result in a viable cell (in the case of meiosis, a viable gamete, and later a viable zygote). In those cases, viability isn't the issue-- it's an issue of whether or not the mutation results in a phenotype that hinders or helps in the organism's current environment.
Most mutations never make it past the viability test.
Mutations are not "random." There are many layers of filters that pick the real information from the noise. Life conforms to its environment. Therefore, a mutation must fit within its environment, or it just doesn't survive.
That's not randomness at all.
And, assuming a non-random intelligence has guided our evolution, who guided *its* creation? Because obviously it is too complex to have merely evolved.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Given *some* description of the designer and its mechanisms, I would be the first to say that ID could potentially be testable. As it stands now, it's simply an overly broad piece of hand waving. It has to be, because the majority of powerful interests that push it are really using it as nothing more than stealth creationism and any attempt to nail it down turns it into real creationism. Sure, there's a minority of people who really think that they're going somewhere with the science for its own sake, but those people certainly aren't Discovery Institute fellows.
And this brings up the next obvious question: How do you show that something is irreducibly complex? More importantly, assuming that the the IC thing has N parts and definitely cannot function with N-1 parts (so far, we haven't seen such a thing, but let's pretend...), how do you handle the case that allows it to function with N + 1 parts? So far, Dr. Behe and company have not really addressed that point. Their work appears to boil down to, "I can't figure out how it could be done, and I reject your suggestions as to how it could have happened because you can't prove that it *did* happen that way." The hair on the back of my neck bristles at the horrible sound of the goalposts screeching across the ground.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
These excuses are made up merely as an attempt at avoiding the arguments and scientific program they present.
Exactly *how* is ID "scientific?"
Is there evidence to suggest that an intelligent designer is required for life to form and evolve? So far, I've heard (and read) some hand-waving about "irreducible complexity," but in all instances, this has turned out to be merely, "I don't understand it, so God must've done it."
Addressing the shortcomings of our current understanding of evolution is one thing. Claiming those shortcomings indicate a failure of evolution through natural selection as theory is a bit disingenuous. To further claim that they point to a mystical "guiding intelligence" buggers credibility.
Basically, you are trading a natural complexity ("how did this evolve like this?") with a mystical one ("Who created us? And because they are certainly complex than even us, how did *they* get created?")
All you're doing is moving the layer of complexity back a level, and declaring that level off-limits to science. And you're doing this with no real reason. Not only is it *more* complex than *any* "irreducible complexity," but it completely misses the point about what science *is*.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
here are some other fictitious candidates where a slashdotter adds 2 and 2. iPhone users becoming obese. natalie portman featured in goatse video. DRM robot synthesizer hacked by internet worm. choose the right buzzwords, get more eyeballs.
Where else was this posted?
The first hypothesis can be tested, whether by observation or by directed experiment. (In particular, it is possible to check for contrary evidence: if any is found, there's something wrong with the hypothesis, and it can be either revised or rejected.)
The second hypothesis can never be tested as it is in principle impossible to do so. (In particular, it is impossible to check for contrary evidence as there is no phenomenon that would ever weaken the hypothesis in the eyes of any of its adherents.)
By virtue of these facts, one is science; the other is, at best, a distraction. QED.
Uh, I think you've lost me there. How exactly can you distinguish whether some particular change was the result of a random or non-random/directed process?
I'm fine with the argument that you can't test ID by virtue of the fact that you can't create a reproducible experiment to show whether it happens or not. However, there is no experiment that you can create to show whether a particular event in the past occurred due to random chance. You could prove that it is possible that the event COULD have been the result of random chance, but you could never prove that it actually did happen that way.
My big issue with the whole evolution-is-science-ID-isn't argument is that the ID camp isn't debating whether evolution happens - it is debating whether it DID happen. That isn't a question of science - it is a question of history. There is no scientific experiment that you can perform to determine whether the Romans or the Persians triumphed in some particular battle - it is a question of what actually happened and not what could have happened. At best science can be used to determine whether a particular evolutionary process could have occurred, not whether it did occur.
Think of it this way - you drop some ice cubes on the floor and go out for a few hours, and come home to a puddle of water. Scientifically you can reproduce that ice cubes left on their own melt into puddles of water. However, there is no way to know without additional evidence whether this is what happened to your particular ice cubes - somebody could have broken in, picked up your ice cubes, and spilled some water in their place. You can argue Occam's razor and all that, but the fact is that the scenario I described COULD have happened.
Personally I find it amusing that people get so worked up arguing these kinds of semantics. The only thing that annoys me is the thought of who is paying all these folks to argue about this stuff (on both sides). It seems like rather than engaging in legitimate discussion everybody is just looking for legal loopholes to get their particular viewpoint promoted more strongly in schools (and that goes for both sides).
its strange, I never thought modern cities were designed.
The just sort of came in to being...
After all there is always Federal Provincial and municipal people fighting each other.
And many bigger cities have multiple municipalities Ottawa/Hull Toronto/Brampton/Sauga
and the politician are only there for 4 years, not nearly long enough to do anything but try and angle the growth one way or another...
There is no design
--meh--
What's missing from this incredible, enraged, mindboggling rant of a slashdot discussion is any proof whatsoever that shows that DI produced the video in question. It's not on the DI website, and the video in question is clearly someone's recording of a lecture which just includes a small portion of the video, complete with the commentary, shown on a screen behind the lecturer.
Far be it for this crowd to include facts in the discussion.
The fact that there is no way to inquire into how the non-random intelligence performed their actions. If you have to take a proposition by faith and have no hope of finding evidence other than by prayer, that isn't science. There is no "evidence" of design. The only "evidence" are some logical arguments that belong in a philosophy class. There is no blueprint the designer used. There is no evidence of the act of creating. There are no proposed tests to prove that ID is right or wrong. There is no way for someone that wants to do research in the field of Intelligent Design. Every aspect of Intelligent Design that has been brought forth has been disproven by actual evidence. If that happened to any other theory in science that didn't come from the mouth of 'God' himself, it would be abandoned, much like the Ether theory. BeHe admitted that astrology would fit his definition of science, I don't want my kids learning that as an alternative to real science either.
Let us look at the theory of Intelligent Design. It states that creatures are created with their features intact and for a purpose. That's how they define "design". Logically then you can disprove intelligent design by finding a single instance of a feature present in any organism that does not serve a purpose. Whales have vestigial leg bones buried inside their body. Why would a designer place them there? They have no purpose, therefore the basis for intelligent design is false. There are MANY other examples, but I just had to find one.
Yes, and every time that a system has been put forth as irreducibly complex, real scientists have found that the system can work with reduced complexity. Anyway, that would be legitimate scientific inquiry in the field of evolution. Intelligent Design posits that there is a designer, then closes the door on scientific inquiry. It's an unprovable statement, not a theory.