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Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity
eldavojohn writes "Painting the current scientific community as just as bad as the Spanish Inquisition, an extended trailer of Ben Stein's "Expelled" has a lot of people (at least that I know) talking. It looks like his movie plans to encourage people to speak out if they believe intelligent design or creationism to be correct. In the trailer he even warns you that if you are a scientist you may lose your job by watching 'Expelled.' Backlash to the movie has started popping up and this may force the creationism/evolutionist debate to a whole new level across the big screen and the internet."
adholden points out a site called Expelled Exposed, which asserts that 'Expelled' "is simply an anti-science propaganda film aimed at creating controversy where none exists, while promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students."
On one side we've got a bunch of scientists - who's philosophy espouses striving for neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc.
On the other side, we've got.... an ex-Nixon speechwiter/game show host.
*sighs* - I bet he's skeptical about anthropomorphic climate change too (there seems to be an extraordinarily high overlap between the two groups).
Oh, and he Godwins himself at 2:40 in the linked video. Discussion over.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
to Expelled, a movie full of ad hominems, half truths, non sequiturs and promoting ignorance!
Hey! Look a Distraction!
There was a debate? When?
Oh, right, in America. Oh you silly Americans. I guess the age of the American Empire is truly over. You're hell bent on driving your population into the next Christian Dark Age, while China is preparing to whip your ass. Good luck with that.
If evolution or non-creationism is correct, and by having a dialogue people are convinced of this fact...then what is the problem? After watching the extended trailer that is the feeling I came away with. Ben's point is that discussion is not being permitted in academia, and in fact the opposite is happening, it is being suppressed.
I can recommend the recent Skepticality pod cast on this topic (#74). There are interviews with shermer and dawkins that give some insight to how this movie is constructed.
It is available at skepticality.com and reposted and richarddawkins.net
Meh... As long as both are prefixed with "theory of", who cares?
Charming man. I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one. -Arthur Dent
Isn't one of the points of the movie that while scientists espouse neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc. that they are not actually following it?
(Disclaimer --> haven't seen the movie or any trailers, the above was a genuine question for anyone who has actually seen the movie, and not an attempt to troll. Also the question should not imply that I agree with or disagree with the movie. It really is JUST a question.)
He's missing the issue. The truth is, I believe some form of "intelligent design." But whether or not I believe it or a billion people believe it is irrelevant. Intelligent design, as has been discussed here and elsewhere, ad infinitum, it's NOT SCIENCE and should not be taught as science or as an alternative to evolution.
On the other hand, if they want to teach it in a Religious Studies type class, I'm all for it. Go for it. That's precisely where it belongs.
... he should have just stuck to "Win Ben Stein's Money?"
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
I though, and then googled him.
... I've always wondered why law is considered a science), but his opinion on intelligent design and evolution means diddly squat.
So he's a comedian, a writer, a white-house speech writer, a law professor and a believer in intelligent design.
Fine, another one of those scientist who think that being a scientist, they can have a scientific opinion on any subject out there.
He's a lawyer, he can have scientific stances on law (if that's possible anyway
Feel free to believe in an Old Man in the Sky, and to embrace ID. Just don't forget to mention that scientific evidence points the other way.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Its not just "Darwinists" that force their anti-Jesus dogma on the education system. I had a similar experience in my childhood.
Given a circle with a radius of 10, whats the circumference? Some would say thats its 10 * 2 * "pi"!
But what is this pi? They can't even define it;its completely irrational! Meanwhile they suppress the controversy. When I put down a much more reasonable answer - 60, because the literal Bible tells me the circumference of a circle is 2*r*3, I was marked wrong! The Nazis used these numbers to build their war machine and concentration camps and its being taught to children far to young to understand its deceptiveness. Inquiring minds are led to a literally endless and patternless series of numbers intended to confuse and dull the mind.
Teach the controversy!
Unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand the distinction, and people like Dawkins don't help. Many religious types treat 'discounting an argument for god(s)' the same as 'advancing an argument against god(s)', and go ballistic. But it's important to note the difference. There's still room to believe in god(s) even if you accept the ridiculously overwhelming evidence that evolution happened and is happening. (I don't believe in god(s), FWIW, but many people do.)
Stein and his ilk really remind me of the worst features of Ned Flanders sometimes. "Well, I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Apparently it's easier than I thought to win Ben Stein's money, just pass the collection plate.
BTW, the reason that evolution can be talked about in school and ID should not is that evolution is science, and can change as new information is acquired. Evolution is not based on any traditional truth. It is based on observation, and it's connection to the holy, if any, is only incidental. OTOH, ID is based on a specific group creation myth, and promoting ID is like promoting religion, something the US government should not do. If we want a survey of creation myths, that is such a large topic that it needs a course all of it's own, and many would support such course, except, I suspect, those that want to teach ID, as such seem often afraid of competing knowledge, perhaps because the truth will set you free,
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
To cut short any discussion from those who think that a religious precept should be included in a scientific curriculum, I submit this quote from one of the linked articles so everyone is clear as to why ID is not science:
"Intelligent Design" fails to meet the basic definition of a scientific idea: its proponents do not present testable hypotheses and do not provide evidence for their views that can be verified or duplicated by subsequent researchers.
That's all there is to it folks. ID supporters need to submit evidence to back up their claim and it will be considered. So far, the only thing ID supporters have done is a) try to show supposed holes in current Evolutionary theory (all of which have been answered) and b) claim that some unknown, untestable, omnipotent force is behind everything. At no time have they ever presented evidence to support their idea and so, rightly, ID falls under the heading as an idea which attempts to support someone's religious ideas.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
As a European person a question pops into my mind a lot lately
"why is the US going backwards in the last decade? who is gaining from this dumbing down of the population??"
Remember if intelligent design is correct then it can be explained, demonstrated and then analysed further. Until then it is as much a waste of time as it is trying to work out how much flour Flying Spagetti Monster is made up of.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
This whole debate seems pretty strange to European eyes. I consider myself to be a fundamentalist Bible believing evangelical Christian, but, in Britain, people like me take the view that Genesis describes the evolutionary process pretty well. Although many Evangelicals support Intelligent Design or Young Earth Creationism, there's little opposition within Christian circles to full acceptance of the scientific explanation of the origins of life.
Between this and support for a right-wing social and foreign policy agenda, I sometimes wonder if American evangelicals read the same Bible that I do.
Stein does not reject Darwinism for the evolution of individual species. He rejects that it is the answer for why life exists and why the universe works that way that it does.
Unfortunately, if you dont think conventional Scientific wisdom has its own share of theories that are not backed by facts, i direct you the "String theory", from which so many PHD's have been made over the last few decades.
:-)
Not totally dissimmilar to creationism, it happens to fit a bunch of facts which may or may not be true, and is unlikely to be proven either way.
Of course, As there trying to dissaociate Creationism from Religion, another way of reading the "facts" they rely on is that we were all created by Aliens from the planet "Zog" who were on a bit of a bender after "DRuuth" celebrated his 4096th cycle (They count in 16's naturally). Boy was that one to remember!
Naturally, if you try to suggest this to one of them, they get rather Irate. Trust me on this.
...Western society. Maybe exaggerated rigth now, but you're getting there. A Secretary of State mentioned this discussion in the Netherlands a few years ago. She became a laughing stock, and rightfully so. I look at it this way: if you make a movie of yourself rolling dice, eventually you'll roll 20 6's straight. Cut all except that part, youtube it, and amaze the world with your amazing dice skillz ("He must know how to throw dice!"). Anthropic principle, multiple universes, they all sound a hell of a lot more plausible than anything remotely connected to Creationism.
Isn't it ironic that a whole generation of religious folks are doing nothing more than routing their kids into a backwater. Suspicion of science just means their children will distrust science and math and be shuttled, therefore, into a legion of burger flippers. Teaching your kids that Intelligent Design is the right answer is as close to child abuse as I can imagine.
Because the evidence for evolution is overwhelming?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There is no debate. There is no evidence whatsoever for creationism.
One thing I've always wondered is why nobody has tried some good old fashioned (Founding Fathers style) Deism. Its pretty simple, God sets the initial conditions at t=0 and he sets the system. By doing this He (or She) knows how things will happen in the future of this timeline. Everything after t=0 is governed by physics leading up to and through evolutionary processes. Its not Intelligent Design, since life on Earth is created by natural processes, but the fundamental laws of the universe are of God/God himself.
Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plankton (with a few plants and dinosaurs), but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?
Why don't creationists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why isn't anyone doing this?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
They ignore you because you obviously don't know what you're talking about.
Then they mock you because you expect to be taken seriously without putting in the work to become informed.
Then they fight you, because you won't go away until you've had your fight, and ingrained in your thinking, so deeply you don't know it's there, is the notion that might makes right.
Then you win, because there are so many ignorant, lazy, belligerent people that sooner later sensible people, who want to get something accomplished with their lives, will sooner or later give up on picking sense out of your nonsense.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I view this in the same manner that Passion of the Christ made more Christians, the way Micheal Moore has made more liberals or the way Bill O' Reily made more conservatives. -They didn't. It catered to an audience already set in their ways on the topic. I don't see a crazy threat to my scientific mind here. If I did...I'd start building sharks with laser beams and build a moat around my house.
There's so much I would like to say here, and I rather doubt that I'll get it all said, but I'll make a stab at it. In the first place, I haven't seen the movie, so can't really comment on Stein's take. However, I have looked at the "sociology" of the Evolution/Intelligent Design/Creationism debate a fair amount, and what I see disturbs me from all sides. One major concern I have is the elevation of Darwinian natural selection as a means of species creation to an unrealistic importance. I just don't see why it's so important in and of itself. One could certainly be a competent physician, for example, and not believe in Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism). It seems to me that one could even be a quite competent practitioner of any of the biological sciences (other than the various sorts of paleontology) without necessarily agreeing with Darwinism. Yet, we are constantly told that a failure to teach Darwinism at the high school level will destroy science education as we know it and result in a US population that is hopelessly ignorant of all science, etc. etc. I just don't buy it. Bluntly, I can scarcely think of a job where a belief in Darwinism is necessary. On the other hand, we have school systems that literally teach absolutely no information science, computer science, etc. etc., and people graduating from college who literally don't know the different between a byte and a gigabyte. It's hard for me to see why this ONE THING is so vitally important, when it has virtually no practical application and there are scientific topics with enormous practical application that go untaught. Could the real problem be social or (speak softly now) political? It seems to me that that is exactly the case. The extraordinary efforts put forth by various scientific bodies to defend Darwinism from all criticism strike me as a knee-jerk reaction to a knee-jerk fear that the Scope's trial will happen all over again. This isn't about science--it's about continuing the Enlightenment project of supplanting all sources of Meaning (capitalization intended) with Scientific Meaning. That doesn't mean that I think that Darwinism is wrong. I actually think that it's as right as you're going to get within the boundaries that it sets itself. But I certainly don't think that the loss of Darwinism would destroy American education or anything along those lines. So ... people... GET A GRIP.
My $0.02.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Uh... because there is exactly zero evidence supporting other theories? Because other theories are largely unscientific, untestable, and not falsifiable? Because creationists still don't understand that evidence against one theory do NOT automatically equate to support for an alternate theory*? Because evidence from every branch of science, from astronomy to chemistry to geology to physics to zoology all support the currently accepted theory? You know, those sorts of things kind of tend to make people really, really tired of dealing with folks like Ben Stein, who remain obstinately and willfully ignorant.
(*e.g., if this fruit is not an orange, that does not mean it is automatically an apple... heck, could be a kumquat, for all you know).
Umm... Stein is not discussing the Science. But, the Atheistic philosophy of Darwinism that says its all an accident and random. ID creationism. Stein points out this very attitude and those that use their power to silence opposition.
ex nihilo nihil fit
But please, I'm begging you, steer wide of websites like Answers in Genesis and the ilk. You will find little honest science there, only phantom plastic arguments that sound like real science. You should challenge presuppositions in the strongest way --- which is to become a scientist yourself. Can you imagine how famous you'd be by overturning the life's work of thousands of very smart people over the last hundred years or so? But don't fall for the easy, grade-school arguments of the charlatans. There are so many subtle and important errors in the page you referred to that you'll never claw your way back out into the world of clear thinking.
You can be sure that those behind this film will say that this is not a pro-religion film, but one where they try to make Intelligent Design a real scientific theory. But before you believe that, take a look at how many church's will send their members, teen youth groups, etc. to watch this film. Then tell me this isn't about pushing religion down our throats even more.
... is the closing of minds
ideas are dangerous to closed minds.
80 years ago the "establishment" was opposed to teaching the theory of evolution - now the "establishment" doesn't want to discuss the possibility that evolution is "bad" science.
I also like the fact that the "enlightened pro-evolution" people are usually the ones resorting to argumentum ad hominem...
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
During the whole montage he's writing something over and over on the blackboard and it comes out to be something like "I will NOT question Darwinian Evolution." He interviews scientists and editors who have lost their jobs for printing/writing papers that claim our DNA has a 'code' with information that could not have happened in nature.
Disclaimer, I read a lot of Darwin/Dawkins/Gould so I'm pretty biased here
I think that even though it's 'a waste of time,' it's bad to write these people off or fire them. I'm sure there's sound criticism against these papers and authors but Ben Stein isn't showing that in his movie if there is.
If you have friends who believe in Creationism, respect them and provide for them sound arguments against it. It may be a waste of time to you but it's complete snobbery to write them off. Ben Stein is correct that you may lose friends if you watch that movie and become polarized by it--don't let that happen!
Like a Michael Moore movie, objectivity is raped, killed, gutted and donned over a rich man's face who then can safely tell you what to think.
My work here is dung.
But seriously, it's Ben Stein making a movie!?!? Why is this going to be "promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students"?
Listen, there are VERY FEW MOVIES of which I would ever suggest to a kid to _learn_ from. As a boilerplate, if you see it on TV, it is probably fiction (except for most of what discovery et al have in their programming, you can generally learn from those).
But come on! It's a religiously themed movie that seems to take after those awful Moore movies. Buy a ticket or don't, but why blow this up (in typical American fashion) and out of proportion?
Get over it, it's a movie, move on, ride a bike or something and forget about it.
The trailer itself is plainly inflammatory. It doesn't support any of its claims. It just makes the accusations graphic. You are not likely to be shunned or feared as he would like to believe. You are, however, likely to be laughed out of the room. The academic answer to mystery has to be exploration. Hypothesizing that it is something unexplainable (ie, the flying spaghetti monster creating the universe) is simply tantamount to giving up the exploration for physical causes of events.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"who's philosophy espouses striving for neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc."
Or greed, ego, sorry...I meant EGO. The fact that so much in science is about competition rather then science.
I guess we can in part thank the National Geographic and the public education system for a large number of unconvinced. They're continued iconic use of artist illustrations of evolution of man from ape to homo sapien. Even after a fair number of list were proven to be frauds or at best honest but foolish mistakes.
Yes, people like to point out that science is about learning and change. However, our science is often more about EGO. And often an unwillingness to admit the mistakes of science. Science will deride religion for the same fallacies it makes daily.
This is essentially what most catholics seem to believe in.
However, that theory has no explanation for why something like a god is needed in the first place. If god is the explanation and "sets the initial conditions", what makes that theory any more plausible than the universe just was with this conditions? Just came into existence?
If you propose some X to explain Y, what is the benefit if you cannot at all explain X?
Why do people always seem to feel more comfortable with not being able to explain the existence of some (usually humanoid) "god" than being equally unable to explain the existence of the universe?
And why do people insist so desperately on something there has never, ever been even the slightest indication or hint for?
Because I can find lots of stories that make me I am glad the crazies here don't express their religion by bombing people... like , in, uh wonderfully enlightened Europe.
/. that this qualifies as a story. I guess a few editors need to get their brownie points with the insecure techie crowd... the one that needs to vilify anyone with belief and the willingness to express it. (plus its also good fodder for anti-Bush people who claim some hair brained connection to him however tenous)
Really, do you guys not get the news we do? Burning cars in France, oh I know, the PC word is immigrants. Killing of writers in Europe because they dared to write about someone's god?
What you have here in America is exaggeration. Look at it this way, if its brought up over and over and made to look silly it probably is. The haters need something to jump up and down about to make themselves feel superior and these ID people are a great target. The ID people are not a great percentage, just a convenient target.
It says even more for
mod to me to hell if you like, but it is true that it takes a big does of exaggeration to make ID people out as a representative of America or religious America.
Bring out the haters, this thread should have lots of them.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"This video is not available in your country."- that is what youtube says. And I live in Germany; so how should i interpret this?
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Evolution and ID do not contradict each other. ID is vague to the point that no matter what science comes up with as the "meaning of life" followers of ID can turn around and say "that sounds like Genesis". Of course when you compare the study and continued theory of evolution to a few paragraphs in the bible there are bound to be some assholes that say "These two things can't be the same". The ability to form one's own opinion is the beauty of the bible, no matter what some wacko interprets the meaning as being, it's just their opinion. The same goes for the atheist/agnostic crowd, they come up with their latest theory and throw it in the face of someone they believe is religious and scream "SEE THERE IS NO GOD" as if they had finally found that incontrovertible proof. The two groups have need to stop trying to have it 100% their own way. I would say a good half way point would be to teach evolution, and if the kids ask how or why evolution is the way it is, the required answer is "God made it that way". Which is a very good answer for all sorts of questions that have yet to be answered: How long is a transcendental number? Why can't we seem to move faster than light? When will Duke Nukem Forever be released?
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My work here is dung.
Looking through my textbooks, I find plenty of description of natural selection. Sometimes there's even a couple paragraphs on mutation. But then they label the whole section "Evolution" and continue on to other subjects.
So far, I have yet to see any convincing arguments that mutation can produce innovative changes. Sure, there are cases of antibiotic resistance, but most of them seem to be merely disabling the mechanisms exploited by the antibiotic, as opposed to actually developing a defense against the antibiotic itself.
"Automatically assume" is a bit strong, and I think it applies more to the ID proponents than those that look at the evidence for evolution and go "yea that makes sense."
...
... and selective breeding is just people making the decision as to who gets to pass on their genes instead of "survival of the fittest." It works on the same principal as evolution. Hell they're even named for the city where the breed originated!
... the proper wording just eluded me.)
I'll tell you what puts evolution in the "fact" category as far as I'm concerned, Yorkshire Terriers. To put it in Java terms
if (Yorkshire Terrier != Wolf || Yorkshire Terrier != Fox){
evolution.setCorrect(true);
}
These little rediculous (but very lovable) dogs in no way shape or form could have survived in the wild. Selective breeding created them
(and yes I know evolution is not a "fact" per se as it's a thoery about a process
...(reference to all the "my uncle was not a monkey!" counter-arguments)? Whenever I hear that one, I pat them on the shoulder, look sympathetic, and tell them to "give it a few more generations."They don't seem to love that as much as I do. O:)
One well known evolutionary scientist P.Z. Myers was queueing up to see a preview screening of this movie, when he was singled out of line and asked to leave the cinema. So he was expelled from Expelled, presumably because he would write it up for the trash it was. A double irony was he was standing next to Richard Dawkins who was apparently not recognized and allowed in.
As to promoting poor science?! What do they think science is? A table of contents pointing to a list of facts about the universe? If it were, it'd only be about 0.00001% complete...most likely less. Science is precisely about opening up the mind to working out the facts versus opinions and figuring out what the truth is...as we presently understand and accept it.
Waking up people's minds to conflicting ideas rather than letting them sleep is a good thing...usually.
Funny how americans cling desperately to their right to bear arms. But the biggest weapon of them all, the general knowledge required to see through possible lies and spin comming from Washington, that one gets dumped by the roadside.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
In order for something to be a theory, it must be testable and falsifiable. "My invisible friend did it" is *not* a theory.
It's true that the origin of life on Earth is still effectively a mystery. We don't know how the first cells originated. We have some interesting hypotheses, though, and they are being tested. Assuming that, just because we don't know something, we won't ever know - that hasn't worked out well, historically.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
"Mommy, he started it..."
News => Tabloid
Documentary => Propaganda
World => Hell (or collapse of all matter if your prefer)
If the Designer is so intelligent and man is his masterpiece, then explain shins. Any half competent designer would have put some fleshy covering there to stop it hurting so much when you hit them against a table leg. Testes outside the body? What were you thinking? Nerve cell regeneration would be on most people's wishlist. Complete amino acid synthesis is missing. One third of the day in low-power recovery mode? The Appendix: why? Intelligent? frankly, I give it a C minus at best.
This is not simply a religious freedoms issue. This is something that will affect everyone. For anyone wondering why this matters consider the following:
India's future genetic engineers and biologists are certainly not being taught ID in school.
China's future geologists are not being told that that the earth is only thousands of years old.
These examples and many like them discredit and undermine the entire educated underpinnings of our society. You can't ignore the machine that makes everything go and just assume that it will keep on working.
I always find these discussions interesting. The fun thing about it is, there is no way to be 100% sure. Yes, geological and biological evidence points (a lot) towards evolution. The Bible says 7 days. You have some Christians that believe that is a literal translation, and some that reference "a day is like unto a thousand years to God" and vice versa - so those 7 days could be millions of years. The problem comes down to - to many believers put God into a box, and try to limit his abilities by their own understandings of the universe. On the flip side, how can you scientifically test that God exists, and there for that He Created? If you could, that would negate Faith by it's own definition. Which basically is what this comes down to for each individual who actually cares about ID vs Evolution..... Either you have faith in God, and believe in 7 days, or I.D,.... or, you have faith that I.D. or Creation is not a possiblity, or can't exist because Science can't prove it. This debate will never be put to rest because of it's nature.
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
I am a Darwinist and fan of R Dawkins - there my cards are on the table, don't flame me for a hidden agenda.
I am also quite interested in Neurotheology - an attempt to explain the religious phenomenon though scientific means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology
In general the scientific community and academia are understanding to many theories - providing that there is evidence or strong theoretical grounds to support it. And thats where intelligent design falls down in my opinion.
Bottom line is: If there is evidence or theoretical reasoning for I.D. that can withstand concerted scientific examination and review then by all means get it on the table and I will prepare to eat humble pie.
Ben Stein also believes some wacky things about the markets and has been published in the NYT. Including issues regarding the credit crisis and that shorts sellers were responsible for market declines this year.
Doug Kass decomposed him pretty well in a series of articles:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10400657/1/kass-ben-stein-blames-you.html
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10403672/1/kass-eat-my-shorts-ben-stein.html
Stein is the new Dvorak.
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You know a movie's in trouble when the main response from mainstream movie critics is roughly "deceptive propagandist shit-pile", but the real fun comes when you start reading up on the people who were supposedly expelled. Like the Smithsonian employee who had his keys taken away and was fired, thrown out of his office, and thrown off the editorial staff of a journal.
Well, he was fired from his unpaid assistant job at the Smithsonian. Well, his contract for his unpaid assistant job expired. Well, it expired and they gave him a new one. But he was sacked from the journal! Oh, his contract expired there too. Well, there's his office of course, they took that away. Well they moved him into a crappy office. Well, they moved him into his own office. They took his keys away, though! They took everyone's keys away in his whole building! And, uh, they replaced them with keycards.
This is clearly the most honest movie of all time.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
... is the reason. Not knowing about bytes and gigabytes is one thing - you can always catch up on that - but being taught that it's fine to ignore the basic scientific methods upon which we have built our entire society, is quite something else. Of course it will not confilct with everyday things most of the time, but it signifies a breakdown of common sense.
Just because the "establishment" does not want to discuss totally futile nonsense like the squaring of a circle or perpetuum mobiles, this does not mean they have closed minds. Its is just extremely boring and a useless waste of time to go through the same nonsense over and over again.
Creationims is nonsense. It adds nothing to scientific insight. Theism is useless. It adds nothing to scientific insight.
Yes, scientists can be very closed minded and stubborn and even stupid. And "the scientific community" can falsely disregard insights and new ideas for a while. That has happened and still happens all the time.
But creationism is so fundamentally wrong and nonsensical in so many ways that the contrary can be said: somebody actively supporting anything that so fundamentally goes against all scientific rational thinking disqualifies him- or herself as a scientist.
A physicist building a perpetuum mobile should get fired. A biologist teaching creationism or ID should get fired on similar grounds.
But the rules of law are made up, and can and do change. Gravity doesn't work the way it does because Newton said so. Science is about describing the underlying laws of nature. As scientists we try to figure out what those laws are, but say nothing of why they are there. Man-made laws and scientific laws are different. Now if you were asking about economics as a science, that would be areally interesting conversation...
Bullshit! Provide some fucking evidence that could lead to actually proving that the evolutionary theory is false and don't fall back on the tired old responses creobots have trotted out before. They've all been debunked with extreme prejudice. Provide the evidence of your "creator". Simply waving your hand and intoning jedi-like "these aren't the theories you're looking for" just doesn't cut it.
He's totally right, science in academia should be more about discussing what you believe and less about what science people have found out after observation and experimentation.
For example the other day when my chemistry teacher told me that material stuff is made of atoms, I really couldn't believe him. I think I should have been given the right back then to discuss with them about my theory that everything is conformed by milk derivatives.
I shouldn't really have to prove my theory or even get the smallest amount of evidence pointing to the certainty of my theory before being given the opportunity to have kids at school discuss about it.
And all what I said in this post is the truth, because if you read this post you may lose your job.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Would that someone should cast a light on Psychology. Perhaps it is just the tendency of its many adherents to be so batty. (I am not a Scientology sympathizer myself, perhaps they aren't much help on this.) While I like the Tesla theory that we are all automatons, I have some doubts when I see some of the "scientific" work being published.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Now I admit there are a lot of atheists out there who understand science just as badly as some Christian fundamentalists and have turned it into some kind of religion, but that says nothing about the validity of the science itself, just like idiot Christians say nothing about the validity of the Christian faith.
As another European I can only agree that it seems a particularly American idea that capital-S Science is waging a "war on religion". Most people here seem to be of the opinion that Christian beliefs don't interfere with an scientific approach to most subjects (granted, when ethical decisions come into play religion often tries to dictate a position, but that wouldn't affect the age of the earth or evolutionary explanations). Most religious persecutions happened ages ago, the Enlightenment changed the stance of the general populace a whole freaking lot.
As an aside: if you really want to see how typically American the problem with Bible-thumping Christians is - just look at the book they take their beliefs from. It won't be the Aramaic original, it won't be one of the early Greek or Latin translations, it will be a comparatively recent translation that has all the biases, word choices and mistranslations from latter centuries built in ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" or "camel through the eye of a needle" come to mind). If those people really cared about their Holy Book, their writings giving to them from a divine being, they'd surely try to get as close to the original, the source, as possible, wouldn't you think?
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
There's no way I was the only one that caught that. At one point in the trailer, while talking about how rough it is to be a creationist in this time it briefly showed a clip of a Nazi concentration camp. That is utterly ridiculous and out right offensive.
No reasonable person could draw any similarities to the treatment of creationists to the targets of Hitler's final solution.
There is no proof of creationism, what there is however is a bunch of speculation that fails every single rule of imperial inquiry. Calling creationism a science, is like call spam a filet mignon. To an average third grader they may seem similar at the surface, but there's no fooling anyone once you look a bit closer.
Sure, if by "job" he means "temper" or "sanity".
Intelligent Design cannot be falsified, therefore it is not science. ID can explain Pegasuses, dragons unicorns and cyclopses just fine. That makes it useless, since that also means it cannot predict anything. Without predictions, you cannot have new scientific insight.
I lost my sig.
Anyone look at the comments on YouTube? Almost unanimous support for Stein's movie. How interesting....
Noam Chomsky said a number of years ago that since conservatives have been successful in rolling back virtually all of the New Deal (with Social Security the only thing left really), they were now working on rolling back the achievements of the Progressive Era. The prime example of that for me was the Exxon (aka Standard Oil of New Jersey) and Mobil (aka Standard Oil of New York) merger, putting back together an oil monopoly that had been broken up by the government in 1911. Now that the Progressive Era seems beginning to falter, it looks like they are taking an ax to an even older structure. Which would be the foundations of liberalism (classical or otherwise) and the Enlightenment - rationality and the scientific process.
If I'm taking a biology class, I don't want some know-it-all punk wasting everyone's time by arguing with the teacher over science-vs-superstition. I'm there to learn the science.
It would have its place in a philosophy or philosophy-of-science class, but not in a serious science classroom.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
For centuries science has debated on the how of everything and every few years what we have been taught as truth turns out to be false when some new truth is discovered. Evolution is a theory and like all theories it is not a fact until it can be proved. And theories that are proved can just as equally be disproved when new facts are discovered. But for all the thinking and proving there's one question science can never answer, and that is "why"? The universe exists. Why? Life exists. Why? Life changes and evolves. Why? Only God knows why. We are not allowed to ask why in public schools. Things are because they are because the state says they are, because the approved dogma says they are and don't dare question it. If the state says we came from apes then we came from apes. If our rights come from our creator and the state says there is no creator then from where do our rights come? From the goverment of course. And what government gives government can take away. Those of us who believe in the why will protect the freedoms of those who do not. You may mock us all you want.
What exactly is that article supposed to demonstrate? That a person can tell the difference between a randomly eroded pebble and an arrowhead? What presupposition is that even supposed to address? How is that relevant to evolutionary biology?
There isn't anything on that site worth linking to, anyway. Not one thing. If you find a coherent, well-reasoned, fact-based argument on that site, it's an accident.
Here's a hint for you (same one I tell my students): If you want to kill evolution, you can't just prove it wrong. You have to show that it is a fatally flawed argument, AND also present a new theory that does a BETTER job of explaining everything that evolution explains. Furthermore, the new theory has to be BETTER than evolutionary theory at PREDICTING what will happen. It is not enough to explain what we already know. Scientific theory has to have a predictive value. Creation garbage has zero predictive value, because nobody knows what the creator will do. Today we have the world as we know it, tomorrow maybe he decides to bring back dinosaurs just for the hell of it.
You should also keep in mind two things: First, if you want to kill evolution as a theory, you need to start with a thorough understanding of what it is (and what science is). You can't present a cogent argument if you don't understand the facts. Second, there have been a lot of very intelligent people, highly educated people, who have thoroughly and rigorously tested evolutionary theory over the last 150 years. A great number of these people were not fans of the theory, and more than a few had reasons to want to disprove it. Despite this, it's still the best explanation of how life came to be, and where life is going, and how it happens on a generation-to-generation basis.
But yeah, that argument about the pebble vs. arrowhead, that makes all of the above moot. Guess I'll tear up my Ph.D. now and start witnessing on the streetcorners.
Someone is challenging us to ask questions?
Someone is telling us to stand up for our beliefs?
Seriously people, Ben Stein is doing a service to the scientific community by encouraging critical thinking and making people challenge the status quo. Besides, science is the biggest group-think boys club there is. Just ask anyone who's ever challeneged string theory. There's scant evidence supporting it, there are way too many variations of it to be taken seriously, and anyone who comes up with an alternate theory (see variable gravity theories) is laughed out without anyone even looking at their paper.
People are going to believe what they want no matter what. Man decided what qualifications something had to meet to be known as a "theory". To a lot of folks, this is limiting what they believe God can do and implies that man may be smarter than God.
I still am in awe on how idiotic people are in 2008.
There is no need for conflict between the two.
It is not incomprehensible to see the universe was created by a higher power, who set into motion the laws of natural selection and everything we see in it.
Ugh.
I firmly believe in science and a higher power that created it all, so it baffles me every day (well, it doesn't entirely, an average IQ of 100 does explain it well) that people are debating something that doesn't need a debate and are arguing something that has no conflict.
Now, does anyone have a link to that paper?
Just link off to their work. Slate magazine did a three part piece on how our culture has gone from skeptical to paranoid to essentially delusional about science in general.
From the article;
"The success of these programs shows how the public's understanding of science has devolved into a perverse worship of uncertainty, a fanatical devotion to the god of the gaps."
It works for evolution, global warming, tobacco/cancer links, etc.
No one should assume Evolution is true. They should consider the evidence, and then make a decision. That's the very reason why ID holds no weight because it puts forth no evidence. Saying something is too complex for YOU to understand is not evidence. Having belief in God as a creator is not evidence. A 4000 year old storybook is not evidence.
The point is, the same scientific method that has shown time and time again that evolution is a fact, is the very same method scientists have used to develop every other technological device and process we used today. But why is evolution challenged? Because it's one of the only scientific theories that directly challenge that dusty old text.
so what underlies an otherwise intelligent religious person to resist evolution?
we need to confront the real underlying psychological issue here: faith in humanity
religious folk view something like evolution as a path to meaninglessness, nihilism, cynicism. your typical secular humanist expresses their faith in mankind directly: there is no conflict between evolution and being positive about mankind's future
but religious folk's minds don't work like that. for a religious person, their faith in humanity is indirect. it is tied up in symbols and code words, like god. god is really just a psychological manifestation of an abstract concept: an ideal man, what humanity strives for, progress
and around an idea like god, you get all of these related mythologies that again, are really just props for retaining and reaffirming and indirect positivistic faith in society and mankind
so what really divides the secular humanists and the religious folk are those with no faith in mankind. when you look at something like evolution, and you consider your traditional religious symbology that enforces your faith, you are confronted with a crisis. and you look at some of the nihilism in the world. not the atheists who believe in mankind, but the cynical, empty, boorish loud kind of atheist who sees no meaning in life, and you react to that. and so you react to evolution: it seems to be a path to this sort of empty faithless indolent nihilism
in other words, the negative reaction to evolution by otherwise intelligent religious folk is really a reaction against the idea of meaningless in life
this is the psychological issue which underlies the rejection of evolution by otherwise intelligent religious folk. and so the real way you defeat their resistance is by criticizing faithless nihilism. those who use evolution as a story about how mankind is meaningless, pointless: you attack and reject them
you talk about evolution, AND you talk about faith in humanity and you talk about evolution as reinforcing meaning, not destroying it. and in such a way, you draw down the resistance of intelligent religious folks to evolution, by demonstrating to them that evolution is not a threat to the idea of faith, that plenty of secular humanists with faith in mankind can also beleive in evolution, without some sort of psychological dissonance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I will never understand the arrogance of religious people. The arrogance of putting "faith" in the particular story taught by their religion over all rational thinking, over all (lack of) evidence, in a word, over all else.
There are hundreds (historically thousands or more) of competing stories other people have "faith" in, and those people are equally sure that their story is the correct one.
Noone of those people has ever seen any of their gods, has not even had the slightes, tiniest indication for the existence of anything remotely similar to a "god". Yet, these people insist that their god must exist.
Why does god exist? Why is their religion just like it is?
These people do not feel the need to answer any of this. They just "have faith".
They use their story and their god as an explanation of what they do not understand. Yet, this explanation is still harder to understand and there is even less indication for it than for the things they try to explain with it.
What makes the existence of a god more likely than the existence of the universe?
Why do these people feel more comfortable with an unexplainable god than with an unexplainable universe?
Did they ever consider that this comfort comes from the fact that their imaginary god is humanoid, intelligent, like man?
People who believe in god are like children who think that the ball runs down the hill because the ball wants to go there out of his own will.
First, I would like to say that I a fan of Ben Stein. But this movie is blemish in what I think is an outstanding career. I will explain.
I too have asked the same exact questions that your trailers ask. But I do have answers. I've followed the I.D. vs evolution debate, and I come down firmly on the evolution side. But that is not what you ask about...
Scientific inquiry first clashed with religion when a man innocently attempted to determine the motion of the heavenly bodies in an effort to determine God's intent. This man was Newton, but he started a long battle of God giving up ground to science. For as long as science is practiced, the domain of God has reduced. It is likely that at some time in the future that we have "God" reduced to the fundamental constants of the universe. (Only in terms of a mechanical sense, not spiritual) This can only be the case if scientific inquiry is allowed to continue.
The problem I have, and as it seems schools (public and private), and government have as well with I.D. people being key in scientific discovery , is that it threatens further scientific discoveries. The threat is not intentional, or, at least I believe in most cases it is not intentional (but the Dover school district it was quite intentional). The reason why it threatens scientific discovery, was shown in the Dover court case. The cellular structure that was heralded as 'irreducible' was actually shown to be reducible. Once the researcher was content with the idea that the structure was irreducible, scientific inquiry ended. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in projects funded by public or private grants. I fear if I.D. was ever accepted as a viable answer, all sufficiently complicated systems would be described as I.D. and we'd throw our arms up and declare ourselves done. I could imagine a time when all things are attributed to I.D. and such a time scares me.
I do not think that all professors who suppose I.D. would be haphazard, but it is not a risk we do not have to take. The question is if there is room for I.D. and a mind that is willing to probe deeper. Can someone have reverence and probe deeper? Newton did, so it is possible, but I doubt all of the I.D. proponents could.
The biggest failure of I.D. is to factor in the value of processes. And really this is what it boils down to. With I.D. there is no process, and it is all design. With science it is all process and no design. For the past 400 years, we've had nearly every process that has been attributed to God be re-attributed to a process. The question then is God a process, or is God designed? If God is a process then there can be no irreducible complexity, and I.D. effectively eats itself. Processes happen in the domain of time, so the question then becomes what is the domain of time for life on earth. We see evolution happening here on earth, so when did that start? And then the question is what was the process for earth? Answering that question is a question of celestial processes arising in planet formation and going back to the beginning of the universe.
Given then that we are the result of processes, how relevant or prevalent is I.D.? Is there any I.D. still left? It would seem that if the I.D. of our creator was irreducible, then we could never replace any part of the design. This would mean we could only add-on to make alterations (adaptation) and this would create more complication from the base simplicity. The neat feature is that any design is completely mutable. You can bury the original design so deep it could not be discerned. What I am describing of course is DNA. However the smallest number of genes for an independent organism is 1500 genes. This would be a boon for I.D. as until there are 1500 genes, there is no way to evolve and combine 1500 genes at once. However, these genes do contain junk DNA, showing that they were created by a process. The only thing I can conclude, and indeed others should be able to conclude, is that we don't understand the process. This is where scientists who don'
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Evolution is observable fact. The theory is as to how it occurs. Scientific theories need to be based on observable facts and be falsifiable. So in no way can the theories of evolution be called bad science unless you're not talking about science at all.
You can hand wave about conspiracies all you like, but science has an easy to follow method, and creationists can introduce any scientific theories they like. They merely need to be scientific.
Now ID is "bad" science as it doesn't put forward any testable theories at all, put in a few testable theories based on facts and you might have something that looks like science. Though they may have some problems getting there.
It sounds to me that a lot of the noise in the ID crowd is to close minds to the facts and replace them with fantasy rather than anything that can be tested.
Bueller?
Bueller?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Actually, it's the other way around. 'God did it' is a remarkably easy thing to understand and believe if you believe in a God in the first place. The hard bit to understand is how millions and millions of tiny adaptive changes make up the vast array of life around us (and us, of course). But when you do finally grok it, it's amazingly elegant and a constant source of wonder. I share an ancestor with every living thing on this planet. Isn't that amazing?
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because creationists refuse to accept facts they make fairly poor candidates for any position that requires actual thought, but they make excellent manual laborers. My daughter plans on a career in physics and she said that she would consider allowing them to tend her garden or trim her hedges so long as they didn't actually speak to her.
It's a bit sad that this discussion always seems to fall back to 'But evolution contradicts god' and similar bla bla.
The point most people miss, is that the person that actually wrote down a lot of his observations, which lead to the idea of evolution, was trying to show how marvelous God created this universe. That a God could make something so complex and self sustaining as evolution amazed him endlessly.
His point was more along the lines that 'Intelligent Design' created all the basework for the great replication and diversion of what came to be known as 'Evolution'.
As I said, a shame a lot of people seem to completely miss that point.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
he's a rebel. He's stickn' it to the establishment by conforming to an establishment... He's a tricky one. Thank GOD for people like him that compel us to think inside the box.
BTW on his game show "Win Ben Stein's Money" I recall him doing poorly on the SCIENCE and SPACE categories.
not to be picky, but that is not really a standard normal distribution. Something like that is nowhere to be found in nature. No intelligence distribution will ever yield a normal distribution (there are bumps at both ends - just to point that out), no average height of all ppl in the world will not yield a normal distribution. In that image the distribution is a bit left skewed. Why? Dunno, I am no gene scientist :)
I believe Darwin was right, but the abiogenesis stuff, we are not much further than the 19th century. That field lacks so much understanding I am even afraid to ask. All we have are a bunch of hypotheses. the same ones all over again. And when all are over we turn to panspermia which doesn't even explain anything, just moves the problem from here.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
It is about "magical thinking" and fundamental control.
When all is said and done, it is about the "authority" losing a tool of control. As long as there is ingrained a perception of an unknowable unseeable god, enforced in science, "authority" will use that god as a whip.
It is no different than parents saying to their kids: "Be good or santa won't bring toys." At least parents follow through with santa. The current authority has a great deal, you get it after you die. Brilliant!
I becomes hard to sustain a "god" delusion if we can explain how we came to be without one.
It'$ a My$tery to Me, why Ben $tein $hould $hame himself in $uch a $hoddy film.
I didnt realize it until later, but they used to teach fairly standard evolution, but it was directional progressing to man and the spiritual. Both Aristotle and Teilard de Chardin teach this. This is called teleology, or goal-direction, but definitately verboten according to the Harvard biologists.
Basically evolution goes in all directions to fill all ecological niches. Soemtimes you complexication toward verbrates and intellignece to fill that niche. At other times you see simplication and parasites such as viruses and leaches, etc.
I understand that people want to answer the why question. Why is there something rather than nothing?
What I do not understand is why the are satisfied by answering it with something that makes things even more complicated: the question "why is there a god" or even "why is there a christian god" or even "why is there a lutheranian christian god" is not easier but much much more complex than "why is there a universe". Simply because we have evidence for a universe but no evidence for a god, christian god, or lutheranian christian god, let alone any evidence why among all gods ever thought out by humans the lutheranian christian god should be the one that actually exists and is responsible for EVERYTHING.
What is beyond me is how people can feel comfortable with such a monstrous, unnecessary crazyness for only a second when the universe alone is a much simpler, much more beautiful and much less confusing monstrousness than any god-story every was.
A monkey could understand "that the other theories actually mean".
There just isn't that much to it. Ultimately it's just a strawman for all of
the evangelicals to rally around since they obviously don't have strong enough
faith otherwise.
Stacking the two sets of literature side by side can be very illuminating.
Why do you assume that thost that philosophically identify as scientists haven't
already done this? It's the nature of the beast. We do not fear "the entire universe
changing" because our understanding of it improved.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sorry, I mean "there is no Darwinism".
The theory of the origin of species through natural selection does not actually address the question of the origin of life, it merely documents a mechanism that has been demonstrated sufficient to explain the phenomenon of speciation. That's all it attempts to do, and that's all it needs to do.
You are creating a straw man, called "Darwinism", that doesn't bear any but a superficial relationship to the reality. Attacking straw men is a blast, it's great fun, but it belongs in the pages of "Mad Magazine", not in the courts and public debate.
Lets start with telemeres...like a lil fuse of life when the fuse ends poof your body stops regenerating most things and thats that. We have several organs that are prone to failure, appearently alligators have better immune systems. We only have one heart and one brain...we get redundant other things. Some people have tails...well most people just most of us cant see ours. Endometreosis, Allergies, vulnerable to Heavy metals and other VERY natural poisons. The list goes on and on.
Humans(the Chosen Species) lack nightvision, Cant see into the Ultra or infra ranges, no sonar, Have limited capacity for underwater breathing and our planet is COVERED in the stuff. Our survivable tempature ranges force most of population to the most viral, Bacterial areas of the planet.
Truly if there was an intellgent designer he could have done better then this...Heck Sci-fi and comic book writers do on a daily basis.
Of course it is nonsense that he assumed a god beyond any necessity.
All rational theories are better off without some imaginary god from some ages-old story book. There is hardly anything more useless than the idea of some god to explain things.
They're trying to build hype for the movie, and guess what? Slashdot has just thrown them a bone... You know what astroturfing is, right?
This is the same tired old game - the loaded, one-sided documentary, made to appeal to people who already feel a certain way about a contentious issue... Stein's become a counterpart to Michael Moore - which given Stein's books and such maybe shouldn't be surprising.
Bow-ties are cool.
If Ben Stein is getting people to question and verify what they see, what they hear and what they are taught, then my hat's off to him.
Invenio via vel creo
I have not watched the trailer, the movie, or seen any of the backlash it has caused.
That being said, if the movie does espouse a hard-line creationist/ID shall I say revolution? Attempting to spur the masses on to make a stand to support creationism and ID and seeks to marginalize true scientific input.
I have a VERY hard time believing this wasn't done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Ben Stein probably has the driest wit of anyone I've seen. Truth be told I would be very surprised if this wasn't an attempt to force the issue for the purposes of being able to destroy the arguments made by the ID people, and that a lot of people are making a mistake believing it to be actually supporting ID.
But then, I haven't seen it for myself.
This is not a sig.
Atheists tend to understand a lot about evolution since it's one of the first
things we get hit over the head with by evangelicals as soon as they find out
that we're atheists. Not intent to live and let live, they insist on tearing
you and your beliefs down.
Although this isn't limited to fundies. Pretty much any branch of xianity will
clash with the others and you end up with silly arguments (among a group of
people from the same religion no less) about who is and isn't going to go to
hell.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's simple really. "God" is a metaphor for science. God is a word intended to describe nature, mathematics, physics, biology, etc. Of course, nowadays, you're much better off using the academic words I just mentioned.
So Intelligent Design is just a metaphor for evolution - except that it pretends that there's an invisible hand behind the evolutionary process.
Just to clear something up, THERE IS NO DARWINISM. The combining of Darwin (a scientist, who observed, hypothesized, and developed a theory) and the suffix "ism" would suggest a dogmatic belief system. A belief system which can be accepted or rejected based on taste with equal validity. This is not the case. The evolutionary theory is SCIENCE! It involves a specific process where any and every assertion can and is challenged, and must be backed up by EVIDENCE to be accepted.
The term "DARWINISM" is used by opponents of evolutionary theory just to get a seat at the table, likening ID to science and saying we should teach competing views. However, "ID" in general, is unwilling to submit itself to the rigorous scientific process where evidence for any notion must be provided.
You're free to believe whatever you want, but if you want to play in the Science ball park, you have to play by the Science rules. Stein's movie which suggest a purging of the ranks, has it all wrong. You have evidence for your hypothesis? Fine, present it. Otherwise, get out of Science! How tolerant would a church be if someone went in and started to challenge dogma, asserting that differing views should be preached?
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
Acting like that is just childish. If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence.
I will illustrate your point, with an example I saw on CNN:
But you don't really illustrate the point - the OP was talking about scientists, and you illustrated the point with a story about a journalist and an environmental activist.
Oh - and can you pls link to the CNN article?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Talk to China about this.
Red Leader Standing By!
Scientific American has a good review of the movie (from the viewpoint of the evil scientists of course): http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie
But for all the thinking and proving there's one question science can never answer, and that is "why"? The universe exists. Why? Life exists. Why? Life changes and evolves. Why?
Why are you asking a science teacher to explain a philosophical or religious question? Would you ask your history teacher how to derive the pythagorean theorem? Would you ask your philosophy teacher how C++ templates work? Would you ask your english teacher to explain continental drift and subduction zones? Would you ask your math teacher about Donne's use of metaphor?
The origin of life isn't what "Origin of the Species" is about. It's not part of the theory that you're attacking. It doesn't matter whether the theory of evolution can explain it or not, because it's not about the the origin of life, the universe, and everything, it's about speciation. That's all.
Go ask your debate teacher about the term "straw man".
The whole argument is a no-win situation for scientists. They are presented with an insidious counter argument to the theory of evolution, and can respond in one of two ways.
1.) Ignore it based on the fact that it does not follow the proper rules for discussion ( i.e. it isn't, and can never be, a scientific theory ) - The opposing side can then paint them as arrogant and anti religious ( and nazis apparently ).
2.) Bend to public pressure and discuss it in the same forum as those hypothesis that do follow the proper rules for discussion - An "alternate faction" with no ties whatsoever to the first ( sarcasm intended ) can claim that science compromises its neutrality and is biased by public pressure and opinion, thus bringing into question all of the scientific discoveries...ever; undermining the hardearned respect science has garnered over the past however many years.
I think that scientists have correctly determined that if they lend ID any amount of weight in a scientific discussion they are slitting their own wrists. Unfortunately the leaders of the opposition are very good at spin. Since the majority of the individuals that make up the opposing group don't like to think about anything longer then it takes their leaders to tell them what to believe, they will never understand that science will never and can never enter in to a scientific discussion of ID without invalidating itself. Without that realization its very easy for an individual to be convinced that scientists are 'arrogant' ( and apparently nazis? ).
Some of the blame for the current state of this situation is to be laid at science's figurative feet. The representatives of science are not very good at PR, and often take the stance that if someone is too stupid to understand something after having it clearly explained to them, then its not the scientists problem. Its easy to paint someone as arrogant when they often are. They need to do a better job of responding to the criticism with explanations of how important their guidelines are, and how compromising them leads to fundamental cracks in the only thing they consider inviolate, their integrity.And because there are no testable alternative hypotheses. Even if you swallow the full Creationism/ID pill, you still need a way to explain and predict things like bird flu. It may well be that his Noodliness is driving our speciation, but how does he do it?
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Which is why I have tirelessly advocated for the teaching of alternative viewpoints to the THEORY of heliocentrism. This "scientific" theory has been contested since the 1600s. I now know that my failure to get an appointment in a high class academic institution in astronomy or geocentric universe studies is clearly another example of how genuine debate is stifled by the scientific establishment. -- David http://teachthecontroversy.com/
While there might be biologists who claim that evolution is answering the question about why life exists, it is simply a false claim to say that this would be the standard. Unlike creationists, theists, and other whackos, most scientists know what they do not know. Sometimes they accept a weak theory as a in place of a simple "dont know", but overall, most biologists will tell you that the question of why life exists is not answered. Also, we do not know why the universe works the way it does, or why it even exists.
There are scientists who think they know more about that but some of them are nearly as crazy as creationists.
The bottom line is: the scientific community is well aware that 1) we do not know a lot about why life has come into being and 2) god is not the answer and explains nothing at all.
>They can produce good research and put forward a good testable hypothesis that can better explain the world or the liars for Jesus can just STFU.
I hope you understand that science has nothing to do with truth. It is about predictions (thus usability). If a theory (in loose sense) doesn't predict anything, pragmatic scientist would go 'so what? It is of no use to me.'
What you are saying is that if something cannot be tested, than it is false. That is stupid. Take GÃdel's Incompleteness theorem. Form an abstract:
The implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules.
Even in world that we define ourselves, there are true things we cannot prove. I will make bold and intuitive guess that it is so for real world.
Richard Dawkins offers his views: Lying for Jesus?
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Read my blog.
One of the things the film does is associate the ToE with Nazism. It certainly seems to have frightened this gentleman - http://richarddawkins.net/article,2488,Open-Letter-to-a-victim-of-Ben-Steins-lying-propaganda,Richard-Dawkins
Actually... it's much more likely that they don't know what "theory" means.
Nope. Fundies have been doing this sort of things for years. They just
haven't been doing it anywhere that Slashbots would have seen it. Moore
was nothing new in this regard and might even have gotten some of his
inspiration from stuff from the evangelical camp.
So they've just graduated from comic books and VHS videos passed around
sunday school classes...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No. But evidence suggesting that the flat earth theory may be flawed is NOT evidence that the pyramid earth theory is correct.
Similarly, if you think there is a problem with the theory of evolution, that does not automatically make your alternate theory true.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
From what i am reading here I am sure this will never see the light of day but, here goes. I read post after post indicating that you have to be a moonbat to take anything but evolution seriously. This all based on the fact that the "experts" agree. Well let me draw an analogy that will work here, "according to the experts windows is the best operating system"! Now after visiting oh say 1,000 mainstream websites on the subject of computing it could be pretty safe to run around and state rather authoritatively windows is the source of all computer greatness. Oh, sure there is a group of nutbags that keep mumbling irrationally about bsd and linux but, the experts assure us that they are fanatics and there is nothing whatsoever to what they are saying. I know what I believe, and I also know, that enough people are full of crap on a wide variety of topics, and that they pontificate about pure dribble in front of some pretty impressive backdrops to add legitimacy to their bunk. So much of what is declaratively said by "scientists" is based on a long convoluted rube goldberg set of suppositions and extrapolations that accepting what they say as the incontrovertible truth, and therefore the final word, makes you an idiot. I am not agreeing with intelligent design but, I do agree with what I think is the premise of the movie which is, a lot of scientists that espouse theories are really narrow minded self important megalomaniacs that in all reality have no definitive answers. Especially when they insist that anyone that disagrees with their "facts" is a poopy head.
would you please link to said other theory? the only source i've ever seen referenced seems to be simply a collection of (largely unverifiable) stories. there is a history of people claiming verifiable predictions, but AFAIK the world still hasn't ended yet, so these can hardly be taken as support. it still surprises me the current draft made it through whatever peer review process the early catholic's had...but who am i to judge?
i don't ask for proof that god exists. *any* verifiable evidence i would consider a miracle at this point.
http://kered.org
But..... I thought the Earth was only flat because the Pope decreed it to be so.... ;-)
I used to love watching "Win Ben Stein's Money", and he was even a guest at JavaOne and hosted a game for the attendees. We all thought he was a smart geeky guy. Talking about burning your geek credential in a fiery blaze of a flamewar.
i thought the whole basis of science was an openness to questioning and critique. is this any less true for science itself (as a field of study within society), than it is for the hypotheses it produces? i don't see the cause for uproar... if science is as good as it claims (and i believe that, for the most part, it is), than it should easily stand up to widespread critique.
Stein is not discussing the Science. But, the Atheistic philosophy of Darwinism that says its all an accident and random.
It's a good thing that Darwinism doesn't say that it's an accident, or random.
Nor is there any such thing as an "Atheistic philosophy".
And it baffles me every day why people get so happy in believing in a "higher power" that created "it all" without any necessity or evidence whatsoever. Why does it make anyone more happy to believe in his religion's special version of some imaginary god who did it all instead of just the universe itself?
In reality there is no need to believe in a higher power or god. The concept of god (any version of it) is useless and *much more* complex as an explanation than what is explained by it.
And why do those who continue to babble about "higher power" or "god" never every despair in trying to explain the existence of their "higher power" or "god"?
I'd say, everything points to born-in insanity and irrationality that somehow developed during evolution.
1. There is no such thing as "Darwinism". If you want to talk about "Darwin's theory of evolution then that's fine.
2. Darwin's theory offers a possible mechanism for evolution. It is a scientific theory. It is not a philosophy
3. The second element of the theory, mutation, is random (though not completely). The critical third part, selection is not random. This is the bit that cretinists always fudge.
There were times, when Arabs were we can say scientific superpower. It was (maybe as a coincidence) at times when science was not greatly popular in Europe (middle ages).
So the question is, whether USA is following similar path taken previously by ancient Europe and then by Arabs. (side question is, whether something like renaissance will occur on islamic countries)
hany
That's what the producers of the movie, and the Discovery Institute, want you to believe. Fact of the matter is, natural selection is always under attack in biology, because nothing makes a career like coming up with a novel mechanism for evolution. Why are intelligent design "researchers" getting terse treatment? Their research is bad. That's why. Most "intelligent design" (basically, everything the Disco Institute has contributed) is just a co-opting of the term by creation science, and has nothing at all to do with the search for evidence of design, so isn't even science at all.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"is simply an anti-science propaganda film aimed at creating controversy where none exists, while promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students."
In actuality that statement simply augments Steins point. We loath Microsoft for slamming competition but for some reason science wants to be immune. ID may be a crock but let these things be debated, not taken for granted.
Some of the evidence is underwhelming and very poor, indeed. I've seen links here in slashdot to bird studies that claimed speciation occurred on the basis that that minor physical attributes (colors, mostly) were resulting in birds of the same species choosing not to mate after events in human time-scales physically separated the populations for a time.
Certainly that could be a first step, possibly a necessary step. But it is not sufficient to the claim of speciation.
The point is that most people arguing about it really don't understand evolution. They latch onto it with all the religious fervor of misplaced faith. And ironically, these adherents to some kind of "atheist" white labcoat cult use it as a bludgeon to bash the religious. So, it's no surprise that they try to fight back with nonsense like ID.
Ignorance is should not be ignored wherever it is found. Especially if it occurs in or around scientific fields.
About your sig:
If someone doesn't trust ssh, which has popular open and closed-source implementations, and been reviewed by many, why would they trust some home-grown alternative with a significantly smaller base of eyes?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You know what's really frustrating about this whole thing?Because the evidence for evolution is overwhelming?
Someone could write a very large, very thorough, very convincing document that establishes an iron-clad argument in support of the current scientific understanding of the world - but to those not inclined to read and learn to understand that document, it's no more convincing that (probably less convincing than) a catchy 10 second sound bite, or a rallying cry filled with logical fallacies, misinformation, and ad hominem attacks... Much like the film which Slashdot is now astroturfing...
Bow-ties are cool.
...that it would be absurd to think that the eye could have come to be through the process of natural selection.
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." -- Charles Darwin 1872
It'd be kind of helpful if he did discuss the science, because all of the people he claims were "expelled" were actually flunked (or denied tenure, in one case) for doing a completely cack-handed job. Nobody was thrown out just for "questioning evolution", they were thrown out for engaging in the career-killing albatross of Disco-Institute intelligent design creationism. (As distinct from intelligent design, the concept.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The reason they don't get published is because their work isn't science. That's the problem with ID as a scientific hypothesis -- there's no way to test it.
IDers present stupid arguments, and then complain they are being persecuted by scientists. Apparently, idiots hate it when you call them idiots.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The owner of the video must be screening comments and not allowing alternative views. Irony, anyone?
-- Boycott Shell
I thought he came to save us from chaotic weather patterns.
*joke*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In light of this recent information regarding Ben Stein's teaching methods, Ferris Bueller's decision to skip school looks better and better.
Way to go, Bueller.
If Philosophy were lumbered with ID, I can see three potential ways to include it in the Cambridge syllabus (which is the one I took).
1) A short article about it could be used in a first year discussion group alongside Hume's 'On Miracles'.
2) It could be mentioned tangentially when studying Hume's 'Dialogues of Natural Religion' and the contemporary philosophers who defend Cleanthes.
However, against 1 and 2, serious metaphysics hasn't much interest in ID per se. There are hardly any arguments in support of it that haven't been around since the 1600s, and they've all been criticised to death.
What is new is the fact that abductive reasoning is being promoted as science even when the thing abduced (and its properties) are undiscoverable/unverifiable by empirical means. (Compare abductive reasoning that posits the existence of a planet because of unexpected movements in other celestial bodies.) So perhaps the question is:
3) What properties should a theory have in order to be usefully called a scientific theory, and what are the wider consequences for science if ID-like theories are admitted? (e.g. what new sort of explanations could you legitimately give to existing phenomena if ID-like reasoning were acceptable? Are those explanations worth having?)
To wit, it's not ID itself that's interesting, but whether or not relaxing the requirements of scientific methodology in this way is damaging to science as a mode of inquiry.
JPSS
So if you believe in creationism the Darwinists will release a herd of Cheetahs on you?? That is just WRONG. Do Darwinists have no morals whatsoever???
The comments here are basically taking the movie at it's word -- that Intelligent Designers are being "expelled" from academia.
This is a lie. The whole movie is a lie. The irony of both invoking Nazis, yet so successfully implementing the "Big Lie" strategy has to set some kind of reprehensible high water mark.
The three "expelled" people presented in the movie -- these are the worst stories the filmmakers could find -- involved a professor who failed to get tenure because he wasn't good enough, a woman who had her contract run out and didn't have it renewed, and them someone who said he was "fired" from the Smithsonian, despite actually being an unpaid research assistant whose term ran out.
Compare and contrast.
This movie makes utterly baseless claims that the academic freedom of ID proponents is under attack.
This is a lie.
Yet, they tell the lie, and then you look at comments about the movie, and you have people assuming that the truth is "somewhere in the middle", or that "both sides need to be considered", or some other trite cliche.
Why do they get a free pass here? Seriously, the production of this movie has been filled with lies by the makers -- these allegedly religious people -- and yet, people still take the movie at face value.
They lied to the interviewees, they attempted to pirate animations used in the movie, after being humiliated during the pre-release screenings they lied to cover it up, they lied to the people who wanted to see screenings -- they're liars.
And then you look at comments here, and people talk like the movie makes valid arguments -- it does not. Aside from lies about academic suppression, it's just one long Godwin -- "there's a very tenuous link between social Darwinism and the philosophy of the Nazis, therefore believing in Evolution leads to the Holocaust".
If, in an argument, someone tells baseless, reprehensible lies about a subject, the truth isn't "somewhere in the middle". The liars are really just lying.
Unfortunately, Ben Stein's POINT (about the scientific and academic communities developing an orthodoxy of thought and belief which they defend as mindlessly and reactionarily as any medieval Pope) is tainted by the particular point he choses to use as an example: Creationism.
Look, truth in reporting here: I'm a long time questioning Christian whose faith seems to be strengthening as I pass 40. I think Creationism - and the idea that it should be taught as some sort of alternative scientific theory (ID being nothing more than camouflage for that) - is ludicrous and the very idea would be funny if it wasn't so serious. FWIW on this subject, I don't think the miracle of creation is any less miraculous having taken billions of years, instead of 6 days. (Shrug.) So that's where I'm coming from on his particular choice of issues.
But no honest observer can deny that there is a (ironically) near-religious mania in academia today for defending certain points of view. Even this wouldn't be so bad - fervency itself is no sin. But the fact that certain subjects seem to be held as above questioning, and that anyone who does raise such an issue isn't merely disagreed with, but subjected to vicious ad hominem attacks and bitter calumny...well, that's the tragedy.
The scientific community has no moral obligation to treat & debate every idea equally, certainly. The guy who thinks the earth floats on the back of a turtle shouldn't anyone's time in an astrophysics discussion. Creationism is about that credible: dispense with it, and move on. But there are a number of other subjects which ARE NOT so certain - from Anthropogenic Global Climate Change to the forbidden idea that different ethnic groups (or even the two sexes) might have different intellectual capabilities. Friendships are broken, careers destroyed over simply RAISING questions about these topics.
Honestly, what's happening in the debate over ID and evolution is the closest real-world analogue I've ever seen to simple internet trolling: merely bothering to argue the point, means the troll has won.
-Styopa
Ben, newsflash for you, there is no God, and the bible is simply a book of really good stories. Sorry to break it to ya, pal.
Actually, there is a good bit of symmetry here. I often say that the Intelligent Design(ID) people admire how the Man Made Climate Change (MMCC) people have pushed their cause. If you believe in the scientific method you have no problems with anyone challenging a theory. In fact, you'd welcome it because it either disproves the theory or makes it more accurate.
Evolution has advanced in it's "completeness" as a theory because of many challenges made to it over the years, and those challenges have helped science immensely. Just because a theory is wideley accepted however, does not mean that it is correct. Prior to Plate Tectonics being widely accepted it was scorned and rejected by leading scientists who had careers built on "old science." This incidentally what the subject line of this post refers to: subduction is one continental shelf sliding under another, and orogeny is mountain building (of course since this is /. let me point out IANAG).
Yet because the heart of Geophysics is still physics, these great scientists were able to accept challenges and look at the new theory and say "yes -- this fits better." And that's what's awesome (and to me holy) about SCIENCE. You can challenge ANY assertion, and if your model is better, it will persuade people. I'm sure some physicist can help me out and show how the theory of gravity has changed massively since Newton -- even though a lay person would say "yeah, I get gravity."
So here's where Expelled and ID fall down -- we KNOW their theory. What is being taught in schools about evolution is mostly demonstrable. We can show evolution in anti-biotic resistant strains of bacteria, that directly impacts humans and health. ID is being taught in the appropriate places -- houses of worship -- where challenges are heresy. Yet in teaching SCIENCE in schools we want to teach that every assertion CAN be challenged and should be observable. That's what science is -- an attempt to understand the universe through observation and experimentation. If someone wants to challenge something in science and can bring legitimate observations to the table, they should be welcomed for the CRITICAL (pun intended) role they play in the process. ID has to reject the scientific method, science always looks for challenges to make the model more accurate -- but ID is by definition perfectly accurate already, and cannot be challenged.
I support everything the MMCC people want as an end result -- I'd like to see us embrace alternative energy, stop burning fossil fuels and generally be more conscious of the impact we have on the planet. I also think that there is a real harm being done to science when people with legitimate complaints about the SCIENCE of MMCC are treated as pariahs. Although I tend to think that MMCC is real, and there is certainly no harm in proceeding to curb our carbon emissions, I welcome the legimate claims of people who think that solar cycles are responsible, or that this period is not particularly warm on a geological chart of temperatures. These are legitimate scientific ideas based on observation and empirical data. MMCC as a theory will gain much more respect when it embraces challenges, instead of treating them in the same way ID treats challenges -- by throwing the scientific method under a bus. On the other hand, if the MMCC people do succeed in making challenges to their "science" become heresy, the ID people will be sure to take notes in how that happened.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
I find it so sad that this article gets posted on Slashdot with a paragraph giving the movie credit as if it were an actual documentary and not what it is, propaganda. It took another poster to add that in. Then looking at the comments I am saddened by the lack of critical thought put into them. People think Ben Stein produced this film to get the word out. Ah,,, no. It was produced by some guy Mathis(?) who hired Ben to be the narrator/host.
Then there is the people who think that there are other theories that explain the ever changing diversity of life on this planet besides the one presented by Darwin over 150 years ago and modified and expanded by countless thousands of biologists with mountains of evidence since then. There are no other theories. Further intelligent design is creationism as written in the bible/ old testament. This movie is just old testament vs science and anyone who has spent any time with improving themselves through education should be appalled that such a movie would be put out there and that many people would fall victim to it in the sense that they think it has any merit at all. If you are such a person all I can say is that you can read up on the history of this film, study evolution, try to find a so called alternative theory that does not come from the bible, and decide for yourself.
Why does science feel threatened? Let the ideas stand on their own. If a scientist lets his faith influence his ideas and methods, then let his work go as far as it'll go, don't destroy his career.
I was about to say the exact same thing!
Any journalist who would delete one his/her paragraphs just because of pressure from some activist group doesn't deserve to have the job.
Since when is news reporting supposed to be about changing the facts to please special interest groups?
"Objectivity" is very easy to say, but very hard to do. Objectivity is not by any means the path of least resistance. The scientific method (and everything that surrounds it) is our attempt to overcome our own inherent lack of objectivity in our investigative processes. Not all humans who strive to be good at it actually succeed.
But a handful of people calling their non-scientific practices "science" do not automatically undermine the value of scientific inquiry, nor do their mistakes automatically invalidate the compelling warrant that has already been established for actual scientific theories.
How do you know this? (I don't know any different, but that's a pretty strong statement to make.)
She is a religious zealot or close enough! -
http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/ealing.htm
That said I don't entirely disagree with the points she put across to the BBC, the BBC were somewhat misrepresenting some of the facts in the original article by failing to point out clearly enough that a short term trend of cooling (almost certainly due to La Nina) does not mean there's not a longer term trend of warming. Their approach in the article essentially also gave voice to those who were making unfounded claims about global warming not being true whilst not giving enough time to the thousands of scientists who have worked hard to actually provide some factual evidence to demonstrate the existence of global warming.
You do realize the parent post talked about creationism, and not belief in God, right?
As for your list -- what are you trying to prove? That intelligent people can believe in God? I think that is well established. What is *also* well-established is that each of those mighty thinkers you list made their contributions to science in an objective way, without resorting to God as an explanation. God may be an inspiration, but he is never an explanation.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's an unprovable theory (as unprovable as the existence of God). ID is not a theory - there is no evidence for it, it isn't testable and it isn't falsifiable.
And as for ID not being the same as creationism, would you like to explain this - http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/missing_link_cd.html
I was educated in a system that was left over from the socialists that ruled my country in the past.
I know that lots of people hated their guts, we did too, but one smart thing they did was - teach sound science in schools. There are some young religious groups emerging this last decade but they are all being laughed at just because people are well educated and know better than to believe nonsense.
Those ID folks trust the same source that said the earth was flat and the sun went around the moon. Just how many time does science need to prove the religious establishment and the bible wrong before it's clear to everybody that the good book is just an allegory at best and fairy tales at worst.
I am not saying that people shouldn't have faith of believe whatever they want to believe, but ask yourself if you want to have your sick child taken care of in a modern hospital by doctors that practice scientifically based medicine, or go to the church and light candles and prey that god takes care of it?
Religion is a white lie that helps people accept the difficulties in life, it makes them feel good for a moment, feel that they do have someone to turn to, no matter what they did or what they expect.
It helps them accept the problems, not solve them.
That's where reason, hard work and usualy science and proven knowledge comes in.
The most interesting things I've seen coming from Ben Stein were his editorials on finance.
It honestly took me by total surprise that he made this movie, taking up the evolution/creationism issues. He wrote some rather interesting pieces for Forbes, including one denouncing people's willingness to forgive stock market scandals (like the Steve Jobs and Apple stock back-dating situation that came up last year). Given the sagging economy and so much distress over America's financial future in the "world marketplace", it would be a great time for him to release a film discussing these topics.
See this for some hot debunking action.
To briefly (and probably not completely accurately) summarize: 1) one guy did get fired, but that's because he wasn't getting published or graduating many students. Sorry you didn't perform. 2) a guy who said "I was fired" from the smithsonian wasn't actually fired (and was never employed there anyway), still has access to the collections and an office there, etc. They did move him to a different office, so the fact that he said "they changed the locks on my office" is true. Even worse, this is the guy who, in his last month as editor of a scientific journal (not because he was fired, but because his time was going to be up anyway) basically took it upon himself to wave a publication into print without peer review, saying that he was the only qualified editor, when there were others who could have and should have been able to review this paper.
So the ID advocates portrayed here seem to be acting in deceitful or unethical ways, and then this movie is compounding their deceit.
There are a lot of interesting questions still to be answered in evolutionary theory; rehashing the same battles over and over again with these people is a distraction at best.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
You're right! There's noise in the data! But can you show that the 'noise' rises to the level of statistical significance? Can you show that there's a recognizable chance that there's a 'signal' in that noise? I said that it fit a bell curve "very, very well" - I didn't say it fit "perfectly", because you don't get perfection in the real world.
The point is, despite a lot of people looking very very carefully, nobody's been able to show any statistically-significant deviation from random in mutations. That doesn't prove that such deviations don't exist, but it does justify a presumption of randomness until and unless someone can show something different. Feel free to get started - if you succeed, the Nobel Prize awaits.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There is no scientific evidence whatsoever for creationism. None, zip, zilch, nada. Supernatural silliness at it's best. I undid my moderation in this discussion to post that.
Want to see some raw uncut creationism? Check this thread out:
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/board/viewtopic.php?id=30455&p=1
I admit I was fairly pissed when I started it, and became extremely pissed and mentally exhausted as the thread progressed. After that, I realized that many people just don't understand the basic concepts of science, and never will, and there is no hope for them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How dextrocentric of you.
Ben Stein's pseudo documentary has nothing to do with fact and reason. It is all about maintaining control over the ignorant masses by means of religion. People who believe in invisible sky faeries can be easily maneuvered using the lever of the pulpit. People who embrace empirical evidence, logic and reason are much more difficult to control.
Does anyone think it coincedence that this movie comes out just in time to stir up mindless, knee-jerk religious animosity towards 'godless liberals' when the republican candidate is not well liked by the religious right?
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
This needs to stop being presented as a two-sided issue. It is only two-sided in the sense that one can be right or wrong. ID has no answer to the basic problem of falsifiability, and so its proponents must resort to faked controversy in order to generate any sort of buzz for their position. There is no controversy over ID within the greater scientific community.
Plenty of Xians eh?
Then how do you explain the Red States?
We've had 8 years of George Bush for no other reason than
xian moral conservatives are blindsided immediately and
completely by any sort of "moral issue" even when it doesn't
have any direct impact on them.
Now I wasn't even talking about that in my previous rant, I
was speaking of the relatively sedate upscale yuppie suburbs
where the relevant Xians seem more interested in conspicuous
consumption than piety.
They're content to let you go to hell even if they will gladly
clue you in about your predicament.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Expelled Exposed rules.
If you had a job or tried to get a job as a writer of short stories, but handed a publication, or university, or publishing agent a blank book and told them you had sung a great tale at it... what do you think would happen? They'd tell you to get lost, not because they're anti-singing, but because they're looking to pay people for writings.
Real scientists aren't rejecting studies or papers promoting so-called intelligent design because they are against writing random stuff, but because it is not science. You have to start with a testable hypothesis and then you need to test it. If you haven't done that, you shouldn't even get to the peer review stage of science. They're not saying what the people have done is wrong, just as they may not think consulting a tarot card reader is wrong. It just isn't science.
Acting like that is just childish.What they're doing is following a formal method that makes personal bias fairly irrelevant. It isn't childish, it is their job.
If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence.There have been thousands of scientific articles debunking such "evidence" over the years. Why would scientists waste their time trying to show people for the hundredth time where they failed to follow the scientific method, something every educated person on the planet should already be able to tell them. If advocates of intelligent design or people who dislike the theory of evolution want to participate in science they are welcome. If they want to pretend to be participating in science while actually just producing rhetoric, they will be deservedly ignored by scientific publications and refused jobs as scientists. It's a level playing field, but creationism has lost over and over and over again on that playing field, so now creationists are trying to avoid the playing field, while arguing that they really are there, and how it is unfair for their "goals" to not count, just because they made them in a goal they themselves built somewhere else entirely.
I have no problem with anyone raising the possibility that Darwinian evolution is bad science, in the classroom. But that's really not what is happening here; this is an attack on the scientific method itself. Scientific theories hold dominance until a better scientific theory comes along. At that point there is a highly entertaining battle and paradigms shift.
Currently no better scientific theory has come along. Instead we see the theory of Darwinian evolution being attacked by rebranded religious dogma. That's what I have a problem with. And look I managed that without resorting to argumentum ad hominem
ah but you too quick to dismiss the data that does not fit as "noise". I repeat, I am not a gene scientist :), in my field (psychology) such "noise" is normally attributed to different causes - be it evaluation bias (which is very, very different from "noise"), be it missing values (to which you can ask yourself, why the question was not answered) . But the data, if correct, never lies :). So noise can be a very tricky issue.
:)
But i diverge; your point is sound and valid. I was just trying to get some crappy methodological issues across
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Because it's a lot smaller, simpler, and easier to check. For example, you only need to look at about 58 lines of code (including comments) to determine that remote buffer overflows are impossible.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
As an european, i can only laugh hard at this movie. I see some people here is supporting ID in some way (fortunately, they are a minority). Well, there's nothing to discuss, ID is not Science and those who support creationism/ID are simple-minded religious zealots.
Also, do we not have a bit of a self-selection problem here? Lets say you hire a scientist, and tell him or her 'Ok, let's discover which gene is responsible for hangnails.'
Should the scientist then reply 'God causes hangnails. I believe they were put in on day 5. Next project?' do you really think he or she will have a long and stirling career in science?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
There are two kinds of people. One kind asserts that they're neutral, unbiased, and objective. The other kind always loses argument ad-hominem. Really, when you start putting labels on the people supporting each side of the issue, the outcome is obvious.
Science should be scrutinized, not believed, even if it is generally neutral, unbiased, and objective. I look forward to Darwinism being taught in classroom as long as students are allowed to criticize it, not learning it as the absolute truth. After all, it's just a model of how someone understands nature to be.
I've pointed out flaws in this model before, e.g. the common ancestry assumption. Most species get their genes from two parents as opposed to just one. Viruses, on the other hand, duplicates asexually. That explains why Darwinism is more readily observable on virus than sexed species. And some science fanboys (they might not be scientists at all, mind you) love to say that whatever works for viruses applies to humans and other animals too.
At least whoever wrote Genesis (it is believed to be Moses) has some sense that human can't origin from one Adam alone. And that Noah didn't just pick one animal of each specie (he picked several pairs) when the flood came because one animal can't breed by itself.
I once had a signature.
The whole scientific process is an accumulation of knowledge over many generations. Because so much of our accumulated knowledge was established in the distant past, we need the process as a way to establish or maintain its viability as a part of the model of the world. Even when accumulation of knowledge spans a single lifetime, we still need the process in order to ensure we haven't gravitated to the answers we "like", but that we've actually come up with a sensible model for the world and that it has, so far, continued to be reliable.
How it works is we find a mystery in the world and attempt to explain it - then we attempt to work out, if that explanation really is true, then what else must also be true? And so we come up with tests... "If combustion is a process of release of Phlogiston, then there must be no material which gains weight as it burns" or "If our calculations about the orbital path of this planet is correct, then on this date at this time, the planet will be observed at this position." As test results come in, the results lend support to the theory, suggest the need for refinement, or else contradict it completely - in any case, so long as the process is properly followed and the results well documented, our total knowledge of the world has increased.
The reason why useful scientific ideas must be disprovable is because if they weren't, we would have no means of establishing the idea's reliability. You can use an untested idea to attempt to model the world in the hope that this model will provide you with some useful information - like playing a hunch, sometimes it does pay off - but to bring that idea to the point where you can rely upon it you must be able to test it.
The reason why I limited my answer to "in certain contexts" is this: I do not deny the value of discussion of creation in a philosophical context, only in a scientific one. Philosophy, like science, attempts to use logic to make reasoned assumptions about the world - but unlike science it does not limit itself to what can be measured or tested in physical terms. It is the proper venue for discussing the possibility of creation as the origin of life. Science deals with data, and the ongoing process of attempting to understand that data. As such, the assumptions made can't stray too far beyond the minimal assumptions possible from the data.
Creation theory and Intelligent Design are not only impossible to disprove (for the same reason it'd be impossible to disprove, for instance, the idea that we're in "The Matrix") but it's very difficult to base any meaningful understanding of the world upon them. Do you accept that the world was "created"? If so, how does that help you to understand how it was created? Intelligent Design claims that its idea could be a viable model for understanding biology - if one assumes things were "designed" then one can attempt to understand what the designer had in mind... But how can one hope to understand the thought processes of an unknown creator? And it's hard to see how that assumption could serve you better than the more conservative assumption that "there is some logical basis to how biology works" - and yet it can serve you worse, by leading you astray...
Bow-ties are cool.
How do you know this? (I don't know any different, but that's a pretty strong statement to make.)
Mark Mathis (the producer) and Ben Stein told many of the interviewees that it was for a documentary called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion" "about the disconnect/controversy that exists in America between Evolution, Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement." Mathis even pretended to be pro-science.Scientific acceptance is simple, pretty like the Apache Foundation motto - Meritocracy in Action. Useful ideas or software GET USED. Intelligent Design, aka Creationism, is a nice theological idea, but not a testable scientific hypothesis. Whereas the Theory of Electro Magnetism has helped us built most of our modern technology, ID proponents so far have solved no real world problems of any practical value. You can use Genetic or Evolutionary Programming methodology to solve real problems. You cannot apply Intelligible Design pattern to help build that next generation chip or pursue the solution to the multi-core programming challenge.
Well you seem to be pretty sure of yourself. Here check for yourself what happens when a very, very solid study and the authors get into trouble when the data shows something other than the "scientific consensus".
Even the mighty House of Representatives condemned the study (a first in our modern and very scientific times). The data was solid, the methodology was stone hard and still, when talking to a bunch of retards it does not matter. Especially if the retards are SCIENTISTS. That is why i am very weary when it comes to "consensus".
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
EVOLUTION is not a theory it is a fact. If you believe that your hair color, eye color, body type from your parents then YOU believe in evolution.
The only part that is up for debate is whether or not evolution is the only cause of our existence. The only reason this is even up for debate is because no one person has been alive for a billion years.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't understand why the right is so adamant that religion be taught in science class. I don't mind religion being taught in public schools, but it should be in a religious studies or philosophy class. If you want more than that, consider private schools or bible study.
Religion is incompatible with the scientific method, and a religious studies class could expose aspects of all mainstream religions (and not simply focus on Judeo-Christian beliefs). Free thought wins.
And by the way, it isn't Darwinism, it is Evolution. Darwin lived and published 150 years ago. It isn't 1860 anymore, we've learned a lot since then and, in a Scientific fashion, updated the model to conform to observed reality.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Richard Dawkins on meeting Mark Mathis:
The Cell video plagiarism is mostly documented at ERV. There are too many posts on the issues to link individually.
After they humiliated themselves, they proceeded to tell lies to cover up their incompetence.
Since their screenings were such a fiasco, they attempted to "filter out" any critics by lying to anyone who might be critical by saying that the showing was cancelled, while telling people they deemed "okay" when it was on.
The people behind this movie are pathological liars. It's like, telling the truth about anything is alien to them.
Then how do you explain the Red States? I blame the Americans. None of the European Christians ever voted for Bush.
Besides, isn't Obama Christian too? Wasn't Clinton a baptist or something like that? You can't blame everything on Christians. Not even in the US.
I agree.
I was taught the theory of evolution as "proven fact" - with the caveat being that the professor wanted to distinguish between "micro" and "macro" evolution
"Micro" evolution was demonstrated with the fruit fly experiment (which countless students probably still perform each year)
"Macro" evolution (i.e. one species turning into a separate species) on the other hand takes "large periods of time" and cannot be directly observed.
Therefore the "theory of evolution" will remain a "theory" for the foreseeable future (while we are waiting on the "gaps" in the fossil record to be filled).
Since "macro" evolution cannot be directly proven, a certain amount of "faith" is required. So we are actually discussing one of those things about which reasonable people can disagree.
Q.E.D.
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Caring about moral issues only when they have a direct impact on you is called "selfishness". Christianity preaches against that.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
I would recommend the work of Robert T. Pennock who has written a well-reasoned book on Intelligent Deisgn and it's nonscientific nature. He does so as someone who takes both science and religion seriously rather than dismissing it out of hand he makes a clear refutation of the theory argumebnts.
Pirsig has a great line in his novel which I paraphrase as "nobody screams and shouts that the sun will rise tomorrow", it's a given and there is no discussion. It seems to me that the people who are afraid of discussion are the screamers. If people argue that the world is flat there is no need to shout them down and freak out at them etc, if you _know_ something to be true you should not be offended or upset if someone else believes otherwise. If your knowledge (belief/faith) is in doubt perhaps then you would scream/shout/freak out. That is what I've taken from the trailer linked here, it totally reminded me of the fanaticism part of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence".
Cheers,
_GP_
Are you also opposed to half-truths, a lack of ethics and generally misleading content?
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
Of course no.t. But people started accepting the fact that it was round when evidence was gathered on that fact. We are all still waiting for the slightiest, tiniest, smallest, most insignifcant piece of evidence for the existence of, say, God...
For those of you who don't read other social news sites, there's a video reply made by Thunderf00t, where he debunks Ben Stein's allegations.
Stein's fallacy is exposed this way: "I don't understand how evolution works, therefore evolution can't be true".
You obviously don't understand the use of the word theory as it applies in the scientific domain. Go read a book on the scientific method and educate yourself and won't appear to be such a fool. The fact of the matter is that the theory of evolution is backed by mountains of evidence, is recognized as valid by biologists everywhere, and does provide the most accurate explanations of life available.
It's fascinating that you believe that the bible adds nothing to scientific insight. Particularly when the bible itself states that the earth "hangs on nothing", that is to say, it floats in space. This was written during a time when all cultures believed something had to be holding it where it was .
If, however, you are only interested in real scientific facts done by real evolutionary scientists - I'd encourage you to check out Dr. Walt Brown's book "In the Beginning". The entire book is based on research done by scientists with an evolutionary viewpoint.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
It requires a time-frame significantly different from that which your Lord and Saviour conveyed to the world with His word: the Holy Bible.
When God spoke through his disciples he indicated that the world was 10,000 years old and was created in stages over 7 days.
Science is always open to new ideas. Some of the greatest revolutions in science have come the unexpected. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was radical in it's treatment of space, time, and gravity. Before him, Newton, Copernicus, etc. The problem that pro-evolutionists have with the alternative like Intelligent Design is that it is not ground in science but religion. It cannot be tested; it cannot be replicated; it cannot be falsified. By definition, it is not science. Yet ID wants to be the same status as evolution without having been tested. At best ID is a unproven conjecture.
Compare that to a real scientific controversy: Was T-Rex a scavenger or a predator? For years, Jack Horner advocated that T-rex was a scavenger. This is contrary to the historical view of T-rex. To this day there is still some debate about this in paleontology. However, Jack Horner's reasoning is based on evidence: T-Rex had a disporportionately large olfactory system compared to brain size similar to modern-day scavengers. T-rex had small arms unsuitable to being used in attacking, etc. As more evidence is uncovered about T-rex, this can be proven or disproven. ID will never make it that far.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
... is a documentary about how fucked up education in the United States is right now, from kinder gardeners getting in trouble for "sexual harassment", "Zero Tolerance" policies, now used at many schools, that punish EVERYONE, treating innocent kids and victims as bad people, how No Child Left Behind is continually destroying education, etc.
Although this film _does_ look somewhat interesting; every documentary and TV report I've seen on TV about this subject is usually pro-Darwinist and, most of the time, completly ignores ID... It'll be interesting to see how they back up ID with scientific facts......
Nah, it's far more common that people don't understand what a scientific theory is. They believe in the lay definition, which is "an idea." A comparable term in science for the lay person's definition of theory would be a hypothesis (however it's not an exact correlation.)
Creationists like to use the term "Darwinism," since it makes evolution sound like a philosophy rather than a scientific theory. In fact, while acceptance of the reality of evolution is essentially universal among biologists, there are many religious biologists who do not find evolution to be in opposition to their beliefs. Evolution is, after all, accepted by all major Christian sects.
If so, I'd certainly like to hear what it is. Though I would wonder why he didn't make a movie presenting the evidence for his theory, rather than telling lies about a real theory.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why do people assume a completely untested assertion is a legitimate competitor in the marketplace of ideas?
What fascinates me, besides the positive modding you have, rather than just pure flamebait, is that it seems that you have had very little discourse with anyone who espouses ID.
Jesus, or any other religious entity, has very little to do with ID. Sure, you can point at one of them and say "this is behind it," but that would be veering away from ID. ID is the discussion that it is very improbable for a world as complex as the one we currently reside in to have occurred randomly.
Evolution, while a theory, is a statement of truth. It is an observation of the natural world, of the order of things, and how future iterations become defined.
It is rather unbecoming of anyone who purports to follow "science," to delve into ad hominem, but the parent of this post has managed to do so quite effectively. This is what Stein is really pointing at - the rejection of additional theories because they might possibly infringe upon the basis of a belief system. There is no intelligent discourse here, only spitting and fist waving.
And hell, if you're going to quote someone, at least quote Dawkins or some other scientifically credible source. Hitchens is just as bad as Bill O'Reilly.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Ben Stein's Expelled trailer presents itself as an advocate for free speech for academics who are being ostracized for their belief in, or even the slightest hint of, Intelligent Design. In that regard he free to say what he wants and I support his right to do so no matter how stupid what he or the others say is.
Of course I also have the freedom of speech to say what I want and what he says in his movie trailer and other video clips I've seen of him is, well to be kind, stupid.
As someone said, he misses the point that theology belongs in it's own space and not in the academic world of science.
As we all know, but not all like, science requires evidence. So while the "mud" might have gotten a kick start with lightening to produce fully functional 747's it's just a hypothesis at this point how lift got started. Once we can create life with mud and lightening in a lab ourselves we'll have definitive proof about one way that life can get started - there could be others, such as life starting in outer space in asteroids, possibly with the energy of a collision, or the warmth from the sun during a close flyby. In any event science considers these potential hypotheses that require evidence before they can be considered a potentially valid theory.
Ben Stein shows his preference, in fact he doesn't hide it at all, when he states that he used to believe in God at the beginning of his life. Well he still does believe in God although he doesn't directly say so. It's a media manipulation technique since he makes one consider the possibly that he changed his mind but then he never delivers on that and instead makes himself out to be a crusader for an injustice.
It is an injustice to call someone's (many someone's) ideas stupid? Should a stupid idea and the person who purveys them not be called what they are? Should the intelligent among the human species not call it like they see it? Isn't that an attempt by Ben Stein to prevent free speech?
Also, his use of the Richard Dawkin's quotes are likely taken out of context. They are effectively used to impune all scientists who communicate the lack Intelligent Design in Intelligent Design.
In his trailer Ben Stein makes the statement that Darwin is a dangerous idea however he doesn't follow through with what he means by that. Of course, to people like Ben Stein, Glenn Beck, Jerry Falwell, the Pope, and other god fearing people, Darwin's ideas are dangerous since the notions of evolution and natural selection might just leave them without any god - and that would destabilize their world view beyond their ability to function normally in everyday life. Oh wait, it sounds like it has as stupid is as stupid does.
Yes, Ben Stein, you can question the authority of Darwin's ideas all you want, however, don't go crying by making a whimpering movie about being expelled when those with some actual intelligence counter question the intelligence of your questions as well as their underlying premises. When the underlying premises of the so called "questions of Darwin's authority" is a supernatural notion such as God you'll have to answer questions yourself about the bigger holes supporting that hypothesis.
Here's a question for you Ben: who created your intelligent designer? Maybe the intelligent designer evolved from lightening stuck mud to create the entire universe where we find ourselves? If so where did the mud come from that created the designer?
For someone who claims that some ideas, such illegal immigration to the USA, are too complex for you (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHbdMbSLfb4) you've sure made up your mind about the first cause of God, something which has zero evidence for it. It seems to me that illegal immigration is a much simpler concept to solve by many orders of magnitude than how the universe got started assuming of course that it ever had a beginning. (A beginning to the universe might not make sense to us mere humans as time *may not* have existed before the universe began).
Stupid ideas are just th
Yorkshire is not a city, you insensitive clod!
The town of Huddersfield, in the county of Yorkshire, is where the Yorkshire Terrier originated.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
The cdesign proponentsists do not, as far as anyone knows, submit their work to peer reviewed science journals (except as in the Sternberg case, when they have an editor who will slip it in without actually sending it out for review). And with good reason: a peer reviewed science journal will reject any article that does not support its claims with evidence, regardless of what the article's ultimate claim is. Acting like that is just childish. If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence. One of the big science journals (Nature, IIRC) gave the cdesign proponentists a free lunch by letting them publish their positions in a special issue. None of the claims have stood up to scrutiny.
And BTW, there is no evidence for ID for anyone to counter. All ID has is a clique of religious PhDs who offer sciency-sounding arguments based on factual and logical fallacies to support an untestable hypothesis. That won't make the grade in *any* field of science, whether religion is involved or not.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have yet to be shown that evolution can be explained by direct observation and demonstrated.
Until I am shown [that], my theory is as good as yours. My theory cannot be directly observed or demonstrated either.
Have you taken the time and effort to look up the direct observations? You are only displaying your ignorance.
But another issue that nobody has talked about is that John Lennon's "Imagine" was used without any licensing. The producers apparently thought it was in the public domain, and inserted it into a montage of Holocaust imagery.
There's no word yet on whether or not Yoko Ono will sue the producers as a result. I hope she does, if only because it's morally wrong to allow stupid people to keep their money.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
That said, many in the scientific community do have an elitist mindset and seem to treat anyone who doesn't agree with the theory of evolution or even questions it as a 13th century fundamentalist.
The Gospel according to lolcat
It requires a time-frame significantly different from that which your Lord and Saviour conveyed to the world with His word: the Holy Bible. Thing is, the bible doesn't actually say anything about evolution or vice versa. They're not at odds with each other. When God spoke through his disciples he indicated that the world was 10,000 years old and was created in stages over 7 days. I'd be very interested in which book, chapter and verse says that the world is 10,000 years old.
I admit it does describe a 7 day creation period, but then again, if you take it that literally, it also describes a pretty contradictory creation sequence in the next chapter.
If you think the next turn will be Britain's you have a lot of news catching-up to do!
Um... no.
I hate to break it to you, but scientific reasoning is based on reproducible evidence and empiricism, not faith. There may be some belief, but those beliefs are based on facts that have been clearly observed in controlled, repeatable experiments. (I believe in the Law of Conservation of Matter, but only insofar as nobody has ever managed to produce a verifiable counter-example.)
This is a bit more reasonable than someone saying "well, God did it".
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
How any location on the Earth's crust can be the "center of the earth" eludes me.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
a) that having Faith is no obstacle to being an unpleasant bigot Would be nice if it was. In fact, I think it should be, considering the words of Jesus I read in my bible, but apparently some people have a completely different interpretation. b) puts people like me off the whole idea of Xtianity Christians are Christianity's biggest enemy.
Nevertheless, the fact that Christians can be just as stupid as other people doesn't prove that Christianity is wrong. It just proves that some Christians are wrong, and that Christianity doesn't automagically make them right (although some seem to think it does).
The name "theory of evolution" is just historical baggage. It's just a consequnce of DNA and "natural selection" (the fact that we're not all created equal - nature sorts out the winners), not a theory at all.
We define evolutionary "fitness" as a catch-all description of those hereditory traits that cause one individual to tend to leave more descendents than another in a given environment. In terms of animals this is mostly about things like abililty to attract mates, compete for food, fertility, disease resistance, etc. Fitness doesn't have any connotation of good or bad - it is just about number of descendents (all that matters in terms of your genetics suriving/dominating over many generations).
fact: fitter individuals leave more descendents than less fit ones
fact: genetics encodes fitness
fact: genetics is hereditory
consequence: each generation tends to be evolutionally fitter than the preceding one
In other words, evolution is not a theory - it is a consequence. At the time Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" (aka the theory of evolution) it was technically fair to call it a theory since it depended on the assumed existence of an hereditory traits mechanism, but since the discovery of DNA there is nothing left but plain fact.
New species are created when two subgroups of an existing species evolve in different directions such that they can no longer interbreed (hence, by definition create a new species and are bound to diverge since due to lack of interbreeding their gene pools can no longer intermix). Speciation is just an example of evolution in action - it's simply what happens when genetic divergence takes you past the point of being able to interbreed (e.g. lion/tiger almost there, horse/donkey just diverged, man/chimp more longer diverged).
Please... The journalist should have followed a proper scientific process -- he should have cited the names/articles of the scientists he references.
He could anticipate the next objection by citing evidence (degrees, peer reviewed articles) establishing the stature of the scientists he referenced.
If he was to edit his own article, it should have been to add citations or recant the claim if he couldn't. Not to obscure it.
Neither journalist nor 'activist' behaved well here. Why is THAT news?
Godwins is not applicable in this context, because the movie's claim that the Nazis used Darwins theory to justify the extermination of the jews (and other parts of their ugenics program) is true. The theory of evolution was the "rational" and "scientific" basis of ugenics.
They believed that a utopian society could be created through the use of selective breeding to remove undesirable traits from the gene-pool.
Godwins applies when you make a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis, not when there is a direct connection. Otherwise, it would be practically impossible to debate facism, anti-semitism, or human experementation without violating Godwins.
"What evidence do you offer about pre-evolutionary origins of life? NOTHING, YOU HAVE NOTHING, YOU SIMPLY CHALK IT UP TO RANDOMNESS, CHAOS OR LUCK I GUESS" Well, What do YOU offer? Science hasn't proven everything yet but that doesn't mean that, automatically, ID is right. "I believe some form of reasonable Creationism/ID Theory can also be regarded as valid hypothesis alongside of Evolution and until its disproven, ID is a theory." It can be a theory, but not a scientific one, as it is not based on evidence, reason, makes no predictions, and it's not falsifiable/testable.
People that believe in these barbaric superstitions should be embarrassed to speak out. And that's being nice about it.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
"What evidence do you offer about pre-evolutionary origins of life? NOTHING, YOU HAVE NOTHING, YOU SIMPLY CHALK IT UP TO RANDOMNESS, CHAOS OR LUCK I GUESS"
Well, What do YOU offer? Science hasn't proven everything yet but that doesn't mean that, automatically, ID is right.
"I believe some form of reasonable Creationism/ID Theory can also be regarded as valid hypothesis alongside of Evolution and until its disproven, ID is a theory."
It can be a theory, but not a scientific one, as it is not based on evidence, reason, makes no predictions, and it's not falsifiable/testable.
OK, I'm only going to say this once (or at least this one last time):
...kind of like this comment.
Shut up. Seriously. No matter what your conviction is about religion, science, or politics, do everyone a favor and just keep your opinion about it to yourselves. If you're hoping that an acrid little reply on a comment thread will somehow assuage the masses of idiots, you fail to see that you're just one of them contributing to the noise and the petty bickering.
Move along now...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Any example of how scientists "had it wrong" at one point in history implicitly provides support for the power of science to get things right. By citing such examples you are attempting to illustrate the failings of science by appealing to more accurate scientific knowledge--a logical contradiction. If science fails so easily, how has it produced the successes that illustrates the failure?
The power of science is not that scientists are individually superior humans. They are obviously subject to the same failings as anyone else. The power of science is that the system of group organization compensates and corrects over time for the failings of the individuals. Thus today we know that orbits are elliptical.
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.
ideas are dangerous to closed minds.
However, an open mind is no reason not to properly categorize things.
The question of what is versus what isn't science is one of philosophy. Science requires certain underlying philosophical assumptions; the question of what assumptions should be used is fair to debate... but is NOT a scientific question.
Assumptions of basic Boolean logical and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory axioms are exceptionally uncontroversial in philosophy. They allow for construction of most of the familiar mathematics geeks play with. If you make the assumption of the Strong Church-Turing Universe Thesis to bound complexity, you can derive (or, being sensible, read the papers where Wallace/Dowe and Vitanyi/Li derived) a formal relationship between "Minimum Description Length Induction, Bayesianism and Kolmogorov Complexity", which allows for a rigorous definition of science as competitive testing for a very formal sense of "simplest descriptive explanation for all the evidence". And, no, "God Diddit!" doesn't win, because it's insufficiently descriptive of the evidence under the formal criteria.
As such, Intelligent Design becomes a candidate hypothesis rejected because it does not descriptively explain the evidence anywhere near as concisely as Evolution. Intelligent Design is not science, any more than the idea of the Luminiferous Ether is. Perhaps the Search for Intelligent Design might remain a scientific pursuit (as SETI is), but to do so it must admit that it has failed even more miserably than SETI.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
... which is of course entirely psychological. For me personally, it is hard to put myself into that place, because it is very easy for me to have a couple of unanswered questions and definitely easier than make up some fairy tale stuff about humanoid god-things that did it all.
;)
But there is obviously some kind of gene in us all that is hard to impossible to overcome with ratio. And it probably works in the way how you described.
But then, people firmly believe in zodiacs and bad omens and homoepathy and alien abductions, so why should we be surprised?
Crap, Greeks knew the Earth was round and could measure its circumference to within 10% (Eratosthenes). Scientists kept this knowledge alive, or tried to, unlike the Christians who liked to burn down libraries and people for that matter. There's a reason why the Christian dominated times were called The Dark Ages. It's the Bible where we get the phrase four corners of the Earth. I love how ignorant of history fundamentalists are. Or are you just stupid?
Evolution says that the diversity of species came about gradually over billions of years.
That Man came to his/her current form by way of natural selection.
These are contradictory assertions. I'd be very interested in which book, chapter and verse says that the world is 10,000 years old. My understanding is that you can calculate it using the information provided.
http://www.albatrus.org/english/theology/creation/biblical_age_earth.htm
Not that I really give a crap.
who gives a hoot what a book like that says?
how many glaring, even shockingly incorrect statements can a book contain before people will stop referencing it?
First, let me say that I have not seen the movie, but since this whole discussion has turned into more about evolution vs creationism, I will take the bait. Despite not having seen the movie, one thing that I think it may try to address is not that sciences theory is wrong, but too narrow-minded. Evolution may be part of the formula, and so also might creationism. Science, supposing to be unbiased and neutral, seems to me to not be looking at any other possibilities and to only want to test a singe theory until they can prove it. Warning: a bit long-winded, but interesting read ahead. My personal believes don't prevent me from being open to new ideas, and just recently a friend has opened my eyes to some other possibilities. I looked up and did some very light research into what he was saying, and I find it very intriguing. He was telling me about the oldest civilizations, generally considered to be sumer, aka the Sumerian's, and what they believed in regards to creationism and religion. Seeing as it was one of the oldest religions, there is a lot to be learned from the study of it. They spoke of Annunaki, strange creature-gods who mad man to serve them. The Sumerian's also have been believed by some to have known details about the solar system that science didn't discover till much later. This is also one place where the infamous 12th planet,"Planet X" theories come from, a scroll cylinder that had a depiction of the solar system with 12 planets in the orbit of the sun. Annunaki, translated means "Those who from heaven to earth came." I find this interesting, because the bible talks about nephilim,(which also means those who from heaven to earth came) or giants, the offspring of angels. Anyway, getting a bit long winded, but to sum it up, there are plenty of people that believe that these "Gods" in Sumer, and these "sons of angels" in the bible, and the "gods" who created man in the mayan myths, may actually be.. gasp...aliens. Assuming there is another race in the universe that is extremely technologically advanced, it is possible that they have such mastery of DNA and such to "create" humans. Sounds far fetched I know, but it is just one example of the many alternative theories that I'm sure exist to creationism and evolutionism that both scientists and religious people seem to cast to the side. Regardless, I think the point of the movie should not be that one is right and one is wrong, but how close minded both theories can be.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
... is the closing of minds Then you must really be offended by this movie, since its whole purpose is to keep True Believers from considering evolution on the basis of its evidential merits. ideas are dangerous to closed minds. Yeah, that's why the backers of this movie tried to keep anyone but creationists from reviewing it before its release. 80 years ago the "establishment" was opposed to teaching the theory of evolution - now the "establishment" doesn't want to discuss the possibility that evolution is "bad" science. You can discuss the possibility all you want. But it's a meaningless discussion unless you bring along some evidence to support the idea that it is. I also like the fact that the "enlightened pro-evolution" people are usually the ones resorting to argumentum ad hominem... "Usually"?You wouldn't by chance be able to support that claim, would you? There's no denying that internet discussions are rife with ad hominems from people on all sides of all arguments, but can you honestly say that "evolutionists" are worse about it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
actually some time in the 6th century bc some nice men in robes in greece measured the world to with in a few hundred miles of its actual circumference, and they knew and proved the world is round. that whole flat earth thing was will full ignorance foisted upon the people by a overbearing church.
2) Be able to explain things that evolution can not,
3) Be able to use this theory to predict how species do evolve and use this knowledge in the medical and pharmaceutical industry, that evolution never could, and
4) Use this new found money and wealth to further more research.
Compare this to what really happens:
a) It is the only "scientific theory" that has to be pushed in schools instead of the normal academic means (yeah, people will disagree with you - but every Nobel prize winner had to do it that way),
b) when they had their day in court they couldn't get just a smidgen of evidence to show that it *was* a science (you didn't have to prove it was even a good scientific theory), but you failed at such a simple task,
c) You still never show why ID is better than evolution; you never show something that ID can predict that evolution can not; you never demonstrate a new drug or cure using ID that evolution can not, and
d) ID has everything to do with power struggles (like the Reformation all over again) and conspiracy theory (the Wedge document); you lie, cheat and steal and then complain why people don't give you equal time.
In other words, you cry like spoilt children who actually have to spend a day doing real work but instead you put on a fake smile and say "all we want is a debate": but *every* *single* *one* of your points are refuted by the present scientific knowledge, yet, you cover you eyes and ears and still scream like a spoilt teenager.
Rant over.
Let me get this first bit out of the way. I love science, and evolution works - heck, without an evolutionary nothing in my field of study (biology) makes any sense at all. So yeah, I'm biased. But I still would like to share my views on intelligent design, so I quit lurking as AC and made an account for this post.
Anyway, let's talk about irreducible complexity. These are supposed phenomena that have occurred in science (biology in these cases) that have caused some folks to say, "Well, I can't possibly imagine how that would have come about through evolution, so this must disprove evolution - Aha! A creator!" Time and time again such "irreducibly complex" structures have arisen (and later been reduced), so that most arguments now center around the difficulty evolution would have making the first cells. I mean that's it, we have mountains of evidence for evolution in everything else, so ID boils down to observing tiny, marvelously complex things and using those observations to support a Designer.
It's been discussed here already that such a stance on a discovery would necessarily end further inquiry, and as such is particularly detrimental to scientific investigation, but what does it say about the Designer? To me, this results in what I call a small god. So you believe in an all-powerful creator who set in motion the cosmos and caused the Earth to produce life, but early on this Designer got careless or lazy, and fudged a few of the details. How is that an attractive idea? You've got a Designer who set up the universe flawlessly - except for a little bit where his evolutionary process couldn't quite cut it making I don't know, flagella or something*, so he just stuck it in there himself and called it a day. I'd much rather believe in a creator who actually made everything run smoothly on its own, who had so much foresight and cleverness that all he had to do was configure an infinitely small point of matter properly, such that it exploded into the wonderful universe we have today. To me, this is a much more attractive, larger god than the one that produces irreducible complexities. And who knows, maybe the Big Bang itself isn't irreducibly complex, as I've represented it. But the point is that we won't know if we dismiss things as irreducible and preclude scientific inquiry.
Along with the lack of qualities that describe a good scientific theory, this small-minded approach lies at the heart of my problem with ID. Just because we know how the Earth works doesn't make it any less amazing - in fact, I would argue that it makes it even more impressive. I know how plate tectonics creates mountains, but mountains are still beautiful to behold, and I feel the same way about the infinite complexity of life.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Fossils aren't just dated with carbon dating. Fossils are dated with many different, independent methods which all agree to within some known error margin.
If you're actually interested in learning about evolution I suggest you browse through the Talk Origins site. They already have answers for all your questions.
Well, that's nice and all, but it's generally not conducive to rational thought to start out with preconceived ideas. Besides, there are senses in which humans are very different from most animals.
HAND.
I met Ben Stein once - riding up an elevator in Manhattan. Had I known he was going to produce a movie like this, I would have kicked him in the shins right then and there. As it was, we chatted and there was no kicking.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Intelligent Design hasn't produced anything even remotely approaching a "very, very solid study".
The Templeton Foundation doesn't even touch the Intelligent Design people.
Intelligent Design is a political movement founded in religious belief. Anything that presents it as doing anything but donning the trappings of science is a lie, pure and simple.
Dude - gotta come out against you on this one. Einstein had to pass tests on Newtonian physics, as did Schrodinger. If you've got a radical idea that overturns conventional logic, then by all means, "lie" on the tests - or mentally preface them with "According to current theories...". I personally don't believe everything I was taught in physics classes, but would never have been so arrogant as to push my own pet theories in a test environment.
And if someone is capable of pursuing mainstream science, while looking for validation of their own theories in their spare time (or funded by someone they've managed to convince), then that *is* science.
Bottom line, I guess: less science education is *not* the answer to a lack of science education.
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#2 is actually telling because it demonstrates the logical fallacy ID proponents are depending on.
There is no evolution/ID binary necessity. If evolution is wrong, that does not make ID right. Thats exactly what ID proponents are depending on... they create false 'problems' with evolution and then essentially say "we're the only other game in town."
Alas, they can't! You know, the whole "first, do no harm" thing
HAND.
I have a degree in macrobiology and I don't recall much of anyone with scientific credibility arguing that microevolution and macroevolution are "the same thing." What evolution science does postulate, however, is that microevolution and macroevolution are inextricably linked together, in that macroevolution is the theoretical cumulative result of microevolution in a population on a massive timescale. The only way this is falsifiable is to wait thousands upon thousands of years while generations of scientists make very careful observations of populations. We have time. That is of course a work in progress, but the field of scientific research is still far younger than the history it's studying, and what has been observed in realtime thus far is barely a blip on the timescale it's making observations about.
The difference in degrees of falsifiability, though, which is what this boils down to, is that evolutionary theory is THEORETICALLY falsifiable, as I outline above. Intelligent Design/"Relabelled Creationist Nonsense" or the other imaginative theories lurking in the wings are utterly unfalsifiable theories. It's not just that they're unpractical, yet possible, to falsify from a theoretical standpoint, they're not even in the same ballpark. This is the standpoint these theories are mocked from, since they will never be falsifiable and they'll never change. It's simply not possible to prove that God (I'm not keen on humoring the pretenses that ID advocates harbor that they're being objective by not pinning-down a specific deity by using the term "designer") didn't create everything. Until a Creationist or objective scientist proposes a theory that's remotely falsifiable, they're going to be mocked when attempting to play the game of science, AND RIGHTLY SO.
... and I'll just mention that Behe(!) testified under oath during the Dover trial that relaxing scientific inquiry such that ID could be admitted would also make astrology admissible as a scientific theory.
HAND.
Rubbish. All the people you mention learnt the existing theories extensively and then began to overturn them. Newton studied and understood the physics of his day (such as it was) and obtained his degree before he began the work he is now famous for. Einstein was well aware of the aether, and only overturned it because experimental evidence 20 years prior had shown aether to be nonsense. Schroedinger developed the ideas of quantum theory to fill in the theoretical gap left by the Bohr atom, and had to draw on his knowledge of both that and classical wave theory to do it. Simply put, you cannot extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge without first being understanding all that knowledge.
None of them intentionally lied in order to attack the scientific and educational institutions from within. How dare you compare these great men to creationists? Part of the comment you just made suggests you may be one of them yourself. Can I ask how old you think the Earth is? The Universe?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
$urely you don't mean to impugn the hone$ty and integrity of the fine people who brought u$ Watergate?
Think of all the good the Nixon Admini$tratuion has brought u$:
(1) Ethic$ exam$ for law $tudents.
(2) Jerry Ford'$ Pardon.
(3) Ronald Reagan'$ pardon$.
(4) GHWBu$h'$ pardon$.
Rummy, Cheney and a $hitload of other retred$ from the Ford Admini$tration.
At lea$t we can be happy that Ben $tein didn't continue his political career!
It must be exhausting for creationists to have to fight against the geologists, astronomers, physicists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, and paleontologists and who are all deluded by "evidence" in their respective fields that the Earth is really old.
No school teaches a biology class or unit called "Darwinism." No scientist identifies themselves as a "Darwinist." You cannot get a degree in Darwinism or publish a paper on Darwinism or read The Journal of Darwinism.
It is a language construction by those who seek to promote their own ideology, typically a fundamentalist religious ideology. They give it a religion-like name so that they can promote the same arguments against it that are promoted against religions. It's the mirror to the ID strategy, which gives the religious doctrine of creationism a veneer of scientific language so that it can be promoted with scientific-sounding arguments. In either case they seek to twist the language to obscure real differences.
You're right that a doctor does not need to be an expert in biological taxonomy to treat the flu. But where you are wrong is in thinking that these are unrelated fields of study. When in fact, both are based on the exact same theory--the modern theory of genetic evolution. This is one of its most powerful proofs actually: the same theory can help improve understanding of both speciation AND the treatment of disease.
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.
The three "expelled" people presented in the movie -- these are the worst stories the filmmakers could find -- involved a professor who failed to get tenure because he wasn't good enough, a woman who had her contract run out and didn't have it renewed, and them someone who said he was "fired" from the Smithsonian, despite actually being an unpaid research assistant whose term ran out.
But that's even better. That's exactly what's needed. See these people were expelled. He didn't get tenure not because he wasn't good enough, just that those judging him didn't find his topic worthwhile. The other two are even better there you could say that they did something that the community would displease of, but instead of being fired, their contracts just renewed when they came up next. That's so much better.
I'm surprised that tenure still exists and that all professors/scientists aren't on yearly contracts. You say or do something that your bosses don't like and you won't be fired; your contract will just not be renewed next year because you weren't performing up to par. For bonus points add in monthly performance reviews that are mostly negative and if that employee ever has others look into then it looks like they deserved to be fired, but were allowed to continue out their term instead of being fired.
*insert nice sensible evolution discussion here*
"Bah, I don't beleive in any of that nonsense!"
"Why's that?"
"I beleive God created everything"
"Well sorry but we're having a strictly scientific discussion where deities are not involved, but those guys over there are discussing philosophy and that bunch over there is discussing theology, maybe you should take your discussion to them..."
"HOW DARE YOU deny the existence of my God!!! WAAH YOU SHOW RESPECT FOR MY BELIEFS AND ACKNOWLEDGE MY DEITY IN YOUR DISCUSSION RIGHT NOWWWW!!!"
"Say what now?!?!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Richard Dawkin's " Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda" is relevant.
The creationism / evolution debate has been done many times here on Slashdot. There'll be comments making one or more of the hundreds of old and refuted creationist arguments(1). It's possible that a couple of comments will use arguments even the Answers in Genesis creationist group says not to use(2). Someone will say there's no evidence for Macroevolution and someone else will point out 29 plus evidences for Macroevolution(3).
The point of Expelled is to make people think they've learned about the creation / ID / evolution debate, but to feel that Darwin= Holocaust. Note how they interview scientists of all sorts, but they don't interview academics who cover antisemitism in pre-20th century Europe. Even one hint or reminder that, say, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 would ruin the Darwin -->Holocaust propoganda.
----------
(1) "evolution requires faith," "Piltdown," "Midocean magnetic anomalies are not reversals"...
(2) "there are no beneficial mutations," "no new species have ever been produced"...
(3) Even if there were no fossils, how to explain how biochemistry matches phylogeny? It's one thing to claim the designer re-uses code to explain similarity, but why would a designer reuse broken code?
Doesn't academic freedom imply freedom from interlopers? I think the interlopers should, by all rights, be able to set up their own academic field. But forcing those in an existing field to accept doctrine that fails the standards established for that field, just to get a free ride on its coattails, isn't freedom. It's anarchy.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
...it means what you think it means.
A scientific theory is falsifiable. That is, there is a possibility that the hypothesis can be conclusively proven to be untrue (and a negative cannot be proven, and is thus unfalsifiable). There are no alternative theories to macroevolution that have a shred of supporting evidence or are conceivably falsifiable. Macroevolutionary theory is at least theoretically falsifiable, which makes it THE theory.
Everything else is just an unsubstantiated hypothesis. Here are some of the alternatives:
Non-scientific, unfalsifiable hypotheses don't belong in science classes, period. It's not fair to present them on the same footing as an actual theory, and it's not fair to waste time tearing them up in the scientific arena. It's like in the movie where Indiana Jones brought a gun to a swordfight. Or the Egyptian thug brought a sword to a gunfight.
That is why it is WRONG to teach these hypotheses in a science class-- either the unsubstantiated, unfalsifiable hypothesis will be ridiculed and trashed by a zealous science instructor, or non-science will be elevated in status to real science. Either way, a student is done a disservice, either by having his/her religious believes thrashed, or by not being taught credible science. That is the point you missed from the satirical post you responded to. Science has at least theoretically falsifiable theories for the absurd alternatives suggested, which Christians have believed in the past, and some continue to believe (i.e., that illnesses are caused by demons and cured by praying, and that natural phenomena are the result of benevolence or malevolence of gods). It's just that science, aided by Occam's Razor, has all-but eliminated the superstitious and fantastic explanations for most natural phenomena. We don't teach alternatives to those theories.
And if you don't understand what the implications of what I'm saying are, I challenge you to prove that the "God Germs" hypothesis is false. (Hint: you can't, no matter how foolish it sounds...just like ID.)
That's the scary reality of the situation. When you put what is in one hand and what will happen in the other, often the what will happen influences the what is beyond a point of accurate renditions of what is.
Take the weather channel chick a while back calling to remove any and all AMA certifications from weather reporters who state some anomaly in the weather isn't because of global warming. Sure the certification doesn't remove any credentials he has but it effect the implied accuracy of his forcasts and thereby effect ratings which means he would lose his job. Hence the reason people now think global warming is fact and if it isn't, it is a good idea anyways.
There are quite a few other places where this has been complained about. It seem that attacking someone's livelihood seem to be the choice weapon instead of attacking statements with facts. How anyone can look at that and think it is objective and impartial is beyond me. How anyone can watch this shit and not think a scam is happening explains why people are defrauded all over the world on a daily basis.
Your mistake here is to assume that things cannot evolve with one purpose and then be co-opted to another. Close relations of bacterial flagella proteins have been found in ancestor bacteria and many continue to feature elsewhere in cells found today. Once existing and in use they have been adapted or simply appropriated to this new purpose.
Incredibly unlikely? Maybe. But bacteria had a long time to chance this out. This pattern of development is the very reason why the design of the flagella is so unnecessarily complex: it's a biological botch job. If this is 'intelligent' design, the designer was on crack.
'Irreducible complexity' of a functioning trait and 'numerous, successive, slight modifications' to achieve it are not mutually exclusive.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
"Todays science was yesterdays theory and hypothesis and much of it remained untestable until recently."
The point is that this yesterday's theory was a SCIENTIFIC theory. BTW, it looks like you have no idea of what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is a scientific model of reality, which errors are delimited, supported on evidence and which makes predictions. Darwin's theory is a scientific theory on evolution, evolution is a fact, in the same way that newton's theory on gravity or Einstein's theory on gravity are scientific theories, but gravity is a fact.
"Its not that we lack answers, we dont even know what questions to ask and will not know if science remains so convinced of its own arguments of which much is lacking especially the big one"
You are the stubborn here. You know? you and all creationists are exactly the same kind of people who denies that earth is an sphere and says it is flat. You are a phanatic, a religious zealot, because one thing is to doubt darwin's theory on evolution (which i do, because there are new and perfected theories on evolution), but what you cannot doubt is the fact: EVOLUTION.
Creationists = people who believe earth is flat, when it's a proven fact that it's not.
Yawn... This comment is full of scientific inaccuracies; vampires don't even HAVE reflections!
I actually believe in creationism and evolution. And I will explain why. I do believe that God did create everything around us, and I believe that he set the stage for everything to evolve.
The bible states that God created everything in six days and resting on the seventh. So answer me this one question? How long is a day to God?
I know for a fact that I do not know and I am almost sure that no one else does either. Dr Steven Hawkins and Dr Albert Einstein may have had a clue, but I know I do not.
I accept God created everything because who could not believe in a higher being than us when you see your newborn child for the first time, or the Earth in its beauty from outer space?
I agree with Ben Stein on a lot of subjects and I believe that everyone is entitled to believe what they want as long as it does not hurt or harm anyone else.May your higher being watch over you. I believe my God does.
I do not consider myself a "religious freak" either. I've been in trouble with the law and I have a cruel streak. I do not consider myself perfect. But I respect other opinions. I ask that you respect mine.
EXACTLY! Steins' approach is tangential, which is particularly effective for propaganda purposes. And, amazingly enough, Stein happens to be a career propagandist!
One thing I've had trouble doing with Creationists is convincing them that just because they can pull some random, unquantified, and untested potential causes of error in scientific methods out to raise doubts about a scientific method not only doesn't disprove the particular method, but it also wouldn't support Creationism if it somehow did manage to do so.
For example, take my discussion with a Young-Earth Creationist a year or so ago. I described dating methods. She attempted to foster doubts about radiocarbon dating by talking about how "there could've been different concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past" and about K-Ar igneous rock dating with something nearly as spurious. For the sake of diligence, I looked up these doubt hypotheses myself, most hits were to Creationist websites and not detailed. I then asked her to elaborate on these hypotheses, to be specific on the margin of error these doubts could potentially introduce. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't able to put-up so she wound up shutting-up.
"What would the concentration of carbon compounds in the atmosphere have to be in order to change a date from on the scale of tens of thousands of years, to fewer than 5,000 years, and what mechanism would you propose that would account for this sort of change?"
"Is the potential flaw in the K-Ar dating method substantial enough to cause an igneous rock that solidified less than 5,000 years ago to appear to have solidified hundreds of thousands of years ago based on isotope ratios?"
The moral: you want to object to a scientific method, you'd better have thought about the method and magnitude of the sources of error you're trying to convince scientists of; it's not like faith, where the mere shadow of doubt is catastrophic. Doubts must be quantified and their implications analyzed before any meaningful damage is done to a theory.
Ben Stein wins at propaganda, but fails at science.
A. "Science can not demonstrate that science is important, that we ought to teach it in our schools, or that is better than religion. If you believe any of the aforementioned, please realize that these are your beliefs. And if you fervently, even zealously, endeavor to defend, proselytize or promulgate these beliefs- you are a RELIGIOUS person."
CA610. Evolution Religious "Consider some attributes of religion and how evolution compares..."
B. "ID is not open for debate in the scientific community...why not debate the ID folks and send them to an early grave"
CI401. The methodology of science rules out even considering design.
C. "the THEORY of Evolution is a theory because it's not been proven. If there was a mountain of evidence, as some idiot put it in his comment, it'd no longer be a theory."
CA201. Evolution is only a theory.
CA202. Evolution has not been proved
D. "Seriously people, Ben Stein is doing a service to the scientific community by encouraging critical thinking and making people challenge the status quo."
CA000--CJ533. Do you know how old and tired these challenges are? How worn out but still repeated, over and over they are? The creationist claims are status quo. The scientists' replies change. 50 years ago the creationists would say "Why, Darwinists say Man is like a Mouse, but look, Man is closer to a Cabbage and so Evolution is wrong," and scientists had to go into an extended lecture about comparing molecules. Now, when creationists claim the same thing, scientists can simply say "Go online. Here is the human genome. Here is the ape genome. Here is the mouse genome. Here is the rice genome. Now, what was that again?"
E. "So far, I have yet to see any convincing arguments that mutation can produce innovative changes."
One of the 'Even a major creationist group says not to use this argument' arguments. Or if you're saying that while the mutations are positive, they don't create something new...
CB101.2 with a list of mutations that caused new features.
And that's just from the last couple of hundred comments.
You need to know Stein's background to see what he's after. Although a conservative, he's also an exceedingly intelligent iconoclast aiming to reveal problem behavior where it's typically not admitted.
His purpose in Expelled is not to promote creationism, either in and of itself or in comparison to evolution. His intention is to point out that SOME OF the scientific community is participating in the same sort of hair-on-fire hysteria as the most vocal creationists. While the latter are widely know and fairly expected to employ this as a tactic, or just emotionalism, the scientific community "should" be above it, but isn't.
He rightly shows that the "evolution/creationist debate" isn't. He shows that it is instead a construct. Creationists claim it in order to put their ideas on equal footing with science, and science unwittingly helps them when some of its members react to what they expect rather than what's actually being said. His movie is a case study in precisely this, both within itself and as a social phenomenon, and you can bet your ass this is exactly what he intended.
It's easy to poke holes in the highly vocal creationists' stance, and quite popular to do so. It's more difficult to poke holes in their scientific counterparts, and supremely unpopular if you assume his intention is to promote creationism. Promoting creationism is his tool, exposing intellectual bigotry is his intention, and before the movie even premiers, he is succeeding admirably.
If one isn't convinced, consider the fact that he's targeting only those that overreact to the situation. For the most part both religious and scientific adherents (and those who hold to both) coexist and even discuss their viewpoints without any acrimony or "debate". They see no contradiction because the two thought systems are orthagonal -- entirely independent and incomparable. It's those in science who can't grasp this due to perceived peer pressure or fear that overreact and so unwittingly lend credence to that which they oppose by the sheer act of opposing it.
And keep in mind that although the movie pokes at one side, that doesn't mean he considers the other side to be right. He's going after the one target too few have the balls to attack. My money says that when it's died down, he'll make a statement that he has no intention of supporting creationism, only that he intended to do what I've described above.
The movie is a masterful piece of agitprop (agitating propoganda). It gets its targets to react wildly to it as though it were their traditional perceived enemy, while its true intent to show that those targets are themselves reacting wildly when they, as the supposed intellectuals, should be reacting with due consideration, if at all. And at this point it doesn't matter if the movie even comes out; it's already done exactly what Stein wants it to.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I enjoyed his TV shows, and I didn't have a huge problem with him being a speech writer for Nixon. More than enjoying his shows, I respected his intelligence and would have loved an opportunity to meet him.
Then I started seeing his NeoCon affiliation and his support for Bush policies that I don't agree with or support.
Sorry, Ben, it's over and I won't be seeing your movie. You're more than entitled to your political opinions, but I am not required to like them or support you.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I want to see this movie for the purposes of entertainment based on stupidity value, and to be able to retort to my friends and family who will inevitably bring it up, but I'm hesitate to give money to a twit such as Stein by seeing it in theaters. Does anyone know where I can (in order of preference) stream, download, or torrent this film?
If man descended from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes? --George Carlin
Heh - you've accused the wrong guy. My disagreements are more with the particle physics side of things, and I'm well aware that I haven't had enough schooling to take on established theories.
:) - doesn't mean we should close the door to people willing to examine the evidence.
But let's say I did go back to school to gain that knowledge. Should I answer all of the questions on tests as if my theory were right and the established ones were wrong? No. As you said - I have to first understand existing theories if I want to be taken seriously when challenging them.
The same rules apply to creationists. If they want to take on established theories, they shouldn't be shunted out of schools just because they do not already hold the view that what they're learning is correct. The privilege of learning the details of a subject in order to challenge it should be open to *everyone*. You seem to want to shut the door on the people who need to learn *the most*.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to shut the door of science to those who are unwilling or unable to actually perform science. But it's a pie-in-the-sky idea. There is no way of telling who is unwilling/unable, and who is simply ignorant and in need of education. And educating the ignorant is far more valuable than cultivating a "pure" academic environment.
Further, if we start allowing people to be dismissed for beliefs they hold, it opens the door for all sorts of abuse.
Finally, science is supposed to be impersonal. It doesn't matter who says something, or what beliefs they hold. What matters is what they put down on paper, and whether it passes the basic test of "is this reasonable?". If a creationist who believes the earth is 6k years old can show that in certain circumstances, carbon dating is off by X%, what does it matter that he's a creationist? If the numbers are right, they're right.
Don't confuse this with supporting anyone pushing a creationist agenda. I've seen a lot of creationists with what I can only describe a contempt for science, ignoring those findings which do not match their expectations. But just because there are a few bad apples (80 or 90 percent
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On one side we've got a bunch of scientists - who's philosophy espouses striving for neutrality, lack of bias, objectivity, etc.
:-)
That statement is as mythological as any found in a religious text.
Scientists are biased too. The scientist who discovered the big bang theory was a Roman Catholic priest and some scientists rejected his theory because he was a priest and the theory sounded too much like genesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
Furthermore, it is naive to think that science is devoid of politics. If scientists are dependent upon politicians for money then science will be politicized.
Acting like that is just childish. If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence.
Except time, of course. If you spent time carefully dealing with all half-baked claims that pop up (many of which make the same errors) you'll waste all your time. Rejecting a claim that's too similar to a previously refuted claim is a way to save time.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
But you don't really illustrate the point - the OP was talking about scientists, and you illustrated the point with a story about a journalist and an environmental activist.
I'll assist him. The big bang theory was initially rejected by some scientists because it was offered by a Roman Catholic priest and sounded too much like genesis.
One. scientists are human and subject to human biases. Two, scientists are dependent upon others and must serve those masters, if scientists are dependent upon politicians for money then politics will influence science to some degree. It is naive to expect otherwise. Three, there are few facts in science. Theories are merely our best current approximation/explanation and are limited by our current understanding. It is therefore quite legitimate and proper to question political sacred cows and investigate such questions as: is global warming predominantly a result of human action?
"plans to encourage people to speak out if they believe intelligent design or creationism to be correct."
Let's stop and think about this for a minute. Why should joe average speak out about what he BELIEVES? Does it really matter and should it influence policy or ultimately, science??
Let's look at it this way: Say NASA is planning to launch a manned rocket somewhere. We don't know how gravity works, but we have lots of theories around it based on what we can measure and extrapolate from this. Now, we could hit up the average joe and joan on the street and get some sort of "what do YOU believe the trajectory should be" to get this rocket into space safely, but we don't. And the average J would agree that it's best to leave that kind of stuff to the scientists who know what the fuck they are doing!
This idiotic evolution controversy is the same damn thing. Fuck the bible, trust the scientists and let them do their damn jobs!!!!
"God did it" is easy to express in our language but I can't think of any sufficiently accurate descriptions of how God did it or how God works.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Get your panties in a bunch because someone threatened your narrow views?
You're as much a joke as the religious zealots.
I'm going to quote my original post for you:
"You all might want to start reading something before just taking sides without information because you like or dislike something you hear. Start reading or STFU about it, seriously."
Alright, the theory of evolution has been proven then, ey? Wow, I thought I would have heard that on the news. Where's your sources?
While we're at it, has the theory of gravity or relativity been proven now too?
The weather ain't deterministic, at least not to modern physics. Some processes like radioactive decay are truly random. Those processes are injecting unpredictable little bits of energy into the weather system. Due to the sensitivity to initial conditions, those little bits can cause drastic change.
I've noticed Florida seems to enjoy destroying education (Besides being the residence of Jack Thompson, I heard they wanted teachers to be able to substitute their own beliefs for the scientific facts behind evolution). Maybe this movie will become a mandatory film to show in Florida high schools?
Given that, at the time, none of them knew of the theory of evolution, I think it's safe to give them a pass.
On the other hand, if Pasteur were alive today, working in biology, and claimed that creationism was the source of all diversity on earth, then damn right he should be fired. And the same goes for the rest of them.
ive read "darwins black box" by michael behe. its a fascinating book that presents, in an apparently scientifically honest manner, some problems in evolutionary biochemistry that the author says are not addressed by any of the research in this field. the ability for our blood clotting mechanism to evolve from a simpler form is questioned with some intelligence. the problem, if i may summarize, is this: there appear to be some holes in the fabric of evolutionary theory which may not be explainable by the current theory. the idea of a conscious, intelligent designer (not necessarily "god" but definitely something many orders of intelligence beyond our own) may help to explain these holes.
i am not as interested in the debate about whether creationists are trying to use scientific language to infiltrate their religious dogma. yes, they exist. for me, the question is: can such a theory of intelligent design be proven, or be falsifiable, and if not, what class of idea is it?
i would say the idea is similar to the Gaia hypothesis, by james lovelock, where he proposes that the biosphere can be viewed as a single living entity, self regulating, that maintains optimal conditions for life. can this be proved? doubtful, but the search for evidence to support it may lead to new discoveries. its more of a paradigm shift.
also, the history of combining science and theology has some very bright spots. pierre teilhard de chardin, a jesuit priest, tried to combine christian cosmology with scientific evidence, and his books, including "phenomenon of man" are full of interesting ideas of the nature of evolution. are we moving towards an Omega point? is there purpose hidden within evolution? again, this may not be provable or falsifiable, but it creates a new way of thinking, which may be necessary as we try to incorporate our own personal experiences of the divine (entheogens, anyone?) with our scientific training.
we may be at a genuinely new, or novel, point in our thinking. old ways of thought (materialism, scientific rationalism, religious fanaticism, mysticism) may have reached their end of life. people married to rigid ways of thinking will overstate their case, deny truth in others views, to bolster their false sense of security. can we truly have any security in this world? are we not challenged every day to consider alternatives to our own well entrenched thought patterns? i know i am. its exhausting, but also exhilarating. and i dont see any slowdown.
of course, im probably just insane. after all, dec 21 2012 is just around the corner, and the I ching told me that the king wen sequence has personal meaning to me by giving me the 3rd hexagram back as an answer to my question "does the king wen sequence have any relevance to me, and should i be worrying about these big issues at all?" the third hexagram is the key to king wen, as the first two are logical beginnings to any ordering of the i ching, while the third doesnt appear to have any logic. see terrance mckennas books for more on this.
hope this was entertaining.
You hear about the person who didn't rely on anecdotal evidence to support his belief system?
You're confused on terminology.
"theory" means one thing in the everyday english language, has a seperate formal meaning in science and yet another in math.
A mathematical theory can be either be proven or falsified (or even provably unknowable) or merely hypothesized.
A scientific theory can never be proved, only falsified.
The "theory" of evolution doesn't need to be proved because it isn't, nor ever was, a theory other than in the sloppy english sense. It is just a consequence of natural selection acting upon hereditory traits, which is precisely what Darwin's insight was.
They've made their case, and their arguments don't stand scrutiny. I'm not wasting any more time on this than I do on any other conspiracy theorist barking insanities in the street. That's not the same as a free pass; they're just not worth wasting energy on.
I know most people aren't overly smart about most things (and I'm including myself in that), but we're not entirely stupid.
Warning: May contain nuts
Actually, the turtles hypothesis is more valid (from a scientific perspective) than Creationism. You see, you could launch satellites, confirm the spherical nature of the planet, and observe there is no turtle anywhere in sight - the theory is falsifiable.
Not so with creationism or its equally dubious cousin intelligent design. There is no way to demonstrate them to be false, making them deficient.
Yeah evil scientists and their philosophy plot to take over the world. Could you please give me a referal where anybody claims "philosophy is science"? A google search for such thing gives quite unrelated results.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
link
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Why, if god created us as his ultimate bmw, are our bodies so not-elegant? anybody who saw the real version of the inner life of a cell ( http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/ ) can see how much complexity lies inside us. why is our chest made from an element that's not the most resistant element in the universe? im sure that prosthetic limbs are now getting better (more resistant, etc) than our usual limbs so how can we get 'better' at doing some parts of our bodies if god created us? most of our bodily processes are not straightforward? of course we are very efficient at doing what we do, but the same effectiveness can be achieved by other, more straightforward, methods. [/newline] and how strange it is indeed that most animals survive better on the enviroments they are found and have a hard time on other places.. of course for evolution theory this questions can be answered in one line, i would like to see such elegant explanation to these and many other questions with ID. Please post more questions that fail to be explained by ID, and of course, saying 'god is all-knowing' is not an explanation by ID.
Evolution implies a number of consequences for which evidence can be gathered. For example, an understanding of how DNA is replicated across offspring has led to implications regarding how DNA should appear across various primate species based upon lineages previously established through the fossil record. Thus far, the patterns expected have been observed.
Your suggestion that the theory of evolution is merely "speculation" is not accurate, and it suggests that you do not actually understand the theory.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
They're continued iconic use of artist illustrations of evolution of man from ape to homo sapien. Even after a fair number of list were proven to be frauds or at best honest but foolish mistakes.
Please provide specific examples.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
A scientific theory is a possible explanation based on observation. The only problem is that the explanation covers more years than we'll ever exist. So we have small clues that lead us towards believing one thing or another but the truth is that it's believed on faith, not scientific fact. No one can observe whether it's actually true or not.
You can't point me to credible sources that say it's 100% true with evidence because it's not even remotely possible at this point in time. I'm not here to convince people what they believe is true or false though, only to try to get people to read and understand what it is they're even talking about.
There were a few good comments on this article but most of the comments were pure crap coming from uneducated minds that think they're smart. It's a mob mentality and it's one of the reasons I don't visit Slashdot much anymore.
The "free pass" comment was referring to the movie's claim of IDers being "expelled" from academia. A quick skim of the comments showed that most people were taking them at their word -- that academics who professed a belief in ID were being unjustly treated with respect to their academic freedom.
That claim is simply a lie. Not only is it a lie, but people who take the opposite stance and teach biology without mixing in bad theology get much worse treatment.
ummm apparently you didn't perform your reading comprehension when you read my comment. I don't know if yours is even worth replying to... because it's as if you are replying to someone else's comment. But in the event that you are replying to my comment and/or in the event that others may be similarly confused (I think this is what I was referring to in my initial comment, actually) I will reply.
Science can NOT demonstrate that science MATTERS. There- I changed the order of the words. Hope that helps. "Matter-ing" is a matter of faith and belief. This is really not up for dispute. (Unlike the position that children "ought" to be taught science and "ought not" be taught philosophy or religion or meta-physics, for example)
It's been a while since I've seen such a lively discussion... it seems like evolution debates are always popular.....
Ah, what? Generally, we see Intelligent Design balanced against EVOLUTION. Can you explain how you took that to refer to homosexuality? Do you need to go back on your lithium? Is there something you feel the need to discuss with all of us?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
A scientific theory is a possible explanation based on observation.
Yes, but you are not listening. Evolution is not a scientific theory - it is simple logic like (A > B) && (B > C) => A > C.
If two individuals P and Q have children, but P has more children than Q, then in the children's generation there will be a greater percentage of P's genetics than Q's, agreed? Would you call that a sciwntific theory, or accept it as just plain logic?
That is all there is to evolution at the core - the fitter genes are more represented in each successive generation.
The HISTORY of evolution is what you are referring to - exactly how did it play out over the last millions/whatever of years? That's an interesting question, and one we know quite a lot about, but it's also an entirely different question that "do species evolve due to natural selection acting upon hereditory traits", to which the only answer can be "yes - it's unavavoidable".
I did several posts up.
Of couse its only a book, because the scientific journals wouldn't accept it.
That being said, Behe has not managed to respond substantively to some very basic critiques of his idea (above and beyond the fact that it's clearly just the same god-in-the-gaps that has been applied to just about everything else until we figured out the answers).
The first is that irreducibility necessarily assumes that to get to a system with N parts, a part is added to a system with N-1 parts. Behe assumes that if we can enumerate all possible systems with N-1 parts, we can show that a destination with N parts is impossible to reach. He ignores the set of systems with N+1 parts entirely. It's like seeing a climber who has climbed himself down into a trap and claiming that he couldn't possibly be here because there was no way to climb *up* into that position.
The second is the simple fact that Behe goes back and forth between two positions, depending on what part of the argument he's addressing. On its face, irreducible complexity amounts to, "If a system is irreducibly complex, then there is no possible path for evolution to produce it." Then, when somebody posits a theoretical path, he immediately moves to, "Sure, but you didn't prove that it did happen that way. It's a just-so story!" completely ignoring the fact that it devastates his original claim that there is no theoretical way for it to get there.
Third, there are good reasons to believe that there is no way to show definitively that a system is irreducibly complex. It simply amounts to, "We haven't figured it out yet." I will gladly concede that Behe is the Isaac Newton of the branch of "We haven't figured it out yet" science, but that doesn't really get you into the journals with any regularity.
Basically, Behe has raised some interesting questions, but they are in no way devastating or even really able to add something meaningful to the body of knowledge, and he hasn't really done anything to flesh out his work. I would be interested in seeing what form his ideas take that he thinks would be novel and publishable, but I doubt that he has made any such thing public. The fact that he's demonstrably not keeping up with the literature or testing his hypothesis is just icing on the cake.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I think we're talking about slightly different things here, Norm. When I said "Theory of Evolution", I was referring to Darwin's Theory. His ideas were based on Macro-evolution. You seem to be talking about Micro-evolution, which according to him, leads to Macro-evolution.
Regardless, though, it's not the ideas I have a problem with it's the armchair mob. Microsoft's evil, Linux rocks, Creationism is for retards, Evolution is fact, etc.
If we're going to talk Micro-evolution then yea, there's proof of that. It's not the entire theory though and it's not what his ideas focused on. It can't be used to prove the rest of his ideas are correct. I'm talking about whole ideas here, not partials. Hell if we were going to do that, Jesus was a real guy right? Well, I could say that proves God exists.
Looking at your user number here, I'd say you've been around Slashdot for awhile. I'm pretty sure, just because of that alone, you know what I'm talking about. No one's perfect but people here need a wake up call IMO.
I don't think it makes sense to distinguish micro and macro evolution - it's just a matter of degree of change.
The key to understanding macro evolution is to realize that the only definition of species that makes sense is based on the ability to interbreed. If two animals can interbreed (and produce healthy young) then they are defined as being the same species, else they are not.
The reason this definition is useful is because if two populations can't interbreed then they can't mix their DNA - they are now on different branches of the evolutionary tree. However if they can still interbreed then however much they may have diverged it's not yet past that point of no return. Note that this definition of species is more stringent than that which has been historically applied which was based at least partly on appearance and habits; e.g. lions and tigers are offially named as seperate species, but since they can interbreed we know those differences are not yet necessarily permanent (they could still re-mix).
Given this stringent definition of species, it is now easy to see how new species get created - it's just a matter of two populations of a single species genetically diverging apart (due to some form of seperation preenting them from much interbreeding while they are still able) until they get past the point of being able to interbreed. Initially the two halves of such a species split will still appear very similar (e.g. horse and donkey - effectively diverged since their offspring - mules - are sterile), but since they have pased that no-turning-back point their DNA can no longer mix and they will almost certainly slowly drift further and further genetically apart.
Note that macro evolution aka speciation, the creation of new species, is (like evolution itself) just a matter of logic. If two populations have drifted apart to the point of inability to interbreed (not that it always happens) then they are simply by definition new species, and will necessarily now form their own branches on the evolutionary tree.
The HISTORY of macro evolution is again a seperate issue. We don't need to know which species branched, and when they did, to accept that occasionally they must do so - there is no force that only allows genetic divergence up to a certain point and not beyond the loss of ability to interbreed. Of course the fossil record, and nowadays gentic sequencing, does in fact let us know an awful lot about the history.
Let's be a bit more clear here.
The "experiment" you propose on the bacteria showing evolution hour-by-hour really probably doesn't do what you think it's doing. What's probably happening is that there is a spectrum of genotypes/phenotypes of bacteria that have varing resistance to the anti-biotics you are contemplating applying to them. What applying the anti-biotics do is kill the ones that are more succeptible thus "selecting" them to breed and use resources in the follow-on generation. The existing geno-types/pheno-types were existing in the population already in the span of hours. Over the course of days or week or months or years, you might develop mutations or horizontal gene transfer in bacteria that can be tested in a selecting environment to experience evolution, but in bacteria, anyhow, you get all sort of non-sexual evolutionary development of pheno-types which are not classically geno-types. These type of mutations that can be selected by evolutionary pressure (also known as natural selection) are unlikely to occur in the span of hours.
It does a disservice to evolutionary scientific theory when these type of explanations are circulated (however well articulated), because they just strengthen the argument that evolution is a flawed theory. The reason evolution appears to be successful in higher animals is specifically because of sexual reproduction slowing the rate of mutation adaptation allowing for better natural selection to occur. In bacteria and viruses, horizontal gene transfer complicates much of the case that proves natural selection and evolution in higher animals and probably just weakens the case for evolution to be believed rather than some weird soviet style biology inheritance (aka lamark or whatever his name was).
Despite the dogma filtered down to the masses, evolution is actually rather an interesting theory that at the same time is subtle and convincing. However presenting it as this over-arching organizational theory that is popular in the layman press really just dillutes the theory (for example, darwinian theory applied to business), which opens it up to crap like ID (who's to say that the guberment isn't designing the successful businesses instead of business being emergent from a natural competition). It may be a bit too subtle to see how generalizing a theory can make it weaker, but I hope this silly example can show you how overarching claims actually detracts from the "real" theory of evolution.
... of course I meant
What applying the anti-biotics do is kill the ones that are more succeptible thus "selecting" the __survivors__ to breed and use resources in the follow-on generation.
That Man came to his/her current form by way of natural selection. There's nothing wrong with the idea of evolution God's tool to create stuff. I've used evolution to create stuff myself, so why can't God? These are contradictory assertions. Only in your interpretation. Not everybody agrees with your interpretation. I'd be very interested in which book, chapter and verse says that the world is 10,000 years old. My understanding is that you can calculate it using the information provided.
http://www.albatrus.org/english/theology/creation/biblical_age_earth.htm But that's really pulling stuff way out of context. Remember that Genesis is not an eye witness account, but a thousand years of oral history written down many centuries after it happened. If you're using it as a detailed history book instead of a book with a message about God, you're completely missing the point. who gives a hoot what a book like that says?
how many glaring, even shockingly incorrect statements can a book contain before people will stop referencing it? The shocking incorrectness is in your interpretation of that book. Why cling desperately to an obviously incorrect interpretation, just to use it as an excuse to throw the actual message away?
I'm not saying the bible is right, I'm just saying your interpretation is so obviously wrong that it's a really lame excuse to hide behind.
"SCIENCE is not about BELIEF" -- bullshit it isn't, it's a construct for understanding implemented by imperfect people; and people with sometimes imperfect information.
Science is about the persuit of truth through observation and testing. Religion is about persuit of truth through being told what the truth is. "Belief" is what parents mean when they say "because" in response to their children's questions of "why?" If science is "belief" then there is no truth. I "believe" that I am a person. I "believe" that there is a car parked in the garage. I can't "know" that there is a car in my garage because I'm not in the garage to observe it. Even if I was looking at it, my senses are flawed, so I have to "believe" them. When you use "belief" as you have, the word has no meaning. Or, more accurately, it has all meanings and everything is "belief." That makes a cute trick for attacking others, but for actually having a discussion makes it pretty much impossible.
Learn to love Alaska
It seems to me that most responses posted here fail to address the central premise of the movie. I think the premise is this: it appears that many scientists have a legitimate fear of losing or have already lost their employment because they are proponents of Intelligent Design, i.e. they have observed that many things in nature appear to be designed.
The central point is not whether:
1. Some things in nature actually are designed.
2. Who or what that designer may be.
3. Evolution may also be responsible for all or part of the formation of the natural world and our universe.
All of these points are ancillary. The film is meant to document the discrimination, fear, and prejudice present in scientific academia. That this point is missed in the forum posts above disheartens me, and I wish I could say that it also surprises me, but it does not. How easily we miss the simple point of something when there are other topics surrounding it that light a fire underneath us. I would hope that we all strongly agree with free speech, tolerance, and choice, regardless of what we may think about the beliefs of those being discriminated against. I will assume we all agree with this statement and will move on to the secondary issues which appear to be the main topic of interest.
I don't believe any Intelligent Design advocate would disagree with evolution (specifically microevolution) as a scientific fact. In fact I know that many ID proponents believe in macroevolution as well. For example Michael Behe, the author of Darwin's Black Box (which is famous for popularizing the premise of ID) is a macroevolutionist.
Many scientists have made the point that apparent design in nature and macroevolution are not always exclusive views. In other words, they feel they have the privilege of observing a world which was formed by the mechanism of evolution and the occasional direct work of some kind of intelligence. In this view, that same intelligence is responsible for designing the process of evolution as well and lets it do the job it was intended to.
Something else that seems to often be misunderstood is the claim that Intelligent Design is the same thing as creationism. I will only note that there are many who believe in ID but disavow conventional creationism, and there are many creationists who disagree with the conclusions of the ID movement (based largely on their belief that the earth is very young). Those who believe that they are the same are only aware of the surface of these subjects, or may simply hope that ID will just as easily meet the same demise that creationism so easily met. Either way they are not in a good position to intelligently criticize ID (or creationism, for that matter.)
Another error that I see many people make is equating ID to what they commonly term "the watchmaker argument". The real argument they are referring to is the classic Teleological Argument, which happened to receive a breath of life from William Paley's watchmaker analogy about 200 years ago. The argument itself, however, was articulated about 1,000 years before Paley by Plato himself and Aristotle after him, and has benefited from a long list of reworkings and clarifications, as well as much criticism. To quote the "watchmaker argument" at all in this context subtely reveals an ignorance of the subject, similar to how a creationist might think Darwin's evolutionary arguments are sole focus of scientific thought. In any case, we should certainly not dismiss ID so abruptly because the "watchmaker" aspect of the Teleological Argument has had popular critics over the years, because ID and the watchmaker argument are not the same. It is a different argument that appears similar to those who have not learned enough about each to be able to understand how they truly differ.
From what I have read, the scientists being discriminated against haven't even made ID part of their curriculum or classroom discussions, though I am
Dawkins.. god, don't get me started. Perhaps someone should refer him to the *sciences* of psychology, history and anthropology, where he would get a perspective on how religion evolved and how intrinsic it is to human nature. His blanket religion-bashing is puerile and worse than pointless. Nowadays, everyone from physicists (sorry, Cosmologists) to economists think they have their finger on the pulse of humanity. It's almost the pot calling out the kettle. It's silly. Sagan knew that religion has its place in the grand scheme of things. Dawkins is not so insightful. It's not Faith we should be worried about, but intolerance.
And there are so many similarities between science and religion. They are both based around a set of accepted "proofs". We say that science doesn't choose its truth, but it does. The current dogma is accepted until proven otherwise. Some scientists rail against their faith - Einstein hated the dice-throwing Quantum theorists, and likely would still be working to "resolve" it today. Similarly, people live their religions differently, choosing how to integrate it into their life and world view. Neither science nor religion *force* us to believe anything - only a culture has that kind of power.
Why do some people of faith believe homosexuality is a sin, or sex outside marriage, while others of the same faith do not? There are various standards of dress, levels of tolerance for others, some attend church, some do not. Someone should conduct a study to measure people's strength in their faith, the happiness and peace it brings, set against the various levels of religious literalism or fervour. I suspect, across the board, those who follow a hard line are by and large less content.
I believe it all comes down to human nature - that is something we cannot ignore. It is very human to have faith, and it is very human to use our brains to solve puzzles - and by doing both or either, so make sense of the world.
It is also very human to make personal choices, and this is the MOST important point of all: We can choose to believe that God made hard rules, and made some people sinful to keep the rest of us on our toes. Or we can choose to believe that God speaks in riddles (hence the constant contradictions in all major religious texts) and gave each of us the ability to work out the difference between Good and Evil for ourselves. Either way it's a test - either way is a valid interpretation of any faith. Which test a person chooses to take - for that is the real choice here - says the most about them, and defines what they will do with their faith.
Same goes for science - some people cannot see past the dogma, others keep an open mind.
Another basic human truth is that people love a good argument, and so we go on.
In the first place, let me just point out that "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism" are terms used within the study of philosophy of science, quite often. Specifically, they refer to philosophical underpinnings of "species formation by natural selection". It does not imply, in any way, that Darwinism is a religious belief, and frankly those who are trying to misinterpret me that way are pretty much showing their collective arses.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism
In the second place ... what term would you have me use? Would you have me spell out "species formation by natural selection" every time I needed to make reference to that concept? Evolution is not a sufficient term, since saying that species evolve is not the same thing as saying that such evolution is sufficient to explain the variety of species we have around us. Most creationists and Intelligent Design types (and, no, they're not the same thing, which you would know if you had ever bothered to study them directly instead of just taking the party line) will acknowledge some sort of evolution. However, to equate evolution within a species to "species formation by natural selection" is a horrible fallacy of composition.
In the third place ... if the shoe fits, wear it. The whole point of my post was that "Darwinism" has been attributed an importance it doesn't really merit, for ideological reasons. In response to that core point, I've gotten many screeds about the importance "evolution", on a micro scale, in understanding modern biology--which just shows how little people understand about the Intelligent Design movement. Intelligent design does not deny evolution--it denies that evolution is a sufficient explanation for the variety of biological diversity we see around us. It makes no appeal to the Bible or anything else to justify this--instead, the critique proceeds on scientific grounds. They might be wrong, but they are not "creationists." Creationism proceeds on entirely different grounds--namely, Genesis 1-3--yet even the most hard core Young Earth Creationist will accept that natural selection and evolution are things that are now occurring.
Last of all, I kind of resent being painted as a fundamentalist. I thought I made it fairly clear in the parent post that I actually accept "species formation by natural selection" as a scientific theory. I think that the poorly thought out, ill-informed way in which people have responded to my original post demonstrates exactly the point I was trying to make. Reading all the responses, it appears to me that much of the defense of "species formation by natural selection" proceeds on rather ignorant ideological grounds, driven by people who've never bothered to understand the real reasons of those they caricature.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Here is a bit of information from TalkOrigins as well.
So basically, you are being dishonest. The book is not based on "an evolutionary viewpoint". It is a rather poor list of arguments for creationism that hold no scientific merit what so ever, and which is even being disowned by other creationists.
Just wanted to catch a major fallacy here for you:
>>Evolution says that the diversity of species came about gradually over billions of years.
>>That Man came to his/her current form by way of natural selection.
Natural selection and evolution are general terms for well-defined and well-proven facts of the interoperation of entities (both artifical and natural).
EG:
* If you kill off most of the non-antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria will become a larger portion of the population.
* If you put a bird on an island where food is in deep holes, birds with longer beaks will be able to get more food. Birds that get more food are able to procreate more. So birds with longer beaks will become a larger portion of the population.
That's darwinism, that's "natural selection" and evolution at work. These are repeatable, provable facts.
Evolution as a theory of creation of life is another matter altogether, which is much more contentious, and DOES (potentially) contradict the bible.
Taking darwinism and the bible at face value, there are many interpretations in which they agree. Maybe we all started as humans in basically the form we are now. But natural selection has still applied to us since then, passing around genes for hair color, disease resistance, digestion of lactose, etc.
Or, still taking both the bible and darwinism literally - how do you (or anyone) know what "God's image" is? Maybe life on earth started as bacteria, and God is an omnipotent amoeba?
Unless you are talking about life evolving from non-life, it's not in direct contradiction with the bible.
There is no real separation between "micro" and "macro" evolution. Only people who are anti-science will do that. No faith is needed for evolution, whether it is "micro" or "macro". It is all about the evidence.
Well, then to you the theory makes complete sense and that's great. I refuse to believe that we're all a bunch of randomly evolved creatures at this point from way back in the day when we were tadpoles in the water. It's simply retarded to me and the day I'll believe it is the day we get it on record.
GL to you Norm, this is my last post. Although I completely disagree with you, I have to respect you for at least not being an idiot.
My intention wasn't to be dishonest. All of the scientific research he cites was done by evolutionary scientists... so I said that his whole book is based on their research.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
:)
Thanks, Monkey.
...), the result of this dumb/mechanical process may give the appearance of intelligence.
I respect your point of view, and realize that we're not going to agree, but let me just leave you with one final thought..
However counter-intuitive the idea of all life, us included, having evolved from a common source may be, and however much it may clash with other beliefs you may like to hold (maybe for very good reason), there is still the reality that evolution has to be happening, even if it may not be the whole story (although I think in essence it is).
Micro and macro evolution are the same thing - just a matter of the genetics of successive generations becoming better matched to the prevailing environment, and as we've seen the logic is inescapable. All that seperates micro from macro evolution is how far the DNA of any population of a species has diverged from any other population (e.g. indian elephants vs african elephants), but since evolution/adaptation is a never ending process you can't expect it to just conveniently stop before crossing the line of incompatability (lack of ability to interbreed - creation of a new species).
So, whatever other forces you believe may also be at work, you can't just ignore evolution. Evolution IS happening, and IS creating new species, regardless of what else is going on, and since the result of evolution is to make each generation better suited to the environment (if I plant two types of apple tree in sandy soil, one that likes sandy soil, and one that doesn't, which one will leave behind more apples and little apple trees?
Even if you like to believe that there is a designer that put life in some form on earth (maybe there was - evolution doesn't conflict with that possibility), or that may be intelligently nudging evolution of different species in different directions, there is no need to reject the reality that evolution is also occuring, and it would be entirely illogical to do so. If you believe that life was designed, then DNA - the ability to evolve - was certainly part of the plan!
See you on another thread!
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
"I can't stand when supposed Christians claim that ID has no place in the classroom."
science classroom to be more precise, because ID is not science.
"why are they so hesitant do any research into any other theories? "
there not, there is nothing to test with ID. No falsifiable tests at all.
"400 years ago it was ridiculous to think that the earth was round; "
not true.
"there was simply too much evidence to the contrary. "
there was none, and in fact there was a falsifiable test to prove the world was round.
"The fact that any intelligent discussion on opposing theories to evolution (intelligent design or otherwise) is completely shut out of any discussion for being ÃoeridiculousÃ, shows that our society is hardly progressive."
Again, not true, but you need to bring some testable hypothosys to the table,.
"there is MASSIVE scientific evidence for ID, "
there is exactly no evidence. none, zip nada.
Theologically speaking, I would argue there can't be, because there can not be proof of God. God needs faith. That's another discussion.
"whoever makes the most noise is right. "
hard to do that in this day in age specifically because we can test and make predictions with the theory of evolution.
"that admitting evolution has HUGE flaws is something the scientific community is not willing to do"
and this flaw is...?
"grossly over generalized"
no, there pretty specific actually. Like, we should find this type of creature at this point in the earth. and they find it.
"Open up your eyes people, ID advocates arenÃ(TM)t the closed minded ones here."
since they are the ones with no evidence at all, and refuse to even understand evolution, they are the closed minded ones.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, indeed; I thought the Clouds were only fog, dew and vapour.
SOCRATES
But what you certainly do not know is that they are the support of
a crowd of quacks, the diviners, who were sent to Thurium, the
notorious physicians, the well-combed fops, who load their fingers
with rings down to the nails, and the braggarts, who write dithyrambic
verses, all these are idlers whom the Clouds provide a living for,
because they sing them in their verses. ["The Clouds" by Aristophanes] This is how it went down
This character then is used as a literary device when wanting to criticise the learned professors who believe themselves to be "The Answer". Plato flips it about and uses Socrates instead to castigate the people for killing philosophy by overzealous democraticism, oh the irony!
Those dialogs are pretty contrived. He uses current hearsay, the stories of old men, to include historical information and frame himself as one of the "sophistes".
There are some pretty cool twists in there too, like making Socrates parents part of the elite circle and putting them close to Pericles, the very figure of democracy.
Xenophon uses Plato's tool, or attempts to, after the alleged date of Socrates demise (died 399BC, I think). He is responding to sophists of his time basically saying "Socrates [our stand in for the world of wise philosophers] thinks you're an ass and he's so wise; you do the math".
Aristotle, naturally rides on Plato's coat tails in this respect.
That's not to say that Plato's work (the cave had a profound effect on me as a teenager) nor Aristotles are lacking philosophically. A philosopher who can engage the people is a great thing.
Oh yeah, there may have been a historical figure called Socrates too, but he's not the subject of these writings!
Incidentally I'm a great fan of "his" method, http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/ is a great source for further study.
No, you didn't. You're using this to make some sort of point.
Or, if you did, you did not use a method of flipping which is fair -- you're using something which deliberately supports this argument.
You see, a quick calculation shows that the chances of that happening is approximately 0.000000000000088817841970012523233890533447265625%
Which should also show you something about determinism. At a certain point, we can reasonably discard a possibility -- if you flip a coin a half million times, it won't come up heads every time. Similarly, at a certain point, we can reasonably assume a possibility -- if you flip a coin ten times, then repeat that experiment a million times, you're probably going to get all heads at least once. (In fact, you'll probably get all heads over 900 times, out of a million attempts.)
I may have the math wrong here, it has been awhile. But predictions like this are easy to come by. In fact, perfect randomness has some patterns in it -- enough that Apple had to make their Shuffle mode less random, lest people start to assume their iPod has a mind of its own.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You seem to be under the impression that the book can mean anything you want it to.
You interpret a passage one way, someone else interprets it in another possibly contradictory way.
If the book does not mean what it says and people cannot agree on what it means then it is not a useful guide and certainly cannot be considered 'correct' or 'True' in any meaningful way.
You are projecting your own ideas/ideals onto the book with your creative interpretations.
Just to be clear, I don't put much stock in any of the nonsense in that book. I certainly don't consider it an authority on anything.
I have heard people come up with good and reasonable stories and codes of conduct working from that book. I have have heard just as many cruel and dangerous interpretations from the same damn book. My point is that these millions of people thinking of this book as a source of 'Perfect Truth' are in danger of making terrible decisions because they are working from unreliable data.
If the book does not mean what it says and people cannot agree on what it means Do you have any idea how many books have been written about meanings and interpretations of other ancient texts? This really nothing special, especially considering and size and scope of the bible. then it is not a useful guide and certainly cannot be considered 'correct' or 'True' in any meaningful way. Do you have any idea how many people misinterpret hard scientific theories? Does that make them useless? You are projecting your own ideas/ideals onto the book with your creative interpretations. No, I'm applying common sense and an open mind, whereas you apply stubbornness and cling you your own interpretation, ignoring historical context or any kind of other understanding about the history of the book.
PS: Don't forget the preview button.
The book is meaningless and/or means anything/everything you want it to.
It is therefore not usefull as a guide and is in fact just a tool to reinforce and provide authority for your own opinions/ideas.