I heard his next movie is about the conspiracy to suppress those who want to teach the controversy of the Flat Earth.
What's the matter Foust? Don't you like the universities being exposed as indoctrination centers?
Flat Earth never came up.
What about the dinosaur saddles from the museum? Did Ben have dinosaur saddles?
Why does the fossil record show no dinosaur saddles? I reject any explaination that cannot produce the actual dinosaur saddle.
And bridles, too.
Gman, did you visit ExpelledExposed to see another view of the context of these people who were supposedly "expelled"? Did you attend university, and if so, what were you successfully or unsuccessfully indoctrinated into, and why?
No Flat Earth? What about the Hollow Earth? I thought the Nazis liked that theory. And evolution is a theory, so therefore the Nazis must've used Darwin to explore the holes at the poles to find the long-lost saucer technology! Oh, no, I've given away the ending!
Foust, yeah, actually I did.
Aaaand you just Godwinned yourself. Good game, you lose.
Sorry, Gman, it's Stein who blames Darwin for the Nazis. That's the whole point of this movie.
No Faust you are wrong. He did make a point about how Darwinsm led to eugenics which Hitler followed in his projection of "the master race".
A theory which led to the murdering of millions of jews.
This is fact, not theory and if you don't like that I would think it would be more a matter of personal introspection that you need to consider.
You can make the claim that Hitler followed this to an insane level, but the fact is he did.
And that was NOT the point of the whole movie.
I'd suggest you plop down $8 and see it for yourself.
Frankly you just look like a foaming at the mouth denier.
Funny how the same people who criticize "Expelled" take Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11" or "Sicko" as gospel truth.
The startling thing here is people on both sides were asked simple questions and they responded as they would.
Both sides were presented.
But what about the truth of the saddles, Fred? Does the truth have "sides?"
Amy, that's kind of the point now. Isn't it?
Grumps... This documentary did not try and nail down one side of the issue or the other.
Instead it dealt with the intollerance of some to diverse opinion.
If you would like to compare fossil records go ahead and prepare a guest post, I'd be happy to publish it. (BTW There are HUGE gaps and unanswered questions in the fossil records)
As to your does the truth have sides... You miss the point.
Remember the recent bali conference on global warming? Only one opinion was allowed. There is a diverse opinion from educated experts who have opposing views.
We are talking about rhetoric and politic over actual scientific discovery. Science must allow for diversity of thought. When it does not, it ceases being science.
Martin Luther didn't like the Jews, either. Does that mean Protestants are closet Darwinists? Take the examples of the movie's selective quoting of Darwin to promote the eugenics angle. Think that's fair and balanced, do you?
So Gman, how'd you resist the indoctrination of your university?
But what about the truth of the saddles, Fred? Does the truth have "sides?"
Yes, because human nature is imperfect and doesn't know everything, truth does have "sides".
Fact is that everything human beings understand is INCOMPLETE. So whatever we consider to be FACT may only be "partial fact"----incomplete and therefore imperfect and far from the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Not a difficult concept to understand, I would think.
"Instead it dealt with the intollerance of some to diverse opinion."
You've said before, Fred that colleges shouldn't be teaching opinion, that they should stick to fact.
I would hope that institutions of higher education would be intolerant to some "opinions." It is my opinion that the atmoshere is about 8% oxygen, that garvity attracts all things and that nobody rode dinosaurs.
It is the job of the University to sift and winnow ideas. Some ideas ain't gonna make it.
Tell me again how liberals allow tolerance and diversity of opinion.
There's a time and place for opinion, you've said that yourself, Fred, and a time and place for facts.
Do you believe that the "saddled dinosaur" theory has a place in a science class? There are some who do. Ben Stein is speaking for them.
Fred says, "There is a diverse opinion from educated experts who have opposing views."
Sorry Fred, I do disagree with you on this one. There is no empiric evidence that I know about for ID, unlike for global warming. So it has no place in a science class which is based on theory AND empiric evidence.
I personally do believe in ID, but it's a BELIEF based on "intuition" with no empiric evidence anywhere in sight. Like I said, present the case for ID in other classes. I don't understand those who wish to inject ID with no empiric evidence into a science class, even if they call themselves experts. I can call myself an expert in crystal ball reading, have a degree in it, give speeches and demonstrations about it, but that doesn't make it a subject for a science class, although it might be interesting in a sociology class.
The other thing is, if you have a BELIEF, no amount of science will ever prove or disprove it; so to my mind there is no reason for controversy in the first place. Science and belief are like apples and oranges----different and serving different purposes, but both legitimate in their unique ways.
It baffles me completely that people don't seem to understand that. In this life there are many ways to be "right". There are many ways to make a potato salad and one isn't right while the other one is wrong----just different. But when you try to mix them up you get a mess, and that's what we seem to have today about science and ID.
Amy says: " Funny how the same people who criticize "Expelled" take Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11" or "Sicko" as gospel truth."
Yes, that is interesting, but still, there is my position which doesn't believe any of them are valid, and I criticize all three and place them in exactly the same category.
PS? And with "belief" I can still be a very legitimate Christian. I don't need scientific fact to TRUST.
Not sure I'm making myself clear here, but I'm trying to point out that there is not an either/or position and that there can be other positions also.
Grumps, not sure that Fred ever said this: "You've said before, Fred that colleges shouldn't be teaching opinion, that they should stick to fact."
And I don't necessarily believe colleges should stick to facts. Opinion is just fine IF IT IS PRESENTED AS OPINION. In fact, it's opinion which makes the world go round and is a seed for future discovery and creativity. The mistake is when opinion is presented as fact, which is what many professors do. I have challenged them in classes on that and they don't like it. Tough!!! Ego also has no place in education.
I think, that perhaps Rose is conflating Intelligent Design with Creationism and flat-earthers.
You do know that science has no facts about what caused the big bang, right?
Intelligent design, and evolution are not incompatible beliefs, but that's what the left would like you to think.
Apparently, when some people want to criticizem they feel the need to go off the deep end. Dinasaur saddles?
Have you ever heard of a strawman fallacy? So...you can't deal with the acyual issues at hand, so you feel compelled to attack any issue you wish? Nice job.
Have a shot at David Berlinski's (an agnostic Jew, if you must know) "The Devils Delusion"
Then come back with stupid, irrational, delusional, argumentum.
Idiot.
Gman, your "Intelligent design, and evolution are not incompatible beliefs, but that's what the left would like you to think."
Actually, intelligent design IS EVOLUTION, so I agree with you about that. Every good design moves with the times and is adapted. A new Ford is not like the Model T was when it first came off the ssembly line. Why would living things be any different?
The problem I have with intelligent design is that it attempts to inject religion where it has no business being, and attempts to inject God where God ought not to be part of the picture since God can never be PROVEN.
I personally do believe in God, but I prefer to keep my belief in God (for which I have not a shred of proof except intuition) separate from science where empirical evidence can actually PROVE A PRINCIPLE.
To mix the two is why we have this sort of argument and division and mess to confuse our children.
"You do know that science has no facts about what caused the big bang, right?"
Yes, I know that. So what? To me that simply means the big bang is a theory, a way of explaining something we don't really understand. I have no problem at all with theories as long as they are presented as theories and not as proven facts.
Surprise, surprise: Darwin killed the Jews.
Please do not present Dawkins as a source on anything here... The man is just a hater.
I advise you again to get off your butt pay your $8 and go see the movie.
I point out that article because it's a fine example of someone else who's swallowed Expelled whole.
I'm too conservatively frugal to go to the movie in the theater. Even with good movies, I'll wait for the DVD. In this case, I expect it'll be less than $8 and "priced to own" in the discount bins by the 4th of July.
David Berlinski is a philospher, not a scientist, and has not published a single peer-reviewed study or article, preferring instead to use the popular press (if "popular" can be read to mean "subsidized by right-wing think-tanks") where he can avoid critiques of his methodology. His public statements reveal an ignorance of, among other things, the fossil record.
He also doesn't believe in "Intelligent Design."
gvinz
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drj...57600301874014/
Feel free to apologize for your ignorant rudeness at any time. Some ideas don't deserve equal time.
I think yours might be among them.
Here is a site that has a debate on ID, both pro and anti. I found that very interesting. What was even more interesting to me is that I share the view of the first anti-ID response by Kenneth Miller. He says: "If Behe wishes to suggest that the intricacies of nature, life, and the universe reveal a world of meaning and purpose consistent with a divine intelligence, his point is philosophical, not scientific. It is a philosophical point of view, incidentally, that I share."
Philosophical points of view are valid, but they have no place in a science class. Period. And that's the point I've been trying to make all along. Miller says it much more succinctly than I ever could.
If interested, here is the site:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/...tion/
nhmag.html
OK, Rose, you get the word out to all those who are asking to remove evolution from science classes, and those who want to add ID to science classes, or both, and get back to us when all that is straightened out, K? 'Round here, start with Grantsburg. Their school district tried to do this. Why, it's in Burnett County, just like Gableman! What a co-inky-dink! I see an intelligent designer behind all this!
Sorry Foust, it's not my ambition at this time in my life to see to it that schools are run properly, even if I have an opinion on the subject.
However, if I were a parent with school-aged children and they were taught ID in science class, I would complain, or at least have a discussion with them about this being a subject that ought not to be in a science class. If they were taught ID in sociology class or philosophy class I would applaud and even have some interesting discussions with them about the subject.
I really don't understand why the difference between "science" and "philosophy" is so hard to understand, especially for educators who ought to know better, nor do I understand why it has to be an either/or thing, and I have no objection to "expelling" those who insist on teaching philosophy in a science class., except maybe as an interesting side subject for debate.
Nor do I quite understand why you have to make a snarky remark when we lprobably agree more about this subject than we disagree.
But then, I guess I don't expect a whole lot from you.
Perhaps we do agree. I think it's rare for left-leaning folks to be the ones chasing evolution out of the schools. They are conservatives, particularly religious fundamentalists.
Foust, when we are discussing this subject you will have to remember that MOST Christians are NOT "fundamentalists". There are billions of Christians who have no problem with the separation of church and state, nor do they want ID in a science class. It's the fundamentalists who make a lot of noise about this while the rest of us tend to not say much and sometimes watch this tempest in a teapot with puzzling amusement.
However, most of the billions out here also have no difficulty with ID being taught as part of other classes such as philosophy or sociology, since religious belief is a basic life reality to most people on the planet.
By the fact that fundamentalists are trying to pawn ID off as a "science" they are making a huge mistake, in my opinion, and causing not only needless controversy, but showing the rest of us how out of touch with mainstream Christianity they are.
And the first Christian who actually said it best was Christ himself when he said, "Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's, and unto God that which is God's."
Seems to me that science and empiric proven evidence are "things of the earth" while God is supposed to be waaaaaaaaaay above all that. Those who mix them up are not thinking very clearly, especially in light of Christ's words.
Empiric science and Christianity do not need to be on opposite sides if thought about in that way. In fact, they are highly compatible if each is kept in its separate realm, and empiric science can continue to reveal more and more of the wonders of creation (and to some, the wonders of God's works).
Rose, I'm well-aware of the differences. Puzzled amusement isn't a much of a reaction against something you think is wrong or inappropriate. Where's the objection from the middle?
Fred, I have forwarded this video series on to the science teachers at my school. I think it presents an alternate theory for the origin of life that makes about as much sense--and has as much supporting evidence--as Intelligent Design. I'm sure you'll enjoy it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T...y.blogspot.com/
I wonder if Ben Stein will make a movie about the people who promote this theory?
I wonder if you will go see Ben Stein's movie.
It was not about the realitve worth of ID. It was about how people who have even mentioned ID are treated and quite a bit more.
Wow, Fred, never did I expect that by the end of this thread, you'd disavow the worth of ID. So the movie made you an evolutionist? Or did Grumps' movie make you an Atlantean? You went to Expelled because you wanted to see how academics are treated when they promote wacky ideas?
John you are out of your mind. Quit stretching...
I said that was not what the movie was about...
It was about academia and their one-sidedness.
Dude, Foust, I found that Atlantis movie. I love grumps, but I insist on my props.
And I guess, Fred, what bothers me--and no, I have not seen the movie yet, but I have read the bios of many of the pro-IDers profiled--is that people who proved completely incompetent in their fields of study and were not granted tenure have become martyrs.
I've been working on my own post about this, but to think that the guy whose claim to "scholarship" is the monumetally stupid observation that the earth was uniquely designed to be studied by scientists--he may as well have said grapes were uniquely designed to get us drunk--deserves tenure is absurd. The theology department at his own university mocked him in a paper.
Further, to equate not getting tenure with being gassed at Auschwitz is nauseatingly offensive on so many levels--not the least of which is that the IDers have landed fellowships at the Discovery Institute funded by the Moonies and the Jews are dead. Your "review" coyly leaves out the part about Stein staggering around a concentration camp blaming Darwin for the Holocaust ("[T]he final 4 or 5 minutes were more than worth the price of admission," you write). That alone makes me reticent to hand the man my $8--I don't want to provide the lube for Stein's Godwinian self-abuse. I want to vomit just thinking about it.
grumps, folkbum - sorry about that. You liberals are all alike. Triceratops saddles and UFOs and pyramids! How are we supposed to tell you apart? Maybe we should agree to watch Expelled after Fred admits he's read ExpelledExposed. I know he likes a good gotcha and unreasonable demand. Hey! I'll be able to get it for free in inter-library loan in a few months, I'm sure. Our tax dollars at work!
One-sidedness? Pot, meet kettle.
The dinosaur saddles are from the other side, Foust. I point and ask for an explanation of where they fit in Stein's version of reality.
Keep your peanut butter off my chocolate. Keep your theology out of our science. We'll be okay.
BTW, I'm not sure that you can insult me by saying that Jay and I are of a kind. Whether you can insult him in that way is another matter.
Yes, ID as practice for academic exploration would be wondrous, wouldn't it? You would be funded based on success at what? Your ability to declare situations so complicated that God made them? All papers would end with "So, we gave up at this point, because this dead-end of understanding is so complex we must attribute it to the Intelligent Designer, wink, wink. No further research is necessary." What would we do with all the evidence and research that builds the foundation of the modern synthesis of evolution? Toss it out?
" Puzzled amusement isn't a much of a reaction against something you think is wrong or inappropriate."
Like I siad, if I had kids in school it would be more than puzzled amusement. But we all have priorities in life and everyone has only 24 hours in a day and finite energy, and this is simply not something I want to exspend energy on, especially since I haven't had kids in school in years.
There are many things I find wrong and inappropriate that I don't spend time fighting. Actually, atheism is one of them, although I have interesting discussions with both my brother and my son who are atheists. Those discussions also stay on friendly levels without all this stupid sort of bipolarism that I often see here, and it doesn't take inordinate amounts of energy because we allow each other breathing room.
"he may as well have said grapes were uniquely designed to get us drunk"
Hey I love that line, and it suits my philosophy quite well-----but it's not science. 
Tell me John are you in the least bit aware of the massive missing evolutionary links in the fossil record?
I'm sure you are.
Yet these very scientists take leaps of faith to fill in the gaps without a shred of evidence.
Faith...
Tell me John are you in the least bit aware of the massive missing evolutionary links in the fossil record?
I'm not John--though John may well mistake me for himself--but, Fred, if you can't be bothered to educate yourself on the extent of the fossil record, here's a start. Look for section 1.4.
Not in the mood Jay... For everything you can point me to I can point you to something.
There are huge gaps in the fosil record, period.
I can ask questions and make points, you can can ask questions and make points.
I said in the start of this that I did not wish to enter into a debate on evolution vs ID as I doubted anyone's mind would change and that tempers would become inflamed.
That position has not changed.
I especially do not wish to enter into that debate with someone who has a history of misrepresenting my opinion.
Considering how many days and hours I've spent on my amateur paleontology habit, no, I'm not aware of "massive missing" gaps. I fail to see how "faith" has to be invoked when you think there's a gap. God always seems to be in the gaps for guys like Fred... until a new intermediary fossil is found - and presto, then there's two new gaps for God to hide in. It's like Zeno's Paradox, but in reverse. I'm reminded of those tests they run on toddlers and monkeys... roll the bar behind the screen, does their brain follow the motion even when they can't see the ball, and do they expect it to come out the other side? Well, when I see two endpoints, all I can figure is that there is something in the middle, it's probably ordinary and it probably fits existing evidence, and I don't need to invoke a mystical leprechaun to make that happen. Of course, everyone loves a surprise and a chance to learn - but it would be - dare I say it - a miracle if some intermediate fossil was unmistakable evidence of divine intervention. Heck, we don't even have 2,000 year-old evidence like that... and you want 400 mya evidence?
OK, Fred - forget arguing with Folkbum. Take the opportunity to educate yourself for the sake of learning, for the sake of refining your personal beliefs and wisdom, and for strengthening your arsenal of facts to rebutt evolutionists. Maybe after that, you'll want to stop arguing about the absence of transitional forms - and it will have nothing to do with anyone who misrepresents your positions.
There are huge gaps in the fosil record, period.
Yeah, it is a shame that we don't have a fossil of every single organism that lived ever.
yawn.
Any gaps in evolution are "filled in" by the continuity of informational macromolecules - DNA, RNA and proteins - that all organisms use to live and replicate. For example, humans have a protein (all the rage now in diagnostics) called C reactive Protein (CRP) that shares over 50% homology with a protein from limulus, the horseshoe crab. Humans and horseshoe crabs diverged about 300 million years ago.
What was the poof to get it all started, that is the faith issue to me.
Yawn? What's your favorite massive missing fossil gap, Fred? "I can ask questions and make points, you can can ask questions and make points." Why, maybe you'd make an excellent ID promoter! No logical argument necessary, no evidence needed - just declare ambiguity, therefore your position must be just as valid.
If the Intelligent Designer wanted us to conclude that s/he'd made everything, why didn't s/he let us uncover enough fossils right now to see that?
So foust, where's *your* proof that everything came together randomly?
Where are your scientific experiments demonstrating that this is the way these things happened? Your lab notes, or at least scientific peer reviewed papers? Do you have any? Can you *cite* any? It must be frustrating for you to have to take so much on faith. I mean, that's exactly what you are doing...taking on faith that science is correct. At some point in the reduction of your argument you'll end up with nothing but faith in the process. Which is no different than faith in a creator. Good luck with all that though.
Gman, all knowledge proceeds on provisional assumptions... we establish what we believe to be true by testing against evidence and questioning assumptions. It's a process. It doesn't claim to magically reveal all knowledge in an instant. To that extent, science is a very different approach to knowledge than faith.
Everything came together randomly? Who said that? I'll go out on a limb and suggest that even a few billion years ago when life first appeared on Earth, the laws of physics and chemistry were the same as they were today, and those molecules behaved the same way then as they would today. What are you questioning? The big bang or how life arose?
Yawn John because you keep ignoring the point.
I'm talking about scientific process and you want to argue about details on a specific issue.
I do not wish to go into that, it is the first thing I indicated and I have repeated it multiple times.
I am trying to frame a discussion about scientific process and intollerance among that community.
When science ignores that which does not fit into a pre-exisiting paradigm it ceases being science and becomes advocacy.
Yes, let's talk about "scientific process". As surely as we understand how profit motivates, you must also understand that if a scientist uncovered evidence that either brought new knowledge or challenged some other established position, or created a new theory that better explained a set of observations, he'd be well-motivated to expose it. He'd get a better job offer, he'd get a book offer, and better still for many scientists, he'd get the satisfaction of advancing the process of science, and better still, he'd get the peer praise and the hot scientist groupie chicks. Might even get a Nobel, which generally delivers the rest as well. What better motivation would you want? And he'd have supporters. Yes, there might be challenges, yes, it might be quite the butter-battle while the well-funded old guard tries to discredit the finding, but the history of science is positively littered with such controversy. It's why history of science majors exist. Only the facts win. If you have a fact in hand, if you have a theory that fits the observations, you win. Presto. That's the "scientific process". So don't tell me that Ben Stein has uncovered a successful campaign to squash ID. If ID has facts that fit, they win. If they have theories that better explain evolutionary observations, they'd win. If they have theories with predictive value, all the better. Bring it on, kids. But ID doesn't have any of this. It's repackaged creationism, cooked up by people who want religion to trump scientific process.
Chasing your tail John...
Look up Christopher Landsea then come back and talk to me.
Come now, running away from ID and evolution and scientific progress, and running for cover under global warming? Show me the gap, baby. Show me how you'd like "scientific process" to work.
When science ignores that which does not fit into a pre-exisiting paradigm it ceases being science and becomes advocacy.
The problem with ID is not that it clashes with established paradigms. Paradigm shifts are the lifeblood of science--hell, it was Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions who coined the term, fercrynoutloud.
The problem with ID is that it's not science. Ignoring non-science does not turn science into advocacy; indeed, ignoring non-science keeps science science.
"As surely as we understand how profit motivates, you must also understand that if a scientist uncovered evidence that either brought new knowledge or challenged some other established position, or created a new theory that better explained a set of observations, he'd be well-motivated to expose it. etc."
I wish science always worked like this, but profits in the various ways you can measure it - money, tenure, funding, etc. - are sometimes dependent on group-think and speak. Funding agencies like NIH do not really like radical ideas unless you have tons of preliminary data, and only established labs can afford to get it.
I once heard a statistic that the random organization of atoms into the simplest amino acid would take around 10 to the 31st power years, obviously requiring supreme intervention for us to be where we are today. Yet statistics like that are always silly because this planet could be one of 10 to the hundredth power planets and this is the only one that had everything happen.
At any rate, it is possible and I think quite legitimate to believe in God and evolution. Using evidence for one to argue against the other continues . . .
There are areas of science that attract the big bucks. Which one related to evolutionary theory gets the big bucks?
For a discussion of the silly stats, see here and here.
Because you have quoted my term "silly stats" and provided links it might not be apparent that my post was in agreement with yours. And any biology department that attracts big bucks agrees with evolutionary theory.
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