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Mr_Christopher



Posts: 1238
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,16:50   

When you read the history of Dembski and Baylor it becomes obvious he was not expelled, but rather does not play well with others.  

And Dembski takes joy in expelling Christian scientistfrom the ID movment

Yeah when you get to know him Dembski does not make a very good persecuted victim.

Speaking of being expelled...I wonder how long it would take to get banned from Dembski's blog if Kevin joined and did not tell them who he is, but instead asked logical and even scientific questions about ID.  

1) Show me the ID evidence
2) IC does not prove design, so show me more evidence
3) So is a snowflake designed?
4) Ha ha ha yes that's funny, a 747 could not just create itself.  Hmmm...Then who created the creato....<ban>

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:01   

Annyday:

Quote

Wesley's made specific points curtly, too.


Curt, but no "personal attacks". Everything I've said or asked Kevin M. was directed at his claims, not his person.

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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
Doc Bill



Posts: 1039
Joined: April 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:08   

Dembski, apparently, isn't featured in Expelled.

Why is that?

After all, Dembski was removed from his position by that atheist, Darwinist mafia boss Robert Sloan, president of Baylor.

Removed with pay for 5 years, I might add.

Hey, Kevin, do you know where I can get "Expelled" for 5 years with pay?

Inquiring minds want to know.

  
Kristine



Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:09   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:08)
I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.

You may be interested in Christopher Hitchens' essay about anti-Semitism (Hitchens is particularly enraged by it) in the current Atlantic Monthly. What is particularly revealing, in my opinion, are the parallels between it and the arguments made (including those by Ben Stein) against evolutionary theory:       
Quote
Political anti-Semitism in its more modern form often de-emphasized the supposed murder of Christ in favor of polemics against monopolies and cartels, leading the great German Marxist August Bebel to describe its propaganda as “the socialism of fools.” Peter Pulzer’s essential history of anti-Semitism in pre-1914 Germany and Austria, which shows the element of populist opportunism in the deployment of the Jew-baiting repertoire, is, among other things, a great illustration of that ironic observation. And then there is the notion of the Jews’ lack of rooted allegiance: their indifference to the wholesome loyalties of the rural, the hierarchical, and the traditional, and their concomitant attraction to modernity. Writing from the prewar Balkans in her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West noticed this suspicion at work in old Serbia and wrote:

'Now I understand another cause for anti-Semitism; many primitive peoples must receive their first intimation of the toxic quality of thought from Jews. They know only the fortifying idea of religion; they see in Jews the effect of the tormenting and disintegrating ideas of skepticism.'

The best recent illustration of that point that I know comes from Jacobo Timerman, the Argentine Jewish newspaper editor who was kidnapped and tortured by the death-squad regime in his country in the late 1970s. In his luminous memoir, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, he analyzes the work of the neo-Nazi element that formed such an important part of the military/clerical dictatorship, and quotes one of the “diagnoses” that animated their ferocity:

"Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space." [emphases mine]

Note that Albert Einstein has now been replaced by Charles Darwin. Note also that "Darwinism" is, as was Jewry, portrayed simultaneously as a hideously strong force about to overwhelm the nations, and as on the brink of collapse.
       
Quote
Anti-Semitism is an elusive and protean phenomenon, but it certainly involves the paradox whereby great power is attributed to the powerless. In the mind of the anti-Jewish paranoid, some shabby bearded figure in a distant shtetl is a putative member of a secret world government: hence the enduring fascination of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. (Incidentally, it is entirely wrong to refer to this document of the Czarist secret police as “a forgery.” A forgery is a counterfeit of a true bill. The Protocols are a straightforward fabrication, based on medieval Christian fantasies about Judaism.)

ID has its lengthy record of straightforward fabrication as well.
       
Quote
That is perhaps what distinguishes it from other forms of racism. Almost every tribe or ethnicity has a rival tribe or ethnicity that it views as inferior or dirtier or more primitive: the Hutu with the Tutsi, the Sinhalese with the Tamil, the Ulster Protestant with the Irish Catholic, and so forth. The “other” group will invariably be found to have a different smell, a higher birthrate, and a lazier temperament. These poor qualities are sometimes attributed even by Jews to Jews: elevated German and Austrian Jews once wrinkled their nostrils at the matted sidelocks and large families of the poor Ostjuden who had come from the backwoods of Galicia and Silesia; and Ashkenazi-Se­phardic rivalry in Israel sometimes recalls and resembles this hostility. But garden-variety racists do not usually suspect the objects of their dislike of secretly manipulating the banks and the stock markets and of harboring a demonic plan for world domination.

Note now this quote from Stein:
         
Quote
Just as a tiny example, years ago a close friend, now deceased, was a trader in London for a big financial house. As he told it, one day I.B.M. came out with stellar numbers. The boss of the trading floor said, “O.K., the guy who’s getting the prize is the one who can make us money selling I.B.M. short.”

So the traders grabbed for their phones and started to put out any bad thoughts they could dream up about I.B.M. They called journalists, retailers, anyone. They sold huge amounts of I.B.M. short. Soon, they had I.B.M. on the run, made money on their shorts and went to Langan’s to drink champers.

As I see it, this is what traders do all day long — and especially what they’ve been doing since the subprime mess burst upon the scene. They have seized upon a fairly bad situation: a stunning number of defaults and foreclosures in the subprime arena, although just a small part of the total financial picture of the United States. They have then tried — with the collaboration of their advance guards in the press — to make it seem like a total catastrophe so they could make money on their short sales. They sense an opportunity to trick other traders and poor retail slobs like you and me, and they generate data and rumor to support their positions, and to make money.

MORE than that, they trade to support the way they want the market to go. If they are huge traders like some of the major hedge funds, they can sell massively and move the market downward, then suck in other traders who go short, and create a vacuum of fear that sucks down whatever they are selling.

Note what is happening here: They are not figuring out which way the market will go. They are making the market go the direction they want.

Weeks before this it was Goldman Sachs out to corner the market and dominate the world.

Stein's allegedly being no one's toady does not rule out his having a blind spot to his embracing of this absurd archetype of paranoiac revelation, in his own words, of cliches such as "the scales fell from my eyes." I am not a biologist, but a scholar of languages and literature. The use of rhetoric, special pleading, and emotional manipulation, as opposed to sound arguments, in both of these cases leaps out at one.

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Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

"Damn you. This means a trip to the library. Again." -- fnxtr

  
Mr_Christopher



Posts: 1238
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:12   

Our very own Richardhughes has documented the Darwing = Hitler link very well I might add.  Here is his research findings:



Keep in mind Richardhughes may be a tard, but he's our tard.

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
Albatrossity2



Posts: 2780
Joined: Mar. 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:17   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
Here is my question - who was Ben's biology consultant for Expelled?  Who advised him on evolution, Darwin and biology?
Ben consulted with many individuals regarding biology and Darwinism, some of whom I know and some I don't. One individual who I know had a significant influence on him is mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. He was also very impressed with Michael Shermer. But Ben Stein is no one's toady. He is a completely free agent who has developed his own unique perspective on this issue.

Kevin

Welcome, and kudos for sticking your head into the lions den.

But here are a couple of clues.

Nobody is a "Darwinist" these days; that died out in the late 19th century. If you want to converse with scientists who will take you seriously, you won't use that word again. It's a dead giveaway that you haven't bothered to even cursorily examine the science of modern evolutionary biology.

David Berlinksi is not a biologist; he is nominally a philosopher who also writes detective novels. Michael Shermer is not a biologist; he is a historian of science. If these sources are where Stein gets information about biology, he is even more misinformed than I imagined. And my imagination is pretty active...

On this board, there are several card-carrying practicing biologists, including Wesley Elsberry, with whom you have already interacted. It won't hurt to listen to some of what they have to say, rather than claim persecution.

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Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
                        - Pattiann Rogers

   
Dr.GH



Posts: 2333
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:20   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,13:08)
I forgot to address the Holocaust. No, I won't teach my kids that Darwin initiated the Holocaust, because that is patently untrue. However, I won't shy away from explaining how social Darwinism and the science of eugenics--which was founded by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton as an attempt to apply Darwin's theory on a social level--were contributing factors to Hitler's views on race.

In that case you will be a (personal expletive deleted) liar.  Racism and bigotry are far older than Darwin, and older than the sciences. They have been justified by every sort of argument, mostly religious and nationalistic. The genocides in the Bible were used as Nazi justifications more than any nonexistant mention of Darwin.  

Rev. Donal Kerr, Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
St. Patrick's University, Maynooth, Ireland has written on the massive ideological support the "new science" of economics privided to justify the deaths of thousands during the Irish Potato Famine.  
Quote
"
Trevelyan, whose influence was paramount, summed up this attitude when he said that the Famine was "the judgment of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people." It was "the cure...applied by the direct stroke of an all wise Providence in a manner as unexpected...as it is likely to be effectual!" As God had "sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated." In other words, the Famine was God's will and we should not alleviate it too much."


However, following the publication of "Origin of Species" there was a great interest in the potential for human improvement by the application of biology. The most active centers for this thinking, called Social Darwinism, were in the United States, and secondly in Germany.  The origin of Social Darwinism was of course British; particularly from the writing of Francis Galton, and Herbert Spencer.  The notion of evolution was used in these nations primarily as justification of the political status quo- basically the poor underclass were inately "inferior" and there was no moral onus to care for them.

The political and economic situation in late 19th century Germany led to a huge polarization between Left and Right, and this is how the notions associated with Social Darwinism in England and the United States came to such different and disastrous results in Germany.

The man most responsible for Germany's "racial hygiene" Rassenhygiene and author of its founding articles and books was Alfred Ploetz.  His 1895 work particularly argued aginst medical care for the "weak" as this would alow them to reproduce more than the "fit."  His ideal of "fitness" was the wealthy.  Ploetz established the Society for Racial Hygiene, Gesellshaft für Rassenhygiene, in 1905 which grew to 1,300 members by 1930.  Curiously, the Racial Hygiene movement opposed birth control,  and in the words of Max von Gruber (1914) "the so-called women's liberation movement."  This latter point was echoed by American eugenicists who objected to birth control as part of an "antibaby strike" by emancipated women.  Today's US religious right-wing fits hand and glove.

The German racial hygienists prior to the 1920s were not particularly concerned with "race" in the sense we use it today, but were concerned with their notion of race=national identity, and race=the totality of humankind.  Ploetz (1895), for example, felt it necessary to explicitly state that his was not an anti-Semitic program, citing the achievements of Jesus, Spinoza and Marx in particular and rejected that there was any such thing as a "pure race" anywhere in the world.  Similarly, he denied that interracial breeding was at all harmful, and referred to the notion of hybrid vigor; interbreeding of races was "a means of increasing fitness and as a source of good variations."  Notably, Willhelm Schallmayer, winner of the 1900 Krupp Prize for his essay on evolution and political development of the state, urged that the singular Rassehygiene be used (rather then the plural Rassen-) to emphasize the focal unity of the human species.  

None-the-less, Ploetz did maintain in 1895 that there were intellectual differences between the Caucasians and Negroes citing 1890 American studies of literacy rates!  (The absurdity of this is patent, but even today there are similar arguments presented by radical conservatives).  More sinisterly, Ploetz together with F. Wollny and Fritz Lenz, organized a secret Nordic division (Ring der Norda) within the Society for Race Hygiene from the very beginning.  Fritz Lenz would become the leading Nazi racial theorist.  His 1917 article "The Rebirth of Ethics" directly brought the thinking of Arthur Comte de Gobineau into German racial theories.  Well before Darwin's Origin, Gobineau published his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races in 1853-1855 which proposed that "racial vitality" was the driving force of history, and that the "white" races were superior to the "colored" races.  Initially this work was only popular in the American slave states, following the biblical arguments of the Negro's bearing the "curse of Ham."  American and European creationist theories of the "pre-Adamites" went so far as to claim that Negroes had been created on the Genesis fifth day with "other beasts of the field."  Gobineau's claim that the German Volk represented the last pure Nordic population attracted Lenz who reintroduced Gobineau into German racist theories.  

What was outstanding and uniquely German was the domination of the racist Nordic movement by medical doctors.  This had several important consequences, one being the prominance given to inherited disease and secondly the willingness to take direct "curative action" as a public health program.  

Leading figures of the Nordic movement wrote for the Politisch-anthropologish Revue edited by Ludwig Wolttmaann, M.D. ( e.g. Rüdin, Lentz, Fisher and Schallmayer).   The right wing of the racial hygiene movement, the Nordic supremacists, that ultimately became the Nazi medical establishment was virtually the creation of medical publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann.  Lehmann joint the Nazi party in 1920, and was the first Nazi to recieve the party's "Golden Medal of Honor" in 1934.  Actually, by 1930 it was nearly impossible to distinguish between the Nordic/Nazi and the transformed Rassenhygiene movements.  At that time, some people still attempted to separate what they viewed as the medical and scientific study of human genetics from the Nazi dominated Rassenhygiene, but within Germany they were suppressed.  

There is a hightly significant passage in Evans pg. 92-93:
Quote
"The minutes [taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt] for the second day's meeting, on 17 April 1943, recorded a statement by Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, in Hitler's presence, to a point made by Hungarian Admiral Horthy: "On Horthy's retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had pretty well taken all means of living from them-- he surely couldn't beat them to death-- the Reich Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There is no other way."

Hitler almost immediately confirmed Ribbentrop's explicitly murderous statement at some length: Hitler: "Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn't want to work [in Third Reich concentration camps], they were shot. If they couldn't work they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished." (references and footnotes are found in Evans, 2001:92-93)


Here we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary's Admiral Horthy, invoking not an übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one.  His analogy is to disease and there is no argument based on the notion of evolution.  Hitler never tried to draw rhetorical support from Social Darwinism arguing in Mein Kampf, it is not present in the text.  Science in any event was at most merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. His opposition is to what he considered a Marxist threat, not drawn from Darwin, which was more a rationalization of his hatred than its origin.  

The Nazi Office of Racial Policy held thousands of public meetings a month promoting anti-semitism and attacking “muddle-headed humanitarianism” (Humanitätsduselei)  or, what we call “liberalism” today.  The theoretical models and dominant metaphors Hitler drew from did not include evolution at any event, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity.  In 1938 the Nazi "Office of Racial Policy" publication Inromationsdienst Martin Luther’s advice on the “proper” treatment of Jews was given prominent display:

Quote
... to put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders ... Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues ... And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught” From Proctor 1988: 88.


The founder of Protestant Christianity was a greater inspiration to the Nazis than any scientist.  Science, politicized by the same conditions that radicalized both Left, and Right in Germany, was used as justification for actions long advocated as “Christian.”  

In fact, the Nazis has the works of Darwin publically burned along with the books of Ernst Haeckel (Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279). Die Bücherei, the official Nazi journal for lending libraries, published these collection evaluation "guidelines" during the second round of "purifications" (saüberung).

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).    

Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

Readers interestd in an honest assesment of the history of the Nazis and their "science" of Racial Hygiene should read the following works;

Evans, Richard J.
2001 Lying about Hitler New York:Basic Books.

Hitler, Adolf
1999 (orig. 1925) Mien Kampf  Ralph Manheim, translator.  New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Proctor, Robert N.
1988 Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis Boston:Harvard University Press.

Edited by Dr.GH on Feb. 26 2008,15:22

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"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."

L. Susskind, 2004 "SMOLIN VS. SUSSKIND: THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"

   
JAM



Posts: 517
Joined: July 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:27   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated.

You can, however, completely disqualify it as a theory because it has absolutely zero track record of making correct predictions.

Hint: in science, predictions have nothing to do with how you think your "theory" will fare in the future, they are predictions about what you actually observe, in experiments or other observations (like locations and morphologies of fossils before they are found).

Here's an example: the prion hypothesis (prions are infectious proteins) predicts that treating a brain homogenate from a prion-infected animal with enzymes that degrade nucleic acids (DNA + RNA) will have no effect on infectivity when the treated brain homogenate is used to infect new animals.

This is the part to consider carefully, Kevin: when Stan Prusiner introduced this hypothesis (not a theory) in the early 80s, the majority of his fellow microbiologists thought he was not only wrong, but nuts.

Stan did not write any books.
Stan did not lie and call his hypothesis a theory.
Stan did not demand that the prion hypothesis be taught in the public schools.
Stan did not have a movie made about the derision he endured from his peers.

Instead, Stan did something that your ID proponents are too cowardly to do, because they know that they are lying.

Stan tested his hypothesis.
Stan did everything he could think of that had the potential to falsify his hypothesis.
Stan did experiments proposed by his critics.
Stan went far beyond the experiments proposed by his critics.
Stan published his data in what we call the primary literature (papers with new data).
Stan's critics examined the evidence (not Stan's arguments).
Stan's critics, nearly all of whom were fair-minded people, began to suspect that the prion hypothesis might be correct.
More people (including Stan's former critics) started to work on prions.
The prion hypothesis is now considered to be a theory.
Stan won the Nobel Prize in 1997.

Kevin, every time anyone calls ID a "theory," we scientists view it as a lie. Now, let's look at what your beloved ID pseudoscientists do:

ID pseudoscientists do not test their hypotheses; they are afraid to.
ID pseudoscientists do nothing that has the slightest potential to falsify their hypotheses.
ID pseudoscientists do no experiments proposed by their critics.
ID pseudoscientists have published not a single datum from testing their own hypotheses in what we call the primary literature (papers with new data).
ID critics (real scientists) look at the total absence of new evidence produced by the ID movement (not arguments).
Real scientists, nearly all of whom were fair-minded people, can see that ID has no scientific basis, and we see that ID proponents realize this.
No people are working on ID. I've done more to test the probabilistic assumptions (falsely presented as facts) underlying the idiotic claims that functional proteins are improbable than the entire ID movement combined. I did this in the course of doing something completely different (not evolutionary biology).
Nothing about ID is considered to be a theory by honest scientists who use the term correctly and consistently.

ID proponents have their very own journal that has not put out an issue in over two years. I'll bet that's not going to be mentioned in the movie, right?
 
Quote
In that case, you'd have to disqualify anything coming out of Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers who aren't afraid to conflate their religious or areligious beliefs with their science.

Kevin, you ignorant goof, we consider evidence. You don't produce any.
 
Quote
It all comes down to the arguments and the evidence.

No. Arguments aren't science without any effort to produce new evidence. Spinning existing evidence only illustrates the impotence and dishonesty of the ID movement, as well as their fear of testing a single ID hypothesis.
 
Quote
...I'd rather disentagle the scientific questions from the religious questions so that the real question becomes, can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?

The dishonesty of your question is compound. The real question is, HAS the ID movement produced ANY evidence, much less compelling evidence, to back up their NOTION?

The answer is no. Arguments don't matter without evidence, and hypotheses aren't considered theories unless there is a large body of evidence that was correctly predicted.
 
Quote
I think the jury is still out on that.

I think that you are laboring under the weight of the goalposts that you are frantically moving.
 
Quote
But that doesn't mean they shouldn't get a chance to try.

They've had every chance to try, and they aren't trying. In fact, for every one of the handful of trained scientists with a track record of productivity, they QUIT TRYING.

Go back and look at the stark contrasts with Stan Prusiner. He was successful. Your guys are pathetic failures.

 
Quote
Virtually all of the IDers I met--and I met a lot--appeared to be sincere, hard-working scientists just like their peers.

How can they possibly appear to be hard-working when they don't produce any data, Kevin?
 
Quote
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth.

If they were seeking the truth, they would test their hypotheses. They don't, so they aren't.
 
Quote
Rather than shove any particular theory down their throats, I hope to teach them how to think critically about the various options that are out there and then make up their own minds.

You mean misrepresenting hypotheses as theories and ignoring the most important evidence--that produced by testing predictions of a hypothesis? That seems dishonest to me.
 
Quote
But I also want to encourage them that life is about constant change and growth, so they should be wary of locking themselves down to one position for all of time.

The essence of science is that all conclusions are provisional, and our duty is to attempt to falsify our conclusions. The ID movement rejects the very basis of science and is afraid to attempt to falsify even the least important ID hypothesis.

  
Mr_Christopher



Posts: 1238
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,17:37   

From a positive review of Expelled

       
Quote
In the movie there are somber moments, as when Stein visits World War II death camps and traces the Nazi philosophy back to the godless Darwinian world in which fitness must prevail and everything is permitted


Documentary or propaganda?  YOU decide!

And when reading Darwin or modern evolution I seem to have overlooked the part about "fitness must prevail and everything is permitted"  Can someone point that page out to me?

This all reminds me of my favorite Philip E Johnson quote:

       
Quote
The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.


Yup, all science so far!

edit:

My new favorite Ben Stein quote:

     
Quote
"I'm hoping that (schools) will at least allow in science classes someone to say, 'What if it's not Darwinism, but what if there was some intelligent designer who created the universe?' "


So...Ben does want intelligent design creationism in the classroom after all.  What a total fruit cake.  When did ben Stein become an idiot?  I used to like him!

Note to Ben - Darwinism/ToE has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE YOU DUMB ASS!  NOTHING!  BIOLOGY IS NOT THE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSE YOU UNEDUCATED CRACKPOT!

Kevin, you wonder why everyone is so hostile to Expelled.  Well that Ben Stein quote sums it up nicely.

Good god, Kevin, could you please explain to Ben that the creation of the universe is not related to the theory of evolution, natural selection, or Charles Darwin.  If nothing else man would you please explain this to Ben?  He'd look far less stupid when he quits confusing darwinism/ToE with the creation of the universe.

This is the kind of shit that pisses people off, Kevin. Ben is clearly ignorant about biology and is perpetuating that ignorance with this propaganda film that only Leni Riefenstahl could appreciate.

Ben looks totally retarded everytime he says stuff like this.  Did ben even graduate from college?  Did he take ANY biology classes?  I mean, biology is not cosmology.  Darwin never theorized on the creation of the universe, Kevin.  

You've got to get Ben a new biology tutor and the one he now has should be fired.

Unless of course....Ben knows better and it lying.  Does Ben not know better, Kevin, or is he lying?  You of all people know the answer.  Is Ben miselading people on purpose, or does he not know the difference between cosmology and biology?  Please shed some light on the subject.

So here we have Ben Stein who does not know the difference between biology and cosmology, mistakenly portraying Darwin as having theorized on the creation of the universe..And he's advocating we teach this crap in science class.  And when we say no way jose you whine about persecution and being silenced.  

How can you defend this rube, Kevin?

Oh and if I sound pissed off it's because I am pissed off.  The Texas school board rubes are using the same kind of nonsense arguments Ben is spouting to justify teaching this shit in public science class in Texas.  In fact the head of our state School board is on record telling his church they do not call it creationism, they call it "intelligent design" so it sounds more like science.  He's yet another liar for jesus from the intelligent design creationism camp with a dishonest agenda.  But you said not to judge a theory by the agenda.  I guess you missed the the note - THEY HAVE NO THEORY IT IS ALL AN AGENDA.  

I will have to put my kids in private school if they succeed, I am not going to give my kids a retarded education, the kind of education Ben Stein seems to be advocating.  

So yeah, as a father of two I am way pissed off.

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
Richard Simons



Posts: 425
Joined: Oct. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:01   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?

Before they do that they need to come up with a theory. If they ever manage to do that, then there will be something to test and scientists will start to be interested.

While interviewing for the film, did you ever ask anyone what would constitute evidence that ID is not correct? That is an essential requirement for any notion to be considered a hypothesis.

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All sweeping statements are wrong.

  
Tracy P. Hamilton



Posts: 1239
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:08   

Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 26 2008,18:01)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:06)
can ID produce compelling evidence and arguments to back up their theories?

Before they do that they need to come up with a theory. If they ever manage to do that, then there will be something to test and scientists will start to be interested.

While interviewing for the film, did you ever ask anyone what would constitute evidence that ID is not correct? That is an essential requirement for any notion to be considered a hypothesis.

About half of scientists are religious.  They certainly wouldn't care if a scientific theory was religiously motivated.  Maybe the reason that those scientists won't accept ID is because it is not a theory, plain and simple.

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"Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world."  PaV

"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen

"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers

  
elucifuga



Posts: 2
Joined: Feb. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:19   

The problem with supposed 'exposures' such as 'Expelled' is that we do not have the other side of any of the examples.  We have only a one-sided view.  Sure, sometimes there are no extenuating circumstances that show actions against persons were warranted, but often there are real, justifiable reasons for personnel actions, etc.

For example, after about 45 years in higher education I have been involved in and know about quite a few cases where faculty members were denied  tenure.  In quite a few cases the person receiving the adverse action claimed discrimination (racial, sexual, political, etc.,) when there were absolutely no grounds for such claims.  In each of those cases the complaints were found to be not true upon appeal.

How many of the cases in 'Expelled' are like that?  We will not know, since the opposite side will likely not be revealed. The real truth is not what the producers of this film seek.

  
ERV



Posts: 329
Joined: Sep. 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:22   

Quote (rpenner @ Feb. 26 2008,16:50)
Why is this movie taking so long from the appearantly completed version being shown around the country to it's rumored April theatrical release? Are you waiting for original animation...

LOL!

New guy wins.

  
Doc Bill



Posts: 1039
Joined: April 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:38   

The bottom line, Kevin, is that nobody has been expelled and your entire movie is a lie.

Oh, what a shock!  Creationists produce a lie.

Sternberg expelled?  No, he is a cheat.
Dembski expelled?  No, poor sport.
Wells expelled?  No, employed.
Behe expelled?  No, full professor with tenure.
Crocker expelled?  No, contract expired, currently employed.
Gonzalez expelled?  No, contract expired.  (in May, 2008)
Luskin expelled?  No, employed lawyer for the DI.
Robert Marks expelled?  No, tenured professor at Baylor.

Hundreds and hundreds of working scientists expelled?  Name one.

So, Kevin, please explain the premise of Expelled?  Based on the trailer, website, blog and your comments I just can't figure it out.

  
Erasmus, FCD



Posts: 6349
Joined: June 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:46   

C'mon Doc, you know what it is.

Darwinismus bad.  Materialismus culture of death.

and stuff like that.

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You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

the odds of getting some loathsome taint are low-- Gordon E Mullings Manjack Heights Montserrat

I work on molecular systems with pathway charts and such.-Giggles

  
J-Dog



Posts: 4402
Joined: Dec. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,18:57   

Quote (Doc Bill @ Feb. 26 2008,18:38)
The bottom line, Kevin, is that nobody has been expelled and your entire movie is a lie.

Oh, what a shock!  Creationists produce a lie.

Sternberg expelled?  No, he is a cheat.
Dembski expelled?  No, poor sport.
Wells expelled?  No, employed.
Behe expelled?  No, full professor with tenure.
Crocker expelled?  No, contract expired, currently employed.
Gonzalez expelled?  No, contract expired.  (in May, 2008)
Luskin expelled?  No, employed lawyer for the DI.
Robert Marks expelled?  No, tenured professor at Baylor.

Hundreds and hundreds of working scientists expelled?  Name one.

So, Kevin, please explain the premise of Expelled?  Based on the trailer, website, blog and your comments I just can't figure it out.

Doc Bill - Kevin just called me on the New Super Secret ID Phone and has an answer for you:

The premise of Expelled, is that the "stars" of the movie, like Sternberg, Gonzalez et al, have been "expelled" from the everyday world of happy, healthy, sane, normal people, and forced to associate themselves with a pig-ignorant and foolish premise that the "Designer" (Not the Christian God wink, wink) created us, and "Darwinism" is wrong.

As all normal healthy, happy sane people all know, this is total lunacy, and hence, the featured performers in Expelled The Movie all feel like martyers, and "expelled" from a normal human existence.

HTH :)

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Come on Tough Guy, do the little dance of ID impotence you do so well. - Louis to Joe G 2/10

Gullibility is not a virtue - Quidam on Dembski's belief in the Bible Code Faith Healers & ID 7/08

UD is an Unnatural Douchemagnet. - richardthughes 7/11

  
elucifuga



Posts: 2
Joined: Feb. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,19:03   

Perhaps it is worth repeating just how Sternberg was 'expelled.'  He was NOT!  He was NOT an employee of the Natural History Museum, but was given space and access to the collections for his research.  HE STILL HAS THOSE..  His keys were NOT taken from him, only a master key that he (and some others) were not permitted to have; all those that were unauthorized had to give up the master keys.  

He complains that he was 'mistreated' by comments from colleagues at the Museum.  That may be true, but his unethical behavior as an Associate Editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was the not unexpected cause of the criticisms from other scientists. He brought those upon himself by his attempts at the surreptitious approval of a paper that would not have been published, if the accepted editorial process of the journal had been followed. These facts are ignored in the 'defense' of Sternberg by the ID and other creationists. He is no hero.

  
rpenner



Posts: 10
Joined: Feb. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,19:08   

Quote (ERV @ Feb. 26 2008,18:22)
New guy wins.

You are too kind.

I spend most of my time on the completely crank-polluted http://forum.physorg.com/ and trying to code up the interface to my personal anti-woo site, but you might have spotted me on Science Blogs.

  
Ogee



Posts: 89
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,19:14   

Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:04)
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept

Hmmm, yeah.. that would be because it is demonstrably untrue.

  
Kristine



Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,20:01   

Quote (Ogee @ Feb. 26 2008,18:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,15:04)
Religious agendas aside, I really do believe that people like Sternberg, Dembski, Marks, Berlinski, Gonzalez, Behe, etc are sincerely seeking the truth. That may be difficult for some of you to accept

Hmmm, yeah.. that would be because it is demonstrably untrue.

Well, I honestly don’t think Ben Stein is a liar. Not intentionally, anyway. I honestly think he has a blind spot, because something else is going on here.

In looking over what I wrote above I’ve come to realize that Americans are still haunted by Adolf Hitler in some profound way that I don’t understand. My parents were the generation that defeated Hitler, and yet, Godwin’s Law notwithstanding, the ID side in this debate more than 60 years after America’s triumph see Hitler’s fingerprint in what is happening today, see his long shadow darken our children’s future, and claim resistance to his tyranny for their own. Has Hitler really done such a number on us? Or rather, have Americans failed to confront some heretofore unacknowledged shadow, and instead (especially the anti-evolution rhetoricians) invoke him to scare schoolchildren about evolution? (Ironically they don’t seem to be too alarmed about neo-Nazis in America.)

Perhaps it really does have something to do with the inexplicable resurgence of anti-Semitism, which reappears like acne, loathsomely, irrationally, sparking Hitchens’ ire and mine, and certainly Stein’s, and being taken up as a moral cause by evangelicals as they have (but merely to fit with their own agenda) adopted Zionism. Or perhaps it is something else.

I think this fear on the part of the ID folks is sincere, despite the antics that we have seen from them. This fear is what motivates them, and they do intend good, and that is why they lie. They tell what they think is a small lie for a moral purpose. They fear societal collapse. That fascism is anathema to most Americas whether Democrat or Republican is a truth that they do not trust.

Why they cannot seem to trust Americans more is beyond me. Certainly I was as moved as Stein was by his visits to Nazi death camps by my visits to the Holocaust memorial behind Notre Dame in Paris and to the plaque, which I sought out, naming the French Resistance martyrs in the Church in the St. Germain des Pres (one of the war heroes was an atheist and a surrealist poet, Robert Desnos, who died in one of those Nazi death camps).

Atheists died fighting Hitler. Artists and “hedonists” were as brave as Christians and Jews in repelling the Third Reich. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder. This isn’t about atheism. This isn’t about Hitler.

This isn’t even about evolution, really. Something else is going on here, and we need to find out what it is – but unfortunately, Stein’s lack of insight into himself hardly gets at what the real fear is. It will be left to others to find out. It is left to you, Kevin, or to me, or to someone else, but someone will find out, but not by continuing Stein’s silly “is not” to science’s “is.” This is not about science.

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Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

"Damn you. This means a trip to the library. Again." -- fnxtr

  
Paul Flocken



Posts: 290
Joined: Dec. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,20:07   

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ Feb. 26 2008,17:37)
From a positive review of Expelled

         
Quote
In the movie there are somber moments, as when Stein visits World War II death camps and traces the Nazi philosophy back to the godless Darwinian world in which fitness must prevail and everything is permitted


Documentary or propaganda?  YOU decide!

Plagiarizing Bronowski won't earn any points for his tripe from people who know better.  I didn't think I could have been anymore disgusted by stein than I already was from what little I knew about him.  I was wrong.

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"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.  Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy

  
Robert S.



Posts: 1
Joined: Feb. 2008

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,20:07   

"My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated."

But you do know that Intelligent Design is not a theory, right?
Because it is not testable, verifiable nor repeatable. Doesn't qualify.

  
Mr_Christopher



Posts: 1238
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,21:00   

Quote (Robert S. @ Feb. 26 2008,20:07)
"My response is that you can't disqualify a theory merely b/c it is religiously motivated."

But you do know that Intelligent Design is not a theory, right?
Because it is not testable, verifiable nor repeatable. Doesn't qualify.

I don't think they get that part.  I don't think they get any of the science part, otherwise they'd be harping on the pseudoscientists and not the imaginary "big science"

Kevin has a link on his website that says something like "this guy gets it" and it links to an article claiming ID is not creationism.

I don't think they get it and I don't think they care.  They're too busy playing david against an imaginary goliath.

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
Annyday



Posts: 583
Joined: Nov. 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,21:09   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 26 2008,17:01)
Annyday:

 
Quote

Wesley's made specific points curtly, too.


Curt, but no "personal attacks". Everything I've said or asked Kevin M. was directed at his claims, not his person.

Yes. Being a fan of brevity, I forgot that "curt" has negative connotations.

Also: Hello, Pharyngulites.

Edited for ugly sentence structure.

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"ALL eight of the "nature" miracles of Jesus could have been accomplished via the electroweak quantum tunneling mechanism. For example, walking on water could be accomplished by directing a neutrino beam created just below Jesus' feet downward." - Frank Tipler, ISCID fellow

  
stevestory



Posts: 13407
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(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,23:00   

Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,16:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:30)
If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it.

By the way, if you do approach Kevin for a formal interview, take a page from Expelled and call yourself a different name and tell Kev it's for a different project.

   
Richardthughes



Posts: 11178
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 26 2008,23:02   

Quote (stevestory @ Feb. 26 2008,23:00)
Quote (Annyday @ Feb. 26 2008,16:14)
Quote (kevinmillerxi @ Feb. 26 2008,14:30)
If anyone wants to approach me with a formal interview request for an established publication or web site, I'm all for it.

By the way, if you do approach Kevin for a formal interview, take a page from Expelled and call yourself a different name and tell Kev it's for a different project.

Zing!

Hi Kevin. I'm making a film called "crossroads"...

--------------
"Richardthughes, you magnificent bastard, I stand in awe of you..." : Arden Chatfield
"You magnificent bastard! " : Louis
"ATBC poster child", "I have to agree with Rich.." : DaveTard
"I bow to your superior skills" : deadman_932
"...it was Richardthughes making me lie in bed.." : Kristine

  
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 27 2008,02:20   

Kevin should get hot on the case of why the ID scientists were EXPELLED from their own ID journal. I mean, they must have been expelled, right, no doubt by some horrible Darwinist. Now that's a hell of a conspiracy we're running, infiltrating their own journal and rejecting all their revolutionary research.

   
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 27 2008,02:46   

Of course that wouldn't work. We can actually see, on ISCID, all the revolutionary ID papers that were submitted for publication in PCID. Let's look at all the ID research submitted in 2007 to the premier ID journal:

http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-forum-f-10.html

Quote


Icon 1 posted 01. February 2007 17:03      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  The Big Bad Wolf, Theism and the Foundations of Intelligent Design:
A Review of Richard Dawkins’, The God Delusion, (Bantam, 2006)

by Peter S. Williams (MA, MPhil)

Summary - The man described as ‘Darwin’s Rotweiller’ (by supporter Charles Simonyi) has evolved to metaphorically resemble the big bad wolf of nursery rhyme fame, and he is on a mission to liberate the pigs (the analogy is mine, not his) from what he sees as their prisons of straw. Indeed, Zoologist Richard Dawkins is so intent on blowing down straw houses that he not only acknowledges the existence of firm foundations that might be used for permanent constructions, but he fails to notice that some of the pigs are building on just such a wolf-endorsed foundation with bricks and mortar more than adequate to the task of withstanding all his huffing and puffing. Dawkins, who is Oxford University’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, has been described as ‘materialistic, reductionist and overtly anti-religious.’ Nevertheless, The God Delusion – which is descended by design from Dawkins’ two-part television series The Root of all Evil? - is Dawkins’ first book to make a direct attack upon religion (especially theism, and most especially Christianity): ‘If this books works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.’


A book review.

Quote
posted 02. February 2007 13:57      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  String Origins
by Richard Atkins

Abstract: It is shown that the string concept results naturally from considerations of gravitation. This paper describes a derivation of linearized general relativity based upon the hypotheses of special covariance and the existence of a gravitational potential. The gravitational field possesses gauge invariance given by a second-order covariant derivative defining an associated differential geometry. The concepts of parallelism and parallel transport lead to string-like constructions.


Some physics notions with no mention of ID.

Quote
posted 07. March 2007 15:49      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  The Evolutionary Gospel According to Sean B. Carroll
A Review of Sean B. Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (W.W. Norton, 2006).

by Casey Luskin

Summary: Sean B. Carroll’s book The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution makes large promises but fails to delivers. He claims that science will remove “any doubt” about evolution, and he hopes his scare-tactics about a coming environmental apocalypse will convince people to just accept evolution and save the planet. As a conservationist myself, I don’t need, as Carroll taunts me, to “accept evolution or you won’t ‘think at all’” in order to understand the importance of conserving our natural resources.


Another book review, and probably an awful one, considering the author.

Quote
posted 21. May 2007 11:08      Profile for Moderator   Email Moderator   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post  Objects of Thought, Thoughts of Objects?
From object-orientation to Process Physics

by Jeroen B.J. van Dijk

Abstract: To resolve the current impasse between realistic and anti-realistic thought, I‘d like to explore their latent neurocognitive origin. Since our brain’s self-referential neurocognitive mechanisms generate neural and mental patterns that ultimately pose as object-oriented units, they predetermine our mental modelling of reality, thus usually making us firmly believe that reality is ultimately object-based. This firm belief is the actual instigator of the strict, but imaginary boundary between physical and mental reality. By discussing self-organizing selectionist threshold models of complex systems, I will illustrate an alternative for the traditional object-oriented realistic and antirealistic schemes: process-oriented reflexive monism, which facilitates a framework for consciousness based on complexity science and is compatible with the recently developed pioneering paradigm of Process Physics. Moreover, an evolutionary account of an autopoietic (i.e., self-creating) natural universe is presented which is fully compatible with the pioneering paradigm of Process Physics.


And some jargony bullshit.

That's it. That's all the revolutionary ID research submitted to the premiere ID journal in 2007, and not even published.

Kevin, I know this might be hard to understand, but do you realize that scientific revolutionaries are supposed to at least do some science? Do you understand that's kind of an important part of a scientific revolution? Possibly an even more important one than press releases and propaganda movies?

   
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 27 2008,03:52   

Quote
"I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world."

-"Father of Intelligent Design" Philip Johnson, Spring 2006

Number of ID 'papers' published in the ID journal since Spring 2006: 0

Number of ID 'textbooks' his fellow IDers have written for the educational world anyway since Spring 2006: 2

Number of ID 'documentaries' Kevin helped write for the educational world anyway since Spring 2006: 1

Edited by stevestory on Feb. 27 2008,04:57

   
CeilingCat



Posts: 2363
Joined: Dec. 2007

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 27 2008,04:09   

Quote (Richardthughes @ Feb. 26 2008,16:46)
Is this P-A-R-O-D-Y?

http://www.benstein4president.com/

(from "expelled"). Is he connect with reality at *any* level?

Short answer: No.  Long answer: He might get his chance yet, what with McCain showing all the signs of going into a death spiral ... surely Ben would make a good vice presidential choice.  His battyness on evolution complements McCain's battyness on Iraq quite nicely.  Besides, America is obviously pining for a former Nixon speech writer in the White House or at least in the Naval Observatory grounds.

  
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