Kristine
Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006
|
| Quote (Richard Simons @ Feb. 29 2008,06:56) | | I wonder if Kevin, who clearly knows very little about science, thought that the IDers had a case when he made the film but but now knows, or suspects, that they took him for a ride. I imagine it would be a very difficult situation as there is no way to back out gracefully and without being attacked. |
No, no, I think he knows better than that - I think he had what he thought was a finger to the wind.
It's pretty sad when someone brags about a good review by Tom Bethell. Miller also wrote the film After… about urban infiltration. I should like to see it, although from what I’ve read the story about urban explorers gets muddled with supernatural elements. (Groan.) The film industry has really run out of ideas.
However, in my opinion it is the ID crowd that is being taken for a ride here! I speculate that we have had a whole generation of people grow up on special effects, and who as a result are quite underwhelmed by reality – and they, not necessarily because they are of the same religious persuasion as the ID activitsts, but because of the mental habits they have formed, wish to jazz science up a little with some “supernaturalism,” i.e., special effects and these shallow “philosophical questions,” but not necessarily any religious agenda – and certainly not Dembski’s or Bethell’s or Coulter’s.
From indb:
| Quote | In a controversial new satirical documentary, author, former presidential speechwriter, economist, lawyer and actor Ben Stein travels the world, looking to some of the best scientific minds of our generation for the answer to the biggest question facing all Americans today: Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life? Or has the whole issue already been decided... while most of us weren't looking? The freedom to legitimately challenge "Big Science's" orthodoxywithout persecution.
The debate over evolution is confusing and to some, bewildering: "Wasn't this all settled years ago?" The answer to that question is equally troubling: "Yesand no."
The truth is that a staggering amount of new scientific evidence has emerged since Darwin's 150-year-old theory of life's origins. Darwin had no concept of DNA, microbiology, The Big Bang, Einstein's Theory of Relativity or of the human genome.
Each of these discoveries has, in one way or another, led a growing number of scientists to reconsider the simple view espoused by Darwin that life is a random, purposeless, chance occurrence. The universe, and life itself - is turning out to be far more complex and mysterious - than Darwin could possibly have imagined.
Darwin's theory isn't a single idea. Instead, it is made up of several related ideas, each supported by specific arguments. Of the three, only Evolution #1 can be said to be scientifically "settled."
- Evolution#1: First, evolution can mean minor changes in features of individual species - changes that take place gradually over a (relatively) modest period of time.
- Evolution # 2: The Theory of Universal Common Descent - the idea that all the organisms we see today are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past. This theory paints a picture of the history of life on earth as a great branching tree, from a single cell that "somehow" materialized.
- Evolution#3: A cause or mechanism of change, the biological process Darwin thought was responsible for this branching pattern. Darwin argued that natural selection had the power to produce fundamentally new forms of life. Together, the ideas of Universal Common Descent and natural selection form the core of Darwinian evolutionary theory. "Neo - Darwinian" evolution combines our knowledge of DNA and genetics to claim that mutations in DNA provide the variation upon which natural selection acts.
When you see the word "evolution." You should ask yourself, "Which of the three definitions is being used?" Because arguments and evidence supporting #1 do not support #2 or #3! |
This is just manufactured "drama" - that's what Kevin's selling.
--------------
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
|
