[QUOTE=Revtim]
I recall him not accepting that the Immaculate Conception referred to the conception of Mary, and not the conception of Christ.
[/QUOTE]
If Ben Stein knew a bit more about Catholicism, he might realize that the Church has no problem with Evolution. And the Bible is not considered literally true.
I’ve been assuming that Scylla was not serious in his reply. He may be a conservative, but he’s not exactly stupid.
If I’m wrong, it would be a little disappointing, so I’d rather not know. OK, Scylla?
I don’t think this is a hijack – is anyone in this thread planning to see this movie? I’m torn – I’d be willing to see it for its entertainment value (much in the same vein as the laughs I get from reading creationists’ misguided missives), but I don’t want my ticket purchase to be seen as a vote in favor of its views.
[QUOTE=Gordon Urquhart]
I don’t think this is a hijack – is anyone in this thread planning to see this movie? I’m torn – I’d be willing to see it for its entertainment value (much in the same vein as the laughs I get from reading creationists’ misguided missives), but I don’t want my ticket purchase to be seen as a vote in favor of its views.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, but I’m not going to pay for it. I’ll wait until it gets to TBS or whatever shitty network picks it up.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I’ve been assuming that Scylla was not serious in his reply. …
[/QUOTE]
I hope so too, but as the old folks say, c’est la vie you never can tell.
The post was more for the lurkers than Mr. Waterboard.
CMC +fnord!
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
Yes, but I’m not going to pay for it. I’ll wait until it gets to TBS or whatever shitty network picks it up.
[/QUOTE]
I bet it will be on CBN or one of those other cesspools pretty soon.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
Not surprisingly, Scientific American’s got a pretty dim view of the movie. Even less surprising, as is revealed in the podcast, is that the producers lied to the “Darwinists” that they interviewed.
[/QUOTE]
In this link there is a round table with a few of the Scientific American people and a producer of the film. If anyone has an hour or an hour and a half to kill, give it a listen.
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds]
Your not holding the fork right!
[/QUOTE]
You’re supposed to use a fork?
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds]
Is this the one where Ben “I’m channeling Ferris Bueller” Stein asks his Satan worshiping Darwinist Nazi teacher “but how did life start?”? The stupidity of the movie’s whole premise in one sentence!
[/QUOTE]
Yep, that’s the one. On YouTube.
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds]
I hope so too, but as the old folks say, c’est la vie you never can tell.
The post was more for the lurkers than Mr. Waterboard.
CMC +fnord!
[/QUOTE]
I like the banana argument because it’s a wonderful summation of the anthropic argument. Fortunately most creationists aren’t very smart or well read. If they were, they would be distorting or misusing this argument to argue for intelligent design of the universe.
Intelligent design may use something like the eye for example. At first glance, it sure seems like the eye was very specifically designed for it’s purpose. It’s hard to imagine how something like that could evolve. The fact of the matter though is that you can demonstrate how it could. Just because it’s difficult to imagine doesn’t mean it’s not so. If you can show how something could happen naturally than that’s a more reasonable explanation than positing a supernatural designer.
If I find a cookie on the counter tomorrow morning, I might hypothesize God made it appear for me, or I might consider that wife left it out. Which is more likely?
(Trick question, my wife doesn’t bake, so it has to be God.)
I guess it could be God, and Ben Stein might be right. You can’t prove him wrong. It’s just evolution is a much more reasonable explanation.
So, ID is not a good argument for a creator. There is no example where a creator is a more reasonable explanation than evolution.
The anthropic principle is a little different. It’s still not a better explanation than nature, but you could probably go further with it than ID.
Basically, the anthropic principle is that we live in exactly the right kind of universe to support life. At first glance this pretty obvious. If it weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here. If it were some other type of universe something different would be here. In truth though it goes further than that. In truth there are all kinds of constants and relationships that are essentially arbitrary that if they were any different, life , or even matter itself would be impossible. There are a lot of these and they all seem to be very finely tuned to provide the possibility of life. If any of these hundreds of things were even slightly different nothing would possibly exist. If for example the weak atomic force were a little stronger or pi was a little different, nothing could exist.
The chances of all these different variables falling into just the perfect alignment as to allow a universe with matter to exist is roughly akin to having a volcanic eruption spew lava into the air in such a way that it would just happen to land in the form of a perfectly functional volkswagon.
If a volkswagon suddenly popped into existence in front of somebody they might reasonably conjecture that somebody is sending them a message.
With our universe, that’s pretty much what happened.
God might have designed it this way. You can’t prove he didn’t.
If I were a creationist this is the tact, I would take. It still doesn’t work, but it’s a much stronger argument than ID.
Why is it a bad argument?
Once you understand that positing infinity means that anything that is possible is inevitable than it becomes a certainty that our sort of universe would roll around.
I’m comfortable and happy in a universe where there is a nonzero chance that if I drop a quarter it will fall through a solid granite table and land on the floor, and that if I watch enough volcanic eruptions eventually I’ll get a volkswagon.
[QUOTE=Scylla]
I like the banana argument because it’s a wonderful summation of the anthropic argument.
[/QUOTE]
Why does a banana demonstrate anything about the anthropic principle? Wild, uncultivated bananas have none of the properties that any person finds compelling in these evolution/ID arguments. Bananas only fit nicely in a person’s hand, peel easily, point towards the mouth, and taste really good because people put a lot of effort into cultivating bananas with these properties.
The banana argument is just stupid.
Having seen the TV ads, it seems as they are marketing it as a highschool comedy, not at all related to science, religion or reality. Something like a reverse Big, where the teacher becomes the troublemaking student and has to go to the principal’s office.
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Having seen the TV ads, it seems as they are marketing it as a highschool comedy, not at all related to science, religion or reality. Something like a reverse Big, where the teacher becomes the troublemaking student and has to go to the principal’s office.
[/QUOTE]
They do show that stupid-ass bit with the caricatured science teacher and Ben Stein asking that stupid question.
There are so many things factually wrong with just that 15 second little snippet. The worst part is that Stein actually seems to think that’s just an incredibly devastating question.
I’l be curious to see what kind of business the movie does. It won’t surprise me if it makes money. There’s a lot of fundies out there.
It’d make about as much sense for a student asks a history teacher “But where did life begin? Who were the first people?” when he’s talking about the migrations from Africa, and then refusing to accept any history as fact if he didn’t allow the possibility of Adam and Eve in Eden or life originating with the Mayan gods fashioning insect like beings.
I’m gonna stick my neck out here and play the devil’s advocate for why Darwin should not be taught, either. At best, Darwin made some nice observations in the tropics. But, what did Darwin really say? As I was taught, he NEVER said man came from apes, carte blanche. He said man came from some common tie to apes yet to be found, aka “the missing link”. Yet, what and where is this missing link? Despite all the findings of primitive men packed in eons of ice on some mountaintop, where’s this missing link?
So, what is so great about Darwin? I fail to understand why science gravitates to him like he’s the ultimate “end-all to the be-all”. BTW, there are other theories on evolution, too…like the little toe we’ve yet to lose that opposing scientists claim we cannot balance without. (Maybe mythbusters can cut off a toe so we can know for sure.) So you see, this is not a B&W issue. If you’re gonna teach evolution, you better open your mind to present ALL the theories. And, they are JUST theories!
[QUOTE=Jinx]
I’m gonna stick my neck out here and play the devil’s advocate for why Darwin should not be taught, either. At best, Darwin made some nice observations in the tropics. But, what did Darwin really say? As I was taught, he NEVER said man came from apes, carte blanche. He said man came from some common tie to apes yet to be found, aka “the missing link”. Yet, what and where is this missing link? Despite all the findings of primitive men packed in eons of ice on some mountaintop, where’s this missing link?
[/QUOTE]
Firstly, Ötzi the Iceman is a modern human, contemporaneous with Sumeria, so what he has to do with this, I don’t know.
Secondly, “missing link” is a red herring, but sure, how many do you want?. Palæontology, especially hominid palæontology, has come an awful long way since Darwin’s day. Kind of like he predicted. That’s good science.
[QUOTE=Jinx]
I’m gonna stick my neck out here and play the devil’s advocate for why Darwin should not be taught, either. At best, Darwin made some nice observations in the tropics. But, what did Darwin really say? As I was taught, he NEVER said man came from apes, carte blanche. He said man came from some common tie to apes yet to be found, aka “the missing link”. Yet, what and where is this missing link? Despite all the findings of primitive men packed in eons of ice on some mountaintop, where’s this missing link?
[/quote]
Spoken like someone who doesn’t truly understand evolution at all. First of all, Darwin is merely the father of the theory, and scientists do not say, “Well, Darwin said it, so that settles it.” Darwin worked up the idea without any understanding of the mechanism of genetics as we know it today. The easiest way to understand exactly what Darwin did is to think of his Origin of Species as the outline like what a novelist would create before starting work on a novel. Later scientists have come along and added to that outline as our understanding of genetics has improved. Some things have been completely tossed out as being wrong, while experiments, observation, and research have shown other things as being right.
Nor did Darwin say that there would be a “missing link” in the sense that we’d find evidence of some creature that was half-man, half-ape/monkey. What Darwin did say is that we would find series of fossils which gradually show fewer ape/monkey characteristics and more and more human characteristics. Which we quite clearly have. “Lucy” being the most famous example of this.
Now, admittedly, we haven’t found fossils which delineate every step of the way, but we haven’t been looking all that long (only about 150 years) and fossils are pretty rare to begin with. We have, however, found enough fossils to form a very good picture of what has happened over several millions of years.
Because Darwin, working from very little information was able to make a “great leap” in thinking, which in the years since hasn’t been proven completely wrong. It’s pretty rare in any field for someone to do this. This puts him on par with the likes of Newton, Einstein, Gallileo in the sciences, or Mozart in the arts.
Science doesn’t. Darwin got a number of things wrong, and had no knowledge of DNA. We don’t even let Einstein get away with having the last word, and are continually doing experiments on his theories to see if they are right, or if he screwed up some place.
This is a pretty flawed argument, and should be apparent from what you’ve just said. If we can’t do without it, then there’s no reason for us to “lose” it. The fact of the matter is that you can maintian your balance without it, but there’s no advantage to losing it. People without toes, or even legs can walk just as well as you or I. Modern medicine and technology has had the side effect of slowing evolution in humans.
As I hope I’ve made clear, there’s no reason for them to do so.
Actually, it is. There’s ample evidence showing that evolution happens (antibiotic resistant bacteria is evolution in action).
Sure, when those theories can present the same level of evidence that evolution has.
No, they’re not. A “theory,” in the scientific sense, is something which can be tested and proven. Evolution can and has been demonstrated (see here, here, here and here for recent scientific studies showing evolution to be a fact.) Show me where someone has proven the existance of a supernatural being, or even come up with evidence hinting at such things.
Just wanted to emphasize that “Darwinism” is not an adequate substitute term for “evolution”. It makes about as much sense as saying “Pasteurism” when talking about the field of infectious disease.*
“Darwinism”, of course, is meant as by creationists to sound pejorative, but it just comes off as silly.
I have found this site to be useful in dispelling the cloud of ignorance raised by Stein’s movie.
*this makes an even better analogy when you realize that there are a substantial number of whack-a-doodles who still refuse to believe in the germ theory.
Evolutionary biologists understand that while Darwin posited the theory of natural selection in evolution, he was not the first person to understand breeding for specific traits (farmers have been doing this for millenia). He came up with the theory (with help, and I believe credited those who helped him) and wrote it up though.
Evolution doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with “how life began” - only how it DEVELOPS. Anyone who claims to know exactly how the universe began and exactly what began it is not a scientist. Or, at any rate, is not using any scientific method to come to his or her conclusions.
“Darwinism” is a hot-button term used in an attempt to frame the evidence for evolution in terms of faction. A belief in the proven principles of evolution is not Darwinism, any more than a belief in the proven principles of gravity is Newtonism. No physicist today would go to Newton for instruction because we’ve learned so much more since then. If he were resurrected Einstein would be obsolete because we’ve learned so much more about relativity since he was around. And no one would go to Darwin as the last word on evolution because we’ve learned so much about it in the last 150+ years.
On preview, re: my last paragraph: thanks for scoopin’ me, Jackmanii.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,2477,n,n
Apparently, they didn’t ask permission to use Imagine, by John Lennon, either.
[QUOTE=Jinx]
I’m gonna stick my neck out here and play the devil’s advocate for why Darwin should not be taught, either.
[/quote]
“Darwin” isn’t taught. Evolutionary theory is taught, not because Darwin said it, but because it’s a demonstrable fact of biology.
It’s more about what he discovered than what he said (Science is not authoritarian. Evolution is not a philosophy or an opinion or an ideology. No one takes it as true just because “Darwin said it”), but his most significant contribution was positing Natural selection as the explanation for the observed phenomena of adaptation and speciation.
This has been addressed already, but you’re mistaken on basically every point here. I will point out again that it’s irrelevant what Darwin said, but what he surmised was that humans and modern apes had a common ancestor. The “missing link” thing is a canard. DNA evidence has confirmed copmmon ancestry between humans and apes and the fossil record has provided several “links” between the human/ape ancestors and humans (and apes).
He is to biology what Newton was to physics, but education about evolution has nothing to do with adulating Darwin. Evolution can be demonstrated and taught without any reference to Darwin, just like physics can be taught without any necessary personal references to Newton.
It doesn’t. This sentence shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both science and evolutionary theory on your part.
Actually, no there aren’t. Evolution has no competing scientific theories. The main reason for that is that it’s a proven fact.
I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with whatever you’re referring to but how does it constitute a scientific theory?
There is only one scientific theory for the origin of species and the word “theory” in science does not mean “unproven.”