Another factor to consider is that virtually all of science is counter-intuitive. If it wasn’t counter-intuitive, it wouldn’t be science, it would just be “obvious”. Most people nowadays accept that the earth is round because it’s been drilled into them from a young age that this is “obviously” so. However, if you were never taught this, then it’s going to be very tough for even the most rational person to accept this based on a 30 minute movie. Science is inherently hard to understand and it’s no fault of JREF that it’s simply impossible for a 30 minute movie to convince someone of such a counter-intuitive position.
Well here is a brief NY Times article that says the museum is pulling their sponsorship of the film.
They are still going to show it but they are returning the money.
And they can also have an exhibit about the earth-is-flat-theory. After all, they have a lot of stuff supporting the competing, earth-is-round, theory. Shouldn’t they have equal time?
And what about the diseases-are-caused-by-imbalances-of-bodily-humours theory?
ID is NOT a theory. It’s religious claptrap cynically dressed up with what appear to the naive eye to be scientific trappings.
(a) cite?
(b) without a cite, I think this is serious BS
(c) and even if it were true, so?
Yeah, what are they, CHICKEN?
They are certainly not the only game in town. They are, however, in this context, the only legitimate viewpoint in town. The mission of the Smithsonian is to (among other things) promote scientific knowledge and inquiry among the populace. How is that served by giving time to people with a 100% inaccurate and frankly deceptive agenda?
There’s a difference between “you all are so dumb that we can’t even teach you anything about this topic” and “you all are so dumb that you don’t have the necessary knowledge base and frame of reference to understand our refutations of those people’s superficially slick and convicning argument, at least in a context like a museum exhibit which doesn’t go very in depth”.
Look, I have a HUGE ego, and am convinced that I’m a VERY smart person, and have a much stronger scientific background than the average American, and I’m sure that if I saw a 30 minute presentation explaining why bucky balls can cure cancer, and another 30 minute presentation explaining why bucky balls CAUSE cancer, I’d have no real way to determine which was more valid. What am I gonna do, go home and independently rerun the experiments? I would, however, walk out of there thinking to myself “huh, I guess there’s a lot of controversy in the scientific community about bucky balls and cancer”. I’d have no way of knowing that (hypothetically) bucky balls absolutely certainly positively COULD cure cancer, and one of the two presentations was total BS.
And evolution is easily as complicated as that, if not far more so. Except that people don’t think that it is, since they learned about it in junior high and think they get it.
No one is trying to stop ID people from making movies, or showing those movies. What people ARE objecting to is the Smithsonian, which is as much the public face of the US scientific community as there is, appearing to in any way endorse such a movie. Also, the IDers ARE slick debaters, and, as mentioned, the subject is very complex. Suppose someone challenged you to a debate on a topic that you knew with 100% certainty you were right about, but you were also quite sure that the net effect of the debate would, despite your actual rightness, be to lead to ignorance and confusion among the spectators. Would you engage in that debate? (Honestly, I’m not sure what I think the right answer is here… certainly I don’t like the idea of just ignoring people whose ideas you disagree with. But I also don’t see how having a 60-city tour of the big well publicized evolution-vs-ID debate would do anything other than provide apparent evidence that there IS a debate.)
ID is not art, it is not history, and it most certainly is not science.
While parts of the Smithsonian display art with religious themes, AFAIK there are no exhibits on religion as such, which would include ID.
ID is not a religion. It’s a pseudoscience.
The JREF seems to be doing so.
Jeezly crow, if I were a creationist I would be mining this thread for quotes.
“Gee, Shodan, what are you doing?”
“Pulling quotes off the SDMB to use in next week’s discussion on creationism.”
"The SDMB? What’s that? "
“It’s a pretty well-known skeptical messageboard. Funny thing, they are real upfront that they are afraid to debate in any forum where they don’t outnumber their opponents at least a hundred to one. They say they are afraid of winding up looking stupid. And they claim that evolution is so complicated that nobody but them can understand it. So we should just take their word for it, 'cause they’re so smart and the rest of us are so dumb.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope, read the thread for yourself. The JREF, another skeptic group, was so afraid of intelligent design that they tried to bribe a museum not to present the viewpoint.”
“Wow, the evolutionists must really be scared of something. I wonder why?”
“Challenging the status quo is always controversial. Remember what happened to Galileo? He was forced to recant under threat of torture, because his ideas were so dangerous to the established way of thinking.”
“Gee - maybe there is something to creationism after all. Maybe I should go to the debate, listen to both sides, and see who makes more sense.”
“Sorry, only one side will be there. Like I said, the evolutionists don’t want to present their side of things. They are afraid of being made to look foolish.”
“Why would presenting the truth make anyone look stupid?”
“I don’t know.”
Regards,
Shodan
Dedicated to the support of religious beliefs.
Or dedicated to the one I love, or whatever. It’s not a religion.
This is precisely why we need reputable scientific institutions who weed out the garbage. The Smithsonian is not simply a forum for various people with various crackpot “theories” to preach. We put our trust in its integrity because it has proven itself.
Look, a creationist won’t likely be swayed by debate anyway. But I’d prefer to think that this person in your conversation who is on the fence would rather think “well, I trust the Smithsonian and since they aren’t willing to show a film arguing for ID then it must be junk science”.
Or he might thiink, “One side is apparently trying to present a case, and the other apparently wants to shut off debate. When you ask them why, they tell me I am not smart enough to understand why, and I should take their word for it.”
And I tend to distrust people who tell me “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. And if they refuse to engage in debate, they don’t offer me any reason to believe in them. And the IDers have won almost by default.
Regards,
Shodan
Surprised you need one.
According to this only 8% of the people are non-believers in God.
There are tons of crackpot ideas out there. Bigfoot. Zero-point energy. Dowsing. Searl-effect transportation. Indigo Children. Past-life regression. Faith healing. Crop circles.
Should the Smithsonian become a debating forum for every fringe nut-job with a bankroll? Or should it try to the best of its ability to present the current accepted wisdom of the scientific community?
I mean, it’s not like there’s an ongoing scientific debate about evolution. Yeah, there are a few well-funded cranks making a lot of noise in the public forum, but their ideas haven’t gaining any traction among actual scientists.
And scientists generally are pretty open to investigating anything that looks promising. When Fleischmann and Pons made outrageous claims about cold fusion most physicists said that they were misreading their data, but it was intriguing enough that at least a few experimental teams took the trouble to check it out.
But no one can check out ID’s claims because it doesn’t make any. It doesn’t make any testable predictions. There’s no way to prove it or disprove it experimentally. It’s not actually science.
That’s why its so hard to come up with a 30-minute knock-down argument against it.
Hell, speculating about the existence of Bigfoot is more scientific than ID! That’s a hypothesis that’s actually open to falsification, unlike what ID proposes. Should the Smithsonian be showing movies about Bigfoot?
No one is suggesting that ID supporters should be censored in the public square. They can publish as many books or magazines articles as they want. They’re free to stand on a street corner and shout themselves hoarse.
But if an ID film appears in the Smithsonian, that implies that the museum management regards ID as an actual scientific theory worthy of debate. It’s an endorsement that adds legitimacy to the ID cause. The sort of legitimacy that rightly should be earned only by long hours of diligent field work and experimentation. The sort of legitimacy that a scientific theory gets by grinding down its opposition under the weight of undeniable evidence.
Showing an ID movie at the Smithsonian is cheating. The ID researchers haven’t done their work. They haven’t made a case. All they have is rhetoric and bombast, and a cheap attempt to do an end-run around peer review by appealing to public emotion. So they should be dismissed as cranks they are, along with the UFO chasers and the crystal rubbers and all the other pseudo-scientific charletans. Fairness demands it.
- You are mistakenly counting some non-theistic religions as “believers in God” when you arrive at your 8%.
- Belief in God is not the same as a belief in ID.
I…have to agree with Shodan on this one. Though I’m an ‘evolutionist’ to my bones and think ID is a bunch of crap, it was wrong to try and bribe the Smithsonian to stifle this movie…and the folks who are defending it here in this thread sound like the typical intellectual elite talking down to the unwashed masses.
Trying to stifle debate on any subject…well, it looks scared to me. Like the evolution folks don’t want to debate, like they are…afraid of something. Thats exactly the wrong message to send, and SO unnecessary as all the real facts are on the side of evolution. The other wrong message to send is, to paraphrase: "You hicks are just too stupid to understand science, so…to prevent you from running amok and thinking wrong thoughts we’ll just TELL you whats right. We are stifling debate about ID vs Evolution for your own good you stupid so and so’s!’
The right thing to do would be to allow the Smithsonian to run the movie and to make a movie which calmly and clearly sets out evolutions side of the story. From what I’ve read about it, the movie is more about philosophy, not science. Rebutt it…should be easy enough. Even the ‘morons’ should be able to follow along.
-XT
Far fewer people will actually SEE this movie than are going to hear about it. And they’re going to hear about it from Discovery Institute, in every fundraising letter and pamphlet and speech made at Creationist rallies and televangelist show they can get the word on. “This award-winning film (the award won will be some trumped-up fundamentalist save-our-faith award) was screened by the Smithsonian Institution in the summer of 2005!” And everyone who doesn’t know the whole story is going to assume that the Smithsonian screened it because it had scientific merit and they’re going to give money to the DI to “fight for our faith” and stick it to the “scientific elite”.
THAT’S why this whole thing sucks.
And now that its been publicized and a prominent skeptical group is PAYING to make sure it isn’t aired? What effect do you suppose that will have? Over, say, just letting they show it with no fan fair and a yawn from the scientific community? Or better yet, no fan fair but a good counter movie quietly tearing it to shreds?
It sucks alright…but I don’t think it sucks in the way you think it does. I see this as major ammunition for the side of darkness, when it didn’t need to be that way. YMMV.
-XT
Point.
I don’t think what Randi did was terribly smart, but I don’t think the Smithsonian policy that allowed the DI to do this in the first place was terribly smart, either.
I agree with everything you’re saying, just not the conclusion you’re drawing. The IDers are in a win win win situation here. If they get someone to debate them and win that debate, they come out WAY ahead. If they get someone to debate them, and the debate is a draw or a loss, well, hey, look, there’s debate going on. There must be legitimate controversy! Both sides of the issue should be represented! And if there is no debate then, hey, what are those ivory tower eggheads trying to hide?
The only two ways that science comes out ahead are:
(1) There is a debate, and the pro-evolution side wins by such a crushing and overwhelming amount that it is hilariously obvious, even to the relatively naive obsever, that not only is evolution right, but ID is a total groundless fraud in all ways (not very likely, due to the complexity of the issue)
or
(2) Places with impramateurs of authority, like schools and musems, don’t even bother mentioning ID, but not in visible and aggressive way, but just by totally ignoring it as unworthy of mention. This is the general policy most places, but the Smithsonian blew it by agreeing to screen this film in the first place.
Anyhow, you seem to be arguing more with the tone that everyone is taking (and sheesh, it’s not like we’re debating this on national TV with IDers watching us and being offended by our tone, we’re debating it in a forum which, while theoretically public, is home to basically zero ID-advocates) than the actual conclusions being drawn. I wish you’d respond to the substance of, say, jayjay’s second-to-last post as opposed to just clucking your tongues at how elitist and snobbish we all are.
And finally, I’d like to point out YET AGAIN that this is NOT a clear cut issue to me, and I’m quite aware that there are troubling asects to my position, and I’ve acknowledged them many times already in this thread. I don’t like taking a position that even remotely smells like stifling intellectual debate. But not everything is absolute, and some decisions are not cut and dried.
If the Smithsonian is approached by a group who will pay them $10,000 to run a movie claiming that the moon landing was faked, should they show it? How marginal does an idea have to be before the museum administration is justified in just rejecting it? Or should they feel compelled to show everything, no matter how crackpot? If NASA refuses to go to the trouble to create a competing movie presenting mounds of evidence that the moon landings really did happen, does that imply that they’re scared of a fair debate?
ID isn’t science. It’s not worthy of serious consideration by public institutions of learning. The Smithsonian should have rejected the movie out of hand.
Randi was certainly wrong and what he’s done, IMHO, is to hurt the cause he was trying to help. I’m unsure if the Smithsonian was ‘wrong’ here to be honest. It depends on HOW they were going to bill this movie. Thing is, turn it around. Say the Smithsonian was going to show a movie on evolution and some deep pockets group bribed them NOT to show it by offering them more money than the group trying to show the movie. How would you feel about that? Would you be ok with stifling the debate in that fashion, or would you be outraged? I’d be outraged.
Look…freedom of speech means just that (yeah, I realize it wasn’t the government shutting the movie down). The Smithsonian had agreed to air this movie, so it was on them…their decision. An outside agency clearly bribed them to NOT show the movie, thus stifling the debate. Again…think how this appears to those who don’t follow this kind of thing daily on a message board. Think what it looks like to someone who is on the fence about evolution vs ID/creatioinism. Think how this will look to someone who is a creationist by default but doen’t REALLY have a firm stance one way or the other because they are simply not well informed (I know a LOT of folks in this category).
Science is about open debate. Personally, I don’t think ID (or creationism, or Christian Science, etc) IS science, but I also don’t think it should be stifled…not if you are trying to educate people. In the long run calm, clear reasoning backed up by ever increasing data, and a healthy atmosphere of challenging finding and theories has made science what it is today…and that has to continue into the future. By saying that ID is just too ridiculous by fiat (I agree it IS ridiculous btw) is playing into the hands of those folks who are looking to portray themselves and kept down by ‘mainstream science’.
-XT