Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-Ashley Montagu (1905 – 1999), Author of Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race’.
When proponents of Intelligent design describe ID as a plausible scientific theory I have to wonder how many vicodins are they taking on a daily basis? ID for the uninitiated is a pseudo-claptrap creationist science theory that says evolution is not a viable mechanism for the understanding of modern biology because of irreducible complexity, that is life is too complicated to have risen solely by time and chance. As somebody said we, the evolutionists have the fossils including the fossils that I have personally discovered, whereas the ID crowd has the bible and faith. They certainly don’t have proof which is why they are going directly to a gullible American public. Why? Americans are good at buying into a lot of crap, look at the past eight years with the oil man Bush and the mess in Iraq (count me as one the gullible on that lie as well).
Talk about the emperor having no clothes, the only substantive part of ID is as a negative argument that diametrically opposed to evolution, otherwise it has nothing of substance to offer science. Imagine teaching ecology in school without a fundamental understanding of Darwinism and evolution. What would ID tell these students, other than the showing and teaching these alleged students the incredible complexity of nature? What’s the explanation for these systems and their numerous interactions? God did it of course. Cool huh? Sorry, that’s not science and I challenge any ID proponent to demonstrate a single predictive model that ID can make regarding living organisms and their present day ecosystems. There are no models, they got nothing but faith. I have my faith too but the difference is I don’t subject you to it. Science is not faith but a way of reasoning and we need all the good scientists we can get with the way we are tanking the environment.
Think I am denigrating a valid scientific theory? Consider that most ID advocates will tell their supporters not to get into the age of the earth with Darwinists. Why? Because they will look stupid and ignorant in their discussions. Think I am being nasty? Well ask the same supporters how many think the earth is 6,000 years old and you will wet your pants with sheer number of true believers raising their hand. And, oh yes, don’t forget the dinosaurs shared the earth with man. Also, there was a flood that killed all the archaic extinct species but Noah saved all of the good species. There is even papers describing how this herculean could be accomplish by a team of people although there is no genetic bottleneck to be found in any of the surviving species of this so-called flood. But what the hell you can’t let the facts get in the way of faith.
How can I say this? Because I read their crappy pseudo-scientific papers! You call this science when the facts are blithely ignored to uphold a literal interpretation of the bible? I have seen such mental gymnastics since Clinton was trying to describe his, eh, well you know his liaisons as being non-sexual. I am all for the good book but I also know men wrote the passages in the bible, not god, and I can smell their stink and agendas a mile away in some of the passages. Just think about the cult in Texas and the rape of those children if you don’t get my drift about how matters can get so twisted in matters of faith. Do I blame all religions for that mess or for the Catholic priest scandal? No, but that is what the ID proponents are doing when the equate Darwinism with the Nazi atrocities, as if to absolve Europe of two thousand years of anti-antisemitism pogroms. What would you expect from a Nixon henchman, Ben Stiller?
If you think you have a valid theory and ID is a science please have you’re debate with the scientists and not with the average lay person who slept through much of 9th grade biology. By the way the process is called peer review. To all people thinking that it can’t hurt to add Intelligent Design to the curriculum think again if you are wondering why all of the American jobs are going to Indian and China. You’re letting the pandering politicians distract you once again as they continue to rob your pockets for the special interests. Keep America strong by keeping your faith and science separate.
Erik John Bertel
Hi. I’m an atheist myself but one of the things I try to touch on when this subject comes up is it is not an atheist/christian debate. Evolution is not an atheistic ideology, it is the only legitimate explanation for the diversity of life that we know, and it’s the best supported theory in all of science. Intelligent design is not science, it doesn’t offer any useful explanatory power. Christian’s who take up the ID crusade are missing the picture, it’s like they’re more concerned with propagating an ancient myth than they are with developing a deeper understanding of their god. It seems they’re trying to tell god what to do, rather than looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions about how god works, they insist that no, they know how god SHOULD work and they refuse to listen to anything otherwise. To them, god is not an elegant mystery to be explored, god is a primitive, simplistic story. They’ve ironically done away with something they claim is so important – faith. To prove god exists (which is what ID claims to do) is to remove faith. You don’t have faith in things you know are true, faith is believing in something that CAN’T be demonstrated.
A quote by St Augustine:
“If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]”
Jason,
I am not an atheist but I do know that the bulk of this fundamentalist crowd doesn’t want knowledge or understanding, they just want to be reassured. The myth, as you describe, is almost critical to their psychological underpinnings and they are not about to undertake a critical analysis of their belief systems, that is why they feel so threatened by evolution because it challenges so many of their preconceived notions about man being at the center of god’s universe. The arguments were never about god’s divinity but it was about man’s stake to divinity! After all, we can’t just be a another amalgam of selfish genes like the other living creatures, we have to aspire to be more.
Furthermore, they are certainly not familiar with St. Augustine but I wouldn’t go so far as Dawkins to call their belief system retarded, let’s just call it simplistic . Maybe that is the fault of democracy because all of the nuances of public opinion become a blur, almost comic bookish when engaged in argument but it is still the best system we have and we will all have to learn to live with the mediocrity.
Erik John Bertel
No, I don’t think it’s retarded either. These people are not stupid. They just have an easy to understand ideology, and they’re not going to challenge that with something they barely even understand. Which in itself is really of no consequence to me until they try to enforce their beliefs on me.
Something needs to be done about the way science is conveyed to non-scientists. When it’s all caught up in jargon and technical lingo, it’s inaccessible for the average person. It’s not so much that the idea is hard to understand, but you need a basic familiarity with the terminology just to understand what most scientists are saying. I think part of it comes from the scientists themselves. ‘We’re smart, listen to how smart we sound! Trust that we know more than you do and listen to what we say’ seems to be the attitude conveyed much more often than trying to convey things so that people can understand for themselves and weigh the arguments for themselves. Of course those on the ‘creation science’ side do the same thing, but the result is non-scientists don’t even really know how to analyze the arguments from *either* side, so they just side with whatever they already believe.
Science has its own priesthood too but I do agree we need a popularizer like Carl Sagan to make evolution more accessible to the average lay person. I have a degree in biology and I am a Catholic so I have been indoctrinated by both sides of the argument!
Erik
But Expelled did get into Micheal Moore territory its done as well (or etetbr) than Moores debut documentary Roger and Me’.. and that was the goal and comparison film’ they were looking at here.The thinking being.. if Moore did that well with his first one and grew from there then Expelled might be able to do the same.Expelled did match Roger and Me in terms of box-office (granted, nowadays its the DVD deal that seems to be the big number in this).But yeah, Expelled is listed at boxofficemojo as the 12 highest grossing documentary of all time and its 5th ranked in political documentaries.The other thing you mentioned was the torrent-o-meter’ but I have to tell you that I also noticed there were a number of looped previews’ but of course you don’t know that till you get the massive file downloaded,but,maybe you didn’t notice this but if you watched the stats there was massive grabs being made for (what people thought) was Expelled.At the time (the week after it debuted) it was one of the most active torrents going and even AFTER about 20 warning were posted saying This is NOT the full movie’ lol.
The ID movement is not just misguided, they are dishonest. See: The Wedge Document. I’m a biology undergrad, and it’s pretty damn telling when the first people to bring up all sorts of absurdity like “6000 years isn’t long enough for evolution to happen” in a Evolution course are staunch Christians.
I’m not a US citizen, and while this idiocy helps me in the short run (by hurting a large number of my US peers in the same boat), in the long run, everyone suffers when science and technology take a backseat. I would think it obvious that when you turn authority into “whatever that guy on TV says”, that a very small number of people are exploiting the rest, often for monetary gain. See: Televangalists.
I’ve been searching every wsebite for a copy of Expelled. No luck. Being one who spends a lot of time on torrent sites (including axxo’s home forum), I found it slightly odd that this documentary was no where to be found. From watching the preview, I gathered that Ben was trying to bring up an issue he seemed to see of creationist scientists being unfairly treated for their proposals/belief. Fair enough I thought. While being obviously biased, it [the preview] never resorted to anything other than logic.What I find interesting is the immense response of almost outright censorship coming from what some consider the most freedom loving group of people on earth. I’ve never seen a torrent which has been more maliciously attacked. People went out of their way to make multiple fakes which are still up and running and I’ve seen comments and posts which were alarmingly hostile towards the film.Still, since (for whatever reasons) a real torrent hasn’t been released, a lot of conjecture will remain about what is really going on and if there is really any unique treatment by the scene towards this particular piece of media.
It hurts the world because behind the pseudo-science is a warped mentality that states the ride we are on in this lifetime is a short one that doesn’t require our intervention because a proactive god is there to take over. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about global warming because Judgment day is coming soon. But don’t worry the way Chinese Industrialists are going with their cavalier attitudes toward the environment they will they waste to this planet long before the Americans get a chance!