Posted on 04/18/2008 4:04:57 PM PDT by PurpleMountains
I just returned home from seeing the premiere of Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed". I was amazed that such an important movie that addresses serious questions would be so enjoyable and have such great entertainment value. The movie exposes Darwinism and the crushing of scientific inquiry going on in this country. Darwinism is the foundation science of modern liberalism, and just as liberalism is a failed philosophy and imposes political correctness to stifle debate, so is some of Darwinian theory wrong, and scientific study and debate about it is simiarly stifled. I urge everyone to see this movie and spread its messsage.
(Excerpt) Read more at forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com ...
Not sure how to answer that. I expect that we might agree on the definition of an "absolute truth", meaning, something that everybody must agree to or suffer the consequences of being wrong. But the term "religion" as you appear to be using it is at best imprecise and in the end it might turn out to be loaded.
As far as I am concerned, absolute truth just "is", knowing WHAT it is is the question. Is that what you mean by "establish"?
Pretty close. Actually, that should read, "a first designer that arose from nothing."
There. Fixed it.
How many Scientific hypotheses in history have been advanced by a group whose stated goal is the destruction of the Scientific method of empiricism?
How many Scientific hypotheses in history have put forth that the Universe is fundamentally flawed and needs the occasional intervention of an outside and unknown force in order to explain natural phenomena?
The “Incompetent Design” hypothesis is not a Scientific hypothesis it is a theological position, one that presupposes an incompetent “Designer”.
God isn't Science, but he is God. Stars form by gravity and nuclear fusion. The Bible says God made the stars. He is still making them, and I believe he is using the same means used to create them long ago. The Bible says God commanded the Oceans to bring forth life, and for the life to fill the earth. We see life changing around us by evolution through natural selection of genetic variation. I believe God is using the same means to change life that was used long ago.
This movie is built upon the dubious and incorrect premise that the truth of Science is opposition to God, and that Biology is a conspiracy to deny God. Most U.S. Scientists are people of faith.
This is America or at the least the last time I checked. It is up to you.
"Darwinism" is a pejoritive created by ID'ers. People do not call themselves Darwinists. Darwin was a pioneer more than 100 years ago. Of course he is passe. He was also right as far as he went. We now have the ability to study DNA directly. It demonstrates that Darwin and Spencer and good ol' Strata Smith were right. Life does evolve.
ID says that something as complex as an itelligent being needs a designer. Are you saying that ID is wrong on this pooint?
A fraud that makes conservatives appear as knuckledragging idiots.
Conservatives like Limbaugh, Medved, Coulter aren't doing their believability any favors by supporting this stuff. I love Limbaugh, but he's a scientific illiterate. I think Medved has some connections with the Discovery Institute, so he's swallowed the coolaid in mass quantities. And I thought Coulter was smarter. Maybe she's just pandering to a certain set of conservatives.
I was extremely disappointed.
I thought the movie was too cheaply made. The message wasn't the one I was expecting, and sometimes the movie made the same huge mistake about "evolution" that the Darwinists make.
This is a documentary where Stein interviews a number of people. The people and their affiliations are only identified by Stein's narration. Apparently titles, displayed briefly at the bottom of the screen reinforcing this narration, would have blown the budget. The interviews are not show from beginning to end, so a person first identified at the beginning of the film reappears later but it is up to the viewer to remember who is who. The number of different people makes this difficult. I thought that titles reminding the viewer who it was that Stein was conversing with would have helped me, at least, remember who each person was. (Who was the French guy, I wanted to know.)
I expected that the movie would show that critics of Darwinism have been treated unfairly by academia and also demonstrate that such criticisms are at least reasonable. Instead it showed that proponents of Intelligent Design, especially Intelligent Design by G-d, are the ones being "expelled." For me there is a difference. Genesis might be the way things happened, but even if it is not that doesn't mean that Darwinism is correct.
I think it would have been useful to spend more time on the scientific contradictions that some of us see in Darwinian evolution. My own opinion is that the books which do this best, both written by credentialed scientists, are Spetner's Not By Chance and Behe's Darwin's Black Box. Neither Spetner nor Behe appeared or was quoted during the movie.
The point was made that "evolution" means different things to different people and while no one said it directly the point was made that Darwinists frequently conflate micro-evolution (which every sane person agrees does occur) with macro-evolution in an effort to to transfer the truth of the former to the validity of the latter. But then Stein essentially made the same error in the part of the film that dealt with the Nazis and Eugenics. These people were interested in selective breeding of humans in the same way people in the horse racing industry engage in selective breeding of horses. But neither the Nazis nor the horse racing folks thought (or think) that they were going to produce a new species.
I also expected that some of Stein's dry humor would be sprinkled throughout the film using sarcasm to help discredit Darwinism. Except for his interview with Richard Dawkins near the end of the film I didn't observe much humor or sarcasm.
ML/NJ
You will note that no ID advocate ever offers evidence for ID.
And yet all three claim to be big supporters of our high tech military yet they are against the very science that makes such a military possible.
I just can not understand why that is.
ID is a deliberate fraud. It is lying for God. I can’t wrap my head around the concept. Why can’t believers worship in church and leave science alone?
You didn’t see the overstrike in your browser?
I also taught Science in high school and college, teaching evolution three times as a Substitute (I cant imagine WHY a teacher might want to take the ONE day they covered the subject in the entire curriculum OFF! LOL!(also twice the one day they talked about Jesus in History class)). I taught them about natural selection of genetic variation and touched on Molecular Evolution and genetic “clocks” to establish phylogenetic trees. It was a CLEAR reflection of what I had recently been taught as the most current work going on in the field.
I saw it, but it didn’t copy to my post.
The sentence should have then read: "...a first designer."
Period.
Now, if you wanna have a real discussion, do not go twisting opposing arguments as you are doing. ID, as I understand it, maintains only that LIFE requires a designer. It is of no help in determining what, who, or whence that entity is. If you insist on pushing that point, you are no longer talking about ID.
Your first designer isn’t alive?
You suggest that ID has the answer as to the cause of life on earth, but we aren’t allowed to ask “what, who, or whence that entity is”?
I say that The Great Gubdumbbeldoobie created life in the universe as compost. Prove me wrong!
Darwins weakness is that so much proof exists to be analyzed. You not only offer none, but preclude EVER offering any.
It;s Hacky Sack Time!
In 1987, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that teaching creationism in public schools violated the separation of church and state in Edwards vs. Aquilard.
In a similar later case, Kitzmiller vs. The Dover Area School District involving the school’s acquisition of Of Pandas and People, it was proven in court that the publishers and the people who financed the purchase lied in depositions when they stated that Intelligent Design wasn’t just another term for Creationism. They did this by showing that dozens of passages in the pre-1987 Edwards vs. Aquilard copies of the book used “Creation”, while later versions substituted “Intelligent Design” in its place.
The entire Intelligent Design movement is a dishonest, legalistic Trojan horse specifically intended to teach creationism in public school even though it is against the law.
Knowing ID’ers are liars, lawbreakers, and hypocrites.
Complete transcripts of Kitzmiller vs. Dover can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover.html
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