Posted on 02/10/2006 10:18:17 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Screening airs evolution versus intelligent design debate
By Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office
This just in from the front lines of the battle between evolution and intelligent design: evolution is losing.
That's the assessment of Randy Olson, a Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist turned filmmaker who explored the debate in a new film, "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution - Intelligent Design Circus," which was screened Monday (Feb. 6) at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.
Evolutionary biologist and filmmaker Randy Olson greets audience members before the screening of his film. Featuring Harvard faculty as well as scenes shot within the museum, the 90-minute film strikes a humorous tone as it explores the debate, poking a bit of fun at both intelligent design and the scientific community.
Though Olson is obviously on the side of evolution, he exposes the shortcomings of both sides. He portrays intelligent designers as energetic, likeable people who compensate for their shaky theory's shortcomings through organization, personal appeal, and money. Scientists, on the other hand, squander their factual edge through indifference and poor communication skills.
But Olson said there's something deeper than the surface face-off between those on the front lines. The efforts to teach intelligent design in the schools is backed by media-savvy, well-financed organizations like the Discovery Institute that aren't afraid to hire high-powered public relations firms to advance their cause.
And, though the position of evolution supporters has been upheld by the U.S. courts - most recently last year in the Dover, Penn., case - Olson predicted that the battle isn't over.
"What's going on is not being called 'a culture discussion,' it's being called 'a culture war,'" Olson said in a panel discussion after the screening.
The film is centered on the debate over teaching evolution in the schools of Olson's home state of Kansas and also covers the Dover, Penn., case.
Despite his scientific background, Olson handles intelligent design proponents gently throughout the film, giving them a chance to air their views. He offers some anti-design examples, like the fact that a rabbit's digestive tract is designed such that vegetation breaks down in a portion that comes after the part that absorbs nutrients, forcing rabbits to digest their food twice to get any value from the food. Rabbits do this by eating pellets that they've excreted to pass them through a second time, prompting the film to ask, "Where's the intelligent design in this?"
But rather than offering a detailed explanation of evolution or a point-by-point rebuttal of intelligent design, "Flock of Dodos" probes how it is that, 150 years after Darwin published his theories and 80 years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, a debate over evolution is raging in this country.
Though he concludes that intelligent design is a theory that has stalled at what he calls the "intuition stage," Olson says in "Flock of Dodos" that it still appears to have the upper hand.
The movie includes several shots of the inside of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, most recognizably the whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling, complete with remnant pelvic bones attesting to a time when the whale's ancestors had legs.
The movie also includes several Harvard-trained scientists, as well as faculty members Karel Liem, the Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor of Ichthyology, and James Hanken, professor of biology and director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Olson received his doctorate from Harvard in 1984 and was a professor at the University of New Hampshire from 1988 until 1994, when he left the university shortly after receiving tenure to attend film school at the University of Southern California.
Olson participated in a panel discussion after the film with James McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, and New York Times science writer Cordelia Dean. The panel was moderated by Douglas Starr, co-director for Boston University's Center for Science and Medical Journalism.
Dean said the debate has remained alive because the scientific community has failed to make the case for evolution to the ordinary person. That is at least partly due to neglect, she said.
"They often see no necessity to do so, and our society as a whole suffers for it," Dean said.
McCarthy said that may be because of the nature of the scientific subculture itself. Scientists are discouraged from drawing too bold conclusions from their research and from not mentioning sometimes multiple caveats on their findings, traits that make it difficult to craft and deliver a clear, persuasive message to the public.
"It's so counter to our training as scientists to give a flip answer or to give an answer without all the caveats," McCarthy said.
it's Bush's fault
"They often see no necessity to do so, and our society as a whole suffers for it," Dean said.
Dean has it backwards. Our society as a whole suffers from the unscientific and irresponsible promotion of the inexcusable pablum otherwise known as evolution. The neglect has been our slow reaction to it. Thank God some capable people are finally taking up the battle standard.
But their work is cut out for them, due in no small measure to the ridiculous, contemptible predjudice of the judges in this country toward evolution and their inexcusable and traitorous opposition to any cogent, critical analysis of it. Way too much of our social deterioration is laid right at the feet of federal and district court activist judges.
The debate remains alive because evolution activists know they have the support of judges, and some of them are one and the same persons.
bump
With ostenisble scientists leaving to go to USC film school and participate in the culture war rather than actually study biology, not surprising no one takes the blow hards seriously.
If you do your science right and your committment is to science you don't need to get the ACLU to have judges decree by fiat people must believe you.
Eating out last night, and no alcohol was involved, it became rather clear that evolution is easily disproven by the simple fact that food, and drink, that we enjoy most is bad for us, but food that is best for us, we largely detest. Wouldn't the opposite be true if we had evolved, rather than been divinely created? :^)
Ping to self.
The fact that God exists simply cannot be ignored as a possibility by science.
Science now affirms that up to 10, possibily 11, dimensions exist and we live in only 4. Science also says those other dimensions may overlap or have interfaces, branes, in ours and other dimensions. Science suggests some of those other 6 dimensions may include 2 additional dimensions of time, thus the concept of timelessness becomes possible.
Who is to say that it is impossible for intelligent beings in those other 6 dimensions to interact and create in our 4 dimensional universe.
Other scientists suggest there may be an infinite number of multiverses. Perhaps beings from other of those universes may have learned how to interact in our universe, via "spirits" (uni- or bi-dimensional fields of force)
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. - RAH
Archive
PH - I have no problem with evolution being taught and neither id nor creationism getting equal time in the science class. What I have a problem with is the refusal to allow the scientific flaws with evolution to be brought into the class room. That's what really has been going on and that's what all the backlash is about.
Evolution does exist, but it does not explain creation, nor does it explain "quantum leaps" in biological developments.
Current evolutionary theories suggest Shakespeare can be written by random ordering of letters over time, if we simply keep killing off the bad combinations of letters and reproducing a new set of letter combinations using the surviving letter combinations and random bits of new letter sets. But it does not explain how the letters came to exist in the first place, why the letter sets should desire to repoduce at all or how it is determined what combination of letters are good, or which are bad to be killed off.
Why do molecules frolicking in the soup wish to reporduce and live at all?
There must be a "life force", if you like, that drives the molecules to expend energy in the direction of reproduction.
Nature does nothing without a force driving the change.
"The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. - RAH"
How does one even begin to talk with someone who says such things as the above? Any opposing view has already be labeled "preposterous", "absurd", and "without a shred of evidence". I think it is extremely arrogant of balrog666 to make a blanket pronouncement that every believer's faith in God (the Biblical One) is established on pure fantasy without any basis of historical, scientific, philosophical, or logical evidence - and, then fails to give any evidence or argument (other than his/her say-so) to support his/her thesis.
Science cannot prove that the soul or love exists either. The Holy Spirit is as real as any love or any passion ever experienced by man.
Scientists who have accepted Christ and received the gift of the Holy Spirit accept the truth of Jesus Christ, without doubt! It has been proven to some of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, including Sir Isaac Newton the man who invented the scientific process.
I have been a scientist and engineer for over 22 years. Like you I thought all religion was bunkem fantasies to prop up weak characters.
I was dead wrong. When my wife (who is a Jewish mathematician) and I tried an experiment, with sincerity, one night, after seeing the movei The Passion (and hearing the exact words of Christ) we asked Jesus Christ to prove he was real and show us. We asked Him to come into our hearts and let us know the truth.
My wife and I experienced a true epiphany. We could feel the energy of 'something" come into our beings, unlike anything we have every experienced in our lives. It was like electricity. She immediately broke down and wept, shivering with emotions of joy, love and relief.
For me it was not quite so profund, but it was fantastic. It is different for everybody, just like love is different for everybody.
I was 42 years old when this happened to me. I had previously already rejected Catholicism when I was 16. I thought I knew it all.
I was dead wrong. So are you. But no man can convince you, only the words of Christ can do that. There are no scientific measuring instruments we can use to measure love, or measure the presence of the Spirit within our souls.
Souls also cannot be proven to exist by science. But like love and the Spirit, every sense and every bit of reasoning I possess confirm the truth of God and Jesus Christ.
No man can convince another man to be a Christian. That is why, unlike every other religion, you do not become a member by acts of faith, you become a member by simply accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour and in return you are gifted with the presence of the Holy Spirit which will forever change your life.
For me it is not a matter of faith. It has been proven true, to me, and my wife, with as much justification as any scientific theory or proof.
As a scientist I believe one day science will indeed affirm the existence of God and the ability of God to intervene in our 4-dimensional universe through a force, or spirit, perhaps from the other 6-dimensions that science affirms as real but are completely unexplored and not understood.
keep an open mind. Without precise tuning of at least 12 universal constants we would not exist, nor would our universe exist as anything more than a plasma. Not even hydrogen atoms would exist.
Good summary of government schooling.
With love and understanding. But we cannot convince anybody about the truth of Jesus Christ. Within balrog666 is a craving, a need, for God, but in people sucyh as he he believes that that need is a cry for something else, like welath, or sex or something else.
There will always be a feeling of "something is missing" in his life until he realizes what that "thing" is, and that it cannot be satisfied by the religions of materialism, or a mate, or drugs, or sex or some other type of religion. Some people and religions resort to relaxation techniques, or re-conditioning programs to try to redefine that innate craving to connect with the one true God.
Ignoring it, drugging it or applying a false "God" are the traditional methods of trying to satisfy that need. They don't work.
I am an evolution supporter -- there's far more evidence for it than for ID -- but I find it strange that Olson or Harvard didn't include a prominent ID supporter in the discussion panel.
I agree that scientists make the case poorly. Here's why I think they do: most of them are products of well-to-do families and excellent schools, and they simply have no idea how little science education the average American has. And most science departments have janitors who are smarter than many high school science teachers, and just about all grade school science teachers.
It's grim to look at what's in a middle school science textbook these days. There's a lot of political cant, and very, very little science.
I recently answered a high-schooler's question, on where did all the breeds of dogs come from. He was absolutely astonished to know that they were the product of human intervention in the form of selective breeding of what were once wild wolves, and there hadn't been differentiated Afghan Hounds and Pekinese since time immemorial (or since Creation, take your pick).
It's people with this general level of education that start withholding vaccination from their kids, for instance, or panic over power lines, or try to get nuclear power plants closed, or go on jihad against flouridation. (I'm not saying ID proponents are all ignorant like this, I'm saying the median of our nation is).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
It's amazing how real God is, isn't it? My degrees are in chemistry and chemical engineering and I've worked in one scientific field or another since 1984.
As for there not being "a shred of evidence to bolster" the existence of a God, I can only point to what I've seen. I've seen hardened, violent prisoners turned into gentle, loving men. I've seen healings and have experienced them myself. Last winter I had a cold and could not rasp out a word without coughing. A group at church laid hands on me and prayed and I was able to join them after about 15 seconds because all of my symptoms had disappeared. I've seen people give up promising careers to spread the gospel and minister to those in 3rd-world countries. I've seen them return to tell me of miracles -- and how much the enemy fights them. I read stories about how fast Christianity is growing in countries like China and Iran where even owning a Bible can mean certain death. These people aren't dying for something that's phony.
I'm not sure about a lot of things in this world. But I am certain that there is a God and that Jesus Christ came to suffer death for our sins and rise again on the 3rd today.
> I've seen hardened, violent prisoners turned into gentle, loving men.
Amazing what modern medications can do for a man, ain't it.
Three cheers for the pharmaceutical industry!
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