Ben Stein vs. Sputtering Atheists

Media Research Center ^ | April 17, 2008 | L. Brent Bozell III

[Aristotelian]

I confess that when the producers of Ben Stein’s new documentary “Expelled” called, offering me a private screening, I was less than excited.

It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay “rights.” Abortion “rights.” On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism’s power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.

Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates. We know the concept of Intelligent Design is stifled in academic circles. An entire documentary to state the obvious? You can see my reluctance to view it.

I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.

Ben Stein’s extraordinary presentation documents how the worlds of science and academia not only crush debate on the origins of life, but also crush the careers of professors who dare to question the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution and natural selection.

Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God? He assembles a stable of academics – experts all -- who dared to question Darwinist assumptions and found themselves “expelled” from intellectual discourse as a result. They include evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg (sandbagged at the Smithsonian), biology professor Caroline Crocker (drummed out of George Mason University), and astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez (blackballed at Iowa State University).

That’s disturbing enough, but what Stein does next is truly shocking. He allows the principal advocates of Darwinism to speak their minds.

[cookcounty]

"You're unfamiliar with Gould and Eldredge? "

If you'll excuse my butting in,

I read Niles Eldridge's "Time Frames," which I found quite revealing. By his own account, he set out to demonstrate evolution in the fossil record.

He chose the trilobite Phacops rana because its ubiquity and high skeletal definition seemed particularly suited to demonstrating gradual change in an organism over time. He describes how month after month, year after year his research went on until he was so bleary-eyed on the bus ride home that he couldn't even read.

Then he struck gold! In an Ohio road cut, he found examples that went, apparently fairly rapidly, from 18 rows of compound eyes, to 17 rows, and then to 15! For Eldridge, it was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The reduction in complexity from 18 to 17 to 15 rows sealed the deal:

Complexity reduces to simplicity over time THEREFORE complexity arises from simplicity!!!

Eureka!!! ---Or something.

[cookcounty]

"You're getting in some awfully deep water there. Are you willing to argue that it's possible for selection pressure to change the genotype of a species enough that the species becomes reproductively isolated?"

Yes, absolutely. But so what?

Species becoming reproductively isolated is not enough to demonstrate Darwinian evolution, is it?

[tongass kid]

Have noticed it takes selective pressure to create a mule that has reproductive problems? Additionally, no selective pressure is needed to create a fine reproducing elephant. Ain't the two party system great!

[ketsu]

Yes, absolutely. But so what?

Species becoming reproductively isolated is not enough to demonstrate Darwinian evolution, is it?

It is. It's trivially easy to prove that phenotype changes according to environment. Once you have reproductive isolation you have evolution.

[cookcounty]

Gotta run, so I'll leave you with this:

Taking a species, and little by little trashing its DNA is a retrogression, a Devolution. (look it up, it's word, ---not that any self-respection Evolutionist would use it).

The processes by which tapestries unravel are not the same as the processes by which tapestries are woven together, ---not by a l-o-o-o-o-ng shot. Good night, may the Great Not-Actor bless you richly.

[ketsu]

The reduction in complexity from 18 to 17 to 15 rows sealed the deal:

Complexity reduces to simplicity over time THEREFORE complexity arises from simplicity!!!

Eureka!!! ---Or something.

Evolution works both ways, think about the massive size and weird complexity of dinosaurs for example. Dinosaurs get hit with an extinction event and then you end up with just little mammals and birds(a gross simplification, but you get my point). It's cyclic.

[js1138]

Don’t be to hasty in your assumptions about reproduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThQQuHtzHM

[ketsu]

Gotta run, so I'll leave you with this: Taking a species, and little by little trashing its DNA is a retrogression, a Devolution. (look it up, it's word, ---not that any self-respection Evolutionist would use it).

The processes by which tapestries unravel are not the same as the processes by which tapestries are woven together, ---not by a l-o-o-o-o-ng shot. Good night, may the Great Not-Actor bless you richly.

Not sure what you're trying to say here, but I'll point out the evolution is *cyclic*, see my earlier post. Tapestries unravel and weave back together all the time, often in the same way(regular and marsupial wolves for example).

[ketsu]

Don’t be to hasty in your assumptions about reproduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThQQuHtzHM

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Thanks you made my day.

[allmendream]

But how is it a blow to the idea of the evolution of man? It it a bipedal ape. It isn’t a human with a large brain, bu it is obviously an intermediate between a knuckle walking ape and a bipedal human. By what logic does one think that its discovery is a blow to the theory? Who said it needed a human sized brain to be an intermediate?

[allmendream]

Humans selected traits. They didn't CREATE or DESIGN the traits. They didn't even understand the molecular mechanism behind the traits they were selecting. Not very intelligent and not exactly designing either.

And I believe in COMPETENT design. The “designer” of Behe’s imagining is an incompetent who created a system for changing biological systems (selection of genetic variation) that is somehow incapable of any major biological change or innovation.

Good thing you have no qualification or grounds to grade me other than in your own insignificant opinion.

[tongass kid]

I do not sit on the jury I only can evaluate the data. Some believe it follows more closely to the apes and not humans, and therefore is not in the human evolutionary chain. Some would would not agree. I responded to one of you questions. Would you care to explain the “Cambrian explosion”?

[allmendream]

Ever tired of being wrong?

(”Devolution. (look it up, its a word,-—not that any self-respecting Evolutionist would use it”)

1: Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2007 Feb;57(Pt 2):201-6. Links
Evolution and devolution of minimal standards for descriptions of species of the class Mollicutes: analysis of two Spiroplasma descriptions.Whitcomb RF.
PMID: 17267949 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17267949?ordinalpos=29&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

[allmendream]

You answered by saying you have no opinion. You have yet to answer any question about how the fossil record is evidence against the theory of natural selection or anything specific about austrolopithocine.

If Darwin supposed humans came from apes, and said he thinks fossil evidence might support this. We are bipedal apes with big brains. Austrolopithocine fossils were found and they are bipedal apes with small brains. You think that they have small brains means that they couldn't be transitional, or that this is a blow to Darwin's theory?

What about the Cambrian explosion? It happened a long time ago in the Cambrian period and was an “explosion” of complexity in living systems.

Do you think it revealed the “hand of the Incompetent Designer” or something?

[tongass kid]

If you read my post you will note that I have not taken a position on evolution, only supplying information.

[allmendream]

“Further (Darwin) believed that the fossil record would prove him correct or incorrect. On the basis of the fossil record since his book he is loosing the battle.” tongass kid

So far you have yet to provide any example of what you mean.

[tongass kid]

I have enjoyed your comments. It appears to me that you have been attempting to explain “microevolution” or the earlier title “variation within kind”. In November 1980 a conference of some of the world's leaking evolutionary biologists, billed as historic, was held at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History on the topic of “macroevolution. Reporting on the conference in the journal Science, Roger Lewis wrote:
The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying miroevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answere can be given as a clear,No.
Additionally, Francisco Ayala (associate Professor of Genetics, University of California) was quoted as saying: ...But I am now convinced from what the paleontologist say that small changes do not accumulate..

Thought you might enjoy the quotes.

[tongass kid]

Your explanation of the Cambrian explosion enlightens one to your understanding of the fossil record.

[okiejag]

ping

[Liberty Valance]

"I want to see Intelligent Design raised in a question in a presidential debate."



Me too.