Posted on 04/17/2008 4:07:06 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at mrc.org ...
God created us In His Image. Fearfully and wonderfully made as these recent (last few decades) discoveries in microbiology show even more clearly than what could be observed prior to this time.
Yet there was a “fall” - perhaps you’ve read of it?
Cataclysmic fall....leading to flaws, illness, death....not just among human beings but in the animal and plant world at large....
Yet it shall not always be so.
Creation waits....for the restoration of all things .....
You can read more about it in the book of Romans written in the first century A.D.:
18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
That cells are complex is not proof of ID or creation. It’s proof that they’re complex.
A lot of natural things are complex. In fact, most are. Take a snowflake for example.
Complexity proves nothing. It’s a fact, not an argument.
Evidently Dr. Behe disagrees.
From Dr. Kennedy’s message:
“So, though Dr. Behe never claims to be a creationist he does however, at the end, come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no other explanation than the fact that there was a great designer. He says -
“the result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell, to investigate life at the molecular level, is a loud clear piercing cry of design!”
I believe the issue is that Darwin continually used the “single simple cell” as the prmary means - in his day - of convincing the world that evolution was even a “plausible” theory....because he proposed that living things evolved from the simple to the complex.
Yet it turns out the “single simple cell” is not simple at all. It is in fact more complex than all the world’s factories (all created by human design) put together. Therefore evolution at its very foundational concept — the single simple cell - progressing to the complex human being....simply fails.
from Dr. Kennedy’s message:
But professor Behe says that the search that he made through books, articles, records, and records and papers of ever sort going through vast computer storage to find them - the results always were the same - there has never been a meeting or a book or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems. It is beyond their ability to explain.
It is indeed the refutation of their view.
“Is that snoogums for “My insults didn’t work so now I’ll play the victim?”. “
Difficult to feel aggrieved when I`ve bitched slapped you from pillar to this post.
” In any museum that has dinosaurs, for starters. After all, extinction is the ultimate failure of a species. “
Extinction has a variety of causes.
Natural selection process being random trial and error, without direction, cannot be 100% neutral. All the right mutations must have happened correctly, at the same time, by pure chance. That is of course, impossible.
There should be more millions more fossils of mutations, transitional freakish creatures.Where are all the failed mutated fossils?
I don’t mean to be argumentative, but it’s a logical fallacy.
“We don’t understand it yet, so it must be God” is not a good argument.
It’s like arguing, as we did centuries ago, “We don’t understand gravity, so the earth must be flat.”
The fact that we don’t fully understand something doesn’t rule God out as the answer, but it doesn’t mean that He is. It’s not the logical default solution to any question. There are no default solutions.
No, ID is not a science. However, ID is bona-fide scientific inquiry, inspiring people to ask questions about evolution that evolutionists have probably never wanted people to consider.
But all that is beside the point. Given that most people will never make a penny off of their understanding of creationism, evolution or ID, the ongoing creationism versus evolution feud is nothing more than the following. It is an example of secularists who have managed to lever a politically correct perversion of the 1st Amendment to keep overzealous Christians from pirating government power so that they can cram their religous beliefs down everybody's throats.
That's the way that secularists see the situation anyway, in my opinion.
You ask me to invest all this time and attention into writings and video of a guy who I'm pretty sure wants me to dismiss a certain set of conclusions about our human evolution because ... he can't square it with God.
About 15 years ago I went on a reading binge (my whole life has been a series of reading binges) of paleontology books and some natural history, just for the fun of it. It was fascinating! I read about fossils of homanids that were not human and not ape, the times they date from, the characteristics they seem to have had, here before we became the unique hairless bipedal primate we are, the only one on earth. I can no more recite to you now the specifics than you can cite the specifics of a college alegebra class some 15 yeas later. But I know what I learned, and it was wonderfully fascinating, the ways the weather and nature dictate our whole form. It never occurred to me to see this as anything other than God's plan. Why does it occur to you?
I'll bet that you haven't got five or six non-political science reading non-fiction books innocently exploring the data in your brain put there out of curiosity, like I do. You invest the time to do that, then maybe I'll invest time in listening to the pastor whose career is to tell people how to be Christian, but I doubt you'd have the inclination to ask because you'd realize the whole thing is silly and your pastor could be talkign about things much more important, such as the evils of liberalism.
Another message from Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries:
Dr. Gary Parker Professor of Biology – author of 5 science textbooks – once an evolutionist….became a creationist..
Hear his message – two parts: (could not get the link to Dr. Gary Parker’s message – part 1 – sorry)
From Evolution to Creation: A Scientist’s Testimony (Part 2)
8/11/2005
http://www.coralridge.org/medialibrary.asp?mediaId=2125
Part 2 – Dr. Gary Parker – – now teaching at a Christian college - after 3 years – now a Christian – got in trouble with members of the Bible Department…..who were basically taking apart the Old Testament….while I was in science dept teaching the Bible is the Word of God and you can believe everything from Genesis to Revelation…..
Here was the great debate – the Bible Dept defending evolution, the science dept defending creation!
That is a worldwide phenonema.
At the end of the debate – friends said – if you only knew about fossils you would leave this creation nonsense.
Got a grant from the National Science Foundation – to go back and complete doctoral in biology with a minor in paleontology - the study of fossils.
All his professors believed in evolution – but the actual fossil facts made it hard to believe in evolution and easy to believe what the Bible teaches about creation, about corruption, about catastrophe and about our redemption in Christ.
First course was about fossil plants…The first day – the professor says – I suppose you all are here to learn about the evolution of plants…You aren’t going to learn much…..Charles Darwin wrote over 150 years ago that the origin of flowering plants is ” an abominable mystery.” Nothing has happened in last 150 years or so to change that any. What you are going to find is that our modern plant groups go way back into the fossil record.
Professor Corner (sp?) at Cambridge even though he is an evolutionist…. Said “I still think to the unprejudiced that if you just looked at the fossil facts, the fossil record of plants – it is in favor of special creation.”
So Gary Parker signed up for animal fossil course…..had mostly geology majors…..they were talking about decopods, gastropods, dodecapods, etc….healready knew all of those names……these animal fossil names were the same as the names of the animals living on the earth today…..except that there used to be more animals and plants living on the earth than now….something happened to cause a decline in size and variety – many forms became extinct…..
Go down as deep as you can into the earth……anybody wonder where snails came from? Snails come from snails….clams come from clams….oldest fossils on earth….laid out right beside the same things found today….but you don’t find snams or clails…..
What about the rock layers – like you see in Grand Canyon…..professor in this class was talking about that….rock layer – 20 million years…..followed down this rock layer – here was a shellfish perched on its end going through rock that represents 20 million years…these things are real mystery – poly stratic fossil….common in coal deposits…e.g. tree stands up through hundreds of thousands of coal deposits but top of tree not destroyed…
In Grand Canyon itself – rock layers being stacked on top of each other in places skips 150 million years of evolution….evolutionists know there should be lot of rocks there or at least lot of evidence of erosion. They have been honest to say that neither the expected rocks or the expected signs of erosion are there in these spots in the Grand Canyon’s rock layers…..
Some say…..If you only believe in a lot of time, science makes sense – actually the opposite is true.
Mt. St. Helens – was a laboratory demonstration by God.
Its eruption sheered off enough trees to make 2/3 Mllion board feet of timber…..and a second eruption – spilled mud into river…5 days later – 1/40th size Grand Canyon was produced…..layers of rock….very similar to what is seen in the Grand Canyon – on a smaller scale but same types of formations. Not in millions of years...but in 5 days!
What about radioactive decay dates….Dr. Parker signed up for that course…..geophysics. His professor gave them a homework assignment – to take rubidium (sp?) strontium…..and calculate age of a rock…..couldn’t get problem to come out…..same with fellow students…
Professor says ……this task was to show you that the dating method doesn’t always work….
William Stansfield – has written a textbook on evolution by evolutionist for evolutionists…at Cal Poly …he talks about all the problems in grade age –how OFTEN age estimates on different strata by different methods are quite different sometimes by hundreds of millions of years!!!! We are talking 99% error.
He discusses in this book the problems in believing the earth is old…even evidence of a young earth…such as the rapid formation of coal….the pressure in oil wells that would have gotten rid of the oil in 200,000 years…yet there is a lot of oil left .,.,…indicating earth would have to be far younger than scientists claim.
Carbon 14 – Stansfield explains that there is only enough Carbon 14 in earth’s atmosphere for an earth that is less than 20,000 years old and in fact a lot closer to 10,000 years old.
He is honest. He says perhaps “there was a greater concentration of water atmosphere….prior to the Biblical flood….about 5000 years ago…”
This Evolutionary scientist says Carbon 14 is out of balance perhaps because of the Biblical flood that shook up earth’s atmosphere….
The Facts that we have are pointing us back to what we read in God’s word.
Final assignment in this class was to list all assumptions you need to make before you begin to date a rock…I listed about 14 assumptions…we were going over these in class and then the Professor stopped and interrupted us and…said…if a Bible Believing Christian ever got hold of all this – he’d make havoc of the dating system…so….”keep the faith”…
At bottom that is all there is to radiometric dating system…and at bottom all there is to evolution..the facts have failed……if it’s a matter of keeping the faith….
I’d rather keep another faith that matches up with the facts….…Thousands of Scientists around the world have come to that same conclusion – that the faith that fits the facts is centered on what is found in God’s World:
Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe…..and redemption in Jesus Christ.
“The Heavens declare the glory of God” Psalm 119
“The invisible things of God are clearly seen in all the things that have been made…” Romans 1
And then this – that hopefully we al know in this country……We hold these truths to be “self-evident” that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
Our rights come not from the government – but by our Creator who made us in His image…and we have chosen to DELEGATE some rights and responsibilities to OUR GOVERNMENT.
Government says that rights given by government, by the state——not from God…who created us.
May the truth of God’s creation once more spread throughout the world…and that millions more might say and believe and act on the truth that “all men have been created equal….”
You are not being argumentative....imho.
Again - I understand what you are suggesting.
I can only point out that Dr. Behe is the one who came to the conclusion - after looking at the evidence - that it suggests clearly that of the handiwork of design....
Instead of unplanned chance happening....
seen in the very basic contents of the living cell....
And, yes, if one sees the evidence of DESIGN, of a PLAN, then the next logical conclusion is that there must be a DESIGNER.....
However Dr. Behe says he is NOT a creationist....
Yes, of course - but have we not had evolution “crammed down the throats” of multiplied millions of “defenseless” students of all ages....when the facts point more and more clearly to DESIGNED life - not spontaneous accidental occurrance by chance over time???
It is time for the FACTS of science which speak to the failure of evolution to be made known far and wide.
In fact I am on the way to see Ben Stein’s documentry right now - will be back later to further discuss.
Thanks to all who will take the time to read the entries here from Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministry....
both his classic message and Dr. Grary Parker’s own personal report of his tranformation from an evolutionist to a creationist....the details are, to me, fascinating.
Actually - after seeing “Expelled” - and reading more on the subject....there is a great deal involved in the evolution vs intelligent design debate - among the scientific / academic “communities” of this country.
As Ben Stein made so clear in his excellent film, there is a “Berlin Wall” within these communities. Scientific investigations are acceptable.....as long as one does not stray from the imprisoned side of scientific inquiry into the freedom side of scientific inquiry which follows scientific evidence that does not back up the evolutionary
doctrine....or which may follow the evidence that indicates intelligent design instead of time vs. chance vs. non-life...to result in life, living forms.
To dare risk leaving the imprisoned side of scientific inquiry and stepping even a toe into the “forbidden subject” areas mentioned above....is to risk losing one’s livelihood....to be expelled from the “scientific”community.
It ia very very big deal.
Darwin, from what I have read, attended seminary....it was his only college degree work by the way...he was NO college trained, credentialed scientist.
However he did not go into the ministry and, indeed, became, in fact, an agnostic.
see http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/cd_relig.htm
You do not know of Dr. D. James Kennedy?
He died last September.
Wikipedia actually has a half way decent biography of him.
He was a brilliant man, a theologian, a pastor, and a scholar.
Yet he was also a servant of the living God, by the grace and mercy of God whose life was transformed by the person of Jesus Christ.
Part of his service to God included entering both the cultural and political arenas - since of course redeemed people should be engaged in the world of our day ....or do you think it is better for Christian men to withdraw to the monastery and never be heard from in the “real life” avenues of today?
The volumes I have on my shelves indlude “The Origin of the Species Revisited” - two volumes - which I did my best to read through. Must admit - they were dry though informative. I bought them and read them at the encouragement of Dr Kennedy. Yes, it has been years since reading them. Don’t remember much - will have to go back and take a relook. Oh, Have you read them?
When you read with delight the volumes you read —— did any of these scientific books give any indication of any of the problems that have been encountered by hundreds of scientists?
Probably not.
Since to report a “problem with evolution” leads a scientist, researcher, professor to risk his very livelihood...
I did not know how extensive this denial of freedom to even discuss anything that might undermine “evolutionary” science....has become in this country.
Maybe you should see the film and then comment.
Or, you could listen to the videos I linked or read the messages I transcribed. It won’t be as difficult as reading those volumes you have read....unless your mind is closed to facts which may make anyone who still believes in evolution “uncomfortable.”
Viewed “Expelled” today. It’s great to see Ben Stein take on such a daring challenge. The “authority” does not like being questioned.
Difficult to feel aggrieved when I`ve bitched slapped you from pillar to this post.O'RLY? LOL
Ironic you prove and continue to prove Ben Stein`s very point. It`s not an amusing irony, more of a sad pathetic one on your part.
Natural selection process being random trial and error, without direction, cannot be 100% neutral.
Where are all the failed mutated fossils?
To be blunt, widespread ignorance of the Constitution and its history among pro-ID factions in our public learning institutions, particularly ignorance of what the Constitution actually indicates about our religious freedoms, is the reason that anti-ID factions are getting away with stifling religion-related discussions in public schools in the first place, in my opinion.
This post (<-click), while addressing a 10 Commandments issue, helps to explain why anti-ID factions have been able to lever the USSC's perversions of our religious freedoms to sweep ID discussions under the carpet.
The bottom line, as mentioned in the referenced post, is that the people need to reconnect with the Founder's division of federal and state powers, particularly where the wrongly ignored 10th A. power of the states to address religious issues is concerned, power now limited by the honest interpretation of the 14th Amendment. The people then need to get in the faces of renegade justices, the Oval Office and the Senate and do a major spring cleaning where government respect for our religious freedoms is concerned.
Ironic you prove and continue to prove Ben Stein`s very point. It`s not an amusing irony, more of a sad pathetic one on your part.That proteins and amino acids are different? ;)Natural selection process being random trial and error, without direction, cannot be 100% neutral. Where are all the failed mutated fossils?
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