Ida: the Real Story of this “Scientific Breakthrough”

AiG ^ | May 21, 2009

[GodGunsGuts]

So-called “missing link” Ida hit the media in a major way on Monday of this week, with even search engine Google falling prey to the hype and modifying its search page banner to show Ida. We quickly responded with a full article, Ida: the Missing Link at Last?

Yet within a few hours of the unveiling of the fossil—coordinated to coincide with the publication of the scientific paper on Ida—some better media outlets began to report some worrying things about the research. It seems as though the scientific process had been rushed and the claims exaggerated in a bid to promote a new documentary and book on the fossil. Sadly, media pressures sometimes trump full research integrity (something we’ve seen before), and careless media sources reprint explosive (and unjustified) quotations without consulting as many scientists as they should. Thankfully, though, many in the scientific community are questioning the research and beginning to become more vocal about their concerns regarding how good science and media aren’t the best mix.

But don’t just take our word for it—read these amazing excerpts that reveal the Ida hype for what it truly is...

[Misterioso]

I was being informal.

[tacticalogic]

Time for you to fish or cut bait!

Do tell.

[Oztrich Boy]

Maybe I don't see the results the way others do. "While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things . . ." doesn't add up to their being atheists in my view.

That category gathers in "I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual" fringe

[CharlesWayneCT]

People who never worship, or more accurately have no interest in worshipping because they do not believe there is a higher power, are generally called “Atheists”. The term is not limited to people who hold no irrational beliefs, but simply to those who do not believe in a “god”.

However, that’s just an argument about the use of a word, and I don’t mind that you tautologically argue that people who don’t believe in ANYTHING not provable and visible would not believe in astrology and mystical things.

I do think though you overplay the argument when you use your very limited definition of the terms to then argue that another poster is speaking falsely because they use the more general meaning of the term.

Especially when they are using the term as it was used by a study they are quoting from a university, not simply putting in their own words.

[dmz]

PS Are there atheists these days who are not Evos?
________

Are there evos who are not atheists?

[Wacka]

The Pope

[CottShop]

[[PS Are there atheists these days who are not Evos?]]

Are htere martian bigfoots who are not astrologers?

[Jaime2099]

whether scientists can find out about stuff without needing to accommodate the findings to a 2800 year old book

Just like they have to make sure everything they find lines up with the religion of Evolution? How is that different or superior to lining it up with the Bible? Who would want to lose their job or ability to be published by finding evidence that that is opposed to Evolution. Most people, no matter how dedicated they are to science, won't take that chance.

[dmz]

You sure about that?

According to GGG’s post 79 on this thread, you have evo atheists and Christian compromisers, which, again according to GGG, is about the same thing.

Not sure, but GGG might have suggested that the Pope is an atheist, but certainly the Pope, according to GGG, is “a Christian compromiser, which in many cases are one in the same thing.”

[GodGunsGuts]

Don’t forget about the (Druid) Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Church, the United Church of Christ (of Rev. Wright fame), not to mention the World Council of (global-socialist) Churches. Great company you got there. LOL

[dmz]

LOL, GGG. I’m as agnostic as one can get. None of the folks you mention are in my company.

I just find it incredibly amusing that you so easily dismiss the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination as a liberal atheist or a Christian compromiser.

Sometimes I think that you had a girlfriend stolen by an evolutionary biologist and just cannot get past it.

[GodGunsGuts]

I have never said that Pope is an atheist. But you are quite correct about one thing, those who try to have it both ways with respect to Christianity and Darwinism are indeed ingaged in compromise. There is no two ways about it.

[dmz]

Which is why I did say that you did. You did, however, provide only 2 categories of evos, evo-atheists and Christian compromisers, which you stated often amount to the same thing. (your post 79, this thread)

So if you don’t believe that the Pope is an atheist, you must believe that he is a Christian compromiser.

Again, I find tremendous chutzpah in an anonymous internet poster dismissing the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination as a Christian compromiser. Almost mind boggling. But you feeeel comfortable with that, so rock on.

[Misterioso]

People who never worship, or more accurately have no interest in worshiping because they do not believe there is a higher power, are generally called “Atheists”.

My mother never went to church though she believed in God. My atheism bothered her. And she wouldn't have been caught dead at a palm reader's salon.

[tacticalogic]

But you are quite correct about one thing, those who try to have it both ways with respect to Christianity and Darwinism are indeed ingaged in compromise. There is no two ways about it.

"Compromise" is how men like Thomas Paine and John Adams, who held different views of biblical interpretation, ended up on the same side of the American Revolution.

[GodGunsGuts]

I never said that Pope was an atheist. But he is compromising with the Temple of Darwin, just like so many mainline Protestant denominations and leaders. I criticized the last Pope for the same tendency—not to mention his interfaith prayer vigils “for world peace”!

http://pluralism.org/news/article.php?id=2401

[Wacka]

So “yours” is the one true way?
Sounding more like Jim Jones every day.
Ready to move to South America?

“Come to me my babies, let me quell your pain.”

[GodGunsGuts]

Actually, Jim Jones was a revolutionary evolutionist. In other words, he was one of yours. If he had been a biblical creationist—that is to say, an uncompromising Christian—the mass murder/suicide would have never happened. Thanks Charlie, thanks Karl, thanks vladimir, thanks Mao...

‘After the film came the purchase of Raven. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that one of the less sensationalistic books on the subject is also one of the hardest to find (it has been out of print for years and fetches seventy to eighty dollars – or more! – through used booksellers). Once reading I was throttled with new information such as the fact that Jim Jones was not a religious fanatic who turned to socialism, but rather a socialist (and an atheist no less) who understood the religious traditions of the poor and oppressed and used them as a beacon to gather to himself an extended family of blacks, poor whites, seniors, ideologically-driven intellectuals, students and professionals (amongst others) in order to impart to them his communist message and to mobilize them to aid in building a communist organizational infrastructure to provide for their physical and social needs.

Why doesn’t anyone mention the fact that during the Redwood Valley period, much of Peoples Temple was organized into living as communes according to the model of the “cell”? Why hadn’t I ever heard that Jim Jones was more likely to stomp on a Bible than venerate one? And why, during a period in which the Cold War was still in full swing (and years since its end) hadn’t I been clued into the fact Jones was a self-avowed communist, right down to the social model with organized criticism and self-criticism sessions, communal eating and campaigns to eliminate such things as “ageism and sexism”?’

[GodGunsGuts]

Ooops, forgot the link:

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume9/TapesBrown.htm

[Gordon Greene]

A new one I cooked up... What do you think?