Posted on 04/01/2008 12:21:24 PM PDT by Zender500
"The shot heard round the world" that started the American Revolution came on April 19, 1775. On April 18 this year, a seriously funny documentary is scheduled to hit 1,000 theaters across America and fire a shot that will go unheard if debate-phobic Darwinists get their way.
The 100-minute documentary, Expelled, is perfect for adults and children of middle-school age or above: It should be rated R not for sex or violence but for being reasonable, radical, risible, and right. (It is rated PG for thematic material, some disturbing images, and brief smoking.) The expelling of Intelligent Design (ID) proponents from universities is not a laughing matter, but star Ben Stein is amusing as he walks, in dark suit and bright running shoes, from interview to interview with scientists and philosophers on both sides of the evolution debate.
Expelled rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall. One Expelled scene shows Stein, mathematician David Berlinski (a sophisticated Paris resident), and nuclear physicist Gerald Schroeder (wearing a yarmulke), all now ID advocates, discussing the importance of freedom as they visit a remnant of the Wall. All three are Jewish, and they don't look or talk like the hicks portrayed in Inherit the Wind.
Stein, giving the Darwinists he interviews plenty of time to make their case, is particularly effective in his conversation with Richard Dawkins, atheistic author of the best-selling The God Delusion. Dawkins astoundingly admits that life on earth could be the result of ID, as long as the designer was a being from outer space who was himself the product of atheistic evolution. No God allowed!
Expelled's showing of the connection between evolutionary doctrine and Nazi eugenics has already infuriated some in academia and the media: University of Minnesota professor P.Z. Myers blasted Expelled as "ludicrous in its dishonesty," and Orlando Sentinel reviewer Roger Moore raged about "loaded images, loaded rhetoric." But since a movie is not a dissertation, films show linkages by juxtaposing clips rather than pages of footnoted type. The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?
The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes. When I stalked the stacks of the Library of Congress in the early 1990s, I saw and scanned shelf upon shelf of racist and anti-Semitic journals from the first several decades of the last century, with articles frequently citing and applying Darwin. If you read an anti-Expelled review that dodges the issue of substance by concentrating merely on style, you'll be seeing another sign of closed minds.
April 18 will bring an interesting test of whether Expelled, or any other documentary so conceived and so dedicated, can endure in movie theaters past the first weekend. Michael Moore's fatuous documentaries have done good box office with the help of sympathetic reviewers and network news producers. Ben Stein's excellent one might rely on evangelicals and others who are tired of being ridiculed by the closed minds of the Evolution Establishment.
Look well at your allies I.D.’ers. They don't just deny evolution but geology, plate tech-tonics, astronomy, physics, and modern medicine. And these Luddites actually claim they are going to ‘rescue’ Science or ‘advance’ Science with their philosophy of the ‘designer of the gaps’.
“I understand that Ben Stein is a smart man, and quite knowledgable about various subjects. I don’t know if he is qualified to debate Evolution, however.”
Stein isn’t claiming to be the expert...his point is that the Darwinists refuse, even run from, real debate...and use fascists tactics to stifle debate.
This was not the treatment of the subject that would be of any use to these students in their career as Biologists, and was not the subject she was hired to teach. I would have swapped out that class just as fast as if I entered a class and all they talked about was the lies and flaws of fallacies and nut jobs associated with Creationism. Neither is of any use to an aspiring Scientist.
Not quite a correct analogy I think...
Upon viewing a crop circle, I would suggest that creation by an intelligent being is much more likely than spontaneous occurrence.
Following that, I would suggest that creation by a human with stakes, ropes and a lawnmower is much more likely than creation by a little man in a UFO. The motivation of the "prankster" is irrelevant.
Both assertions are dependent upon (1) Ockham's razor, and (2) the willingness to research exactly how those circles were made and how the feat could be duplicated.
Any ID proponent who is willing to similarly research and develop a coherent theory as to how the designer actually does it will have my respect.
If you stopped there without speculating as to how it was done, it seems you would be in a stronger position with regard to Occam's razor (I think the Latin spelling is more traditional).
Consider these two assertions:
1) The crop circle was made by some intelligence.
2) The crop circle was made by a group of one or more humans with the use of stakes, ropes, or lawnmower or similar tools.
Unless you consider humans not to be a form of intelligence, the first assertion is always true if the second is. But the second is possibly not true if the first is.
The more specific an assertion is within the subset of another assertion the less likely it is to be true. This is essentially the definition of the largely misunderstood or misapplied Occam's Razor".
Any ID proponent who is willing to similarly research and develop a coherent theory as to how the designer actually does it will have my respect.
Agreed such research would be most impressive! But I don't think mortal science is up to the task.
But please notice how you just applied a high value to the non application of Occam's Razor? Indeed, a more specific assertion, if true, is more valuable then a less specific assertion that could be deduced from it. Occam's Razor only applies to the relative chance of veracity, not the value of the assertion itself.
It seems to me my objection to your original criticism of ID stands unscathed:
My issue with ID proponents is that, having posited that the origin of life is complex beyond the capacity of science to understand
ID proponents do not hold that the complexity of life is beyond the capacity of science to understand. Rather they hold the complexity as evidence that there was intelligence behind it.
...they resolve that dilemma by...
The dilemma seems purely your invention here.
introducing a creator more complex still, by several orders of magnitude!!
The creator doesn't make it more complex at all. The model of the creator used is based on very broad parameters, because the details are beyond the scope of what they are promoting.
Indeed they are applying Occam's Razor and you seem not to, as if you merely wish them to assert more then they reasonably can.
Now is ID a valid form of science. No, I don't think so, but is it a reasonable philosophical doctrine. Yes, it would seem so.
Exactly.
When a proposed explanation for "the way the world is" moves from natural to supernatural causes, it leaves the realm of science and enters into the realm of philosophy.
Not any less "valid", just a different mode of approach.
Thanks for your well thought out posts!
Yet “I.D.” makes specific claims regarding Science and the nature of this “designed creation”; namely that the mechanism put in place to allow for the change in living species in response to environmental pressures (natural selection of genetic variation) is insufficient to accomplish any major changes that we have observed in what species have inhabited the earth.
That is why, to me, I.D. will always stand for Incompetent Design rather than Intelligent Design. A truly Intelligently Designed universe would have a mechanism in place that was sufficeint to the need rather than some shoddy haphazard system only capable of ‘micro’ changes.
Maybe I should call what I believe “E.M.I.D.” for “Even More Intelligently Designed” or perhaps “N.I.D.” for “Not Incompetently Designed”.
Most Scientists in the U.S.A. are Christian (I am one of these), and they also mostly believe in a “not Incompetently Designed” universe. Many of them are named Steve apparently.
Yet “I.D.” makes specific claims regarding Science and the nature of this “designed creation”; namely that the mechanism put in place to allow for the change in living species in response to environmental pressures (natural selection of genetic variation) is insufficient to accomplish any major changes that we have observed in what species have inhabited the earth.
That is why, to me, I.D. will always stand for Incompetent Design rather than Intelligent Design. A truly Intelligently Designed universe would have a mechanism in place that was sufficient to the need rather than some shoddy haphazard system only capable of ‘micro’ changes.
Maybe I should call what I believe “E.M.I.D.” for “Even More Intelligently Designed” or perhaps “N.I.D.” for “Not Incompetently Designed”.
Most Scientists in the U.S.A. are Christian (I am one of these), and they also mostly believe in a “not Incompetently Designed” universe. Many of them are named Steve apparently.
Good point, if there is a designer he certainly takes his time about it, and does a lot of learning from trial and error.
Yeah, a non-transcendent, non-god-like designer that actively moves evolution along doesn't seem plausible to me either.
They couldn't pay Jimmy enough now.
Jimmy is replacable, although certainly he was a key ingredient to the show. I suggest they replace him with a scantily-clad buxom brunette.
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