Posted on 09/25/2001 4:46:13 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
There is no religious bias in the PBS Evolution Project because Ken Miller says there isn’t.
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by Josh Gilder
A first-hand report on the PBS Press Conference for the Evolution Project, held July 26, 2001 at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, California
I just returned from the PBS Pasadena press tour, which opened with a press conference on their up-coming 8 hour, 7 part Evolution series, to be broadcast Sept 24-27. Others will no doubt be offering critiques of the series itself. I’ve not viewed the entire series, but from what I have seen I can say that it’s not what you’d expect. It’s worse.
Jane Goodall was there via satellite, along with series producer Richard Hutton, Ken Miller, Eugenie Scott and Jim Morris, all in person. It was a lavish affair, put on with the aid of the some $14 to $25 million dollars donated to the project by Microsoft gazillioniare Paul Allen. Along with a nice press kit, we all had copies of Darwin’s Origin of the Species waiting for us on our chairs and an evolution card game (“Test your evolutionary knowledge”). Advocating Darwinism to the press is clearly preaching to the choir. Even so, the speakers took great pains to impress on us all that there is no (real) conflict between evolution and religion (Miller of course took the lead here) and any perceived conflict was simply a matter of ignorance (on the part of the public, of course). The over-riding purpose of the series, in fact, was to help people overcome their unreasonable and irrational fear that Darwinian theory somehow threatens religious belief. This naturally went unchallenged by the press core, until fellow IDer, John Reynolds, managed to waylay a live mike and ask: if so, why is the series so patently and gratuitously offensive to the religious sensibilities of the majority of the American people? Which it certainly is.
Miller jumped in to express wonderment that anyone could even think such a thing, saying he “wouldn’t have been associated [with the project] if he thought there was any bias whatsoever.” He repeated this to me even more emphatically later on. (It was a little like the joke about the guy whose wife catches him in bed with another woman, but the guy adamantly denies he’s having an affair, saying he’s never been in bed with another woman in his life. His wife points to the rather obvious evidence lying beside him. He simply repeats his denial and adds, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”) Miller’s role as religious mascot was clearly central to this whole enterprise. His first words were something to the effect of “I’m a believing Catholic and a believing evolutionist,” and after that, all religious issues were reconciled, as it were, in his person. He saw no bias. Therefore there could be no bias.
Just before they switched off the microphones, I was able to get in a question about the 14 to 25 million dollars donated by Paul Allen. Mr. Allen’s production company, Clear Blue Sky, not only produced the eight-hour series, but is behind a much larger project that includes an interactive website, on-line courses for teachers, a written teachers’ guide, special videos with ready-made answers to students and parents who might raise inconvenient questions about evolution, and the training of special evo-cadres (the “Lead Teacher Initiative”) to go out into the public school system and instruct other teachers exactly how to teach evolution.
I asked Richard Hutton, the producer, if it was in accordance with PBS guidelines to allow donors to produce their own series for airing on the public stations – thereby granting them effective editorial control. Hutton denied that there was anything untoward, as Clear Blue Sky was an independent production company, but when I asked if it was wholly owned by Mr. Allen he admitted it was. Hutton refused to say how much Mr. Allen had given, but said that the production of the series was in line with the costs of other series. This would leave anywhere upwards of $10 to $20 million left over, which Hutton seemed to admit was being used in preparing the educational materials and training the evo-cadres to blitz our public school systems this fall.
It was hard to follow up further as they kept turning off the mike. I did have a back and forth with Ken Miller afterwards, trying to get a little further into the bias issue. I asked why, despite liberal use in the series of evo-“experts” such as Dennett, Gould and others, no mention was made of their philosophical agenda (atheism) -- something Miller discusses at great length in his book, by the way --and that it was only critics of evolution who were portrayed as having an alternate agenda (creationism). I pointed out that Miller himself acknowledged in his book that Berlinski, for instance, was not a believer, and that Michael Behe was not a “typical” creationist. He ignored the question and launched into an attack on Behe, assuring the now large audience assembled around us that there was absolutely nothing to any of these so-called scientific critiques of Darwinism. He was so emphatic on this point that it became impossible even to respond. I was effectively shouted down and left the field.
John Reynolds, however, did get in some good points with Eugenie Scott, which I’ll let him elaborate on in his report. Interestingly, a reporter from the Washington Post came by to get John and my names. I think the funding issue may have hit a nerve.
© 2001 Josh Gilder. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. File Date: 9.19.01
The PBS series advocated ATHEISTIC evolution which is in COMPLETE contrast to the teachings of the RCC. Moreover, IMO, the subtext of many of the series fly in the face of Catholic teaching especially on sex, marriage, monogamy, etc.
And the duck-billed Platypus is the transitional form between ducks and musk-rats. These creatures, like all creatures, appear in the fossil record as fully formed, integrated organisms and disappear as fully formed, integrated organisms.
Haeckel's embryo's
Not fraudulent:
On a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: All vertebrates develop a similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal pouches, and so forth). This shared developmental program reflects shared evolutionary history...
Why? You've assumed the conclusion.
Haeckel's inaccuracies damage credibility
They certainly do.
Peppered moths as evidence of microevolution
Also not fraudulent in the way you think. Certainly Kettlewell's pictures are fraudulent,
Well, that's what I was thinking. His pictures were fraudulent. He pasted the bleeping moths to the trees. His fraudulent photos also "damage credibility."
but some of the basic questions he sought to answer were answered, and supported evolution. Same as above.
He proved that more than one supporter of evolution is willing to fabricate evidence.
Panspermia
I mean, come on. This just pushes the problem back. It's also ludicrous. Which reminds me of another fallacious evolutionary theory that I was taught, the dudes at the University of Chicago who came up with the "building blocks of life."
The transitional forms of horses
Do you have any scientific theories refuting these two points? Or are you just articulating an opinion here?
Horse-like creatures of different sizes prove nothing. Again, these creatures, like all creatures, appear in the fossil record as fully formed, integrated organisms and disappear as fully formed, integrated organisms.
The transitional forms of humans including:
Pilt Town Man
Java Man
Nebraska Man
Neanderthal Man
Lucy
I doubt that Piltdown Man, Java Man, and Nebraska Man were ever taught to you in high school as fact, unless you are very old, and even then, I still call you on it.
You may be right. I don't have my old biology textbook. But the point is irrelevant because all of these examples that I have cited above are either fallacious or fraudulent and have been taught as fact to generations of students. And it is still illegal to teach "Creationism" or ID in a government classroom.
This entire list here puts your entire post in a false light.
Why? I don't see the logic. It's been proven that all of the examples that I have cited have been proven to be fallacious or fraudulent.
If ID has any scientific merit, let it stand on that, don't try to misrepresent evolution to prop it up.
How have I misrepresented these frauds and fallacies?
The YEC's do it all of the time, and they look foolish in their attempts to do so.
The fabricated nature of a large portion of the evidence for evolution is worse than foolish, it's malicious and immoral.
It's as much of a "transitional form" between reptiles and birds as the bat is a transitional form between mammals and birds. Archaeopteryx is a fully formed and integrated creature. In fact, seven or more fossils of Archeopteryx have been found.
If microevolution was true then the fossil record should be chock full of "transitional forms." Instead, every creature appears fully formed and integrated, and disappears in the same way. That is the rule and the real-world evidence, artists' renditions notwithstanding.
I doubt Thomas Aquinas would think much of modern 'creationism'.
He probably wouldn't. And he would be less impressed with the hand-waving and smokescreens of the proponents of evolution. But he would be impressed with the ID movement.
Go to http://www.arn.org and read anything. There's something going on that you don't know about.
This isn't worthy of dispute, but... God's Word as we now have it in the Bible has been translated, re-translated, rewritten, recopied, and reinterpreted many times. So to really get a good sense of the meaning of God's Word, particularly regarding such problematic and difficult sections as Genesis, one must study it. Since I am not a theologian, my level of study is inadequate to the level of analysis that an accurate study of Genesis (and the Bible overall) requires. By consulting these sources in addition to my own effort at understanding, I've been able to achieve a reasonable congruency between the natural revelation -- which is what we see and what we learn about nature -- and the special revelation, which is God's Word in the Bible.
My original reply here was meant to underscore that there is no one "answer" or one fully-agreed to interpretation of the entire Bible. In my denominational affiliation, adherence to the fundamentalist literal interpretation is not required or preferred. And that's why I am not a fundamentalist.
"There is no religious bias in the PBS Evolution Project because Ken Miller says there isn’t."
As I noted on a previous thread:
Fitting that a series on evolution should be run on state-sponsored television, otherwise known as the network whose initials stand for Pure B.S.
The atheists are stroking themselves with all the "intellectual fulfillment" they're getting over this one. But like any drunk on a binge, eventually they'll wake up from their hangover and realize that the same problems that existed before this series, will continue to exist long after it's over.
This series is nothing more than state-sponsored appologetics for the state-sponsored religion of secular humanism.
You didn't read the speciation links, did you? You glanced through the resource but never even looked at any of the speciation links. After you've actually viewed what I asked you to review, we can discuss your claims about there being no proof of speciation.
I don't think you can make a priori predictions about the prevalence of transitional forms in the fossil record. There are plenty of transitional forms, but they are certainly outnumbered by successful dead ends. There are far more dead Homo sapiens, for example, than fossils of Homo habilis. But there are certainly fossil hominids, and some show features which are close to those expected for a common ancestor of humans and great apes.
Once a creature has specialised to fill a niche, it may become more numerous, but at the same time because it has sacrificed versatility for specialization, it's probably less likely to evolve into something very different.
"These networks are 'our taxpayments at work' providing the propoganda of the elite! Tell your representative to decrease the funding and inherent support for these anti-religion zealots!"
"The series was funded by Paul Allen not the government."
The facilities to broadcast this tripe are paid for by public funding. Ergo, you have something worse than either the government simply running propaganda on its stations, or a private entrepreneur buying time on private stations to broadcast his point of view: you have an example of fascism:
fashizm , totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life. The name was first used by the party started by Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until the Italian defeat in World War II. However, it has also been applied to similar ideologies in other countries, e.g., to National Socialism in Germany and to the regime of Francisco Franco in Spain. The term is derived from the Latin fasces.
Characteristics of Fascist PhilosophyFascism, especially in its early stages, is obliged to be antitheoretical and frankly opportunistic in order to appeal to many diverse groups. Nevertheless, a few key concepts are basic to it. First and most important is the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it. The state is defined as an organic whole into which individuals must be absorbed for their own and the state's benefit. This "total state is absolute in its methods and unlimited by law in its control and direction of its citizens.
A second ruling concept of fascism is embodied in the theory of social Darwinism. The doctrine of survival of the fittest and the necessity of struggle for life is applied by fascists to the life of a nation-state. Peaceful, complacent nations are seen as doomed to fall before more dynamic ones, making struggle and aggressive militarism a leading characteristic of the fascist state. Imperialism is the logical outcome of this dogma.
Another element of fascism is its elitism. Salvation from rule by the mob and the destruction of the existing social order can be effected only by an authoritarian leader who embodies the highest ideals of the nation. This concept of the leader as hero or superman, borrowed in part from the romanticism of Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Carlyle, and Richard Wagner, is closely linked with fascism's rejection of reason and intelligence and its emphasis on vision, creativeness, and "the will.
Regarding the last point: fear not! The ruling elites of intelligentsia and academia are here to save us "creationists" from our poor, deluded, backwards and uninformed ideas about origins. Materialism is at the heart of the state religion, and fascism is just one of its many "faces."
The culture war is on: let the battle begin!
When the drought ended, beak size within the finch population returned to normal.
I thought some parts of the show were a bit hokey. The portrayal of Darwin misrepresented his character and personality, and was clearly written by someone who had no idea how Victorians thought and felt. But, on the whole, I was not offended by it, and in fact found it quite surprisingly free of leftist bias.
Just a matter of semantics, but when archaeopteryx was flitting about, it was the end product of its evolution to that point. At that time, it was not a transitional fossil between two other groups (dinosaurs and birds). The only reason we consider it a transitional form now is that we have seen the critters which have succeeded it in the fossil record. It isn't like the archaeopteryx started the day as a reptile and ended the day as a bird -- as a species it remained for thousands of generations. It was "fully formed and integrated" for that time, but its descendents show it to have been a transitional critter nonetheless.
Yes. It's a coherent whole. There are no fossils of anythng but.
That's why some celebrated evolutionists hold to the theory of "punctuated equilibria" or punk eek as it's less affectionately called. I believe Gould is a punk eeker. Anyway, in order to explain away the lack of fossil evidence for evolution, these folks hold that evolution occurred in great leaps.
In the end, it's is even less credible than the theory of gradual evolution.
You might want to peruse Darwin on Trial by Philip Johnson. It's only around 150 pages. You could read it in one sitting.
As compared to what? A fossil record of one-eyed one horned flying purple people eaters? Of course the creatures are going to be fully formed, integrated organisms. They have to have survived to propogate their lineage to the next generation.
On a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: All vertebrates develop a similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal pouches, and so forth). This shared developmental program reflects shared evolutionary history...
Why? You've assumed the conclusion.
Haeckel's original work was in the 1870's. I don't think he had assumed anything at that point. After the fact, we can look back and go, yeah, his drawings were incorrect, but he had some good ideas. The fact that they are incorrect do not invalidate the fact that mammal young go through several stages where they do form vestigial structures that other vertebrates go through as they mature. This has been borne out in other work. Why would a set of 130 year old drawings invalidate that?
Me:Haeckel's inaccuracies damage credibility
Aquinas: They certainly do.
Well, you are certainly indulging in deceitful tactics, and damaging your own credibility by selectively quotemining my posts, leaving out the point I was making, that is certain.
Me: Peppered moths as evidence of microevolution
Also not fraudulent in the way you think. Certainly Kettlewell's pictures are fraudulent,
Aquinasfan:Well, that's what I was thinking. His pictures were fraudulent. He pasted the bleeping moths to the trees. His fraudulent photos also "damage credibility."
I can see you have some comprehension problems. As I understand it, Kettlewell's pictures and placement for his moths were not where the moths normally lived. However, according to Professor M. E. N. Majerus in Melanism - Evolution in Action, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. said: "My view of the rise and fall of the melanic form of the peppered moth is that differential bird predation in more or less polluted regions, together with migration, are primarilty responsible, almost to the exclusion of other factors." (p. 155). He is the principle scientific critic of Kettlewell's tests, and he reexamined the experiment. That Kettlewell performed one erroneous experiment out of many appears not to have any effect on his results. But, in the prior two examples, it was not creationists who did the legwork to correct the scientists mistakes, but two different groups of scientists.
He proved that more than one supporter of evolution is willing to fabricate evidence.
Do you have proof that he "fabricated" evidence? Or that he had no concept of the actual habitat of the moths? Why would he do such a thing?
The transitional forms of horses
I said:Do you have any scientific theories refuting these two points? Or are you just articulating an opinion here?
Aquinas said:Horse-like creatures of different sizes prove nothing. Again, these creatures, like all creatures, appear in the fossil record as fully formed, integrated organisms and disappear as fully formed, integrated organisms.
Please read my statements above.
Aquinas said:The transitional forms of humans including: Pilt Town Man Java Man Nebraska Man Neanderthal Man Lucy
I said: I doubt that Piltdown Man, Java Man, and Nebraska Man were ever taught to you in high school as fact, unless you are very old, and even then, I still call you on it.
Aquinas said:You may be right. I don't have my old biology textbook. But the point is irrelevant because all of these examples that I have cited above are either fallacious or fraudulent and have been taught as fact to generations of students. And it is still illegal to teach "Creationism" or ID in a government classroom.
Generations? Piffle. You exaggerate and distort. I doubt Neb. Man, and Piltdown Man were taught as fact by anyone, as they were discovered as mistakes during the cutting edge of paleontology at the turn of the century. There fore they were unlikely to be taught to anyone at the school level (except as a case where the sci. method corrects itself) after that. Again, you lie and distort to attempt to make a point, and you dig a hole that is harder and harder for you to get out of.
The others in the list have never been exposed as frauds in a scientific setting, unless you have scientific references??? Remember, a fraud is someone who willingly decieves or lies to someone. Where, is the proof that any of these are willful lies and deceptions?
I said: This entire list here puts your entire post in a false light.
Aquinas said:Why? I don't see the logic. It's been proven that all of the examples that I have cited have been proven to be fallacious or fraudulent.
Tisk, not all of them. Not even most of them. Give me a break. I know of no scientific refs discounting the basic results put forth by Kettlewell or Haeckel, or most of the above things you call "frauds" above. The only known fraud in your list is Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man, and the only frauds there are the shysters who put the evidence forth to the scientists as hominid bones.
Aquinas said: How have I misrepresented these frauds and fallacies?
Looks pretty straightforward to me. You persist in calling them frauds when you have posted no such scientific evidence to back up your statements. Most creationists do it all of the time, and they look foolish in their attempts to do so.
Aquinas said:The fabricated nature of a large portion of the evidence for evolution is worse than foolish, it's malicious and immoral.
No, I'd say Creationist and ID lies and misrepresentations are malicious and immoral. I very rarely see evolutionists lie and misrepresent opposing arguments, but I catch creationists and more than a few ID'ers doing it ALL THE TIME, why is that? Do they not understand the evolutionary theory? Or is it a malicious attempt of a believer of Christ to lie for his God?
When the drought ended, beak size within the finch population returned to normal.
So let me get this straight. The environment places a pressure on an species to vary the size of an appendage. While the pressure remains on the species, the species remains slightly changed. When the environmental pressure is removed, birds with shorter beaks survived better, and the population returned to normal.
This disproves evolution HOW? Looks to me like this proves the evolutionary point.
If we are nothing but the product of physical and chemical forces randomly mutating, then your value judgments concerning Aquinasfan are meaningless and self-refuting.
Cordially,
To the Believer no explanation is needed; To the Doubter, no explanation is possible.
Give it up, you're not going to change my mind with the flotsam you have thus far presented. In fact, unless you're Jesus Christ, you're not going to change my mind at all. Call it willful ignorance if you like, your saying so doesn't make it so. Let God be true, and every man a liar! "Professing yourself to be wise, you became a fool, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." (Romans 1:22-23). Read the rest for yourself. It will be like looking in the mirror....
I don't understand. Why does its being a coherent whole mean it can't be a transitional form?
Punctuated evolution was more popular when there were fewer transitional forms known. There still are gaps, mind you; there aren't as many well-preserved bird fossils as we'd like. But this problem has largely been alleviated by DNA sequencing, which allows us to determine the rate of change at a molecular level. Certainly at the molecular level, there is evidence of a few large scale rearrangements of the genome (e.g. in the early lineage of bears, for reasons nobody understands) but gradualism seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
There was a marvellous poster-map in Science about 2 years ago, lining up homologous parts of the genome in about 20 organisms. It doesn't presuppose evolution or anything else - it's just data - but IMHO it makles a convincing case for it, although I'd certainly like to know what happened in the early ancestry of the bears. Science is, after all, seldom complete.
I'll get around to reading Johnson's book one of these days, but you have to understand I'm not exactly optimistic about the thoughts of a law professor on my own subject (one of my major research areas is DNA and RNA structure).
If what appeared as 'my post' was really nothing more than the result of an impersonal, random, accidental collision of electrons that just gave the 'appearance' of having been sent by an 'intelligent' personal agent (I use the word 'intelligent' loosely) then it would be irrational to at the same time suppose that there was any meaning or significance to the patterns of letters that appeared on your screen with respect to anything other than themselves.
That is why it is proper (as you did with my post) to infer that messages conveying information come from intelligent, personal agency and not from random, impersonal physical and chemical forces randomly mutating.
Cordially,
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