["Icons of Evolution"] Premiere Evolves into Protest

The Falcon (Seattle Pacific U. student paper) ^ | 5/15/2002 | Haley Clark

[jennyp]

Premiere evolves into protest
Film argues for expanded scope of science education

By	Haley Clark, News Editor
Published: 5/15/2002

Saul Renderfrance

The "Icons of Evolution" documentary, which highlights what some scholars regard as problems with a number of pieces of evidence commonly used to support Darwinian evolution, premiered in Third Gwinn Friday night.

Friday evening’s premiere of the film "Icons of Evolution" met with dissension from people within and without the bounds of SPU.

These dissenters include members of the SPU biology department and a group called Burlington-Edison Committee for Science Education (BECSE).

Prior to the event, in the stairwell inside Gwinn, members of BECSE handed out packets of information about Jonathan Wells, a biologist featured in the film.

The event, which was sponsored by the Political Union Club, the SPU political science department and the Discovery Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan education group based in Seattle, was attended by approximately 500 people, according to John West, Discovery Institute senior fellow and SPU political science chair.

After the film presentation, panelists answered questions posed by 15 to 20 people. The panelists included Wells, Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman and Roger DeHart, former biology teacher at Burlington-Edison High School, who got reassigned by his school district for teaching biological evidence against evolution and telling students about scientists who were skeptical of Darwin’s theory.

According to an email from Carl Johnson, a member of BECSE, he handed out literature between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m. prior to the 7:30 p.m. event.

Saul Renderfrance

Jonathan Wells, microbiologist and author of "Icons of Evolution," participates in a panel that commented on and responded to questions regarding the documentary inspired partly by his book.

"At 7:15 p.m. Mr. Chapman...arrived and was livid at us for handing these out. Five minutes later Campus Security arrived and told us they received a call from those putting on the program that they wanted us removed from the property," Johnson said.

Chapman said that this is incorrect and that he was happy to have the protestors at the event. He talked to them when he walked into Gwinn and was given some of their materials. According to Chapman, he did not call security.

"I was happy to have them there. Unwittingly they served a useful purpose," Chapman said. He also said that the packets of information consisted of personal attacks aimed at Wells, rather than the discussion of issues.

The two packets were entitled; "The Talented Mr. Wells" and "Jonathan Wells: Who is He, What Is He Doing Here, and Why?".

West pointed out the irony in that this same group whose protesting helped get DeHart into trouble with his school district were allowed free speech at Friday’s event. West emphasized the importance of the group members being permitted to have free speech.

"SPU is a university and we should prize discussion of different points of veiw."

According to Director of SPU Safety and Security Mark Reid, security responded to the scene after someone who was concerned that the protestors would disrupt the event alerted security. West said that security responded because he had asked that they be called in case the group decided to disrupt the event by shouting or yelling. He said however, that handing out information was fine with him.

Saul Renderfrance

Sophomore Mackensie Rogers asks the panel about possible ways for future biology teachers to avoid the problems that the controversy caused Roger Dehart.

Reid said that they (the group members) were relatively peaceful and just wanted to get their point across.

"We were fine with that," Reid said. "They were not asked to leave campus."

"There were no real difficulties with these guys," Reid said.

Members of BECSE, including Johnson, attended the event.

The film shown at the event presented scientific evidence that questioned the accuracy of evidence that has been used to support Darwinian evolution. One piece of evidence discussed was Darwin’s Galapagos finches. The finches have been used as an example of how changes in the environment can bring about alterations in species’ physical attributes.

According to information presented in the film, the evidence collected to date only shows fluctuations in the finches’ beak size. These fluctuations are dependent on climate and have not produced long-term changes.

SPU senior biology major Nathan Brouwer attended the event.

"I thought it was a really well-made movie," Brouwer said.

However, Brouwer thought that the event used science as a guise for a political agenda of reintroducing God into public school science curriculum.

West commented on this.

"The point of Friday’s event was not about having God in the classroom but about good science education," West said. "[Students] should be exposed to the diversity of scientific opinion about the key evidences for Darwin’s theory."

West said that schools should not teach Darwinian evolution as "unquestioned fact, when it’s not."

Biology Department Chair Rick Ridgway identifies himself as a theistic evolutionist, which means that God as a creator could use evolution to bring about the diversity of organisms.

About a month prior to the event, West sent Ridgway and other faculty members invitations to participate in the panel at the event.

All of the faculty members declined to be panelists.

Ridgway said that he felt it was odd that SPU faculty were invited to be on the panel, but scientists such as Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller, who represented evolutionary support in the film, were not asked to attend.

According to Ridgway, if they had been given around six months’ notice, the science department may have been able to generate funds for bringing one or both of the scientists to the event.

West said that planning for the event only began about six to eight weeks ago, so he could not have given Ridgway six months’ notice. Also, because Darwinian biologists have the majority view, he did not think it would be difficult to get some of them to attend the event.

When Ridgway asked about having Scott or Miller attend the event, West told him that he did not have the money to pay for either of the scientists to attend the event and be part of the panel. However, he said he would have liked for them to attend.

According to West, the Discovery Institute did not have to pay for Wells and DeHart to attend the event because they live in the area. But Scott and Miller live in San Francisco and Rhode Island, respectively, according to West.

West said that he did not feel that the presence of Scott and Miller was necessary for having a meaningful discussion at the event.

According to Ridgway, the goal of the Discovery Institute is to remove evolutionary theory from high schools and substitute intelligent design theory, or at least make the theories equal.

West said that this is an incorrect assertion. "The goal of the Discovery Institute is far from wanting evolution removed from the classroom," West said. "Discovery Institute adopts the approach that we ought to teach more about evolution and not less, and that includes problems with [evolutionary] theory."

Ridgway said that as a field, science is designed to look at the natural world and not to take a stand on whether or not God exists. He said that so far there is no empirical evidence to support intelligent design theory.

According to West, the theory of intelligent design is that "the specified complexity that we see [in the universe] is best explained as a product of an intellectual cause rather than being caused by chance and necessity," West said.

According to Ridgway, prior to the event, he sent an email to West and copied it to President Phil Eaton and other members of the administration.

According to Ridgway, his email said, "My concern here is simply that SPU and the Discovery Institute be seen as separate entities, and more specifically that the underlying political objectives of the Discovery Institute Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture not be assumed to be the official stance of the university."

"The university does not take an official stance on evolution," Ridgway said.

According to Ridgway, after he sent out the email, West contacted him and said that he would be happy to make an announcement at the event saying that the views of the Discovery Institute are not necessarily the views of SPU. "I was happy to do that," West said.

However, West said that he did not recall any other event at SPU in which that kind of announcement has been made. He pointed out that at a university there are many events that espouse differing points of view.

SPU sophomore Mackensie Rogers attended the film premiere. Rogers is a biology major who plans to teach high school biology.

Rogers agreed with West that evolution is only a theory.

"A lot of the high school text books have it (evolution) as being the total truth and it’s not, it’s just a theory," Rogers said. "It isn’t science if you’re only seeing one side."

"I’m just really glad I was able to go to [the event]."

[RaceBannon]

Why the sarcastic quotation marks? Because with a couple of exceptions, the "experts" are not precisely who they purport to be. Take Paul Nelson, for example, whose undertitle IDs him as "Ph.D., Philosophy of Biology, University of Chicago." True, as far as it goes: Nelson did attend UC and got a Ph.D. in 1998. But that's not where he works: He works for the Discovery Institute, a fellow of its Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture. Same with "Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., U. Cal Berkeley," "David Berlinski, Ph.D., Princeton," and "Stephen Meyer, Ph.D., history and philosophy of science, Cambridge University": The degrees are real, but the apparent academic affiliations aren't; all three are fellows of Discovery Institute. John West, for a change, is, as suggested by his on-screen ID, a professor at SPU; but his Discovery Institute "fellowship" also goes unmentioned by the filmmakers, making Icons of Evolution look less a documentary than a covert ideological infomercial.

Since when does putting the school where you got your degree mean you work there? This is another example of evolutionists whining about being proved wrong again!

[jennyp]

Since when does putting the school where you got your degree mean you work there? This is another example of evolutionists whining about being proved wrong again!

He's trying to make the point that they're hiding their political agendas by only showing their mainstream academic credentials and not mentioning the DI or the CRSC. Similar to how Jonathan Wells never seems to mention his strong Unification Church affiliation nor how the Rev. Moon inspired him to "devote [his] life to destroying Darwinism" in any of his CV pages nor when he does talk radio shows.

[jennyp]

This is another example of evolutionists whining about being proved wrong again!

Icon of Obfuscation

[PatrickHenry]

Lurking ...

[longshadow]

Where do I get tags for hunting academics?

You and PH should be aware of the latest Fish & Game Department regulations regarding hunting of Academics:

"1. Use of bait, such as manuals on "Student Self-Esteem" and literature published by the CPUSA, shall be forbidden whilst taking academics.

2. No academic shall be taken within 500 yards of a known a "Sanctuary Zone." Sanctuary zones shall include Volvo dealerships, Organic Food shops, and anyplace where electric vehicles or Barbara Streisand recordings are bought or sold."

Happy hunting.....

[My2Cents]

Friends of mine often tell me alarmist stories of how anti-Christian the culture is getting. Reading most of the posts in this thread shows me there alarm is justified.

[gore3000]

I forget, who are the reasonable creationists around here? I guess they should get a bump too. :-)

I forget, who are the reasonable evolutionists here? Certainly none listen to any evidence against their theory. Certainly nothing that you posted supports the theory of evolution. It is just a long smear on those who oppose evolution. Neither of the articles either states any of the arguments against evolution or tries to refute anything said by Wells, or by the documentarty. As to the Discovery Institute being biased against evolution - so what? PBS is not biased for it? The difference between the two though is that the Discovery Institute argues facts, you and the evolutionists -as the articles show- just try to smear opponents.

[gore3000]

And sociologists. And "education" professionals. Dumping all of them from academia would cut the professorial ranks in half, and the world would be far better off. Oh ... add "journalism" to that list.

You can add paleontologists to the list.

[gore3000]

Since when does putting the school where you got your degree mean you work there? This is another example of evolutionists whining about being proved wrong again!

In another thread the lying evolutionists whores in the press call Steven Gould a biologist when his degree was in paleontology not biology and he was a practicing paleontologist until he went into writing evolutionist drivel.

[gore3000]

He's trying to make the point that they're hiding their political agendas by only showing their mainstream academic credentials and not mentioning the DI or the CRSC. Similar to how Jonathan Wells never seems to mention his strong Unification Church affiliation nor how the Rev. Moon inspired him to "devote [his] life to destroying Darwinism" in any of his CV pages nor when he does talk radio shows.

So what? Darwin and his friends dedicated their lives to promoting Darwinism and making up excuses for it. How is one different from the other? Interesting that all you can do is smear the man but you cannot refute his statements that make you so angry. Thruth of the matter is that Wells is totally on spot in his Icons book. He exposes the fraud of evolution, the many frauds that evolution has used to promote its fake theory on the masses. The many frauds that it continues to use even after the frauds have been exposed. Science is about truth not lies and any theory that needs to be promoted by lies (and smears) is itself a lie.

[gore3000]

Icon of Obfuscation

A long smear which does not refute the points made. Haeckel's embryos are a lie and evolutionists continue to put them in books and even on the internet even after they have been proved to be lies. Piltdown man, a complete fraud was accepted by paleontological "scientists" for over 40 years, fact not lie. That the "species" of finches are not real is true - they interbreed and produce fertile offspring. In addition to which the Grants showed that without mutations the finches beaks grew and shortened according to the amount of rainfall - back and forth. There is not an ounce of fact contradicting the above central statements of the book. Just the usual nonsensinsical nitpicking and argument from "authority". As usual though, the "authorities" cannot give concrete examples for their side.

[PatrickHenry]

Slime-free zone.

[VadeRetro]

Icon of Obfuscation

Bookmarked! The most detailed demolition of Wells to date.

[gore3000]

The most detailed demolition of Wells to date.

The biggest piece of garbage written. No wonder you evolutionists are ashamed to post it. Let's see one single refutation of the meat of his arguments, just one. You have that piece of garbage to refer to - which of course neither of you has bothered to read. You folk just post anything that has a title that insults those who tell the truth.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Similar to how Jonathan Wells never seems to mention his strong Unification Church affiliation

Nor does every quote from the Washington Times mention that paper's ownership by that Church. Perhaps you would like it if they had to wear armbands with moons on them. And Jews could wear the Star of David, and gays could wear pink triangles. I guess this is your plan, but it has been tried before.

[inquest]

I don't know what exactly they teach in political science classes, but politics, like history and economics, can be studied using scientific principles. Just ask James Madison. Pretty much all of the best qualities of our Constitution we owe to him and his very scientific studies of past federations, going back to ancient Greece. I hihgly recommend reading the Federalist Papers, when you have the time.

[medved]

The two packets were entitled; "The Talented Mr. Wells" and "Jonathan Wells: Who is He, What Is He Doing Here, and Why?".

That's the kind of behavior I've come to know and expect from evolutionists.

[medved]

The big lie which is being promulgated by the evos is that there is some sort of a dialectic between evolution and religion. There isn't. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion whicih operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the only two possible candidates would be voodoo and Rastifari.

The dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.

Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some expect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...

To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

God hates IDIOTS, too!

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:

Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now: OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.

But it gets even stupider.

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...

2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...

3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.

4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.

5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:

The don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

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Splifford the bat says: Always remember:

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; especially on an evolutionist.
Just say no to narcotic drugs, alcohol abuse, and corrupt ideological
doctrines.

[VadeRetro]

I'm just floored by the jaw-dropping arrogance of a guy who claims to believe in an all-powerful God, creator of the universe, but will withhold his worship if God didn't do it the right way. "Sorry, God! You didn't do it my way. No worship for you!"