Just saw Ben Stein's documentary, "Expelled" about the issues of Darwinism......

Originally posted by dominicus
even if the makers of the movie mislead the scientists they interviewed (which aftering whatching the movie I highly doubt such a thing happened) It would be very easy for the interviewee to bounce back from any questions.

As a matter of fact, many of the universities that fired intelligent design supporting scientists, refused to be interviewed because they knew it was in regards to the scientists they fired. .............


So to all your propoganda talk....I say it's truth and the way things are, and the documentary recieved a standing ovation where I watched it.

I haven't seen it, yet, but, that seems to be the whole perspective on it.
Everytime Dawkins or Harris gets stumped, it seems they cry 'foul'.
Can't they make sense WITHOUT a 'hothouse' of accolades?

I imagine that this has been brought up before but has anyone read this article?
Scientific american
I think these are some valid points. I still plan to see the movie and make my own assessment though, as I do any documentary. I will say that 8/10 documentaries I see are one sided and have an agenda. There can still be good things taken away from them though.

[edit on 093030p://111 by shizzle5150]

[edit on 093030p://111 by shizzle5150]

reply to post by Clearskies


No, scientists want to talk about science, not some fantasy idea that has no basis in reality. For them to be tricked into this ridiculous movie is indeed foul. Of course they had a right to be upset with the deception.

Anyone who claims evolution is contested or controversial, or how people are persecuted for not believing in it, are either horrifically mis-informed, or being deceptive on purpose.

The only words I've heard against evolution are from people who simply don't understand it.

This is the kind of stupid 'movie' (mocumentary) that I will not bother to pay $9 per person to see, since I already know it's BS.

When it hits HBO or Showtime, for free, I'll buy the popcorn and sit there and laugh at it's inanity.......



[edit on 4/21/0808 by weedwhacker]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
myers, dawkins, and others were told they were being interviewed for the movie "crossroads"

I don't understand how this would be a rebuttal to their words. If their ideas were that of a scientific mind, why would they answer differently based upon what the title of a movie was? They either believe what they stated or they make a habit of lying and "winging it" when asked questions.

(typo edit)

[edit on 21-4-2008 by dbates]

Our family has been to ONE movie in 13 years.
National Treasure 2, but, I would like to pay to see this one!

Originally posted by dbates

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
myers, dawkins, and others were told they were being interviewed for the movie "crossroads"

I don't understand how this would be a rebuttal to their words. If their ideas were that of a sciencetific mind, why would they answer differently based upon what the title of a movie was? They either believe what they stated or they make a habit of lying and "winging it" when asked questions.

dbates, I know I am jeopardizing my credibility, by bringing down a 'full' quote...but, so be it...

I happen to think 'Dawkins' (please note I alphabetized his name) has a point. I will buy his book, now that it's in paperback.

Have seen Mr. Dawkins many times, on many cable channels....and based on seeing his ability to withstand his 'nay-sayers'....I'm going to buy his book!!

THE problem is, as I SEE IT (notice the emphasis?) is....those who wish to 'bible-thump' will never be convinced otherwise.

Those you can think for themselves, will be able to think independently of what they are told to 'believe'.

I pride myself on being able to think....I don't need some dogmatic, overly controlling 'group' to tell my how to think, I qam perfectly capable, thank you very much!

WW

[edit....of course I can think, but make typos along the way....]







[edit on 4/21/0808 by weedwhacker]

reply to post by weedwhacker

(At least you didn't spell scientific incorrectly)

That doesn't answer my question? Why would their remarks be different just because of the title of the movie? How does that change scientific facts? I don't understand how they can argue that they were taken out of context just because they thought the movie had a different name.

Just read all the links and articles all the naysayers have sent, and it still hasn't changed my mind about what I have known to be true for the last 8-10 years.

Just like the post above, regardless of what they were told the interviews were for i.e. corssroads or something else....the questions were reasonable and were answered accordingly.

Even in interviews when dawkins is asked how did the first cell originate, he goes off into this ridiculous explanation that perhaps some form of intelligent life (aliens???) brought cells here. The catch 22 is that while he ridicules intelligent design, he's supporting, or at least hinting at aliens....HAHAHAHAHa.

I've seen Dawkins fail in debates and make himself look like a fool dozens of times. Again, if evolution is a fact, I support it (more so in conjunction with I.D.) however Dawkins has shown himself countless chinks in his armour and has shown this many times.

Again, I see intelligent design everywhere I look; at you, at myself, at these discussions, evolution itself is a design that has intelligent properties, as does nature, the universe, atoms, cells, and everything that exists. I mean it's rather obvious to some one with half a brain cell and some observational skills. The odds of all this happening randomly and evolving are preposterous.

I've known for 8-10 years that there's EGO blockade in academics. These Dawkinses and all his other minions, because they have doctorates...have this Super Inflated EGO club that stands in the way of anybody else who questions the norm. And if your a self professed inventor or biologist....HA !!!! Good luck trying to find ears that will listen.

I mean I understand that we have to hold the highest prestige and credentials in science, but when it's gotten to peoples heads and formed a biased against other ideas....thats just wrong and if this bias and ego club didn't exist....I garuntee we'd progress by leaps and bounds.

Call Ben Stein's movie what you want, attack it, use your excuses. I have been in debates and discussions with at least a dozen college professors over the last decade and releazed that what Ben Stein discusses in his documentary has been going on for at least the last few decades...and this is even admitted to by the professors I am in contact with.

It's really about I.D. being a credible scientific area of study and about the loss of freedom of speech in Science. These 2 things are cancers to the Ego Club and slows our progress, how so???

Because of only evolution is held as foundational, any additional findings have to be in conjunction with this "foundation" If somebody discovers something that is an anomoly to this "foundation" it will be immediaytely discarded as "anomoly" place here.

Whereas of we keep all other ideas open, including I.D......such discovered anomolies may fit perfect with I.D. or other ideas and may be the norm one day.

Regardless, I can stand here and say that I've experienced directly the main ideas that Ben Stein's documentary explores.

Oh noes, Waterloo!!!

The death of our materialistic horde is nigh!

As can be seen on this thread, this mockumentary is just speaking to the converted. Probably the most mendacious piece of poop to come from IDers since the last thing they excreted. A big flop already, out-done by Super-size me, panned by almost all non-christian critics, having to bus in church-groups, offer cheap tickets to kids, lies, copyright breaches. No more than is expected.

Expelled Sucks.

Hopefully this will kill any last credibility that IDers had.

Enjoy.

*back into self-imposed exile*

To quote South Park (Stan when talking to Garrison and Mr. Dawkins) :

Couldn't Evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?

Both ID and Evolution can co-exist...right?...

reply to post by melatonin


NO, melatonin...a 'good' mocumentary is 'This Is Spinal Tap'....or, even better....'Best in Show'.

Both of them are comedies....and I think, it will come to be, 'Expelled' is just a parody of those comedies.

IF this 'film' decides to take itself seriously....then it's even funnier!!!

Especially since, of all people....Rush (huramph...cough, cough....ggggg...urghhh...OK, I got that last pill out of my throat) Limburger....er, I meant....'limbuagh...cough, cough'. Where's my damn oxycontin?!?

Where was I??!

Oh...Rush say it 'good'...seen him in paper...he smart....must be funny....give me more drug!

This is hysterical. Do you guys ever listen to yourselves? hahahaha. Let's give Dawkins all the room he needs on ATS and everywhere else for that matter, but when it comes time for somebody else to speak up with a different view, pull out the draino kiddos, we have a clog.

This is too funny. Where do all these scientific professors find the time to spend on ATS anyway? Don't you guys have a thesis to write or something?

Oh I know, it's pro bono community service, right?

reply to post by dbates

You ask why misrepresentation of the film to interviewees such as Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers would cause their responses to differ. It would not.

That is not the point.

The point is that they were approached under false pretences because, if they had known what Stein's true agenda was, they probably would not have allowed themselves to be interviewed. Or so he assumed, and to obtain their participation he lied to them.

Having thus secured footage of them by means of deceit, he then chopped it to pieces and intercut it with other footage with clear intent to distort both their statements and the accompanying nonverbal content. In other words, after deceiving his interviewees, he then went on to deceive his audience about what they were actually seeing.

Stein's low stratagem and subsequent tampering with the record are the reasons why these interviewees have objected to so strenuously to their treatment -- not because 'they might have answered differently if they'd known'.

Finally, I hate to be banging on, but all the facts about this case are quite clearly reported in the links I posted earlier. Dominicus says he's read them and they haven't changed his mind, so they can't be so terrifying, can they? Be brave. Go read. Don't miss the one in which the little god-bothering liar who reported that Myers was evicted because he created a disturbance at the premiere gets his comeuppance. More proof, if more were needed, that truth-telling is not among the virtues of the indecently religious.

Originally posted by idle_rocker
This is hysterical. Do you guys ever listen to yourselves?

No they don't ever listen to themselves as they prefer to spend time agreeing with others who happen to have a similar educational background which happen to exclude 99.9999% of the rest of humanity. They have obviously not discovered the irony of it all...

hahahaha. Let's give Dawkins all the room he needs on ATS and everywhere else for that matter, but when it comes time for somebody else to speak up with a different view, pull out the draino kiddos, we have a clog.

Well this is supposed to be a place for discussion and since we have plenty of would be intellectuals, and even a few well informed peopled, you really have to 'fight' for your place under this sun.

This is too funny. Where do all these scientific professors find the time to spend on ATS anyway? Don't you guys have a thesis to write or something?

That's what the real scientist are probably doing and you shouldn't be put off by all the bluster as few here actually have the credentials or knowledge to take it much further than that.

Oh I know, it's pro bono community service, right?

Well that's how it will be presented but as i have said you shouldn't be discouraged so easily if at all.

Stellar

Originally posted by indierockalien
I think Darwin got it right about the theory of Evolution... that a species evolves in order to deal with new environmental paradigms... and maybe survival of the fittest worked in earlier times on this planet... but now that social interdependence has developed, and consciousness has expanded, evolution itsself must follow suit. To assume that one thing is above change over all other is a ludicous idea. If evolution cannot evolve to fit new paradigms, how can what is evolving evolve?

Survival of the fittest is true, in a sense, though.... good ideas flourish.... bad ones are put to the wayside and forgotten.

Survival of ideas that work the best with the whole, I guess?

Also, I don't believe that there is one being that is some superpowerful decider of the universe. I think the unifverse decides for itsself, and same with everything in it. We couldn't have a successful idea without all of our nervous cells contributing, now could we?

i believe "survival of the fittest" is a term for Social Darwinism my friend. The phrase has more to do with economics than the animals of early earth . . . Social Darwinism is pretty imperialistic, unsympathetic, and evil in my mind. Nazism at its finest . . .

[edit on 4/22/2008 by JPhish]

Originally posted by Astyanax
You ask why misrepresentation of the film to interviewees such as Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers would cause their responses to differ. It would not.

That is not the point.

It would cause the responses to differ as they would be FAR more cautious with their answers and do their best to frame it in the most non controversial way. Scientist tend to reserve contradictions and questions for discussion amongst their close friends... This i would say IS the point and it's why we can't trust them to tell us what they don't know and won't talk about.

The point is that they were approached under false pretences because, if they had known what Stein's true agenda was, they probably would not have allowed themselves to be interviewed. Or so he assumed, and to obtain their participation he lied to them.

It's a sad day when the only way you feel you can gain 'scientific' ( a process to which few scientist adheres to) input is to hide your true motives. In fact maybe it isn't as that pretty much describes what grant proposals do. If we are too talk about liars and being lied to lets talk about why the scientific establishments of the world are riddled with deceptive processes and practices?

Having thus secured footage of them by means of deceit, he then chopped it to pieces and intercut it with other footage with clear intent to distort both their statements and the accompanying nonverbal content.

Oh this is what everyone says when they don't want their words to be taken at face value! I don't plan on watching the movie ( as if i need further evidence that human beings form exclusive groups where disagreement is not allowed) so maybe someone can tell me if it's really that bad?

And about the distortion how can their words so easily be taken out of context if was meant to prove a opposite? Where they drunk?

In other words, after deceiving his interviewees, he then went on to deceive his audience about what they were actually seeing.

And how is that different from what people pretending to be scientist do?

Stein's low stratagem and subsequent tampering with the record are the reasons why these interviewees have objected to so strenuously to their treatment -- not because 'they might have answered differently if they'd known'.

Because frankly they know that they have been suckered and that what they said, or the deductions he made and presented, were not as unfair as they now wish us to believe. It is after all better easier to discredit the source when the information isn't all that bad!

Finally, I hate to be banging on, but all the facts about this case are quite clearly reported in the links I posted earlier. Dominicus says he's read them and they haven't changed his mind, so they can't be so terrifying, can they? Be brave. Go read.

All the facts? You mean the facts as presented by one side is clearly reported in those links? Thanks for trying to set us on the 'right' course!

Don't miss the one in which the little god-bothering liar who reported that Myers was evicted because he created a disturbance at the premiere gets his comeuppance. More proof, if more were needed, that truth-telling is not among the virtues of the indecently religious.

Well i don't think much of the pseudo intellectualism that the average practitioner of ID and like theories practices but how many informed people still believes that you can trust the average scientist to give you insight into the contradictions that are currently serving to undermine his entire field of study? At least we know what may inspire intellectual dishonesty in the religious majority but why on earth can't we trust scientist who are supposed to follow a process that should in theory automatically exclude such practices? If they can't or wont get it right and continue to do self serving things why bother to point out that the less well trained and educated do it? What does that prove other than the fact that education is wasted on people who want to believe certain things?

Stellar

reply to post by idle_rocker


Not all ideas are equal. In this discussion we have two sides. One is arguing from a scientific standpoint, with masses of evidence to support their scientific theory. The other side is a collection of folks arguing from someone else's standpoint, with absolutely no evidence to support their baseless theory. The two are not the same, clearly, so why on earth should Creationists be tolerated in a discussion about science? There is no science in Creationism.

reply to post by JPhish


And you believe wrong. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean what you think it does. Darwin was using the word "fittest" to describe an organism that was most suited to succeed. It has nothing to do with social Darwinism. And bear in mind that a very large proportion of scientists who have accepted the evidence of Evolution (read: most scientists) don't accept social Darwinism as viable part of society. They indeed strive to ensure it doesn't happen.

Intelligent Design is not science. Period.
No one has ever been fired from a school for believing in God. Period.
The best example put forth in "Expelled", Richard Sternberg, was not fired. He still has an office at the Smithsonian, which isn't a university by the way. Also, he could not be fired because he was an unpaid research assistant and he still is today.

The ExpelledExposed.com links have already been posted, but here is another useful link: www.skeptic.com...

And now for the lighter side of the discussion:
cectic.com...
cectic.com...
cectic.com...
cectic.com...
cectic.com...
cectic.com...
www.intoon.com...
burntelectrons.org...
www.democraticunderground.com...
and finally: secularearth.com... x

-Derek

Originally posted by dave420
Not all ideas are equal. In this discussion we have two sides. One is arguing from a scientific standpoint, with masses of evidence to support their scientific theory.

Sure but as you may or may not be aware there are great masses of information and 'evidence' that those scientist chose to ignore in arriving at both the classic theory and the modern , perpetually evolving, result.

The other side is a collection of folks arguing from someone else's standpoint, with absolutely no evidence to support their baseless theory.

So the fact that they appeal , given it's sometimes mistakenly so, to the evidence and information which the scientific establishments of at least the western world have chosen to misrepresent or completely exclude in their evaluation of the classical theory of evolution.

The two are not the same, clearly, so why on earth should Creationists be tolerated in a discussion about science? There is no science in Creationism.

Creationist should be allowed their views, and engaged as often as possible, as long as they stick to raising the very same contradictions and questions qualified evolutionary biologist are raising amongst themselves. Obviously not many people are in fact aware of these very real and very troubling questions but just because the average religious person doesn't seem to care much for objective proof we should not slam the door on those few who do care and ARE employing the scientific method towards their goals.

reply to post by JPhish


And you believe wrong. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean what you think it does. Darwin was using the word "fittest" to describe an organism that was most suited to succeed.

Darwin himself attributed the expression 'survival of the fittest' to H Spencer and while he said that it was a convenient way to express his own more general claim that those organisms most 'fit' were those that could best adapt to their 'environment'. Since environment covers such a broad range of things the common idea that organisms were vying with each other ( as in a boxing match ) and not instead more passively trying to adapt to temperature changes and or 'preservin their DNA against mutations and the like.

It has nothing to do with social Darwinism. And bear in mind that a very large proportion of scientists who have accepted the evidence of Evolution (read: most scientists) don't accept social Darwinism as viable part of society. They indeed strive to ensure it doesn't happen.

Social darwinism has in fact been a great tool of the empire builders and since Darwin himself held deeply racist views ( all of which now seem laughably stupid and makes you wonder about the brilliance of the rest of his work ) it's no surprise that his work easily yielded to manipulation by those who wish to abuse and misrepresent scientific 'achievement' to further their own power and control over resources.

Social Darwinism is alive and well and it's got more support in the scientific establishments of the west ( and elsewhere) than you may think. The very fact that 5 million people died in the DRC in less than a decade , without you even being aware of it, should tell you something about the deeply racist nature of the MM and especially of those who fall over themselves to support interventions to 'bring democracy' to a country such as Iraq where people , and women especially, had more rights than almost anywhere else in the ME and certainly more than anyone in the DRC.

So while you may think are worthy of your deep and abiding respect i can assure you that the majority are doing things non of us would pay them to do.

Stellar