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

reply to post by StellarX


No-one's saying anyone can't challenge evolution. In fact, science demands it happens. Yet so far the only "challenges" that have faced it from the Creationist camp have been childish at best.

So debating a baseless theory (which Creationism is, as it's based solely 100% on the Bible, which is not a scientific document) in the same regard as a scientific theory is pandering to religious types who want equality where none should exist. You want to challenge evolution with everything you throw at it, yet somehow scientists aren't allowed to throw their hands up in the air and laugh out loud at the ridiculous claim that is the unfounded theory of creationism. When that happens, it's an evil plot by atheists to trample christianity. Oh the irony.

Science isn't a free-for-all where anyone can say anything they want. Evidence talks, and so far Creationists have been vewy vewy quiet. Unless you count rehashing the same debunked points again and again, which only serves to further establish creationism as the wishful thinking of some confused people into the origins of animals as we know them.

So please - enlighten us with these "great masses of information and 'evidence'" that contradicts evolution. Please. And be aware I said "contradicts" not "says something evolution doesn't cover", as the two are very different indeed. If you're right, you could win a nobel prize!

And saying Social Darwinism is accepted in science is hilarious. If that were the case, then there would be no medical research, as that flies in the face of Social Darwinism. The fact medicine is one of the most exalted fields of science should tell you just how much claptrap that assertion is. Going as far as saying Darwin was a racist, which is a point that has been debunked thousands of times before, shows you are willing to say anything to "win" your debate.

Banging on about the Congo and the media silence that surrounded it has nothing to do with this argument, unless you paranoically condense media and science into the same entity, which wouldn't surprise me Also, if it's not been covered in the media, how do you know about it? Were you there?

And then talking about Iraq? You know who masterminded Iraq? Christians. Great job there, folks. Jesus would be proud.

Read what a certain Dr. Dawkins wrote to a confused person who saw the movie in question. It's pretty concise.

Originally posted by dave420
Read what a certain Dr. Dawkins wrote to a confused person who saw the movie in question. It's pretty concise.

I like what this poster asked;

10. Comment #164748 by Hmmmm on April 20, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I don't think Darwin was responsible for the holocaust...but it does seem to me to a logical end point to a purely naturalistic philosophy based on survival of the fittest. Anyone care to explain the naturalistic basis for morality and compassion? What part of naturalism argues against helping nature out?

Thing is, I believe the closest we could come to truth would be with a marriage between evolution and intelligent design co-existing and together.....being that evolution itself is a design and has a high level of intelligence to it.

The funny thing is, that the point I have made since the beginning of this post, being the reactions of the gateholders in the scientific community being biased and mocking anything else but evolution........ most of the individuals that have responded on this thread sound "EXACTLY" like the evolution idea fascist police that hold the keys to scientifc academics.

With most of your posts, comments, and reaction you are simply proving my points and perhaps not even knowing it....and I'm speaking of the posters who can't take steins documentary serious...... when I can find 100's of people that believe and have believed what Stein's documentary has said before it came out.

If he was decietful because the interviewee's wouldn't have been caught on camera had they known it was about the fascists acts of key evolutionists....hey so be it. I dont agree in decieving anybody, but even if they didn't know....the questions and answers....even if you keep into consideration the possibility of a hack job in editing, the answers are still self evident in themselves.

Watch that movie and mute every single question asked and it will still support the main idea I have put forth about the loss of freddom of speech in academics around the U.S.

Thank you all for proving my point
_________
Oh and for those that have a hard time separting intelligent design from the Bible, shame on you. Supporters of intelligent dsign and articles in support of it have never had anything to do with the Bible.

As a matter of fact the Bible should never ever and wont be included in scientific findings having to do with intelligent design. I believe all findings in the I.D. category can be supported by mathematical formulas and statistical data to support said findings. Matter of fact the guy in my signature....Georg Cantor, I believe it is possible to tie his work into allot of I.D. stuff being that he was dealing with infinity and proved that there is a level of infinite being that resides outside and transcends all other things that we know of.

Regardless, why do people have to bring the Bible into I.D. is beyond me when from the very beginning I never said anything about the Bible, being that this is a scientific debate.

[edit on 22-4-2008 by dominicus]

Ok, if life has an Intelligent Design, then who is the Intelligent Designer?

The quote from the Bible I posted simply supports the concept of interdependency.

Much of the Bible is being supported by modern scientific findings, mainly in archaeology, but also in physics.

A science student in Kentucky says when the Bible records God spoke, and things were created, that's just what happened, and he can support that with scientific experiments.

"There are several documented and currently taught laboratory experiments that accurately portray the events in Genesis in sequential order, the most important being that of sonoluminescence," he wrote.

That, he described to WND, is the circumstance in which sending a sonic signal into bubbles in a fluid causes the bubbles to collapse and they release photons, or create light.

source

Yes, I believe God, the Intelligent Designer, spoke everything into existence.

reply to post by Clearskies


...survival of the fittest leads to the holocaust?

what the bloody hell?

holocaust = artificial genocidal acts
nothing about being the fittest

evolution = natural selection

the entire concept of eugenics is entirely opposed to the idea of natural selection...it's artificial selection

did you not read the quote i provided?

from origin of species:

if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

i think the works of martin luther had more influence on the holocaust than darwinism...

reply to post by dbates


...they would have realized that they would have been subjected to "creative editing" in a movie about how intelligent design is being oppressed by an atheistic conspiracy of darwinism...
which they were

it's also called lying
lying is bad, mmkay?

not to mention the fact that the whole thing is full of lies
and contradictions

"intelligent design isn't religion, until the second half of the movie where not being allowed to preach intelligent design is a violation of of my religious freedom"

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Yes!
Hitler's holocaust inspired by evolution

Ben Stein like his brother Franken is a zombie fascist dinosaur
with a tiny brain that was stolen from a pet cemetery.

Villagers need to grab the torches and expose his brand of darkness
to the light.

Btw, don't evolutionists claim it is the recessive genes, not the dominant ones, that will eventually save us from extinction? How does that add up? If recessive genes are selected against, how does that jibe with SotF?

One more conundrum swept under the rug.

reply to post by Clearskies


PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not!!!!!! try to bring HITLER into this discussion!!!!!

It is sick, and a terrible attempt to sway the thread, it is completely obvious.

Wanna use Hitler? Then start a new thread, for neo Nazis!!!

WW

reply to post by Clearskies


Then why wasn't he mentioned at all by Hitler? Surely he'd have used every single well-known and respected scientist's findings that agreed with his lunacy to prop up the insanity.

But he didn't. Because "Social Darwinism" is something Darwin himself detested. Just because it has "Darwin" in its name doesn't mean to say Darwin agreed with it.

Please stop trotting out these ages-old ridiculous arguments about Darwin - they only serve to make you look foolish, not to give your argument any credibility or indeed to take credibility away from anyone else.

Originally posted by Electricneo
Ben Stein like his brother Franken is a zombie fascist dinosaur
with a tiny brain that was stolen from a pet cemetery.

Villagers need to grab the torches and expose his brand of darkness
to the light.

Absolutely the funniest thing I've seen on ATS in a long time!!

Thanks for making my morning!

And, before I go, it is important to remind everyone of Ben Stein's old job, back in the 70s....he wrote speeches for Richard M. Nixon!

'Nuf said....

WW

I don't get what's wrong about misrepresenting your intentions in an interview. It's used all the time to get past any prejudices and biases the subject to be interviewed may have.

Also, I never understood why so many people seem to care so much about this Darwin vs. Spaghetti Monster thing. What difference does it make? There will always be something science can explain and some things it cannot. What's that harm is claiming some magic did it or some aliens from somewhere else did it until you can find out exactly what did it?

Evolution is fine and dandy but what was there before any "big bang"? We're just supposed to accept that for an undetermined amount of time for no apparent reason there was a ball of space junk just sitting there that one day decided to explode itself? That space junk had to come from somewhere. The void the space junk was in had to come from somewhere. There had to be a place for the void to exist before there was a void.

Both accepting some big bang from nowhere and a big magic man just "creating" the Earth are simplistic and have dead ends. Neither is complete and both as equally ridiculous.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Hey, thisguy!

The concept of the 'big bang' postulates that everything we see and feel and know came from an infinitly small nothing....not some ball of mass floating around in space....and time had no meaning before the 'event'.

There's a movement in the Physics field, or the Cosmology field, that is imagining Multiple Universes....so, if there is some 'supreme being' then he/she/it has his/her/its hands full!!!

WW

Originally posted by Electricneo
Ben Stein like his brother Franken is a zombie fascist dinosaur
with a tiny brain that was stolen from a pet cemetery.

Villagers need to grab the torches and expose his brand of darkness
to the light.

I rarely laugh out loud, but that is fantastic!

And can people stop bringing up Hitler - it really is sinking too low.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


In this case, the problem with saying you're from a serious documentary meant that people who won't give creationists the time of day in a scientific discussion were suckered in to talking to them. That's perfectly reasonable, as what creationism is isn't science. For, say, Dawkins to humour some creationist, the very fact he listened to them gives them some sort of credibility, like they actually have a right to be part of this scientific discussion. They don't.

People care about this "debate" because both sides have a vested interest in it. Religious believers want creationism to be true because they think if it wasn't it might invalidate some of their beliefs. Scientists want people to know the truth, so having a group of people say a whole heap of scientific evidence is bunk really gets them going. Quite understandable on both sides, really. That's not to say both sides are equal in this discussion, as they simply aren't. One side is arguing from reason, logic, and evidence, the other is arguing from some artificially-constructed hypothesis with no supporting evidence. In the eyes of adult, rational debate, the two couldn't be any different.

What happened before the big bang has nothing to do with evolution. Heck, God might have pulled everything out of his divine shoe for all we know. The fact we don't know what happened before the bang has as much relevance to us knowing about evolution as it does on knowing what the weather is like outside - nothing. We do, however, have some rather interesting theories about it.

reply to post by FatherLukeDuke


Anyone should be able to bring up anything they want in a discussion like this. If we can finally get people who cling to this "Hitler loves Darwin" nonsense to read the truth about this misconception, maybe it'll start to go away. Plus, it's so easy to show the ridiculous nature of such an argument, so I say let 'em keep doing it.

I am going off to donate to the ASPCA!

supportaspca (dot) org


I'm tired of this nonsense!

Go put your money where your mouths are!!

WW

Originally posted by dave420
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

In this case, the problem with saying you're from a serious documentary

Well, who's to define "serious" in this case? It's a completely subjective term.

People care about this "debate" because both sides have a vested interest in it. Religious believers want creationism to be true because they think if it wasn't it might invalidate some of their beliefs. Scientists want people to know the truth, so having a group of people say a whole heap of scientific evidence is bunk really gets them going.

If the religious really have "faith" I don;t think it matters one way or the other to them. Maybe there is a portion of them insecure in their own beliefs and need constant reassurance or something but that isn;t an issue of science vs. spaghetti monster that's an issue between them and their "faith."

Also, I take objection to "scientists want people to know the truth" as if it is a valid blanket statement. I used to work in research labs and plenty of them just want some grant money. Some, if they have any capacity for individual thought, spend all their time trying to prove to themselves what they claim they believe. Not unlike the religious person constantly looking for reassurance of their own faith.

I knew plenty of "truth seeking" scientists in school but once they got to the real world and started fighting for funding and paychecks all of that truth-seeking nonsense got cast aside.

What happened before the big bang has nothing to do with evolution. Heck, God might have pulled everything out of his divine shoe for all we know. The fact we don't know what happened before the bang has as much relevance to us knowing about evolution as it does on knowing what the weather is like outside - nothing. We do, however, have some rather interesting theories about it.

So it is the claim of the religious that their god didn't exist before the big bang?

If neither side is willing to concern themselves with the origin of all existence then that makes their pretend concern with creation vs. evolution that much more pointless doesn't it? Given a definite answer to the question still would not resolve and questions about before creation or evolution came into play. It's like watching mold grow and rather than wondering where the mold came from you're stopping yourself at how more mold was able to grow from the already existing mold.

If this is as deep as this whole argument goes then it really is a pointless shouting match for no reason between two people who have neither anything to gain or lose regardless of the outcome.

What is to gain besides petty bragging rights should there be a definite answer?

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


When talking to scientists about science, a "serious" documentary will stick to science. A frivolous documentary won't.

If you want to be pedantic, then maybe I should have said "science" instead of "scientists" when I said scientists only want the truth. Science doesn't want grant money - it's a methodology for determining the truth.

That documentary, from what I've read (including direct quotes in context, and research into the guys mentioned) is full of misreporting, lies, and bad logic.

As for your point about pre-big-bang times, your logic is all over the place. Scientists are concerned with EVERYTHING. Science is as concerned with what happened before the big bang as it is with evolution, the only difference being we can observe evolution (both directly and indirectly), and we can't observe before the big bang. Saying because science doesn't have all the answers somehow nullifies the scientific method is bizarre.

The evolution vs. creationism argument isn't even about science, but about one group wanting to ignore scientific evidence when it suits them, in order to prop up a pre-existing idea they don't want to lose. That's all. The science isn't up for debate, as to do that requires evidence. Creationists have none. None at all.