You wouldn't expect Scientific American to take a particularly positive view of a movie that espouses intelligent design over evolutionary biology. Then again, you wouldn’t expect the producers of said film—in this case, Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—to offer the editors of said magazine a private screening.

Associate producer Mark Mathis showed up at our offices with a preview of Expelled in hand. That's right, the unexpected screening happened. The unexpected positive reviews did not.

As part of this special package of reviews and commentary,  our Skeptic columnist, Michael Shermer, who appears in Expelled, starts with his own links to the film—in the 1970s he was a student at Pepperdine University, where the movie begins—but ends up dumbfounded by the movie's dishonesty. (Shermer caught a screening at the National Religious Broadcasters's convention.)

Also, this week's Science Talk podcast features Steve Mirsky interviewing Rennie and Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education. Scott says she was "bamboozled" into appearing in Expelled. In another clip, you can hear how Mathis responded to a number of questions from Scientific American staffers.

Finally, SciAm editor in chief, John Rennie, writes that the movie's attempts to link the theory of evolution to the Holocaust are shameful, and is joined by Steve Mirsky in summing up "Six Things in Expelled that Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know".

Have your own review? Leave a comment on any part of this feature. Check back frequently—we hope this  generates a lot of light along with the heat.

152 Comments

1. 1. nick7woods 11:32 PM 4/9/08

   I think it is critical that, when discussing such a heatedly debated issue as evolution vs. intelligent design, the authors of such reviews should avoid bias at all costs. This means not intentionally bashing the perspective one disagrees with or using disparaging puns to simply get attention from a certain demographic. No matter how distasteful a certain viewpoint might be, it is even more distasteful rhetorically to read such a biased and one-sided reaction to that viewpoint. If the precepts of intelligent design are not scientifically sound and irrational, then isn't it enough to argue on rational grounds to make one's point? It is rather needless and takes away from the overall ethos of Scientific American as a professional organization when the author must include their own personal bias on the issue at hand. What such articles do is make those who agree with that bias beforehand unquestioning, and those who don't offended and not susceptible to listen to a belligerent argument.

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2. 2. shetterly 12:28 AM 4/10/08

   All they wanted was publicity. Which you gave them. They're happy.

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3. 3. redmeg8 01:04 AM 4/10/08

   Editorial by another person not happy with the movie and how they are portrayed in it, Richard Dawkins: http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

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4. 4. rtlbuilder 01:39 AM 4/10/08

   "Here find an illustration I did as commentary on religious/science confusion of evolution hope it amuses. "were in Kansas toto"
   www.iteetoo.com/scirel.html

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5. 5. BGThree 02:05 AM 4/10/08

   Why is it always assumed that "intelligent design" and natural selection are mutually exclusive theories? Is it not possible that a higher power (whether God, an alien race, or something else) created the universe, and that life then evolved according to natural selection?

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6. 6. Spin-oza 04:23 AM 4/10/08

   BG3 opines that the totally debunked pseudoscience of ID and the towering edifice of evolution are "not mutually exclusive theories". First of all evolution is a "theory" akin to gravitational or electro-magnetic theory, while ID is rank, biased conjecture. As for a "higher power", beyond the natural world, it would be a. unknowable and b. incredibly complex. To postulate such an unfathomable entity, which supposedly had itself no creator, is both beyond remote and a big fat target for Occam's razor.
   
   Nick7Woods asserts that ID (aka creationism... aka irreducible complexity) and evolution are "heatedly debated issues"... and cautions against "personal biases". Interesting... but I can't think of a University or scientific journal which gives the least bit of credence to the canard of ID. Thus, no debate, heated or otherwise is warranted.
   
   I do agree with the sentiment of one poster that regretted the publicity or exposure SciAM is giving to narcissists like Stein.
   
   Later.

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7. 7. Jim Lacey 12:41 PM 4/10/08

   When Laplace was asked by Napoleon why his theory of the cosmos did not mention a creator, he is said to have replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis," The same might be said of ID.

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8. 8. engr.student 02:53 PM 4/10/08

   As a christian, and a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering I have had to sit in classes where my teachers say people who believe in religion do not belong in the sciences. If you think that your "science" is unbiased, or unprejudiced then you are mistaken.
   
   There are things to which science does apply, but there are things to which it does not. Science can not, and should not, answer questions like "is there currently life on the other side of the universe" because it can not know the answer. Any answer supplied is an exercise in either religion or fallacy. Science provides several robust measures of order, and how one type of order connects to another. In Scientific American's rehash of the chicken (creation) vs. the egg (evolution) there has been no math. Science without math is just natural philosophy - a kind of religion that should have no claim to legitimacy greater than blind belief in Buddha, Moses, or the FSM.

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9. 9. John Rennie 04:06 PM 4/10/08

   Thanks for all the comments on the reviews thus far.
   
   As my review noted, I'm sympathetic to the complaint that by reviewing [i]Expelled,[/i] we are giving it the attention it craves. Unfortunately, just ignoring the movie also opens up the possibility that some of its more pernicious statements and arguments will take root in the general consciousness. And you can be sure that if the science establishment ignored [i]Expelled[/i], its defenders would crow that science had no rebuttal. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't. In this case, we felt that a detailed response was appropriate, but I don't fault others for coming to a different conclusion.
   
   Nick7woods more specifically criticizes our reviews as biased or opinionated. Those probably aren't quite the right words: what he means is that the reviews should sound dispassionate and calm . Again, I think that's a valid viewpoint, but I don't think there's a strategy for responding to anti-scientific claims that is clearly best in all cases.
   
   [i]Expelled[/i] is trying to make an emotional argument at least as much as it is a quasi-scientific one. It is strumming the heartstrings of moviegoers who would be outraged at the "expulsion of freedom" and Nazi atrocities. Some of those people might best be reached by a calm recitation of facts, and so some reviewers should do that (as Michael Shermer does, for the most part). Others will be more powerfully corrected by a more passionate rebuttal. I think we will need both.
   
   It's very reasonable to say that pro-science responses to anti-science should always be objective. The problem is, in practice, the bar for objectivity always gets raised higher. For people looking to reject a criticism as emotional or unscientific, there's always a word choice or other detail that gives them the excuse they need. For example, I could have written the driest, most dispassionate essay possible and some pro-ID readers would have rejected it as biased. Why? Because I'm the editor in chief of Scientific American, and so I must need to stay on the good side of scientists (or something like that).
   
   So don't dismiss what I say in my review because it's "biased." Doing so is really just another type of ad hominem argument. Engage with my actual arguments and tell me where I'm wrong, if you can.

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10. 10. RBMoose 04:27 PM 4/10/08

    I know I'm wasting my breath, but... the point of the article had little to nothing to do with Intelligent Design vs. Evolution as it did with the really, really bad job the movie did with using bad examples, and potentially lying to the audience in order to get their point across. If the ID argument is so strong, and the scientific community so rabid and, well, evil, why does this movie use examples which are so easily tossed aside as horribly biased, one sided arguments? As far as the ID vs Evolution debate, read the transcript about the Dover PA trial, and then explain how that didn't basically just sum up the entire argument, and the shortcomings of ID.
    
    (Just had to post that big article while I was writing mine, didn't you... :-P )
    
    --
    Edited by RBMoose at 04/10/2008 9:29 AM

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11. 11. jjreding 05:11 PM 4/10/08

    According to the Creationist theory the Earth was only 4000 years old at the time of Christ. Even the most devout believer can't possibly believe this to be the case. We keep hearing about the Earth is 6000 years old today, but I haven't heard anyone mention the 4000 year factoid. As far as Noah's ark is concerned, if there were dinosaurs on it there is no way it could have had the dimensions specified in the Bible. Of course, Creationists don't want to believe any of this. Unfortunately for them, the empirical evidence to the contrary is too pervasive.

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12. 12. engr.student 05:17 PM 4/10/08

    Science requires: testable, measurable, and provable.
    
    Science can not speak to the supernatural. That is one of the questions it cannot answer. It is, by definition, not natural.
    
    Science has no footing to even speak to a statement like "In 7 days the FSM created a world that looked like it was 4 billion years old". It is a supernatural.
    
    The place where the ID people are being much more rigorous than the evolutionary community is intelligent design, and it most certainly is science. How can you measure whether some object was created by 16th century Afghan culture? You can look at material, production processes, and potential uses. You measure the object and you compare it to the potential creators. Using expectation maximization you find the most likely match, and you can date and place your created object in history. There is specific, well founded mathematics, as well as anthropology and history behind the determination.
    
    The ability of an evolutionary process has constraints. There are limitations in the size of the evolutionary leaps that can occur. Bacteria do not give birth to monkeys in a single generation.
    
    Science can compare any "intelligent" design in nature against measurable, testable, provable, and solidly founded capacities of an evolutionary process - yet it has not. The outcome of such a comparison can then have Occam's razor applied to it. Applying Occam's razor to philosophy is not the same as doing good science.
    
    Remember that Occam's razor is one half of science. It says "only what is necessary". The other half of that statement, which you should address, is sufficiency. There are numerous anti-razors that say that sufficient is required. Together they form the "necessary AND sufficient" requirements of good, solid science.
    
    You know this stuff.
    
    Saying that "intelligent design" is not science is to falsely deny a valid scientific tool. Saying that its application to a non-evolutionary origin of life is not invalid is also bad science.
    
    AIDS is a disease communicated to human beings, it did not evolve there. If you want to measure the likelihood that an AIDS infection in one person came from a source, you measure the AIDS virus in the patient, and compare it to potential sources using well-founded methods. The origin of the AIDS virus in the patient is established by comparing it to potential sources. The same science that allows the attribution of some artifact to its originating culture also allows sufficient evidence to convict of murder.
    
    Have you ever read "Mein Kampf"? Do you understand Hitler's world-view, his paradigm? What was the ideological foundation of "the master race"? Would you like to discuss which parts of his work are founded on the ideas of social darwinism, and evolution?

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13. 13. Ichneumon 06:12 PM 4/10/08

    > The place where the ID people are being much more
    > rigorous than the evolutionary community is
    > intelligent design, and it most certainly is science.
    
    No they aren't, and no it isn't. The "ID people" repeatedly promulgate blatant fallacies and appeal to emotion rather than rigorous science. For example, one of the favorite shibboleths of the "ID people", Behe's "Irreducible Complexity" argument, contains at least four fallacies which are fatal to his argument.
    
    Additionally, almost every "pro-ID" attempt by the "ID people" is actually an attack on evolution, not positive evidence *for* ID. Sorry, but neither science nor epistemology work that way -- you can't demonstrate "ID" by eliminating evolution. That's the fallacy of the false dichotomy. Knocking out evolution, even for a particular case, doesn't demonstrate ID, because of the obvious fact that it's possible for *both* to be wrong.
    
    Instead, in order to actually demonstrate "ID", you need something far more specific than, "gosh, that doesn't seem like it could have evolved, therefor ID, because I can't think of any other option at the moment". Sorry, that's not science.
    
    The "ID people" would need something far more specific that actually points *towards* ID instead of *away* from evolution. For a trivial example, something like a copyright notice in the genome.
    
    The errors in Paley's fallacy have long been recognized, but hthe "ID people" keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
    
    > How can you measure whether some object was created
    > d by 16th century Afghan culture? You can look at
    > material, production processes, and potential uses.
    > You measure the object and you compare it to the
    > e potential creators. Using expectation maximization
    > you find the most likely match, and you can date and
    > place your created object in history. There is
    > specific, well founded mathematics, as well as
    > anthropology and history behind the determination.
    
    Yes indeed, but this is not what the "ID people" do. Your above example is possible because we have independent confirmation of the existence of 16th century Afghans, *and* a great deal of knowledge about their abilities, location, reach, methods, tools, styles, etc. These can be used to gauge whether a given artifact was crafted by those Afghans, or some other culture instead.
    
    This is NOT the case for what the "ID people" attempt to do. They in fact go out of their way to avoid being pinned down about their hypothetical designer(s). There's no way to scientifically test their nonspecific hypothesis, which is: "At some unspecified time(s), unspecified designer(s) made an unspecified number of interventions in the progress of life on Earth using unspecified methods with unspecified capabilities/limitations for unspecified motives." Yeah, good luck testing and/or falsifying *that* one...
    
    > Science can compare any "intelligent" design in
    > nature against measurable, testable, provable, and
    > solidly founded capacities of an evolutionary
    > process - yet it has not.
    
    Yes, it most certainly has, countless times, and continues to do so. Please attempt to learn something about evolutionary biology before you attempt to critique it.
    
    > Saying that "intelligent design" is not science is to
    > falsely deny a valid scientific tool.
    
    Sorry, but science does check for "intelligent design" in the general sense, when possible and appropriate, as in your above Afghan example.
    
    That does not, however, make what the "ID people" are pushing actual science, however, nor is it. All of their suggested "improvements" to science to date have been grossly flawed, and at heart are attempts sneak their religion into science through a Trojan horse with a sign hung on it that says "Intelligent Design".
    
    As an *idea* testing for "intelligent design" is fine. In *practice*, the "ID folks" suck at it, and don't do it in anything resembling a properly scientific manner.
    
    > Have you ever read "Mein Kampf"? Do you understand
    > Hitler's world-view, his paradigm? What was the
    > ideological foundation of "the master race"?
    
    In his handwritten notes, he credited the Bible, actually. Do some research. Elsewhere he also declared the idea that man came from apes to be unbelievable to him. Hitler was, literally, a creationist, even though he may not have seen eye to eye with most traditional Christian sects.
    
    Furthermore, there's nothing in Hitler's so-called "thinking" on the matter (nor his attempted genocide) that doesn't pre-date Darwin. People have been trying to eliminate hated groups/races, and declaring that the "inferior" bloodlines need to be purged in order to protect the "superior" bloodlines for as long as there have been people. Ideas of "royal blood", "mongrel races", good and bad bloodlines in domesticated animals, and all the other ingredients of Hitler's so-called reasoning, have been around (and acted upon for ill with regard to our fellow men) for thousands of years. Darwin didn't discover or promote these ideas. All Darwin added was the realization that a) nature can cause selection too, not just the herdsman or pigeon breeder, and b) this action over long periods of time can lead to not just new varieties within a species, but eventually to new species as well.
    
    Neither of Darwin's contributions applies to Hitler's actions. Hitler was neither allowing nature to shape mankind, nor was he attempting to create a new species.
    
    Darwin's work lends no support for Hitler's actions.
    
    > Would
    > you like to discuss which parts of his work are
    > founded on the ideas of social darwinism, and
    > evolution?
    
    No, because your attempts to smear evolutionary biology are entirely transparent.
    
    Look, I'm all for adding something to science class that says, "by the way, kids, anyone who tries to use evolutionary biology to 'justify' genocide is an idiot and a monster, don't do that", but to try to smear evolutionary biology on the grounds that someone *could* (or even arguably has) misuse(d) it is just a despicable tactic, the lowest form of pandering propaganda.

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14. 14. Bill Odum 06:30 PM 4/10/08

    Considering that I consider that the gifts of Reason and Imagination as the greatest of God's gifts(I have chosen to believe in God, albeit, a mysterious God); I therefore consider the so called "Intelligent Design" idea an insult to God. While I am not "against church", but long as clerics force feed imagination as reality, civilization will continue a downhill course of wars, and misspent resources. True Science leaves a possibility of being "wrong", whereas Clerics feel that they, for self serving reasons, cannot. Both "atheists" and "true believers" are wrong; no one really knows. So called "Intelligent Design" is stupid, lazy, insulting. God embraces evolution. Science allows man to look back at millions of years of history in order to give humans a chance to survive. If you attend church, when was the last time you heard a cleric identify wars as evil, or encourage the congregation to take care of their bodies, their earth? What I hear is believe, and give money.

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15. 15. flyboy 06:37 PM 4/10/08

    There are 2 types of reality. The right brain subcribes to a practical reality for those who need comfort & reassurance. The left brain deals with rational reality & serves to question beliefs with a healthy skeptecism. Our genes determine which brain we are likely to favour. It is useless for one to debate with the other.

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16. 16. OneEye 06:38 PM 4/10/08

    jjreding - your critiques are amateur at best. If you really want to see a factual layout of the YEC (Young Earth Creationist) views, see www.answersingenesis.org, where your simplistic critiques will find "pervasive evidence" aplenty in support of the YEC position.

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17. 17. jfsaaf 08:01 PM 4/10/08

    I think the link between the holocaust and the Nazis is not something that can be blamed on the producers, but on many Darwinists themselves, as is carefully documented in Richard Weikart's book:
    http://web.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/response-to-critics.htm
    
    By the way, it is interesting to note that the interviewer was indeed unapologetically upset for the attack on Darwin, which is precisely the kind of reaction I see in many of the religious people I often encounter.

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18. 18. browndoc 08:18 PM 4/10/08

    This country is positively nuts.
    Creationism and IT have been rightfully outlawed in Europe to be taught as an alternative to evolution.
    Due to good science,god is finding it ever more difficult to find places to hide."if science can't prove it then god did"is getting tiresome.Remember,the world used to be flat and the sun revolved around "It".Some people will never get a proper education.

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19. 19. Ichneumon 08:25 PM 4/10/08

    > If you really want to see a factual layout of the YEC
    > (Young Earth Creationist) views, see
    > www.answersingenesis.org, where your simplistic
    > critiques will find "pervasive evidence" aplenty in
    > support of the YEC position.
    
    I've been all over the AiG site, across many years, and have seen none of this "factual layout of the YEC view" you allege. I have however seen many grossly fallacious and/or dishonest misrepresentations of the actual scientific evidence for the age of the Earth, however, and I've written quite a few articles detailing AiG's failings. For one example, their assertions about the Coconino geologic layer in the Grand Canyon is both laughably wrong and dishonestly omits simple facts that blow their scenario completely out of the water.
    
    However, it's a large site, and I suppose I might have missed this "pervasive evidence" in support of the YEC position which you claim is there. Why don't you list what you consider their top three very best pieces of physical evidence for a young Earth, briefly in your own words (so that we don't have to critique an entire long page of scattershot assertions), and we'll have a look at them to see just how well the very best evidence for the YEC position stands up to examination?

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20. 20. DavidONE 08:31 PM 4/10/08

    engr.student,
    
    I certainly hope your engineering abilities are more structured and coherent than the rambling, disconnected diatribe you've offered up here.
    
    > "Science can not speak to the supernatural."
    
    That is often true because the supernatural is often fairy tales and hallucination. However, when the supernatural, i.e. your god, is posited for creation of planets and life, science has a lot to say.
    
    > "ID people are being much more rigorous than the evolutionary community is intelligent design, and it most certainly is science..."
    
    The 'evolutionary community' is not interested in ID because it is *not* science. It's religiously-inspired propaganda. It's not motivated by truth, it's motivated by sneaking the xian god in to the classroom - "cdesign proponentsists". That's why ID is not studied in any reputable university on the planet. Nor will it ever be unless the ID cabal produce some evidence to warrant serious discussion. Don't hold your breath for that.
    
    > "Bacteria do not give birth to monkeys in a single generation."
    
    I'm not sure why you're stating that. Did you think someone had claimed that? I suggest you Google 'evolution' and get clued up.
    
    > "Have you ever read "Mein Kampf"?"
    
    Again, not sure where this paragraph is heading or if any argument is being made. I'll assume you're planning on arguing for the 'Darwin=Holocaust' bullshit. Try http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/the_simple_falsehood_at_the_he.php and then http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm. That should do for starters.

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21. 21. Ichneumon 08:34 PM 4/10/08

    > By the way, it is interesting to note that the
    > interviewer was indeed unapologetically upset for the
    > attack on Darwin,
    
    Yeah, silly us, we take offense when the truth is twisted and people are unfairly slandered, especially when it's done for propaganda purposes by people who want to deceitfully get their religion taught as science.
    
    We're just funny that way.
    
    Of course, our reaction might be bewildering or "interesting" to those who don't have the reverence for truth and accuracy as we do. To those people, lying to support their religion is just another tool to be used to defend the faith, and thus the only reason they can conceive for our reaction is that we're somehow "religious" about science, not concerned about honesty and integrity.

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22. 22. Ichneumon 08:51 PM 4/10/08

    > I think the link between the holocaust and the Nazis
    > is not something that can be blamed on the producers,
    
    Of course not, since it's well documented that the Nazis committed the holocaust.
    
    > but on many Darwinists themselves, as is carefully
    > documented in Richard Weikart's book:
    
    The case for Nazis committing the Holocaust isn't dependent upon the "Darwinists", either -- plenty of first-hand accounts are still available.
    
    Meanwhile, there are a lot of apt descriptions of Weikart's book, but "carefully documented" is not one of them. "Selectively quote-mined out of context while ignoring contrary evidence" is much closer to the mark. Ultimately, Weikart attempts to force-fit the complexities of society and history into his simplistic "blame Darwin" thesis, and fails to pull it off. See for example this review of his book in The Journal of Modern History [url http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/502761]http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/502761[/url]

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23. 23. Spin-oza 09:51 PM 4/10/08

    Hmmm.... I just reviewed this thread after commenting much earlier on and I am utterly amazed at the patient, cogent replies of ICHNEUMON to all the bogus musings of the faith-based, hoping to insert their supernatural-designer-god into the vocabulary and business of science.
    
    Science, as opposed to the failed history of authoritarian religions touting a creator god, has been the most fruitful human undertaking by far. I am reminded of the wonderful quote by the imminent American iconoclast, Robert Green Ingersoll... observing that when science was in its infancy, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle... and now the palsied, atrophied wreck of religion, long passed by the energetic, athelete of science, seeking a "bargain" like an old hen in the barnyard (religion) saying to the muscular horse (science) "let us agree not to step upon the other!". (paraphrased)
    
    That is exactly what is happening with the morph of lame creationism to ID... as outlined dispassionately, factually and unequivocally in the DOVER, PA "trial" which (again) totally debunked ID and was decided by a "conservative" judge, much to his credit.
    
    As for the possibility that one can be trained in the sciences and still be religious... of course... and Kenneth Miller the biologist at Brown University is a great example... but he has totally rejected creationism in ALL of its guises, including ID. The brute fact is that there is a direct correlation between education in math and science and lack of religious belief.
    
    ID merely adds a superfluous layer of speculation to an evidence-based reality that not only fits an evolutionary model, but that model has predicted evidence which was later sought and found. DNA has been an absolute coup for evolution, a theory of the highest order which has never been disproved.
    
    For those of you still clinging to the super-natural and ID, please explain the following in terms of your "intelligent design" model:
    
    1. a 13.7 BILLION year old Universe, filled with chaotic events like superNova, lethal radiation, colliding galaxies... and "finely tuned" for Black Holes?
    2. an 8 Million year old ordinary star, our sun... in one of a 100 Billion galaxies, each with billions of stars... in a vast, expanding universe?
    3. a 4.5 Billion year old earth... with a moon most probably formed by a cataclysmic collision... and with no life of any sort for a Billion years?
    4. the emergence of life in an evolutionary fashion... with the supposedly most "intelligent" only appearing in the last 5-8 million or so years... and all of these early human forms becoming extinct... not to mention the extinction of all Home species except for Sapiens, who only appeared in the proverbial last "blink of a (geologic )eye"?
    5. plate tectonics and the vast geologic and fossil record which totally supports an evolving earth and biology?
    6. species like dinosaurs and parasites?
    7. vestigial structures... like males with teats, flightless birds, snakes with pelvic structures... and whales with legs?
    8. myriad human congenital anomalies (conjoined twins) and high maternal death (preantibiotic era) in the profoundly fundamental act of childbirth?
    9. myriad medical illness leading to unfathomable pain, suffering and death... not to mention wholesale slaughter during pandemics and "acts of god" (tsunami, hurricains, earthquakes, drought, etc.)?
    
    Once you ID'ers have tacled those items... I've got many, many more.
    
    Cheers!
    
    --
    Edited by Spin-oza at 04/10/2008 2:54 PM

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24. 24. Preston Osborne 12:44 AM 4/11/08

    >>As for the possibility that one can be trained in the sciences and still be religious... of course... and Kenneth Miller the biologist at Brown University is a great example... but he has totally rejected creationism in ALL of its guises, including ID. The brute fact is that there is a direct correlation between education in math and science and lack of religious belief. <<
    
    I suggest that you do a little research into who the "founding fathers" of the various disciplines of science were. Most of them believed in creation. Sir Isaac Newton, Paschal, and Pastuer are a couple of scientists that come to mind...
    
    ID bashing has become great sport but in reality to shows just how bankrupt the Darwinists are when it comes to compiling a scientific argument either for Evolution or against Intelligent Design.
    
    I'm sure that there were those that held to the "flat earth theory" and were just as adamant and "wrong" as you are... In my humble opinion of course...
    
    Darwinism is the religion of atheists... If only Christians were as fervent about seeing souls converted to Christ as Darwinists are to converting atheists to Darwinism...
    
    Speaking as an engineer... In my opinion a creationist is much better suited for the sciences than an athesit is... Simply because he's not shackled by the propaganda of Darwinism..
    
    --
    Edited by Preston Osborne at 04/10/2008 5:55 PM

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25. 25. engr.student 12:47 AM 4/11/08

    Spinoza,
    
    Those arguments are meaningful to a "young-earth creationist". Just because I am Christian does not mean that I ascribe to the 7 literal day theory. I can be quite comfortable with an 18 billion year old universe, and still have it fit with a creator.
    
    The point I was trying to make about ID is that, without being the "horse" of science the hen is willing to ask questions in ways that the horse should. I have sat through courses on "Organic Evolution" and would never, and am not, disrespecting my teachers by trying to "invalidate" biology. A majority of the students had significant mathematical difficulties that second year engineering students would not. It is not entirely out of line to say that biologists major on the key points of their field which can tend to systemic understanding, great laboratory technique, etc... and minor on points way out of their disciplines (but still in science) like the fundamental mathematics behind information theory and optimization theory. Biologists do not often "get down verbally" with Number Theorists.
    
    Those ID-ers without the formal education are asking questions that the biologists, if they sat down with the number theorists, could answer with a very excellent answer (one that didn't have to resort to such things as Flying Spaghetti Monsters). They may be hens, but within their hen world they are doing more than the "horses" are doing in their horse world. That is a kind of excellence that science, if it were humble and truly deeply interested in knowing truth, would look at the pathetic chicken and be convinced that it too is taking on the habits of being entrenched in its paradigms, and becoming in some ways like a religious institution instead of a bold explorer into the unknown regions of understanding. It is a good habit to never believe you have a monopoly on truth - that sort of arrogance leads to a very dangerous, unhealthy, and un-excellent myopia.
    
    If the goal is learning truth and communicating truth, then smear (either way), and FSM's are an indication of a failure. If you want me to understand you, don't attack me - take time to explain something. If you want to understand something I said, ask a question, and don't attack some part of my identity.
    
    Is there something of excellence that you can gain from understanding the ID-ers without necessarily buying into their belief system? Likely.
    Is a non-vitreolic engagement on your part more likely to engender some degree of respect? Likely?
    Is a vitreolic engagement on your part like to increase the net vitreol in the world, and damage the communication and pursuit of truth? Likely.

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26. 26. Spin-oza 02:17 AM 4/11/08

    Well... the silence is deafening, as they say...
    
    It seems none of the ID apologists are willing to utter a peep and show the (conspiratorial?) scientific community how the ID model (assuming there is such a definable precept... versus wishful thinking) versus the monumental scientific edifice of evolution, explains the world as we know it, thankfully "Naturalized" by reason and science.
    
    Again... one can sure have personal religious beliefs (usually inculcated, ad nauseam, since early childhood) and intellectually grasp and even excel with abstractions in math and science... and obviously some among us must have needs for "afterlife" and "demigod" status from such faith-based dogma. However, when the Universe is surveyed and an uncompromising look of reality is fully grasped, Cognitive Dissonance is the result for such disparate, conflicting ideas... something, unfortunately, humans clearly excel (self-deception).
    
    As far as the religious beliefs of past pioneers of science... they are completely irrelevant to their contribution to the corpus of knowledge, and the lines they penned. Their religion is much like their language: a product of their time and culture. Most were Deists... having a vague notion of a Prime Mover or Divine Providence... but not of a personal god.
    
    BTW, isn't it odd there is not a single reputable study demonstrating the "power of prayer"? In fact the largest study out of Duke and Harvard (both with vaunted Divinity Schools) not only proved that "intercessory prayer" to be totally impotent for patients undergoing cardiac surgery, those "prayed for" actually fared worse.
    
    Anyway... back to ID. Like prayer, it is impotent. It adds nothing, postulated nothing to be tested empirically, and does not fit reality as we know it all too well (see my prior comment). As far as "understanding" the ID'ers... as the Dover PA litigation exposed... I think we understand their pernicious agenda all too well.
    
    "[T]heology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?" Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 6.
    
    EXPLAINING THE UNKNOWN BY THE UNOBSERVABLE IS ALWAYS PERILOUS BUSINESS!
    
    Cheers to all who truly seek.

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27. 27. DavidONE 10:13 AM 4/11/08

    A general response, mainly as a reminder, if it were needed, that the ID gang are attempting to stick the label 'Darwinist' on the rational, reality-based, scientific community in order to make it appear as though we are following the 'cult of Darwin', in the same way they follow the cult of the xian zombie.
    
    It's another attempt at the "atheism is a religion" nonsense. More desperation and dishonesty as their god gets squeezed in to ever tighter gaps - no wonder they're squeaking so loudly!
    
    Additionally, it betrays their deep ignorance that the subject of evolution has moved far beyond what Darwin proposed, while still confirming the basic structure 150 years later.

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28. 28. DavidONE 10:35 AM 4/11/08

    > Preston Osborne: "Sir Isaac Newton, Paschal, and Pastuer [were Creationists]"
    
    D' ya think that might be because Newton and Pascal were dead *before* Darwin was even born?! And prior to 'On the Origin of Species' there was really only 'god did it' as an explanation?
    
    Similarly. Pasteur was in his late 30s when Darwin published, so he'd been born and bred with 'god did it'.
    
    > " In my opinion a creationist is much better suited for the sciences than an athesit is ..."
    
    And your *opinion* is worth nothing on this subject. A successful scientist is one who seeks the truth first and foremost. Creationists arrive with Bronze Age stupidity and desperately seek anything to shore up their ludicrous view of the universe. Again, that's why ID is not studied in any reputable university on the planet.
    
    So, what are the options? I can think of three:
    
    1. there's a massive global conspiracy, involving millions of scientists, to keep the 'truth' of Creationism / ID (which one are you arguing for?!) out of science
    
    2. Creationists have discovered a truth that has eluded millions of scientists over the last 150 years
    
    3. a handful of bible belt wing nuts, deluded by their Bronze Age fairy story are attempting to subvert modern science in order to further their death cult
    
    Which one is it?

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29. 29. Timothy 02:31 PM 4/11/08

    I am constantly noting people are confused about the terms and positions in this debate. This is not good if we expect to learn anything beneficial from these discussions.
    
    One of my old professors used to say "the mark of an educated person is they are able to articulate fairly a position with which they do not agree" or something to that effect.
    
    First of all, ID appears to have its roots in philosophy, and not religion. Aristotle was most certainly not a 'fundamentalist' by any stretch of the imagination. Many of the ID advocates are also not even religious much less all fundamentalist Christians. Michael Denton for example was certainly not a Christian, but he was one of the first of these guys, he was I believe agnostic but he published books like [u]Nature's Destiny[/u], and [u]Evolution, a Theory in Crisis[/u]. That is by all accounts it appears what motivated the rest of the ID crew.
    
    About the credentials of IDers, many of them, like Behe, a tenured professor, do hold pretty impressive credentials. It is silly to say they are incompetent in their fields, or uneducated.
    
    I see this as due to a very unfair and disingenuous stereotype that anyone who has an alternative idea about evolution is a creationist. Quite frankly that does not seem to be true. I have seen as many people believing we were designed by aliens or something weird like that as I have Christians who advocate it.
    
    It seems to me that simply pointing out problems with "motivations" is not convincing because it is a genuine logical fallacy, and in this case is not true.
    
    Whether ID is science or not seems also a little clouded because of all the confusion in this debate. If we are able to detect design in other things like SETI as they would argue, then why not in biology?
    
    Another myth seems to be that they don't have any published hypothesis. This is untrue as well.
    
    John A Davidson, an ID advocate published his hypothesis in Rivista. ([url http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15889345]A prescribed evolutionary hypothesis[/url]) Granted it is not a high impact journal, but I think the point is that they are going through the same bother as everyone else to have their research scrutinized. Of course this isn't really what the media is reporting, it tends to want to polarize things, as the great [i]Science versus Religion[/i] debate. I think is is pretty poor that SA resorts to the same media-narratives when called upon to do some real investigation.
    
    Design is a real possibility, and if someone has read ID's work they would realize it says really nothing about a six thousand year old earth, or looney stuff like that. ID's work is actually more along the lines of Evolution itself than people realize. There really shouln't be an "at odds" mentality, but I see that it has fallen victim to a sort of cultural battle.
    
    Now I have a lot of criticisms for IDers as well, but as there really aren't too many here, I would probably be wasting my energy typing them up.
    
    But in Short, I think Science is approaching this issue all wrong. If we want to know our real history, then we have to gauge ID as a possibility, and if we want to really address the Issues ID raises, then we have to treat their argument fairly, and not with ad hominems, and stiff arming.
    
    I thought I would respond to this too:
    
    "Creationism and IT have been rightfully outlawed in Europe to be taught as an alternative to evolution."
    
    I wouldn't be too proud of outlawing any ideas considering Europe's past history of doing so. Furthermore, this is not really discussing creationism classic is it?
    
    --
    Edited by Timothy at 04/11/2008 7:33 AM

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30. 30. Spin-oza 04:16 PM 4/11/08

    TIMOTHY pontificates near the end of a tedious comment:
    "But in Short, [u]I think Science is approaching this issue all wrong[/u]."
    
    Amazing ... the scope of such a sweeping condemnation of the disciplines of the biological sciences... as well as aspects of geology, physics, astrophysics... geochemistry... is both arrogance personified and breathtaking.
    
    Please Sir Tim, post your scientific credentials and research papers! The vast community of dedicated scientists who have embraced evolutionary theory as a bedrock upon which many edifices are solidly built are apparently in need of your profoundly penetrating insights.
    
    Sarcasm aside... not...
    
    On the one hand we have the Discovery Instituted lackeys, who clearly have a dogmatic agenda... who are driving this ID train down the creationism tracks with buffoons like Ben Bulbous Stein out to make a quick buck....
    
    On the other hand we have the enormous weight of about 140 years of progressive research done by tens of thousands of eminently qualified scientists of various, inter-related disciplines, who actually gather empirical data to rigorously test and expand upon evolutionary theory as proposed by Darwin, in a published, peer-reviewed dialogue of reason.
    
    Hmmm... I don't know for sure... but I have a vague notion that the Discovery-ben-Stein ID connection is a bit suspect.
    
    AND once again I see that no ID "defender" has addressed any of the nine points I offered earlier. It is impossible to take ID the least bit seriously unless those proposing it can demonstrate why it has superior explanatory AND predictive properties regarding the THE REAL WORLD as revealed by arduous scientific inquiry.
    
    If one must have needs for a god-construct or "intelligent designer", who cares? It matters not. It is merely an unknowable... an absurdly complex and improbable entity beyond the Natural Universe and thus, having no relevance to our existence in the proverbial "here & now".
    
    Deus sive Natura.... or ... what more god could you possibly need?
    
    --
    Edited by Spin-oza at 04/11/2008 12:40 PM

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31. 31. Natedog 04:31 PM 4/11/08

    I visited the site recommended by OneEye (www.answersingenesis.org) and if you are looking for a laugh you MUST visit this site!
    
    Here is a quote from "Taking Back Astronomy"
    
    "Why is it that so many scientists choose to ignore the recorded history of the Bible, and instead believe in a vastly inflated age of the universe?"
    
    "One answer is circular reasoning: many scientists believe the world is old because they believe most other scientists think the world is old."
    
    LOL
    
    Imagine a bunch of scientists standing around looking at a rock.
    
    Scientist 1: "Well Bill says this sucker is really old and he is really smart so we should probably just take his word for it".
    
    Scientist 2: "Yup, case closed. The rock is a million billion years old".
    
    If that is how creationists think science works it is no wonder they are skeptical of science.
    
    The truth is that there are a number of methods used to determine the age of objects. The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth. The oldest rocks found thus far are at least 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old and most direct samples beyond that point would have been destroyed due to erosion and crustal recycling of the molten surface.
    
    The processes used are thoroughly outlined and not open to bias on the part of the scientist.
    
    Scientists are not interested in how old people want the earth to be or even how old they themselves think it is, it simply study the evidence and report their findings.
    
    Also even though DavidONE already touched on this I want to thank Preston Osborne for pointing out the fact that Sir Isaac Newton was a creationist, a man who died 132 years before "The Origin of Species" was published.
    
    --
    Edited by Natedog at 04/11/2008 10:50 AM

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32. 32. Noremacam 04:31 PM 4/11/08

    attempts to link evolution to the holocaust are shameful? Well of course they are! Hitler creating a master Aryan race that is evolutionarily superior to other human beings? Gee, I can't see the connection at all.

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33. 33. Spin-oza 05:59 PM 4/11/08

    I see that 'NOREMACAM' has gleefully jumped in bed with the sleazy film by Discovery Institute shill, and huckster, Ben Stein... seeking to tangentially smear the towering work of Darwin via the backdoor of Nazi machinations and the decidedly mentally ill narcissistic megalomaniac, Hitler.
    
    Since the ID'ers have NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE in the scientific realm... they are reduced to pandering such deplorable tripe. Nothing new there.
    
    What this poster and others of his ilk conveniently overlook is that Hitler and virtually all of his inner-circle were god-believers, predominantly Catholics. All were brought up "in the faith" and none denied the existence "of god". Hitler often referenced "god" in his oratories and prayed publically. The German people who were the necessary cogs in the machine, were at least 95% "christian"! In fact, as a young man, Hitler seriously considered entering the Seminary.
    
    His particular "brand" of christianity... and goodness knows there are more brands than fleas on the proverbial dog... was a mix of Catholicism and Aryan christianity. As another poster has previously pointed out, his hatred for the jewish people was fueled solely by the ranting's of Martin Luther, as well as official Catholic doctrine.
    
    Darwin and evolution were most definitely NOT the basis for any of Hitler's "faith-based" horrors. The Catholic church was MIA during this time... fully in bed with the Fuhrer with their infamous CONCORDAT. The 3rd Reich incorporated many christian symbols into their sick military juggernaut... and "GOT MIT UNS" should be known to anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of modern history.
    
    Soooo... perhaps one should not speak about things one knows almost nothing about.

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34. 34. DarthRook 06:08 PM 4/11/08

    Oh, yeah?
    
    Well who else but god could create a 5 billion year old garden of eden in 7 days and populate it with killer naked-apes and Angelina Jolie?

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35. 35. Ditches 06:24 PM 4/11/08

    I once saw a pile of bird crap that remarkably resembled the state of Texas. I was convinced that such fecal complexity couldn't occur by mere chance, and naturally assumed that this was a sign from some omnipotent creator.
    
    Three months later, as I walked out of Dallas airport, eager to arrive at my new, divinely mandated home, a bird crapped on my head. At that moment, I knew that I had made the correct decision.

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36. 36. Spin-oza 07:59 PM 4/11/08

    Ditches... careful... you're treading very closely to the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich "miracle" as seen and auctioned on EBay and authenticated by the Roman Catholic Church.
    
    As I think of all the silly reasons that the scientific community must respond to such BS as the pathetic film... I am reminded of the delusional nature of most Americans... who in their "ignorance is bliss" blinded state, believe in ghosts and The Rapture, in addition to a 6 thousand year old earth with "man walking with the dinosaurs". Our budget deficit pales in comparison with our EDUCATIONAL deficit, eh?
    
    I am also reminded of [b]PROJECT STEVE[/b]. I am sure most of the well-informed remember this response to Discovery Institute and the Institute for Creation Research propaganda... with their so-called lists of "scientists" (and I use that word in the loosest possible sense) who opposed evolutionary theory.
    
    It was funded by the National Center for Education (as I recall) and gathered, as a response, the signatures of real, working scientists NAMED STEVE... primarily biologists, who not only supported evolutionary theory but rejected bogus creationism and its spawn. By the time it ran it's course there were over 800 signatories! That's right ladies, OVER 800 MAINLY BIOLOGICAL SCIENTISTS NAMED STEVE who utterly rejected "intelligent design" nonsense. Can you imagine the number if scientists with ANY NAME were allowed to sign... hundreds of thousands????
    
    NOW, will some ID cult member please tell us why men have teats and even get "breast cancer"?

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37. 37. Spin-oza 08:14 PM 4/11/08

    ATTENTION Intelligent Designers.... THIS JUST IN:
    
    "A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a [b]snake with two legs[/b].
    
    Scientists have only a handful of specimens that illustrate the [u]evolutionary narrative that goes from ancient lizard to limbless modern serpent[/u].
    
    
    Researchers at the European Light Source (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, used intense X-rays to confirm that a creature imprinted on a rock, and with one visible leg, had another appendage buried just under the surface of the slab.
    
    "We were sure he had two legs but it was great to see it, and we hope to find other characteristics that we couldn't see on the other limb," said Alexandra Houssaye from the National Museum of Natural History, Paris.
    
    The 85cm-long (33in) creature, known as Eupodophis descouensi, comes from the Late Cretaceous, about 92 million years ago."
    
    The above courtesy of the BBC.
    
    Hmmm... a SNAKE WITH LEGS from about 90 MYA... more evidence of "intelligent design" (like flightless birds and underground moles with covered eyes)... or perhaps just one of the tens of thousands of clear examples of evolution?
    
    The remnants still exist on modern constrictors as appendages to hold-fast during snake-love-making.
    
    cheers.

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38. 38. stella_tigre 11:05 PM 4/11/08

    I suppose it would be silly to think maybe, given the preview op, this is meant to be an ironic attack on ID? I don't know Ben Stein except for silly game shows that I only saw the first 13 seconds of (before I got ahold of the remote....) It would explain the anomaly of the preview...Or an effort to renew his own notoriety.

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39. 39. dread77706 06:44 PM 4/12/08

    Spin-oza - Re: the Snake w/ legs
    
    Did they find a man with 23 ribs near by?

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40. 40. Patrick 027 02:33 AM 4/13/08

    Someone remarked that the science as it is must be weak if all we can do to defend it is 'smear' and discuss motives.
    
    Well, part of the problem is, there is SO much to say about evolution, it's hard to know what to say, especially in this kind of a format. I would recommend looking into some books. I can recommend my college textbook "Evolutionary Analysis" (Freeman and Herron). For a more introductory text, see "Evolution of the Earth" (Dott and Prothero) - this being more about geology, but there is some information about evolution in there.
    
    Perhaps a book that will get you more to the point with regards to ID and creationism is (I think I got the title right) "Why Darwin Matters" by Michael Shermer. I haven't looked into it yet but there's also a book - I think it's called "Intelligent Thought" - with several contributing authors. There was a very good 2-hour NOVA special on PBS a few months ago - I think it was called "Intelligent Design On Trial" - it was about the Dover case, but goes into the actual science (as the Dover case itself had to do).
    
    My knowledge of ID is basically that it claims that there are designed features of life suggesting an inteligent designer, which would have required great luck to come about by natural evolution (in this way, ID is opposed to natural evolution). For example, the famous Palley's Watch - you see a watch, you assume someone designed it. One prominent concept is irreducible complexity.
    
    A few points - first, natural evolution involves a method of problem solving - trial and error. Thus we can expect at least some degree of apparent intelligent design to appear in the results.
    
    Second, A. watches have evolved. Their origin must have been a 'mental mutation' in somebody's head. (Technology can be thought of as a symbiotic (we hope!) virus that has infected human minds and culture. Different devices can 'swap genes' within the human mind, to produce new ideas. Ultimate origins would have been ideas derived from observing nature and ... etc.) B. We know that humans invented watches, so it is easy to make the assumption that watches were designed. C. We've never seen a watch reproduce itself. If they could reproduce themselves, they might occasionally replicate their genomes imperfectly, often leading to sterile or dead watches, but occasionally leading to something else, thus giving some variety in the watch population... you see where I'm going.
    
    Third, irreducible complexity can be a tricky thing. The arguments I've seen (the bacterial flagellum, the human eye, and for analogy, a mouse trap) make the implicit assumption that the only use they ever had was the present (extant) one. Thus, remove or change one part a little, and it doesn't work quite right (if truly irreducibly complex, it just wouldn't work). So how could it have evolved from gradual change? Well, the predecessors may have served different functions. On a related note, keep in mind the environment has changed over time. The evolution of predators obviously would have driven evolution in their prey, and vice versa. Some primitive devices that barely worked might have sufficed for the conditions at the time. The current human eye (and many other eyes) allows the brain to perceive a two-dimensional picture of the world with a dimension of depth and some dimensions of color, movement (movement is actually a part of visual sensation, and not just derived from changes in the visual perception - hence, it is possible to see movement without seeing what was moving - although that's more about the brain than the eye... ), etc. The predecessors wouldn't have done all of that, but even a simple device that gives a rough sense of which direction light is coming from (ie which way is up?) could have been of some use to some organism (and indeed It's my impression that some organisms may today have such devices).
    
    I think some ID proponents may not fully appreciate how complex the mechanisms of natural evolution can be. There is natural selection, but there is also sexual selection and frequency dependent selection. There is kin selection (I think that's what it's called) - where evolution may lead to some amount of altruistic behavior towards relatives, which can be explained by the sharing of genes (because they're related). A multicellular organism's cells are typically clones of each other (or at least nearly so), so evolution is able to explain how some of my cells sacrifice themselves for the good of the group (me).
    
    There is also exaptation - when a characteristic of an organism finds a use that it wasn't 'desiged' for - but at which point that it becomes used that way, evolution can start working on it.
    
    Very important for speciation is epistasis - when two populations are seperated reproductively, mutations can gradually accumulate in one population that are not the same as in the other population. Now, it is important to remember that a gene's contribution to an organisms's reproductive success is not something that occurs in isolation - it requires the other genes, and how a change in one gene affects the organism depends on what the other genes are. The mutations within each population that are able to survive and spread must be able to work with the other genes, including the other mutations, within that population. They might not work with the mix of mutations in the other population. Thus, when members of the two populations meet again, if they try to reproduce, they may not produce viable offspring, or their offspring may not do very well.
    
    See also 'ring species'. These are cases of apparent potential speciation in progress. A group of populations may be distributed through space, so that neighboring populations exchange genes via mating and so are prevented from becoming reproductively isolated. But when members from populations spaced further apart are brought together, they might not reproduce successfully. They might not even recognize each other. There is a case of a bird (a warbler?) in Asia, with a territory that wraps around Tibet. All along, it can be seen as a single species, except in the northern end, where there seem to be two groups that don't recognize each other's songs. The territory forms a broken ring with two ends that overlap each other but are not reproductively connected - if enough of the southern populations died out (perhaps by climate change), then a speciation might occur.
    
    Genetic variation doesn't just come about from mutations at single base-pair sites in DNA. During Meiosis in particular (how germ cells (sperm, egg) are produced), genetic shuffling can occur, and multiple copies of segments of genes, whole genes, even whole chromosomes, can occur in the end result. genes and gene segments may also be rearranged. This can break genetic linkages (genes that are physically close on a chromosome tend to be inherited together, so that variations in those genes tend to come in some combinations but not in others - the genes are linked).
    
    ...
    
    Now some philosophical points. Science can't disprove God. I once read that the most efficient code would resemble black body radiation. I suppose then, that given the stochastic (random) nature of much of what happens in the universe, the universe could be full of secret messages from God, in unbreakable code. God could even be actively adjusting the trajectory of the universe on the microscopic level, with quantum uncertainty and other stochastic processes masking his/her presence. Of course, if God were omniscient, s/he could have set the initial conditions just right so that it would not be necessary to make adjustments (with the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, at least one version would turn out 'correct'). Such adjustments or fine tuning could alter the details (the 'weather'), but not the larger scale generalities and statistics (the 'climate') - or else it would be detectable. Anyway, though, this is a bit ad hoc and with Occam's razor, well, you know - it's not impossible but it's just one possibility. Anyway, if God created nature and evolution is natural, than there shouldn't be any problem for religious people - unless they insist on Biblical literalism or something like that.
    
    ----
    
    Aside from timing relative to Darwin's work, it can also be pointed out that not everything Isaac Newton did or thought was a part of scientific work. Isaac Newton researched the Bible, and calculated that the world would end in 2060. This is not based on the orbits of the planets. It's based in religion (and rather oddly at that, considering it says right in the Bible that we won't know when the final days will come, or something like that).
    
    By the way, that's a good general point to keep in mind. Scientists are people and they can philosophize and fall in love and get angry just like anyone else. They might even try to do work in other scientific fields outside their areas of expertise - some of them are able to do well at this, but others will fail (for example, with evolution and global warming).
    
    ----
    
    Blaming scientific theory of evolution for the Holocaust is like blaming the scientific theory of the water cycle for the deaths in the wake of a Tsunami.

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41. 41. ajaxpc 10:56 AM 4/13/08

    You're good at pointing out the nonsense, but you're not so good at thinking about why people need to believe it.
    
    What makes people so afraid as to abandon rationality?
    
    We may be practically terrified  e.g. by our precarious circumstances in an uncaring universe - but practical threats are usually less terrifying than what our Enlightenment predecessors might have called 'moral' hazards: the possibility that some things might so dehumanise us as to destroy our 'souls' - our senses of ourselves as human beings.
    
    Perhaps we now call this terror 'shame'.
    
    If you ridicule religious beliefs, you promote the shaming of their adherents - and feed the terror on which their exploiters thrive.
    
    What can you do about this?
    
    The question isn't beyond rational consideration - although perhaps it isn't simply a scientific issue.
    
    Do you need to decide whether you can shrug it off as 'not your business', or whether you can bring it, sensitively, within the scope of your social concern?

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42. 42. Trisha Gura 08:19 PM 4/13/08

    I, too, have been misportrayed by ID proponents. I am a science journalist who wrote a story about fossil and molecular evidence for evolution. Trisha Gura, Bones, molecules...or both? Nature 406 (2000): 233. The ID folks have misconstrued the article to mean scientists are in conflict about whether evolution as a whole theory is true. It's vexing and fascinating both to watch how the intelligent design proponents miscontrue and misquote their scientific "sources." For the record, Nature nor I personally do not support intelligent design nor do we disavow support of the theory of evolution.

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43. 43. Patrick 027 12:34 AM 4/14/08

    Just so there's no confusion - my reference to my college textbook - I only meant it was the textbook I had and used; I haven't written any books.
    
    A terminology issue - I think sperm and eggs are germ cells, but I think the term might also apply to the line of cells (distinct from somatic cells) that produce the sperm and the eggs. My understanding is that meiosis is involved in sexual reproduction in all (as far as I know) multicellular organisms with specialized germ cells distinct from somatic cells (although some insects' inheritance patterns are a bit different - bee siblings, for example, are more closely related, genetically speaking, than siblings in most sexuallly-reproducing species - that helps explain why they have such a great degree of altruistic behavior (dying to defend the hive)); I don't know much about sexual reproduction in single-celled creatures.
    
    Another point related to epistasis - genes might interact more directly (some gene's activities involve control or influence over to what extent other genes are expressed) or more indirectly (ie if gene A codes for protein X and gene B codes for protein Y, then if X and Y interact in the body (directly or indirectly), then how a version in A affects the organism will depend on what version(s) of B are present. If a set of mutations in one group of genes causes webbed fingers or toes and another set of mutations in another group of genes makes the organism want to swim for food instead of run for food .... etc...
    
    And the effect on reproductive fitness of an organism from any variation in its genotype (its genetics) will depend on the environment of that organism, which can include other individuals of the same species.
    
    So one could look at evolution from the veiwpoint of the origin, survival, spread, change, duplication, and extinction of a gene, with everything else being the environment.
    
    ---
    
    The characteristics of an organism are its phenotype. Variations in phenotype come potentially from the combined variations in genotype and in environment. It is the phenotype that selective forces act on directly, it is through that that genotypes are selected for or against.
    
    There is a specific mathematical definition for heritability (actually there are two, because there is broad sense heritability and narrow sense heritability) based on the relationship among the phenotypic variation, the environmental variation, and the genetic variation (which has two components, which I won't go into now) among the members of a population - heritability can be found for any one phenotypic trait. For a trait, one might find a high heritability for two populations seperately, but that does not indicate what the heritability will be if the two populations are pooled together for a study - because the environmental variation within the populations might be much smaller than the difference in environment between the populations.
    
    Phenotypic plasticity refers to the influence of environmental factors on the development of a phenotype. (PS as the effects of the genotype depend on environment, the effects of the environment depend on the genotype, and the effects of different parts of the environment may depend on each other.) Biological evolution can select for a form of phenotypic plasticity found in the brains of many animals - the ability to learn - which is generally advantageous. When this occurs in a social species, one can have culture, and then cultural evolution (which might conceivably be partly Darwinian and partly Lamarkian, and partly follow biological relationships (parents pass on to children, groups pass on to next generation), and partly have some lateral 'gene' transfer). Culture can be shaped in part by biology and in part by environment (including neighboring cultures). Culture is a part of the individual's environment and can influence biological evolution. The individual's behavioral patterns are a part of it's phenotype and also a part of the culture. As a phenotype develops, it can alter it's own environment, sometimes just by migrating, ... etc.
    
    In large part due to rapid cultural evolution, the environment of many humans today is quite different than the environments that shaped most of our recent biological evolution. We live in much larger groups, etc...
    
    The idea of human evolution is not incompatable with the ability of humans to concieve of morality and even want to be moral. There is kin selection, and sexual selection and frequency dependent selection, etc... And humans have had to live in groups in the past and had to find ways to interact successfully with each other in order to survive. Some aspects of psychology which can be traced to evolution might be used differently now due to cultural evolution. (Michael Shermer has done some writing on this; I'm sure others have, too.) (The recent environmental changes have made some previously adaptive traits into maladaptive traits. It is interesting, though, that humanity has reached a point where many of us have goals in life quite aside from spreading our DNA around...)
    
    ---
    
    And that might lead into what ajaxpc was talking about.
    
    Some people think that without God, there isn't morality.
    
    If they mean this in the sense that God created morality, then it must be wrong.
    
    But first we must distinguish between human conceptions of the specifics of morality and the general concept of morality, which is something which is absolute and unchanging. Human ideas of the specification of moral principles might be in error and can change with time, but the idea of morality is that there is a correct version of it.
    
    Morality might be expressed in terms of moral value. A moral value might be assigned to a situation. If a situation A presents a choice with options a and b, which would lead to situations A and B, respectively, than a decision with positive moral value would be to choose the option that maximizes the possible moral value of the new situation (which may be defined to extend into the future and include the potential moral values of situations resulting from future choices, etc.), and the moral value of the decision would be expressed as the difference in moral values of the different outcomes from the different options. With uncertainty, moral value may take into account probabilities. Furthermore, the moral judgement of the decision maker is not just based on the moral value of the decision... Although the math of the moral 'economics' can be simplified be considering the decider and his/her available decision-making resources as well as the choices to be part of the situation, etc...
    
    Thus morality of an action can depend on the nature of the action and if considered seperately from the situation (including the decider and his/her resources), is also dependent on context.
    
    However, the mathematical function that gives moral value on the basis of the characteristics of something - that function itself must be fixed. If it is not fixed, then that must mean that there are other variables the function depends on, which can also be traced to something on which the morality depends - once all such variables are identified, the function left must be eternal and fixed. If it were not, it would not be like what morality must be like. It is independent of any being, no matter how powerful. It is not something God could create or destroy (just like logic and math - I mean the truth of math itself, not the human symbols used or thoughts about it.. etc.). Consider that if God created morality, then God must be good. But morality must be independent of such a creation or else God could not be said to be good and so his creation might not be good at all... (well, I had expressed that more clearly at an earlier date).
    
    And why would human concepts of morality happen to bear any resemblance to such an eternal thing? I think the key there is that the moral value is a function of the nature of things, and so the morality function, as applied to humanity, will yeild answers that depend on our nature and the nature of our situations. Another intelligent species might evolve with a different conception of morality, but after accounting for the differences between the species and their situations, it may be possible to reconcile the two different versions of morality.
    
    Some people think that we have a purpose because we were created by God, who gave us purpose. But I think that, whether or not God created us with purpose in mind - whether we were created for a purpose or not, the fact that we are should give us purpose (and that would be the same purpose God meant for us if s/he created us with such a purpose in mind).
    
    I can't help you with life after death. The prospect of no life after death scares me, too, more so than the idea that there is no God. Perhaps that's why I consider life after death to not be so closely coupled to God's existence as others do.
    
    Quantum uncertainty works both forwards and backwards in time. So with the Everett interpretation, we could have multiple pasts. Might the moment of creation be in a state of quantum superposition between being effected by God and being something that just happenned at random or for some other reason?
    
    The idea that something can't come from nothing may be rooted in the physics of the universe. But if there were truly nothing, there wouldn't be any physical laws. There wouldn't be any rules, except logic itself. But if there are no rules, all logic can offer is that anything might go [*EDIT: so long as whatever does go is logically consistent with itself*].
    
    Justifying belief in God by the need to explain the universe is problematic because it suggests an infinite progression - you would then need an explanation for God. Is that explanation another God? Etc.
    
    By the way, if you really want to stretch your mind, try reading "Equations of Eternity" by David Darling. PS in that book it is pointed out that a perceived problem with the Everett interpretation is that it doesn't explain how our consciousness ends up in the version of the universe that it does. It occurs to me, though, that this is analogous to wondering why I am not you. (Seriously, why aren't I you? Think about it. By the way, if my consciousness could somehow leave my brain and inhabit yours, I would then have your thoughts, your memories, your impulses and inhibitions - as far as I could tell, I would be you. In fact I would be you, which means I wouldn't be me anymore, so I have to stop saying 'I' - hence, I can't be you, EVER (at least, not exactly you in every way).
    
    Occam's razor:
    
    And it might seem simpler to say God did it when it comes to the origin and evolution of life (or many other things), then to offer 'more complicated' natural explanations, but keep in mind we already have (except for philosophical qualifications) established the universe and nature already exist, so the need to explain that the universe is at all - it doesn't add an unnessary layer of complexity to explanations of things that happen within it, and the same goes for such things as natural selection, gravitational collapse of nebulae, etc.
    
    ---
    Occam's razor also does *NOT* (edited, I originally forgot to include the word 'not') dissuade from thinking the universe is infinite in space. The universe could be finite without boundaries with a topology, for example, resembling the surface of a sphere (you never reach the end of the Earth but you will eventually repeat your journey along any great circle route) - or if the universe were a repeated tile in a tesselation (which could involve a non-euclidean geometry - for example, I've read of one idea of a tesselated dodecahedron, and if you go far enough in one direction, you come back from the opposite direction, but rotated... I think that was it). But so far, last I heard, the universe seems to have a flat geometry with no evidence supporting tesselation (although it could just be we haven't looked far enough out - we might not be able to). Anyway, if the universe is flat, the idea of reaching a boundary in space, an edge of the universe that can be seen within the dimensions of space, is so bizarre that it is less complicated to assume the universe goes on infinitely. Which generally increases the chances that any given thing would occur, by the way.
    ---
    
    And from a scientific point of view, if one does not know how something happened - say the origin of life (*EDIT: not that we don't have some ideas, though *) - one does not jump to 'ID did it' or 'God did it', but just accepts that we don't know everything yet. For that matter, that life exists could be considered scientific evidence that the origin of life was possible (life couldn't have been present at the moment of the big bang - it certainly would have been highly improbable to survive in the earliest times of the universe).
    
    ----
    
    If a miracle is considered to be something happenning with 100 million to one odds against it, well, with over 6 billion people in the world and x number of things happenning to each of them every day... you can expect miracles to happen every once in awhile. [*EDIT: that is, if the chances are defined locally for each opportunity, whatever small 'hypervolume' of spacetime that requires. If you evaluate the chances globally for a year and then confine your observations to just the Earth and just for a year, then that's different*]
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/13/2008 5:39 PM
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/13/2008 5:50 PM

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44. 44. Spin-oza 01:17 AM 4/14/08

    DREAD777... why yes... of course, the Discovery Institute "scientists" did find human "footprints' which appeared to be running away from the (90 million year old) snake with hind limbs... and yes... I do believe they reported a "partial fossilized skeleton" of a male, missing a rib... and later, they unearthed THAT VERY SAME RIB incorporated in the remains of a female... on christmas EVE no less!
    
    21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
    22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
    23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she was taken out of Man.
    
    Perhaps this passage from the Genesis, (aka musings from Late Iron Age, ignorant, jewish desert tribes), explains the popularity of RIBS on the BARBIE, even today.
    
    BUT.... why did this omni-god of the bible... the Intelligent Designer of the Universe... having unfathomable power... go about creating a human from a freakin' rib bone? I mean couldn't the Creator of All Life have done a bit of rudimentary genetic engineering? Such crude surgical technique... I hope Adam didn't get an abscess or an ugly keloid scar!
    
    Once again the bible is vindicated, since it foretold the use of the exclamatory adolescent term, "B-O-N-E-R".
    
    TRISH... the fact that ID'ers have twisted your earnest scientific research for there own vacuous agenda is what they have been doing from day one: it's their modus operandi. Everything they do is faith-based and they seek to twist the facts to fit their dogma... much like Bush did with the Intelligence to fit his policy (pretext) to invade Iraq. Of course, it is shameful... but then again, shame or guilt requires a conscience... and with the creationist bizarros at the DI or the ICR, any means are justified to achieve their "godly" ends.
    
    OH WELL... I grow a bit weary that there ar no ID apologists to play with... and none have even attempted to answer the challanges I made back in post #24 as I recall.
    
    HERE'S a fresh thought for all you religionistas who are clinging to the fixed delusion of a sky-god-creator, and most likely a god-man and "holy ghost" as well. If in fact there were such a TriPartite SuperNatural entity that you could communicate with in some meditative manner... you would not be making fools of yourselves by making absurdly bald assertions about ID... and would be totally immersed in rapturous communication with the god-head, oblivious to all the mundane pedestrian concerns with life in the modern age. I for one, would be blissfully living a simple, communal, ascetic life, awaiting my "joining" with the eternal.
    
    Hmmm.... but what about all those garrish Mega-churches and ranting evangelists... .... ... hypocrites?
    
    --
    Edited by Spin-oza at 04/13/2008 7:03 PM
    
    --
    Edited by Spin-oza at 04/13/2008 7:07 PM

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45. 45. WideAwake 01:33 AM 4/14/08

    In Dr. McDonald's case, would his belief in miraculous intervention in biology have contaminated his teaching of sociology? Evidently his Committee thought so; do you?

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46. 46. engr.student 05:05 AM 4/14/08

    Spinoza,
    
    You are venom, and no dialog.
    
    You can pat yourself on the back for your venom, but that is no indicator of understanding.
    
    If you are about fight, but not about truth, all your arguments are an exercise in futility.
    
    You spoke of the horse and the hen. When you become the repressive, intolerant, institution and act to shut down anyone who disagrees with you, in the language of actions you are saying it was good that you were oppressed. When you rejoice in oppressing, you are an oppressor.
    
    Your contempt of the religion I revere is offensive. Your abuse of it, speaks of your ability to hate, not your ability to understand.
    
    Aristotle said that an intelligent man could hold two mutually exclusive ideas in his mind at the same time. He admired that. You certainly do not take the time to seriously understand those you hate on.
    
    You may gloat in your ability to hate. That is not the same thing as having a monopoly on truth.

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47. 47. Spin-oza 05:30 PM 4/14/08

    ENGRdotSTUDENT:
    
    Thanks for the ad-hominum... which further bolsters my case. When someone has nothing of substance to add to the dialog... in this specific case, the vacuous pseudoscience of creationism in all of its threadbare garb (ID and "irreducible complexity"), one resorts to adolescent personal attacks.
    
    I have posted many challenges for the faith-based claiming ID as some reasonable alternative to the bedrock edifice of evolution and the myriad empirical evidence that supports it... only to be met with silence and musings that evoked the devious agreement the late "Great Agnostic" Robert Green Ingersoll illustrated between the palsied-hen wreck of religion and the scientific atheletic-horse in the "barnyard of reality".
    
    The "venom" as you call it is the harsh light of reality impinging on the dark, empty musings of the failed enterprise of discredited, oxymoronic "creation science" and their repetitious, tiresome attempts to inject their faith-driven agenda into our classrooms. If you wish to teach your children such nonsense, then homeschool... where lame propaganda can remain unchallenged.
    
    Personally, I could care less what your personal beliefs are concerning ontology and the supernatural. I hate no one since like Spinoza and Eienstein, I am an utter Determinist and know that individuals cannot be "ultimately responsible" for themselves... or a [i]Causa Sui[/i]... they cannot have created nor caused themselves. You and everyone else is a fully caused, causal agent. However, I do hold each individual (and myself) responsible for their actions, since they are the proximal causal agent... we are in fact, our very actions.
    
    Certain human tendencies and behaviors are clearly nonproductive and maladaptive. Religion has longed outlived its usefulness and is perhaps the best example of such ignorant, human herd-like behavior and in desparate need of reexamination. This "observation" has been the subject of myraid thougtful intelligent minds, from Richard Dawkins "Religion, the Root of All Evil" to the prescient observation of the great Roman philosopher, SENECA:
    
    "Religion is viewed by the COMMON PEOPLE as true,
    by the WISE as false,
    by the RULERS as useful".
    
    Back to science... you may wish to attempt to educate yourself on the numerous historical conflicts between religion and science ... conflicts that have always revealed the dogmatic religious positions, often based on the "revealed truths of the bible" to be completely false.
    
    I recommend you read the recent work by Victor Stenger, an accomplished physicist, "God, the Failed Hypothesis" and get back to us.
    
    Recall that the topic of this thread was the horribly twisted and duplicitious assertions backed by the bogus Discovery Institute with front-man Ben Stein in their "expelled" film.
    TRISHA earlier posted a concrete example of how the ID'ers had shamefully twisted her research to fit their agenda. That is where the outrage is aimed.
    
    SINCE you apparently embrace ID, please address the points I have repeated raised... and while you are at it... [b]please describe for us this mysterious, occult agency and exatly how it supervenes on the Natural world and evolving universe or Cosmos.... and what empirical, measurable evidence exists for it.[/b] I thiink you surely must know that extraordinary claims must have extraordinary, irrefutable evidence, eh?
    
    IF you merely wish to have, like the Deists of the Enlightenment, a "prime mover" or "first cause", then who really cares, since this adds nothing from a scientific perspective and not only place such a construct squarely in an Infinite Regress of first causes... but this unfathomably complex entity is quickly slain by Occam's razor.
    
    NATURE and the COSMOS is far grander and awe inspriing than any god(s) of any religions humanity has created... and still apparently needs. Gods in all their forms were clearly created from evolving humans, seeking to cope with the brute fact that we, along with everything else in the universe, "have our time" and "die"... as well as eeking out a harsh existence and fearing nature's fury in pre-scientific times.
    
    Personally, i fear death not at all... and know that human life was destined as this universe has inexorably unfolded. How wonderful! I also know that I am A PART OF this miraculous reality... as opposed to a faith-based "special creation" APART FROM it. In a sense then, we are indeed connected to the eternal.
    
    DEUS sive NATURA.
    
    --
    Edited by Spin-oza at 04/14/2008 10:37 AM

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48. 48. Patrick 027 01:04 AM 4/15/08

    Sometimes I wonder if the 'ancients' - or maybe a few of them, anyway, might have been a little wiser than we tend to think. What I mean is, do a lot of people misinterpret parts of the Bible? For example, for people who insist on a literal interpretation - well, didn't Jesus often speak in parables? Who's to say that the story of Genesis was not intended as metaphor?
    
    PS see also "How Good Do We Have to Be?" (Kushner - I think he's a rabbi). There are some very interesting interpretations of biblical stories in that book, and though I don't recall the answer to this riddle, the author did mention that the 'rib' from which Eve was made may not have been a rib at all (PS I'm not sure if I actually finished the book, though).
    
    Remember, the Bible has had to be translated into different languages (obviously different parts were originally in different languages, from different times, etc.). Could the original intent sometimes get lost? Words don't always match other words 1-to-1 between languages, and I have read of some cases of biased translations, though these may have been corrected over time... (see also "Eunichs for the Kingdom of Heaven" - (another book I didn't finish but the parts I read were quite intriguing - once upon a time, some people believed that deaf people couldn't be 'saved' - based on an erroneous interpretation (they took something too LITERALLY) of something one of the apostles said, I think. People also used to think that menstrual blood was poisonous or toxic, and that the fertile time of the cycle was at a completely different part than we now know it is.)). There is also the matter of historical context - turning the other cheek may have actually refered to a kind of civil disobedience (Romans slapped people with their ... right hands? To slap with the back of the hand was like saying, "I'm better than you" - adding insult to injury. Turning the other cheek might then require slapping with the palm of the hand, which is at least a little different.)
    
    A thing to keep in mind about questions of a why a good God would allow bad things to happen, especially to good people - the idea that this disproves God might be somewhat analogous to the idea that apparent design in life proves ID.

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49. 49. DavidONE 03:13 AM 4/15/08

    > "... didn't Jesus often speak in parables?"
    
    http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
    http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html

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50. 50. engr.student 03:28 AM 4/15/08

    Spinoza,
    
    I answered reason to your reason and you attacked ad-hominem. I then replied reason to your ad-hominem, and you added more ad-hominem. You don't get to have it both ways.
    
    If the rule is speak reason, and be spoken to in the language of reason then you would show it with your actions (or in this case your words) and you are not. Don't be a hypocrite.
    
    The bible speaks relevant truth:
    Proverbs Ch2 has the scientific method in each of its steps in as clearly as can be articulated in that ancient Hebrew, so Bacon was not the first originator, just the first to speak it in english.
    
    Job argued that the world was suspended over nothing when the "you" of that day would have been debating whether it rode on the back of a giant elephant or a giant tortoise. He is considered to have lived approximately the same time as Abraham, not Galileo.
    
    The essential points of the human experience is not what we know. Knowledge does not address the problem of pain - it becomes irrelevant before the loss of a loved one. The majors to major on are not about what you hold in your hands, or your head, but your heart. How greatly have you truly served and blessed your neighbor, and your enemy are greater measures of the quality of your humanity than which side of which debate you can stand on.
    
    The bible speaks to how you should engage in the key components of being successful as a person - things of the heart. It is relevant to the internal truths of the human experience.
    
    Institutions screw things up. Think about politics and government. The same thing happens to spiritual truth. Ask a native Italian which pope was killed in the 1900's for continually looking into the monetary aspects of the catholic church after being warned by the mafia to back off. The ability of the institutions of men, religious or not, to screw things up does not change the fact that a life lived according to the commands of Jesus is noble, excellent in every value system on the planet today as it was when the words were spoken.
    
    If you want to engage on ID then engage.
    
    You said ID is not science. I provided you examples.
    
    You said we don't know God, so measuring whether we are created is impossible. That was not my point, and is a big miss on your part. Go back to what I said about the AIDS virus. Knowing how the body works can tell you what comes from where, and what does not. You do not need to know the origin of AIDS to measure where it didn't come from. You just need to understand the virus, and the human body.
    
    I gave you a challenge, and you did not take it up. I said, essentially "show me the math" because "science minus math is not science". Show me where the biologists have joined up with the number theorists. Show me their documentation on what the requirements are for the "mutation temperature" in order to allow existing combination mutations, or deny undesirable mutations. I have heard only silence.
    
    Before you continue pounding your chest, and possibly without the bile, please answer "would you like to have a discussion"? The bile can be an indicator of your need to emotionally masturbate over me... if thats all this discussion is - then I quit - go find a different glove. If you can talk without bile, I am certainly capable of, and willing to, engaging in this conversation.
    
    Points to address are:
    - bible contains scientific truth thousands of years ahead of "science".
    - words of Jesus are good words to live by, when understood in context.
    - ID is science, both in that knowing a system and a product it can evaluate the likelihood of that product coming or not coming from that system - whether the system is an anthropological one, a biochemical one, or purely information. It is relevant to evaluation of, and acceptance of, or refutation of potential origins.
    - Science without math is junk. Show me the math, specifically the math requested above. Show me how that math does not apply to the model of ID that creationists are clamoring for.
    - Be willing to forgo the bile.

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51. 51. engr.student 03:50 AM 4/15/08

    You quoted a website. I'm assuming that you care about the content. You are a participant in the discussion. I can point you to answers in genesis websites all day long but that does not constitute a discussion. If you wanted to talk about the content, then here goes:
    
    You do not have to believe in Jesus. Believe in math - in this case the math behind the Kalman filter when applied to optimal state estimation.
    
    Something not observed can be meaningfully measured. Just because you get data from hearsay does not mean that its invalid, just that it has some degree of noise in it.
    
    Not being known does not stop the truth from being true. It just stops it from being acted on.
    
    Those disciples you credit with lying (not knowing them personally how can you possibly justly evaluate their character) died terrible deaths when it would have been trivially easy to not die by denying Jesus, and lighting a candle to Caesar. History says something about them - why presume guild without looking at their words in context of their actions?
    
    Human beings grow and change. The same tools applied to those ancient works, are applied to modern works, and have interesting results. A current author can write a book, take a break, experience life, grow, and the tool will indicate the author is different.
    
    Silvanus was a scribe, a person whose job it was is to record the words of another. Paul references people who helped write the letters in several epistles - not that they decided what words to use, but they copied the words of the speaker to text. Until the Puritans instituted general education, nearly no culture was generally educated, or generally literate.
    
    You say there may or may not have been a Jesus. Thats your belief. You have no information, your link says so. If it comes to a debate of beliefs why would your belief be more significant than mine. Belief is belief. You have your "un-faith" and I have my faith. They have equal scopes of validity. Why can't you give my belief the respect that you want to receive for your belief?
    
    This is a discussion about truth. Whether you believe Jesus existed or not, you can certainly appreciate the historical value of both the testaments of the bible, from their references to titles, historic names, and coins, to their names of places that were assumed for millenia to not exist only to have been finally found. Whether or not you like the author, the bible certainly has an immense historic value and viability.

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52. 52. Spin-oza 04:31 AM 4/15/08

    ENGRdotStudent:
    
    For a moment, reading your posts... I thought I was at a Campus Crusade for christ website... but then I realized this is the erstwhile SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN... sheesh!
    
    Now, every other word you post is dripping with Kool-Aid bible-speak and jesus junk. I suggest you keep your 18% jesus (the percentage of the "sayings" the Jesus Seminar could reasonably ascribe to this ephemeral figure) all to yourself since it enlightens you so much... and leave the Enlightenment that Reason and Science brings to the rest of us.
    
    BTW, the historicity of jesus "the christ" was determined to be in the NEGATIVE by none other than the UNIMPEACHABLE ALBERT SCHWEITZER... after about a decade of focused reasearch. (see his Quest for the Historical Jesus). The newly formed Jesus Project will now delve into the question of whether there is ANY historical underpinning at all to the alleged miracle working god-man, roaming our planet 2000 years ago.
    
    ENGR... are you studying at Bob Jones' or Oral Roberts' "university"?
    
    YOU keep trying to obfuscate and avoid the brute facts that ID has NOTHING to say regarding the biological, geological, paleontological, astrophysical... etc. etc. scientific disciplines.
    
    The burden of proof or evidence is on you, junior. Put up or please, at the very least, stop with your personal religious musings.
    
    IF you wish to challenge evolution, as I have said many, many times... then post your academic credentials, your areas of research and publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
    
    OK... we know you can't do that... so at least, address the NINE POINTS I raised days ago (post #24).
    
    OK... we know you can't do that either... but at least, we (finally) know WHO is your "intelligent designer": bible-sky-god and jesus... and one can only assume, the holy-ghost as well.
    
    WELL... there you have it... it's all in your bible... so what is it exactly that you are doing here? Hoping to proselytize... and save "souls" in some bizarro Cosmic War with Satan and his minions? WHY trouble yourself with facts and empiricism, when you have plastic myths and delusions?
    
    HERE'S something else for you to ponder, if that is possible:
    
    The Great Athenian philosopher, EPICURUS, hundreds of years before the Common Era posited:
    
    IF GOD IS NOT WILLING, BUT ABLE TO PREVENT EVIL, then he is MALEVOLENT,
    
    IF he is WILLING, BUT NOT ABLE, then he is IMPOTENT.
    
    IF he is BOTH willing AND able, THEN WHENCE COMETH EVIL?
    
    IF he is NEITHER willing NOR able, THEN WHY CALL HIM GOD?
    
    ENGR, just relax... you're in a soporific echo-chamber where ignorance should be bliss! Your patchwork bible is like a RORSCHACH blot... you may interpret it any way to like to "fit the facts", as revealed by empirical science.
    
    CHEERS!

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53. 53. DavidONE 12:39 PM 4/15/08

    @engr.student:
    
    > "I answered reason to your reason..."
    
    This is a demonstration of someone deluded in one respect (belief in deities) becoming deluded elsewhere (your interaction with Spin-oza). Your post at #47 is nothing but ad hominem. Your other posts are confused, convoluted and meandering.
    
    > "You do not have to believe in Jesus. Believe in math - in this case the math behind the Kalman filter when applied to optimal state estimation."
    
    Utter drivel. You're attempting to convolute a much simpler argument with, what you believe to be, impressive mathematical knowledge that has no bearing on this discussion.
    
    > "Not being known does not stop the truth from being true."
    
    This way lies madness. I have the ability to travel in time whenever I wish. Nobody knows this and I will provide no evidence - but it's true. Are you going to tell me I can't?
    
    > "Those disciples ... died terrible deaths when it would have been trivially easy to not die by denying Jesus"
    
    The men who flew planes in to buildings on 9/11 could have saved themselves by denying Allah, but they were so deeply deluded by their beliefs that they were certain they were getting fast-tracked to heaven and 72 virgins. Do you think that's what they got?
    
    > "You have no information, your link says so."
    
    So, when you're presented with "there is no evidence", you immediately conclude "it may therefore exist"? I have nothing to add to that.
    
    > "... the bible certainly has an immense historic value and viability."
    
    No it does not. It's a cultural document. It's a fable, a work of fiction. It's a re-telling of earlier myths, legends and religions. For instance, every single miracle attributed to the Jesus character was reported in earlier gods and messiahs.
    
    There is absolute and incontrovertible evidence that much of the literature in the bible and supporting documents have been amended and interpolated to bolster the Christian doctrine. Lying for Jesus has been part of the game since day one - and continues to this day with AiG, ID, Expelled, etc. etc.

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54. 54. uconndave 05:38 PM 4/15/08

    In response to the Hitler-Darwin connection. There is none. Hitler may have cherry picked some Darwinian material to illustrate his perverted science. That would be like saying that Wagner supported Hitler because Hitler liked Wagnerian opera.
    
    Hitler also lifted the concept of "The Chosen Race" from the bible, does that mean the Jewish People supported him. I think Not. Hitler was a sick, perverted man who managed to collect like-minded people around him at a critical juncture and leverage that into a power grab. He used science, culture and religion to further his twisted aims. That does not mean that science, culture or religion supported him.
    
    ID is a perversion of 2 words. "Intelligent" and "Design". That does not make either one of the words bad. I drive a car that is the result of Intelligent Design, but that does not make the engineering team any better than me.

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55. 55. patrickofsanta cruz 08:19 PM 4/15/08

    There is a war between two philosophies: an Absolutist philosophy, which turns to mysticism and the supernatural to answer questions about the natural world, and the scientific philosophy, which requires empirical data to form tentative theories to answer these same questions.
    This war predates Christianity. You can see it clearly in Aristotelian philosophy, for example
    Absolutism starts with an absolute answer based on belief. This answer is unchangeable and all observation and facts must be rationalized to support this Absolute truth.
    Science starts with a question which requires observation and experiment to arrive at an answer which will incorporate all of the facts-- only to be strengthened, changed, or discarded as more facts emerge. All scientific truth is tentative.
    These basic methods of determining truth are incompatible.

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56. 56. DavidONE 09:10 PM 4/15/08

    patrickofsanta cruz,
    
    There is a lot of truth to that, but occasionally rational, evidence-based argument gets through and allows people to shake off the shackles of religious indoctrination. A quick search for 'religious deconversion' will throw up plenty of personal testimonies that detail how the clear thinking provided by science helped them 'step in to the light'.
    
    However, I think engr.student is too far 'down the rabbit hole' or blinded by cognitive dissonance to be helped at the moment.

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57. 57. Lasthonest 10:07 PM 4/15/08

    It is sad indeed to see such unscientific arguments (or should I say pseudo-scientific) posited by an intelligent man. Then again, there's been a stampede to join the global warming religion, hasn't there?

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58. 58. Spin-oza 11:30 PM 4/15/08

    AHHH.... it's sooo good to see that some RATIONAL posters have returned to this thread.
    
    IF the bible were some wealth of accurate, inter-subjective information and truth, then ENGRdotSTUDENT would be totally immersed in "bible study" 24/7... and so would I.
    
    I suspect the lad IS struggling with COGNITIVE DISSONANCE... and in fact, may NOT be "too far down the rabbit hole". WHAT all christ-bots forget is that many and problably the vast majority of freethinkers, humanists, skeptics, Naturalists, agnostics and atheists were at one time indoctrinated into some religious faith... usually of their parents. (In that regard, one's religion is much like one's language, eh?) I was myself very involved in the church... even as a lay Lector during the service and "youth minister" briefly... ugh.
    
    Anyway... once I could no longer deny that religious claims were false, and looked into the murky origins of christianity, I was not only shocked at the scope of deception but [i]felt utterly betrayed and manipulated[/i]. I was bitter that for so many YEARS of my life, I was gleefully fed pap from a book of half-truths and falsehoods. by the organized church and their minions. I was dumbfounded at the reams of scholarly research and confessions by former "believers" that clearly exposed the mythos of messiah and the patently bogus bible.
    
    HOWEVER, it is never to late to (finally) admit that when you are "praying to god and jesus" you are having a conversation with yourself.

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59. 59. Patrick 027 12:45 AM 4/16/08

    Lasthonest - what is your point? Are you being sarcastic?
    
    Engr. student - there is math in evolution - see the textbook I mentioned earlier: "Evolutionary Analysis" (Freeman and Herron) (oh, and the edition I have is 2nd edition.)
    
    EDITED ADDITION:
    SEE ALSO (a much more leisurely read) "Why Darwind Matters" (Michael Shermer) - he has a chapter that looks over the best arguments of ID and goes over their weaknessess.
    
    You also mentioned something like a real 'ID science' regarding how to tell something about the origin of something. It is true, there are ways to tell. That doesn't make "ID" of the form used by the Discovery Institute correct.
    
    Could you give me an example of something in life that indicates to you 'intelligent design', beyond the level of intelligence that evolution by natural processes can accomplish?
    
    What did you mean about thermal ... I forgot the term you used, something about temperature for avoiding deleterious mutations? Of course, replication and maintenance of genes is a chemical-physical process affected by temperature, but I'm not clear on what you're thinking. There is not a temperature at which mutations become good (except for some specific mutations, in the sense of those that led to thermophiles, or the opposite if we go the other direction, etc.).
    
    ----
    Information in a nutshell - at a moment in spacetime, there is some information. That moment (event, thing, whatever) has a past and future light cone ("A Brief History of Time" (Stephen Hawking)) - the surfaces intersect time slices so as to form spheres of radius x = distance light travels in time t to get to or come from the point in space. All the information at that point must have originated (or been translated) from the information within it's past light cone (sampled at any time) and has caused the information in it's future light cone (sampled at any time) - but of course, some information in the past and future light cone are not contributing to or derived from the point in question, because the light cones intersect/overlap with other light cones converging on other points that are not contained within the original light cones.
    
    Bearing in mind potential for some similarity in the future light cone, going back into the past light cone, depending on the specific situation, of the information at the point, there may be some contributing information on the surface of the cone (photons, perhaps other massless bosons) or just within it (photons scattered once or twice just before the vertex of the cone), etc.
    
    (PS if in a medium with some refractive index greater than 1, photons themselves will be trapped within some narrower cone. I wonder if there could be a gravitational refractive index - a crystal lattice with mini-black holes would ? (gravitonics? - I have no idea about that) - anyway, that would be wavelength dependent, of course. As long as where on the subject, you could define your 'genetic cones' to be your direct ancestors and decendents, except for a little bit of lateral gene transfer via viruses...)
    
    Meanwhile, some of the contributing information may be concentrated near the axis of the cone, associated with objects of some mass. If objects with mass are in contact with each other or interact via fields, then information in the objects can get transfered around.
    ---
    
    Some of the information regarding the evolution of the Earth has been left in layers of rock; some is left in genomes* -
    
    --(Actually, the amount of information that can be gained from one source is increased by the information from another source - the sum of the information of two seperate puzzle pieces is less than the information of the two combined. Each individual rock, each gene, each neuron in the brain, by itself has not much to say. )---
    
    - *(although, it would be a small residual of all the information that was - afterall, it could be expressed in terms of the position and velocity (up to quantum limits) of every subatomic partical. We don't need all that to find what we want to know about the Earth's past - we don't even need to know each individual of each species that ever was - although we could get a lot of information back if we could somehow surround the Earth with an armada of the most powerful telescopes ever conceived, and other instruments, positioned on a sphere of radius ~ 4.5 billion ligh years, and then gather data for the next 4.5 billion years.
    
    Where did the information in life come from? It must have all been contained within a sphere of radius x light years, x years ago.
    
    The information in the genetic code can be less than in the material of the genes itself, because we can write it as ACTGCTAGCTTA... which is a shorthand for the molecules. Although it only takes a little bit of information to describe the molecules combined with the sequence of letters to reconstruct a whole length of DNA, but anyway...
    
    Life is not isolated from the environment and neither is it's genome so there's no problem regarding increases in information content of the genome (such as by gene duplication followed by some divergence in the two copies of the gene - this produces gene families) (lack of isolation also allows local decreases in entropy - it comes from geothermal energy (via geochemical energy) and the sun, the sun being dominant in the source of free energy in most ecosystems today); information propogates along lines of cause and effect, so if there is no problem with the physics, than how can their be a problem with the information.
    
    Ultimately the origin of life may be a question of probability - over the space and time of a planet, or just including especially suitable sites, over suitable planets around suitable stars ... etc... how many might we expect it to occur (and then, how much panspermia might happen?), and it comes down to how many past light cones have the right mix of information. That may be somewhat random, although not every conceivable arrangement will be present or or present as often, for example, you're unlikely to find a planet completely made of mercury... their are patterns, and anyway, their were likely steps between pure abiotic geochemistry/geophysics and the first fully biotic thing, and while biological evolution couldn't apply to the abiotic things, aspects of it might have started to apply in varying degrees along the way. Meanwhile, there are abiotic selection and evolution mechanisms that can sort and concentrate materials (And shape them - crystal habits, river valleys, volcanic craters, snow, caves, pores in zeolite) when driven by an energy supply - igneous rocks typically contain mineral grains that have differentiated from the magma's composition; chemical erosion processes the different minerals differently - some dissolve, some don't, the quartz goes on to form beaches, etc, and so you get sandstone, silstone, shale, conglomerate... and then hydrothermal vents pop up (geological heat release is not evenly spread out) and you get deposits of sulfide minerals and ...
    
    The atmosphere as a whole was probably not as reducing (CH4, H2, NH3) as in the famous Urey-Miller (did I get that right?) experiment, but there could have been some CH4 and CO; anyway, the meteors striking the Earth are some percentage metallic Fe, which can supply reducing reducing substances upon chemical reaction. Then there's comets... And reducing substances might have been concentrated in the fractures around a crater or in sedimentary layers, through which hydrothermal vents may percolate... minerals producing little structures, surfaces with some catalytic properties, environments with thermal, pH, and redox gradients, geochemicals yet to reach chemical equilibrium, convection, substances concentrated onto surfaces in a drying tide pool or rejected out of water freezing to ice, reactions occuring in cloud droplets... gases trapped in ice caves or lava tubes ...
    
    PS I may have used 'information' as both 'information' and 'meaning', but in information theory (as far as I know), information is a seperate matter from the meanint that might be read from it.
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/15/2008 5:57 PM
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/15/2008 6:04 PM

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60. 60. Natedog 04:35 PM 4/16/08

    "Then again, there's been a stampede to join the global warming religion, hasn't there?"
    
    I do not wish to take this thread too far off topic but I am sure that you are already aware Lasthonest that there is no religion involved in the science of global warming.
    
    I would ask you what data people possess which causes them to question the overwhelming scientific consensus confirming global warming but seeing as you have chosen to use the term religion I think it is pretty safe to assume you are simply putting forth an opinion with the absence of a full and complete scientific understanding of subject matter.
    
    If that is the case of what possible use could that opinion serve?
    
    --
    Edited by Natedog at 04/16/2008 11:11 AM

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61. 61. DavidONE 07:17 PM 4/16/08

    "...the global warming religion"
    
    It's a common ploy of the religious: equate everything to a religion (atheism, evolution, global warming) and they can then dismiss criticism of their own unfounded beliefs because we (the rational) have similar 'unfounded beliefs'.
    
    And no matter how much incontrovertible evidence is piled in front of them, they're still certain it's all just another 'belief'.
    
    What you gonna do? Can't reason with 'em, can't shoot 'em....

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62. 62. Patrick 027 10:49 PM 4/16/08

    5 clarifications:
    
    Information in past and future light cones:
    
    While not all the information in a past light cone or in a future light cone corresponds to the information at the vertices of these cones, for prediction of the vertex from the past or 'prediction' from the future, one needs to know information about the information that is unnessessary to know before one knows that that information is unnessary for the purpose of reconstructing or predicting the information of the vertex.
    
    --------
    
    Multiple traits in a phenotype may be affected by changes in one gene (I believe this is referred to as pleiotropy). Those traits may add to or partially (or completely) cancel each other's contributions to reproductive fitness.
    
    --------
    
    Eustasis - in the general concept, a gene's contribution to the fitness of an organism (or, potentially, aspects of it's phenotype, for that matter) depends on other parts of the genotype (as well as other factors).
    
    What I didn't mention before: for many organisms, there are two copies (unless an 'error' occurs) of each gene (or locus, refering to the position on a chromosome) because their are two copies (unless an 'error' occurs) of each chromosome - for sexual reproduction, typically one is from each parent.
    
    Different versions of a gene are called alleles. With regard to any one gene, homozygotes are organisms with identical alleles for each copy; heterozygotes have two different alleles of the same gene. (If their was a recent gene duplication event, then I am refering to corresponding loci on each of a pair of chromosomes ... I think... of coarse on chromosome may have been rearranged so...).
    
    So as defined above, a form of Eustasis could occur where a heterozygote's fitness (say with alleles A and a) is not the average of the two homozygotes' fitnesses with each of those alleles. This is not (so far as I know) actually called eustasis - I think that term is rerserved for a gene or allele's effect's dependence on the gene or allele of that gene that doesn't correspond to the same gene on the other of a pair of chromosomes.
    
    Instead, if the heterozygote is more similar to the homozygote with AA than that with aa, then A is dominant and a is recessive (at least relative to each other). If the heterozygote is actually more different from the homozygote with aa than the homozygote with AA is, then this is called - okay, I'll have to look this and the next term up again to be sure, but I think it's called overdominance if the heterozygote's fitness becomes greater than that of either of the homozygotes (when a is deleterious relative to A), and underdominance if it is less than that of either of the homozygotes (when A is deleterious relative to a).
    
    A deleterious recessive gene may not be rapidly selected against because, for example, if the fraction of the population with that gene is 5 %, then unless mating is nonrandom relative to that gene, the fraction of the population that are homozygotes with the recessive allele is just 5 % of 5 % or 0.25 % . If overdominance occurs, a deleterious recessive allele can be 'actively' kept in a population by selective pressures. [*EDIT:additional point: if underdominance occurs (and is strong enough?), the recessive allele a is more common in the population than the dominant allele A, unless AA homozygotes preferentially mate amongst themselve, the dominant allele A may be selected against, and most of the population may eventually be aa homozygotes, even if a was deleterious relative to A. In economics that would be a case of 'INCREASING RETURNS'.] [*EDIT - actually I think in that last case, a would have to be called dominant and A recessive, ...in which case the symbols would have to be switched around, ...]
    
    --------------
    
    Generally, fitness may be nonlinearly proportional to genotypic variation; phenotypic traits may be nonlinearly proportional to genotypic variation (or environmental variations), in ways dependent on other parts of the genotype and also the environment (and environmental effects may be dependent on the genotype and other parts of the environment); fitness may be nonlinearly proportional to phenotype and in a way that depends on the environment, etc.
    
    --------------
    
    Another mechanism that can cause speciation is gene duplication. After a gene duplication, if only one of the genes is used (per chromosome, anyway), then the other may not be maintained by selective pressure, undergo genetic drift via accumulated mutations and become unfunctional (unless another use is found for it). If a gene duplication occurs and this spreads through the population, and then the population is seperated reproductively into two seperate populations, and one copy of the duplicated gene falls into disuse and degrades (or finds another use) in both populations, but this doesn't happen at the same locus (the two copies of the gene have different positions, or loci, in the chromosome) in each population, than if the populations are brought back together, there may be a tendency toward hybrid disadvantage because hybrids may recieve two degraded versions and no working versions of that gene, etc...
    
    ---------
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/16/2008 4:01 PM
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/16/2008 4:03 PM

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63. 63. Patrick 027 11:38 PM 4/16/08

    Correction to comment 63, third to last paragraph:
    
    Actually, I think it would be 9.75 % of the people in a population that have at least one copy of the allele a, with only 0.25 % being homozygotes aa, leaving 9.50 % Aa, in a population with random mating, before selection occurs, and some other conditions... but you get the idea.

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64. 64. jmorrison 05:44 PM 4/17/08

    This may be a little simplistic, but, I was wondering what mind altering substance the Intelligent Designer was using when it came up with the duck billed platypus? I also wonder about the hardships that the emporer (sp?) penguins go through just to reproduce.

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65. 65. obilon 05:58 PM 4/17/08

    Mostly famous to Generation X for his role as a monotone teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and known to this new generation of whatchamacallits as the voice of a Pixie in the great cartoon, "The Fairly OddParents," Ben Stein is pimping a film that basically blames Charles Darwin for the Nazi's disregard for life, and wants America to continue to give ID a chance as an alternate theory to Evolution. WTF? I always thought he was crazy but now I see that he's nuts.
    
    The more I learn about Ben Stein, the more I just want him to be some two-bit actor in some 80s movie--oh wait he was. I never realized how the role in Ferris Bueller was a parody of himself. I used to read his column on Yahoo Finance but now I can't because the more I read the more I disliked his views. What's worse is I used to love "Win Ben Stein's Money."
    
    Now with the movie Expelled, supposedly an intelligent discourse on why ID has been kept out of the school system in favor of Darwinism is a travesty. I can't believe we are still having this conversation.
    
    The movie uses a tagline that reads, "Big Science has expelled smart ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has it's Rebel!"
    
    What it should read is: "Big Science has expelled smart ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has too many Right Wing Nut Jobs!"
    
    Bleech!

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66. 66. engr.student 09:36 PM 4/17/08

    Patrick,
    
    Nice work. I like it. Thats relevant conversation.
    
    Information annealing, and thus information temperature is an idea taken from metallurgy and materials science. In something like a stress-relieving anneal, you take a worked piece of metal, and raise its temperature to just the right point, and you hold it there for just the right time. That allows internal loads, and damage due to stress to be compensated for - the material in the high temperature state moves to relieve the stresses, fill the voids (microscale) and its stronger and better for having been heated. If it is overheated, the material can radically change properties (again because of microscale) or the material can have a macro-scale deformation like melting. If its not heated to a high enough temperature, then the process is an exercise in futility.
    
    In information, like in numerical simulation, the same thing hold true. A temperature is applied to your method, in the form of adding a noise term. This is to make sure you do not end up on some sort of local minima to your cost function, but instead that, over your domain, you end up on the domain minima.
    
    I have 2 weeks of school. I have serious projects due. Im quite willing to talk reasonably about science - I love the field. Im not into personal attacks either way, but right now my time is amazingly limited. Im taking a full-time graduate courseload, and working a full-time research assistantship. I barely have time to sleep.
    
    Thank you again for being real, about science, and about math. Science can't be something that someone else knows or its just religion. You are having faith in something another (quite fallible) human being did. If you can do it yourself, and you truly understand what you are talking about, as you seem to be doing, then thats real science. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
    
    I gotta get back to homework.
    -mike

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67. 67. jsparkle 08:25 PM 4/18/08

    just saw the movie and am
    astounded that anyone would not see design in DNA, hardly random if it has to be mapped and is used for genetic counseling
    Dawkins looks like a fool suggesting suggesting aliens planted us here
    NEXT guess!!!!

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68. 68. Natedog 09:04 PM 4/18/08

    Thanks for your seven informative yet identical posts jsparkle.
    
    I do not wish to be rude but your post(s) have yet to add anything meaningful to the discussion.
    
    You seem convinced that DNA had to be designed and also seem to be convinced that the designer of that DNA could not have been an alien life form from else where in the universe.
    
    I cannot even imagine what powers of deduction you possess to know such things unless..... could be that you really do not have a clue and are simply making an unsubstantiated guess based on your preconceived notions?
    
    What a sad state of affairs we would be in if people's personal opinions served as proof.
    
    "just saw the movie and am astounded that anyone would not see design in DNA, hardly random..."
    
    You and me both. I would be amazed if someone put forth the argument that DNA is random and not the product of billions of years of evolution.
    
    Unfortunately this movie was produced precisely for unlearned persons such as yourself who are willing to swallow any argument so long as it agrees with the beliefs they already held.
    
    Ok, so maybe I did wish to be rude afterall…. ;-)
    
    --
    Edited by Natedog at 04/18/2008 2:52 PM

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69. 69. Cigarshaped 10:14 PM 4/18/08

    I don't want to see the movie. I'm Christian but NOT Creationist. There must be a Designer who started the ball rolling and set the rules to govern development of species, etc. Science is only starting to accept Catastrophism as the initiator of new/ replaced species. Uniformitarianism needs adjustment as a result: no longer assume strata laid down at a predictable rate. Dating the past is the least precise art - change happens much faster than we ever realised!

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70. 70. emptyvase 10:25 PM 4/18/08

    I'm pretty certain that Ben Stein's point is not "anti-evolution" so much as it is free-speech. Allow Darwinism to be taught in schools, that is good...show us the theory and its evidence. But by the same token, perhaps we should highlight the shortcomings of our knowledge as well...we don't know where it started, we can't explain much of evolution, the holes are huge...perhaps there was a "Designer" but we don't know that...it cannot be proven nor disproven.
    
    Perhaps if we chose to allow both sides to be taught equally, there would be less dissension, which ultimately impedes the progress of science (and religion).
    
    Theologians and philosophers should not ask scientists to ignore science; Scientists should not ask theologians and philosophers to ignore religion or philosophy. To the extent that we do this, we fail ourselves as a human race....

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71. 71. Farkas 10:45 PM 4/18/08

    "Never You Mine: Ben Stein's Selective Quoting of Darwin
    One of the many egregious moments in the new Ben Stein anti-evolution film "Expelled" is the truncation of a quote from Charles Darwin so that it makes him appear to give philosophical ammunition to the Nazis. Steve Mirsky reports."
    
    Gee Steve. It looks like you engaged in a little "quote mining" yourself. Pro-evolutionists do it all the time. They only object to it when an opponent quotes something that's embarrassing to evolutionists.

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72. 72. DavidONE 12:00 AM 4/19/08

    "...Darwinism ..."
    
    There is no such thing as 'Darwinism'. It's Stein and his cohorts attempting to paint the scientific theory of evolution as a personality-lead cult, which they then attempt to blame for the Holocaust and any other societal horror they can dream up. They are lying scum bags.
    
    "...evolution, the holes are huge..."
    
    Only in your knowledge of the subject.
    
    "...impedes the progress of science (and religion)."
    
    WTF? Religion does not progress. It's stationary, apart from being neutered by secular society of its more barbaric 'morals'. It has been for thousands of years (except the occasional new one that gets invented). It still contains the same Bronze Age stupidity it started out with.
    
    "Theologians and philosophers should not ask scientists to ignore science;"
    
    They can ask all they want, but science does not require the permission of religious cults to continue its inexorable progress.
    
    "Scientists should not ask theologians and philosophers to ignore religion or philosophy."
    
    They're not. You're very confused about what's going on.
    
    Don't preach in my classroom and I won't think in your church.
    
    
    P.S. Why are there so many half-wit xians on the *Scientific* American website?!

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73. 73. Chuck Darwin 12:06 AM 4/19/08

    Everything you need to know about "Expelled" is in this [url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThQQuHtzHM]hilarious 2 minute vid[/url] on Youtube.

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74. 74. stella_tigre 04:37 AM 4/19/08

    muchas gracias for the stork theory video.
    
    there is waaay too much exposition on this site
    
    and far too little satire. i still think the whole thing is a send up by stein to put his face back into the public arena. why else would he have put the preview in front of SA?
    
    egads.

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75. 75. GinKirk 01:32 PM 4/19/08

    Science is the study of God's creation!

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76. 76. Natedog 01:32 PM 4/19/08

    "Perhaps if we chose to allow both sides to be taught equally, there would be less dissension, which ultimately impedes the progress of science (and religion). "
    
    I think many people fail to realize that both are taught. Maybe not in public high school so much but that is simply because at that level it is more important to teach the basics of math, science, writing, etc.
    
    Once you get to university their are countless philosophical and religious courses one can take.
    
    The problem is that people want ID taught in science classes when there is no evidence and hence no science behind it.
    
    Teaching ID in science class would be no different than teaching art in math class.
    
    --
    Edited by Natedog at 04/19/2008 6:33 AM

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77. 77. Ditches 02:36 PM 4/19/08

    "Don't preach in my classroom and I won't think in your church."
    
    This should be a bumper sticker.

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78. 78. Triton 04:21 PM 4/19/08

    When I read such dribble, I have to wonder: do they believe that we are created in God’s image and likeness or did they create God in their own image and likeness. If they accept the foundational Christian tenets that God exhibits the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and is therefore omnific, eternal, and the very essence of perfection, why do they insist on limiting such magnificence by demanding that He act only in accordance with their limited knowledge and perception.
    
    Creationist/ Intelligent Design Theory (which it is most certainly by any definition of a theory) in addition to being terrible science and logic, is most fundamentally extremely flawed theology. It’s premise, instead of glorifying God, dismisses Him as a mere tinkerer in the grand drama of genetics (Michael Shermer's observation). If you accept that God is the very embodiment of perfection you must realize that God must be both Necessary and Sufficient. Creationist Theory demands just the opposite. It requires God to constantly intervene in the process, to adjust, alter and supplement. God, from the creationist purview, is not Sufficient but merely Necessary. God is not unbounded but limited and restrictive. Moreover, the way he has intervened according to Creationist/Intelligent Design Theory makes Him appear devious and dishonest. How else can you reconcile the premise of a young earth with the physical evidence?
    
    God as the watchmaker of Paley’s vision is an anthropomorphic creation. The downsized version of God that Creationist/ Intelligent Design Theorists would have us accept commands none of the reverence and grandeur that is the essence of fundamental Christian beliefs.

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79. 79. slopeside 09:28 PM 4/19/08

    Don't those silly creationists know that nothing times nobody equals everything? How dare people demand Darwinism produce even one example of a random mutation improving a critters survival advantage!

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80. 80. Patrick 027 12:12 AM 4/20/08

    Triton - nice! (Have you read "Why Darwin Matters" ?)
    
    Farkas (78)
    - what quote mining did Steve Mirsky do?
    
    Emptyvase (77)
    - the issue of what to teach in public schools does not involve scientists asking philosophers and theologans to ignore philosophy or religion, not at all. But religion and philosophy don't belong in science class, except in so far as a 'philosophy of science' (scientific method, what is science, etc.), and history of science (which might include some mention and explanation of the creationist/ID movement, and explanation of why it is not science (and some of the factual and logical errors) - but that shouldn't be a central part of a science class).
    
    Outside of public schools, people would generally like other people not to be fooled - it is sad to see it happen. I'm not talking about fundamentals like whether or not God exists. But certainly, it is understandable that people who understand science are rather troubled by the numbers of people (many of whom vote) who believe in specifics of religion that have been shown to be false (literally 6 days of creation ), at least given certain practical assumptions that underlie most of what most people do. (PS changes in the rate of time are meaningless - it's always 1 second per second, at least at any one location and velocity.) Or when people construct arguments to support their beliefs that are easily shown to be not valid or sound. I'm not saying they don't have a right to believe.
    
    Cigarshaped (76)
    - dating can be more or less precise depending on the method. For radioactive isotope dating, different isotopes are more or less useful for different time scales - obviously, C-14 is useless for dating something back in the Cambrian, and uranium / lead dating, very useful on the very long timescales, couldn't be used for very recent events. Radioisotope (and the related fission-track) dating can give good numbers, though. There is also relative dating - the relationships of rock layers or bodies of igneous rock, faults, fossils, folds (relative to paleomagnetism, for example), etc, can be used to determined relative order. But you do have to know what you're doing, and scientists know what they're doing. For example, for a given isotope, different mineral grains have different 'reset' temperatures - the date you find is the last time the rock was at that temperature or higher (combining dates from different isotopes and different mineral grains may be used to establish a cooling history; also helpful is that different kinds of minerals and rocks may form depending on the pressure and temperature path (ie high heat near surface vs low heat at depth ...). A body of magma that cooled slowly will tend to have larger mineral grains. Magma that pushes up through sedimentary rocks can produce various compositions of magma ... So you put all your puzzle pieces together and get a picture; you get a hypothesis or theory; you predict what missing puzzle pieces should look like, and then find them to test your ideas...
    
    Uniformitarianism can and has been taken to extremes but I think the science has come to an appreciation of the potential for both gradual and sudden changes to occur. There might still be too strong a pull towards uniformitarianism - for example, in skepticism regarding snowball Earth episodes, but then again, if the scientists can justify their skeptism with reason and facts, then it's not a problem, and it is a healthy challenge to the idea of snowball earth episodes - if the idea survives it may be more certain... (Although I wouldn't claim to be up to date on the status of the idea right now - I've read that some - coal, was it? - was found from a time that was supposed to be during a snowball Earth event - this would tend to cast 'cold water' on the idea, but I wonder if the date on the coal truly matches the date of the snowball - and anyway, maybe other snowball periods did happen - even if some turn out to be 'slushball' (although it may be hard to explain the resurgence in BIFs, then - unless...) or regular glaciation (but I don't think that would [*EDIT removed 'n't'] explain the paleomagnetic record for low-level glaciation, or the cap-carbonates)...
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/19/2008 6:47 PM

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81. 81. Patrick 027 12:29 AM 4/20/08

    ... addend to last comment - ON DATING: also, if you are C-14 dating sea creatures - in particularly, deep sea creatures - then you have to remember that the age is a combined time of the C uptake in the creature and the 'age' of the water when the C was taken up - the last time that water was close enough to the surface for mixing and exchange with the air to bring the C isotope ratios to those of the atmosphere - actually, it could be more complicated than that if the particular mass of water got near the surface at some point to gain C-14 but not close enough to match C ratios. And then their's biological activity in the water and sinking dead planckton ... etc.
    
    The long and short of dating - you have to know what the date actually means.
    
    PS I once read some argument against the accuracy of U-Pb dating that was based on the idea of Pb being a metal and sinking to the core... or something like that. But dating is more sophisticated than that. First, certain mineral grains have different tendencies to take up or reject elements from magma when they form in igneous rocks (which is why different minerals can crystalize out of the same body of magma - they [*EDIT: insert 'often'] have only limited solid solubility within each other [*EDIT: there are some minerals that can form with a continuum of compositions, though, so you may see mineral chemical formulae with a (X,Y)n, indicating X and Y can substitute for each other - for example, I think olivine (Fe,Mg)2SiO4 can range from Fe2SiO4 (fayalite) to Mg2SiO4 (forsterite?)]. My understanding (I'm not 100% sure on this) is that zircon grains don't form with much Pb in them, so the Pb that is in them can be assumed to be from decaying U, which zircon will form with. In addition, the interesting thing about U-Pd dating is that most U is of two isotopes, and each decays to a different isotope of Pb (at a different rate), and that their is a third isotope of Pb.
    
    But to fully explain U-Pb dating, I'd have to review it again myself. There's a term 'concordia'.
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/19/2008 5:38 PM

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82. 82. Patrick 027 01:42 AM 4/20/08

    engr.student (mike) - Well, I don't want to lead you on, so to be clear, I'm not actually doing work in this field; I have the textbook from an elective course I took for breadth requirements (granted, I could have taken an easier course but opted for something I thought would be nice to know more about). But I do try to understand whatever knowledge I share; that is, while I may not have participated in the experiments and observations, I understand the logic between the findings and conclusions (that, and also, many of the facts ('the potential for overdominance, pleiotropy, eustasis, etc.) fit very well with the more basic understanding of genetics that I had from earlier. Some information is also quite standard - no one seriously questions it - it's common knowledge within science - so it can form a dependable foundation for other ideas.
    
    You bring up an interesting point about what scientific knowledge means for nonscientists. Certainly, it is very helpful for people to be aware of how science is done, that the conclusions and any speculations are not just drawn from a magic bag. (Along with that, some general awareness of statistics and probability would help, and not just in understanding science reports.) (This general knowledge should be a part of introductory science classes (although some statistics might have to be witheld until students reach some level in in math). Science classes can also use reports of specific experiments that have been done to illustrate generalities.) However, if everyone who wanted to know something had to participate in all the steps to get that knowledge, or even know all the details, then most people would know very little. Even within the sciences, there are many fields, with so much work within each field ... There is peer review, though.
    
    As an example, in the first blogs I participated in on Sciam's website, someone suggested that AGW (anthropogenic global warming) was religion. I responded that, of course, it could be, in a sense, religion for some people, if they only just hear of it and accept it is real. But it is possible to read more about it and find out why it makes sense to accept it as real (and get a better sense of how it works, what it could do, etc.). It often isn't necessary to read the (often dry and lengthy) original scientific work, because their is science literature written for more general audiences (granted, you have to watch out for errors there - Glenn Beck and John Stossel don't have the best 'reporting' on global warming (to put it mildly)). We can also build social networks of people we trust, and so when there is controvery, we ask our friend who is more familiar with the subject, and s/he may have read more in depth coverage or taken classes, and ... etc.... I'm reminded of an episode of "Home Improvement", when Wilson quotes ... someone ... and I have to paraphrase, but it was something to the effect that "there are two easy paths in life, to believe everything, and to doubt everything, and both are foolish (or lead to folly)".
    
    --------
    
    Annealing - I'm somewhat familiar with that, actually. At higher temperatures, it is easier for dislocations and other imperfections to migrate via diffusion/shifting at the atomic level.
    
    In so far as that applies to mutations (although there can be similarities and parallels between wildly different phenomena, this case doesn't seem like a very clear fit to me) - I think the questions are: how rapidly do mutations occur? What are the proportions of benificial to deleterious to neutral mutations? How strong are selective pressures (tends to push a population towards a fitness maximum) relative to genetic drift (tends to spread a population out in 'genotype space')? Theses things will vary from case to case. Some genes may be under very strong selective pressures, and so evolution could act (perhaps indirectly via other parts of the genome) to actually reduce mutation rates for that gene. It's also possible to imagine (though I am unaware of any cases of this) that a variable environment could drive organisms with lower mutation rates to extinction while allowing organisms with higher mutation rates to survive and continue evolving.
    
    You mention local maxima verses domain maxima. But there is no requirement in biological evolution (or economic evolution) that organisms end up clustered around domain maxima; they certainly can end up on local maxima that are not optimal for all possibilities. Of course, if they ended up on maxima for their entire domain - well, there's the question of what is the whole domain? I may need to give it some more thought to be sure, but it seems to me that species truly ended up on the highest maximum of the entire domain, they would all be alike (or tend towards that state) - unless there are multiple maxima of very similar values... I think genotype space is potentially limitless so it's hard to picture this. This also brings up ecology - as species evolve (and/or change in number), they change each other's fitness landscape (COEVOLUTION - very important point - PS over time, it's concievable that a lower hill and a higher hill in the fitness landscape could migrate towards each other, so at some point a species on the lower hill could experience a burst of change and migrate up to a higher maxima)- so if they were to converge toward the same maximum, it's possible that maximum would start to 'erode', or split, or not... (the ecological relationships would have to break down - I wonder if there might be an analogy to a singularity in physics, or going toward the big bang, when the forces were united)...

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83. 83. UpQuark 02:27 AM 4/20/08

    Did SCIAM ever post how long each person spoke?

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84. 84. UpQuark 02:38 AM 4/20/08

    This thread is very profound in one way.
    
    The folks whom are defending creationism haven't yet provided any studies on its validity.
    
    The folks whom have defended evolutionary biology, at time, have. There is a sprinkle of a discussion about dating materials. There is an admission that cell generation isn't known yet. There are other examples.
    
    There is NO example of why ID works or any works in progress about ID.
    
    That isn't science.

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85. 85. Dialogue 04:23 AM 4/20/08

    Last time I checked the theory of evolution is just that a theory. I want to hear the opinion of both sides, so that I can think for myself. If you let the masses think, it might be dangerous! Why are people so afraid of teaching both sides? Are both sides hiding something?
    
    I saw the movie and the underlying message is one of the freedom to choose. I guess most of you missed it, if you saw the movie at all. Everyone knows that Ben Stein can be a funny guy, but the message is a little deeper than you give credit. You can get all worked up about the movie, which is fine. My kids fell asleep. I know it impacted them...
    
    You can quote dead people all you want and I don't really care. How about what is happening in the world today and the need for all of us to work together? Tell me what you believe to be the truth, I will listen and then I will decide for myself. Science, science, science... Most people don't even care about the debate.
    
    --
    Edited by Dialogue at 04/19/2008 9:55 PM

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86. 86. Hughes 06:26 AM 4/20/08

    Having seen the movie, and read many comments here, including the review. It seems to me that the crux of the issue is exactly as Ben has laid out.
    Freedom of expression is expelled in the USA Scientific arena. The continued claim that this is only and all about religion is simply a smoke screen to hide the truth that even Dawkins admitted. That we really don't know how DNA arose on it's own. But, what is even more amazing is that despite this lack of knowledge, Dawkins et al are certain that it wasn't designed by an intelligent source.
    
    I'm not sure what to call that except blind faith.

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87. 87. KAR KAR 03:41 PM 4/20/08

    John Locke once asked this question:
    "What came first, mind or matter"?
    
    For the materialists who do science, the answer is a forgone conclusion and no other answers can be considered. Mindless matter came first and everything from the universe, to evolution to your decisions and actions are mind-less matter in motion. And anybody who presents factual evidence that suggests otherwise is just a toothless, "backwater", snake-handling, idiot who also probably believes in fairies, gnomes and hobgoblins.
    
    Today they don't burn you at the stake, but they do burn your reputation and career at the stake for even questioning materialism.
    
    This documentary exposes most modern scientists for what they are: puppets to this belief system. And by asking simple, direct questions Ben Stein shows his deftness as a masterful puppeteer.
    
    Go see this documentary. It's hilarious!

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88. 88. GinKirk 04:00 PM 4/20/08

    Of what are scientists so afraid concerning the prospect of allowing open debate in classrooms about ID versus evolution??? If they have full assurance that when they teach evolution, they are teaching the entire truth, then why not acquire an attitude of "Bring it on?" As Frederick Douglass declared, "Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist."
    
    The Old Testament contains more than three hundred specific predictions about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah – all made hundreds of years before Jesus birth. The two reasons that you'd ever make such explicit and unambiguous predictions are: (1) you're wrong and you know it but you don't care because you'll be dead when people find out, or (2) you're right and you know it and you don't mind taking God at His word and writing it down exactly as He tells you to. In 1958, a scientist named Peter Stoner looked at the probability that just 8 of the 332 predictions of the Messiah could've been coincidentally or accidentally fulfilled in one man, much less a man who actually proclaimed Himself to be the Messiah. He looked at the probability of each of the eight individually, and then added up the probabilities for all eight. His mathematical conclusion, verified by the American Scientific Affiliation, was that the chance of all eight being accidentally fulfilled in one man was 1 in 10 to the seventeenth power. I'd bet that you'd have better odds of winning the CA Lottery every time you played than having eight of these prophecies fulfilled in one man. Take 100,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars and lay them out across the state of Texas. They would cover the entire land surface of the Lone Star State two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars – paint it red – and toss it into the stack, mixing it up real good. Finally, blindfold a guy and tell him he can walk across the state as far as he wants. But then he's got to bend down and pick up the one red-painted silver dollar on his first try. That's how likely it is that eight messianic prophecies could've been randomly fulfilled in anyone, much less the one who claimed He really was the Messiah. Multiply this out to 332 Old Testament predictions that were precisely fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and what do you have? You have proof of the divinity of Old Testament prophecy. So if there was a divine hand behind the prophecies that referred to and were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, doesn't it make sense that there was a divine hand behind the rest of the Bible? And if the things the Bible said about Jesus were objectively proven to be true and accurate, wouldn't it be fair to conclude that the rest of what the Bible says is just as true and accurate? The Bible is the divine and true Word of God. What it says is true. If that is so, then it happens to also prove that God exists and is exactly as the Bible describes Him. That is because the Bible – which we have just agreed is divine, trustworthy, and true – says so.
    
    Contrary to what Richard Dawkins says, God has not hidden Himself. He wants to be known. Even people living in a time or place untouched by Christianity can see God in His creation and in their conscience. He has revealed Himself through the Bible and through His acts and words. God's ultimate revelation of Himself was in Jesus Christ. All philosophies and belief systems are based on faith. Even science is based on faith. It takes blind faith, for example, to believe that humans evolved from fish. And what is atheism but the belief that there is no god? Moral relativism is the same way. You've got to believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth and all the rest. But if you're going to put your faith in something (and you are, whether you realize it or not), then shouldn't it be something that works on all levels? Jesus is there for you when you're up, and He doesn't abandon you when you're down. Christianity isn't based on your good works, as so many other religions are, but on God's good works on your behalf.
    
    C. S. Lewis, brilliant Cambridge and Oxford professor/author/former atheist/born again Christian said, "In coming to understand anything, we are rejecting the facts as they are for us, in favor of the facts as they are."

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89. 89. DavidONE 06:11 PM 4/20/08

    [i]"Last time I checked the theory of evolution is just that a theory."[/i]
    
    lol. It's like a conveyor belt of stupidity... one after another with the same idiocy. It's Dunning-Kruger effect turned up to 11.
    
    [i]"Why are people so afraid of teaching both sides?"[/i]
    
    It's not *both* sides - it's all sides. E.g. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Leprechaunism, Pink Fairyism, etc, etc, etc. We need to teach the controversy of *all* sides, no? Of course, if all sides are taught there'll be no time for *real* science and the USA will become a nation of mouth-breathing, Bronze Age mud eaters.
    
    [i]"Freedom of expression is expelled in the USA Scientific arena."[/i]
    
    Nope. You can express yourself all you want, just don't be surprised that if you dribble out nonsense you get ignored or ridiculed. That's how science works - failed, false and useless stuff gets discarded and the remainder is kept. Creationism is all three.
    
    [i]"C. S. Lewis, brilliant Cambridge and Oxford professor/author/former atheist/born again Christian..."[/i]
    
    Let me fix that for you: [i]C. S. Lewis, [b]delusional fantasist[/b] Cambridge and Oxford professor/author/[b]claimed [/b]former atheist*/born again Christian...[/i]
    
    * Lewis described himself as being "very angry with God for not existing". That's not an atheist, that's a xian having a bad day.
    
    
    Reading some of the inane idiocy that's piling up in here, it's easy to see that Charles Darwin hit the nail on the head: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".

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90. 90. jcrudd 07:27 PM 4/20/08

    I am not a scientist, horror of it all. I'm one of the ignorant masses rooting in the mud looking for food, ferrating out antagonists to my procreating mate.
    
    So please forgive my ignorance when I respond to a statement such as: the IDers have no supporting data or scientific process. From my observation they are using the same data and processes that doctrinaires of evolutionary biology use to purvey evolutional theory.
    
    Seems there are at least two questions that bring a deer in the headlights look from the likes of Mr Dawkings; Explain the evolution of the cell (or deign I say, irreducible complexity), and where is the fossil record of transitional moves across species.
    
    I could put global warming on the table as a juxtaposition, but again this may be akin to irreducible complexity; man induced global warming proponents/opponents: same data points, same processes, different conclusions.
    I'm always a little reluctant to jump to the loudest side with the most numbers - a bit like pubescent cliques and what style shoes are in.
    
    And please no "establishment" arguements. The sides firmly implanted in the masses, the side that would be considered "establisment" in either of these two arguements would be, man induced global warming, and evolution.
    
    But, you know, I wasn't there - at the beginning, I mean.
    
    The horsemen are on the hill, fidgeting feet are raising dust as waves of uneasiness ripple through the heard.

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91. 91. Dialogue 08:15 PM 4/20/08

    DavidONE - let's not resort to name calling. Keep it clean brother!
    You too can free your mind of brainwashing and indoctrination if you so desire.

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92. 92. RoccoP777 09:50 PM 4/20/08

    I sincerely hope that Expelled will be translated into German and soon appear in theaters over here. I haven't been able to see the film, but after reading many of the comments from people who call themselves scientists I am amazed that they can be so willfully misinformed about the facts.
    I live and work in a city called Jena, which has been crowned as Germany's City of Science 2008. It is the city where Ernst Haeckel, the German Darwin, introduced the theory of evolution to Germany. Many of those making comments are howling mad, that Expelled makes a link between Darwinism via Haeckel to the Anti-semitism of the Nazis. Have you forgotten that historical research is also a branch of science which shouldn't be ignored or glossed over. Here are just a few facts/quotes from Haeckel which support this connection:
    Haeckel was one of the first who proposed that humans are descended from apes and classified the human species into 10 races  the highest developed, being white Europeans  with the German people topping them all. Haeckel wrote: A single, well-trained German warrior ...has a higher intellektual and moral worth of life (Lebenswert) than a hundred of the raw, nature people, which England, France, Russia and Italy can show. Hitler agreed!
    The white race were at the top of the heap and the dark-skinned races at the bottom. He even scientifically declared, that: The difference between the highest and lowest developed humans is greater than the difference between the lowest humans and the highest animals. He later claimed that house pets were more civilized and advanced in their development, than the wild peoples or primitive peoples.
    Within this context Haeckel continually wrote about a bitter fight of all against all and a merciless, striving for survival and the destruction of the direct opponent and the destruction of one's neighbor.
    In addition to that he writes: The highest human form will therefore, sooner or later in the battle for survival, conquer and displace the other lower species. Within this context he comments: I simply cannot believe and all my views resist the idea, that such a mighty, long and great movement like anti-semitism could be possible without good reason.
    Anyone who reads the writings of the father of German Darwinism and cannot see a direct connection between his theories and the Nazi philosophy of genocide is not being objective or honest. I personally know one of the curators of Haeckel's legacy The Phyletische Museum. He's a top notch, highly respected biologist and zoologist. Although he overseas Haeckel's Museum he readily admits the racisism in the guise of science, which Haeckel promoted and is disgusted by it. So Expelled appears to have hit nail on the head here.

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93. 93. DavidONE 10:25 PM 4/20/08

    jcrudd: I can see you think you've landed the killer punch, but, alas, your arguments have been presented and demolished thousands of times. See http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html. I assume that you're aware that ID is nothing more than Creationism with a dishonest coat of pseudo-sceintific paint on it? If not, try http://www.google.com/search?q=cdesign+proponentsists
    
    Dialogue: if you say stupid things, don't be surprised if you get called stupid. If you don't know what you wrote that was stupid, you'll find the answer, along with many others, at: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html. Please pass it around all your Creationist brothers so that they stop saying the same really dumb things. Over and over and over again.

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94. 94. DavidONE 10:43 PM 4/20/08

    RoccoP777, I'm very skeptical that you are really German. To be so ignorant of your own history and to be taken in by the lies of the evangelical xians is very suspicious. However, a little extra reading should help clear things up:
    
    http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/hitler-eugenics
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_the_Jews

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95. 95. Patrick 027 11:48 PM 4/20/08

    RoccoP777 - the father of German Darwinism? Why should there be such a thing? That sounds more like a religion than a science; scientifically, evolution is evolution whether studying in England or Swaziland. Well, maybe that's not the fairest point; sometimes different 'schools' develop greater or lesser popularity in different regions - there was at one time differing tendencies between American and European geologists (I forget what it was about, though - it was resolved in time!)... But anyway, if what you say is true, it seems like Haekel was running away with an idea just to fit what he may have believed anyway. Wouldn't a lot of people at that time have believed those kinds of things about the races with or without evolution?
    
    Do you think most evolutionary biolists in more recent times or people who accept the theory of evolution think the same way as Haekel did today? No? (I hope that's your answer; if you want evidence: I don't think that way! (only 1 data point but it's a start)) - what does that tell you?
    
    ---
    
    Other points:
    
    Argument from authority; consensus - yes, by itself, that's not necessarily going to lead you to the right answer. But a scientific consensus is usually reached - not by a 'popularity contest' or vote, but by people being convinced one way or the other by facts and logic. You may point to scientific revolutions in the past and say - 'hey, those people before were wrong, so whose to say the currently established views aren't also wrong?' - well, scientific knowledge is always somewhat tentative, but some is more tentative then others - after a hypothesis or theory has been repeatedly tested and supported by results, it becomes practical at some point to regard as established (it will still be called a theory though - but quantum mechanics and general relativity are both theories. Established theories are used to explain how things happen and make useful predictions (global warming) - they are very important) - consider how much in your everyday life you take for granted as true even though you don't technically know for sure (you don't know for sure that you're not hallucinating right now). At some point, ideas become so accepted (strengthenned by surviving many challenges) that they can with confidence be put in textbooks, relied upon for engineering and technology, medicine, etc, and even used in government policy (necessary for global warming). So in time, the sun-centered planetary system, relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, and anthropogenic global warming have come to be accepted. They are the establishment now. Do you really expect that in the future, scientists will discover that the Earth-centered view was correct afterall? That Newtonian mechanics was enough without general relativity and quantum mechanics? There are still unknowns, but more likely, the new theories will encompass the old, in the same way that relativity and quantum mechanics still encompass or include Newtonian mechanics - in that the later is still accepted as a great approximation for most macroscopic phenomena in familiar settings on Earth at small speeds - in that sense, at least some of the past revolutions were more like 'evolutions' - or refinements (for example, narrowing the range (reducing the uncertainty) of likely climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, or getting a clearer picture of some regional effects or effects on low-frequency variability, etc. - or getting a clearer picture of the evolution of humans, or figuring out whether gradualism or puntuated equilibrium is more common for some group, or whether stasis is real or an illusion, or pinning down just when multicellularity evolved, etc.) (See "The Relativity of Wrong" - Isaac Asimov - a great illustration using continued refinement of the shape of the Earth). Also, for past revolutions, what was being overturned was at least in a couple cases something that hadn't previously been looked at with science.
    
    This is a great segway for discussing proper and improper skepticism. Scientists are supposed to be skeptical, but they are also supposed to be logical and take facts into account, which means, sometimes conclusions can actually be made. Proper skepticism is a balance between being open minded but not being gullible. It makes sense to have a significant level of skepticism when a new claim is first made. But then, experiments may be repeated to verify results. For whatever idea is supported, new predictions based on that idea can be made and then tested with new experiments. Paleoclimate data may be used to test climate models; a new fossil find may support or disprove a particular proposed phylogeny for some group of species (or support or cast doubt on a paleoclimatic scenario, or continental drift scenario, etc.). If an idea is very 'out there', and not at all fitting with what would could be possible or likely given the constraints and opportunities supported by established ideas, then a very high level of skepticism may be justified, or even ignored (for the time being, at least, until the source provides some good evidence) - for example, what reaction would you expect to the headline "Astronomer finds planet of gold!"? If a source has some bad reputation (particularly if you have confirmed it for yourself), that may also justify ignoring it (junkscience.com) - this may sound close minded - but it is practical; why should we waste our time?
    
    If someone claims skepticism towards a large anthropogenic contribution to current global warming, if they are a good scientist, they should either find some lack of evidence or error in logic on the part of established climate theory, or they should provide evidence and/or logic of their own that refutes it or casts doubt on it. If their own ideas are either readily disproved, shown to be misleading half truths or based on misunderstandings, or just restatements of selected portions of established theory itself, or otherwise shown to be quite a bit weaker in the face of healthy skepticism than the established theory, then it seems impractical (and unwise, and in the case of global warming, unnecessarily risky and dangerous) to put significant stock in the possibility of their being correct.
    
    --
    Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/20/2008 4:56 PM

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96. 96. jcrudd 01:05 AM 4/21/08

    DavidOne - Man, that's harsh dude. Obviously it was you who landed the death punch.
    
    OK, I'm a dwarf in the land of intellectual giants on this site. Help me out, shine a light into my darkened state, show me the elephant in my living room.
    
    YOU HAVE AN EXPLANATION TO MY TWO QUESTIONS, RIGHT?
    
    Far as I can tell, you are left with the two options Dr. Dawkins danced around. There is a God, (NOT, according to Dawkins) OR we were planted by a superior species from far far away - but they evolved.
    
    But, alas you misunderstand me.
    
    I DON'T KNOW HOW WE GOT HERE.
    
    I've heard scientists of the Christian faith who believe God created an evolutionary path. And there are those who believe in intelligent design.
    
    Help me out, explain the complexity of the cell, and are there links?

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97. 97. Patrick 027 01:53 AM 4/21/08

    On God: I don't generally argue for or against God directly (in the most general sense - I may argue against specific versions of God); I do argue against illogical justifications for (or against, when the occasion arises) for believing God. I don't think human capacity for morality, or mathematics, somehow proves God (nor do I think God (at least at the level of generality I am thinking of in this sentence in particular) could be necessary for logic, morality, 'meaning' and purpose to exist - see also my earlier comments). It doesn't make sense to me that God 'gave' us rights (or free will - which is an illusion, although a useful one that may be a useful approximation (legal applications) to reality if reality is seen over short enough periods of time - PS see below**) as if a seperate act from creation itself - we should have rights because of the way we are ('applied morality'). The existence of the universe with lack of explanation for it's origin doesn't prove God, because then God requires an explanation. A potential reason for not believing in God is that it seems like an ad hoc idea (it's too arbitrary - it doesn't follow 'naturally') - although the degree to which it is ad hoc will depend on the degree of specificity in what God is considered to be. But that bad things happen doesn't disprove a benevolent creator (I think).
    
    On that note, it has occured to me that confusion over God may occur because different people are thinking of different things. There is, for example, Spinoza's concept of God.
    
    I found a book once, I think it was called "Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?" - or something like that. It was more kind to evolution than some religious figures have been, although it still didn't get it right. But the most interesting part, to me (PS I only browsed some of it), was about what God is. The most interesting answers were along the lines of God is existence itself. Sometimes God is referred to as the Great 'I am'. (PS similarly spiritual, inspirational and deep discussion of what God is can be found in "Why Darwin Matters" by Michael Shermer.) Perhaps there is a connection to the mystery of consciousness - see below**.
    
    ---------------
    
    On 'materialism':
    
    PS free will can be debunked with science via the evidence that the mind is part of the brain's behavior or comes from that somehow (neural correlates). But even without any materialism, free will doesn't make any sense as a precise truth (it can be an approximation that is more valid over shorter time periods). The long and short of it is this - does a person have an identity? If a person causes something, it may be the person's will, but it is not free because it is caused by the person. The person ultimately is not free because the person is either caused by him/herself at an earlier time, some external factor, or a combination of both. If a random factor (quantum fluctuation?) pops in and causes something, it may have been free, but it was not willed.
    
    But moral responsibility might still be assigned. I have mentioned free will can still be a useful approximation. This is actually related to the distinction between ultimate and proximate causes, which another commentor (name something like Spinoza, but with a _ in there somewhere - sorry I forgot your name) mentioned - although I would take a more nuanced view - our choices can be a part of us. The issue regarding responsibility, I think, is related to the question - to what degree does a causal chain, through time, become internalized and an integral part of a person, before leading to the choice being considered. (Questions of nessessary and sufficient condition may come into play - or they may be overshadowed by the next sentence.) Also, to what degree did the person intend something, what was intended? (any particular decision has to be judged on intent. For example, if negative (bad) moral responsibility can be assigned in relation to a decision made with good intent, it may be by way of a prior decision that had influence on the likelihood of real consequences matching intended consequences. The later decision may have been ineffectual but by itself it can be praised; the prior decision that made the later decision ineffectual may or may not be judged negatively depending on specifics. More generally, the consequences of decisions include effects on future decisions, for the same or other people, in choices available and ability to make an effectual decision and/or ease with which a good decision can be made, etc.)
    
    --
    
    Okay, now really on materialism:
    
    I don't believe in 'ghost in the machine', that the conscious mind has actions on neural activity aside from those actions that are due to the neural correlates of consciousness.
    
    However, I think consciousness is a mystery. Of course, there are things about the brain that we have yet to learn, but while we can observe and study consciousness in the medical sense (ie the patient has regained consciousness), it is truly an assumption that this occurs along with a conscious experience that the person has, that is something like what I have, or what (I assume) you have.
    -----(Physically, the neural correlates don't need their consciousness correlates - and they can produce the obserbal behavior (even if you obseved directly the neural activity) without consciousness. PS if you were unconscious up until ten seconds ago but were medically conscious prior to that 'like anyone else', you would have memories of that medical consciousness in your brain and you wouldn't know that you hadn't been conscious before. Presumably you would assume you had been conscious all along.)-----
    It's not clear to me that science by itself could clear that hurdle, unless we assume that matter/energy itself has a conscious property (likely related somehow to information content or processing). Which then might lead back to the Great 'I Am'. Perhaps all subsets of matter/energy are having or at certain moments (whenever information is processed?) have an 'I am' experience, each in it's own way. This is pure speculation but that's all I have for this subject. (And so the perfect but formless (and boring?) Great I Am blew itself apart into all the I ams, imperfect in their specificity but beautiful and amazing in their variety and identity).
    
    More speculation - life after death -
    
    In the Everett interpretation, with quantum probaility in finite energy wells, etc... there should always be some small fraction of universes in the next second in which you are still alive. It is likely that not all is peachy, though.
    
    Some part of brain activity must be responsible for an awareness of time. What if that goes before the final moment (presumably it must become distorted when neural activity starts to go ... unless it happens too suddenly). Perhaps just as, to outside observers, it takes forever for something to reach the event horizon of a black hole, perhaps it takes forever, in the perception of the person who is dying, to die.
    
    Probably more familiar is that long after we go, we leave behind a record of our being (the information content of our future light cones). (yes, quantum uncertainty, but also remember, Everett interpretation, infinite universe - the information in any given version of the universe in the future is correct for at least one given universe in the past) But what ultimately happens to that information? _______________________________________________

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98. 98. pstanden 03:33 AM 4/21/08

    What is Scientific American's take on the following topics?
    
    1. The movie "An Incovnenient Truth" -- do you have a "take" on this movie somewhere on this website? Does it meet your gold standard for scientific rigor and critical thinking?
    
    2. As Stein stands accused of misusing Darwin's quote on breeding, and you assert that Darwin and Darwinsim is inherently compassionate, given that Darwin said "... but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.", I am wondering if a fetus or infant is, scientifically speaking, weak and helpless?
    
    3. Forrest Mims wrote outstanding columns on amateur science for your magazine for a while. He was not offered the job permanently -- refresh my memory, why not?

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99. 99. DavidONE 11:51 AM 4/21/08

    jcrudd,
    
    I gave you the answers on the link provided. All you needed to do was search and read. OK, I'll save you the searching, but I can't read it for you:
    
    http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB010_2.html
    http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
    
    There are other pages that expand on those. Put some work in and you'll find them. When on the index page, hit CTRL+F to search the text on the page.
    
    Also, don't confuse / conflate abiogenesis with evolution. Abiogenesis concerns life from non-life, and evolution the development and variation of life.
    
    There is no absolute answer on abiogenesis - yet. That still doesn't mean that 'goddidit' is the answer. For thousands of years 'goddidit' was the accepted answer to everything - fire, lightning, plague, volcanoes, etc., etc. Each and every time science and the natural view have removed gods from the equation.
    
    "I DON'T KNOW HOW WE GOT HERE."
    
    The question is too vague and all-encompassing.
    
    P.S. If you consider that I'm being 'harsh' it's because Creationists nearly always use the tactic of feigning genuine interest for learning and open debate, but will then not read or plain ignore any evidence that contradicts their originally held and flawed views, e.g. "evolution is just a theory", referring to evolution as Darwinism, "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?", etc. - see the site I keep linking to for comprehensive collection. Hopefully you genuinely want to learn.

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100. 100. DavidONE 12:18 PM 4/21/08

     pstanden,
     
     I can't speak for SciAm, but I'll give you my take:
     
     1. Without reviewing and fact-checking every statement and claim in An Inconvenient Truth, I'll just say the general premise is considered true by the vast majority of scientists, governments and interested lay people. Man is contributing to climate change which will prove catastrophic for life on earth if we continue as we are. And not just 'greenhouse gases' - we're polluting the environment in many way. The evidence for this is overwhelming. However, let's not get side-tracked by your favorite conspiracy theories - it has no relevance to the very evident dishonesty of Expelled.
     
     2. There is no such thing as 'Darwinism' except in the head of dishonest Creationists who wish to relabel the scientific theory of evolution in order to make it in to a personality-lead cult which they can then attribute with societal evils. Which is what you've just done with a cherry-picked fragment and subsequent straw man interpretation.
     
     3. No idea. Mims claimed persecution. The ACLU offered to support him, but he declined. Refresh my memory, why? Maybe the same reason the DI did not take the opportunity to defend ID (aka Creationism) in the Dover case?

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101. 101. GinKirk 12:40 PM 4/21/08

     Bullies exert uncanny power in their quenchless thirst for control over others - to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line. Why not choose to appreciate and foster the uniqueness of the individual, instead of aiming to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity. As a follower, there is no need to agonize over complex decisions, plan ahead, exercise initiative, risk unpopularity, or exert much courage. When a person assumes the role of follower he hands over to the leader his power, his authority over himself, and his maturity as decision-maker. He whose accepted role it is neither to think nor lead has defaulted his capacity to think and lead. Why can we not encourage and, yes, even advance the unique talents with which we are blessed??? Why not choose, instead, to live as people who respect and appreciate the lively variety among individuals, rather than people who would prefer to destroy individuality, in the name of control. Public education and the progressive media in the U.S.A. are on a mission to turn all children away from Jesus. Evolution is taught as fact, and inspiring true stories of heroes of our Judeo/Christian heritage have been deleted from history textbooks. So what if history offends someone? It is what it is, and needs to be taught as such. Unfortunately, in public schools, students are rarely introduced to men and women of courage, honor, inspiration, or traditional principles. No, schools, instead, are issuing forth drastic, narrow-minded beliefs. Innocence seems to be out while indoctrination is in. Why does our public school system wish to brainwash our next generation against the truth which is Jesus Christ??? Of what is it so afraid??? Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action said, “”It’s a sad fact that those who complain the loudest about any mention of Christianity in public settings are also the first to hide behind the First Amendment to slander faith, morality and country and indoctrinate our children with repulsive ideas under the ridiculous guise of ‘education‘.“ With no moral framework or baseline of truth to follow, and without historically accurate facts, how can teachers teach students to be honorable, responsible and caring citizens? As Mother Theresa said, “There is a famine in America. Not a famine of food, but of love, of truth, of life.” Much can be understood about the civility of a society in observing its regard for the dignity of human life. How can a female, who is created to nurture the new life within her womb, choose to go against her own nurturing nature to destroy her own flesh and blood? What about her baby’s choice? Is what God has to say about the matter significant? Why do so many care more about the rights of soul-less animals than they do the rights of humans who are created in God’s image? Why can a man who has abused his dog spend several years behind bars when a mother choosing to abort her own baby can do so freely, without legal consequences? How can we send a man to seven years in prison for killing a police dog, but release a man who snuffed out the life of another man, by stabbing him eighteen times, after a mere three years (basically spent in club med due to his high-powered attorney of a daddy)? Then consider that perhaps we are allowing the wrong input in our lives and the lives of those who have been entrusted to our care. After all, we are raising our next generation of leaders!!! Words like diversity, pluralism and tolerance have anesthetized us to the reality of good and evil. We’re called to love all men in the name of Jesus, not ignore their debauchery in the name of diversity. Sin is a big deal to God. So much so that He allowed Jesus to die on a cruel Roman cross to rescue us from its grip. Glossing over evil - whether our own behaviour or something the entertainment media has produced - is to say in essence, “What you did is really of little value to me, God. My view of sin is different from yours, and frankly I’m not that disturbed by it. Tolerance is the cultivation of an attitude of indifference to things we see happening around us. It is a numbing of one’s conscience, a dumbing down of one‘s convictions. It is political and cultural correctness. It is being afraid to step on toes. It is not wanting to make waves. It is keeping one’s head in the sand like an ostrich. In the name of peace, we tolerate evil. In the name of tolerance, we accept sin and call it free enterprise or freedom of sexual persuasion. We dare not stand up for what we believe for fear of being labeled intolerant. “Tolerance” and “love” are two very different things. Tolerance sees your sin and embraces it. Grace sees your sin and hands you over to Christ's healing embrace.
     
     Every day more of us are diagnosed as having some form of mental illness with the intention of medicating us into zombies who don't display the entire range of emotions we were created with, so we are controllable, not speaking out against the filth our movies, television, literature, music industry, arts and Internet constantly churns out. Medicated so we don't call abortion what it is - murder. Shushed so we don't speak the truth about homosexuality. Silenced so we don't speak out against the scourge of pornography and the degradation of females. Manipulated so we don't work towards getting prayer in Jesus' name, ID taught in science classrooms and the history of our nation's belief in Jesus put back where it belongs in history textbooks. Let's not allow evil sociopaths who wish to control everything and everyone get away with it. Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Jesus has been tossed out of the public arena as our nation sinks further into its abyss of decay and decline. How ironic it is when a tragedy occurs, everybody is quick to blame God. But ... wait a minute...I thought He had been rejected???

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102. 102. DavidONE 04:15 PM 4/21/08

     GinKirk:
     
     "[snip borderline psychotic, paragraph-free drivel]... Jesus has been tossed out of the public arena as our nation sinks further into its abyss of decay and decline."
     
     You mean like the abyss that liberal, atheistic (~70% do not believe in any gods) Sweden, for instance, 'suffers' from? Or indeed every other 'godless' nation in Europe that enjoys substantially better societal health in almost every measure when compared to god-fearing USA.
     
     http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
     http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita
     http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre-health-teenage-pregnancy
     
     I'm thinking more god and Bronze Age morality is not the solution.

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103. 103. Natedog 05:10 PM 4/21/08

     "Last time I checked the theory of evolution is just that a theory."
     
     Unlike religious cults science is not so conceited as to state that it knows absolutely everything about any particular subject. That is why evolution is referred to (and always will be) referred to as a theory.
     
     Scientists are not questioning whether or not evolution occurred or continues to occur they are simply piecing together the details of HOW it occurred, an endeavor which can never be complete.
     
     That said it would be extremely unscientific to simply insert baseless theories (ID) in the gaps of our current knowledge in the hopes that evidence will not be discovered proving otherwise.
     
     --
     Edited by Natedog at 04/21/2008 12:43 PM

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104. 104. dwhitbeck 01:30 AM 4/22/08

     Scientific AMerican has degenerated as a scientific magazine in much the same way that byte magazine degenerated form an exciting computer magazine to a hardware and software review magazine. What happened to the columns on amateur science and mathematics. I don't see it as any more valuable than Popular Science magazine. Scientific American has become more of an opinionated, and political editorial magazine.

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105. 105. pstanden 04:25 AM 4/22/08

     In lieu of a substantive response from Scientific American, a reply to the points raised by DavidONE:
     
     1. A central tenet of "Expelled" is that healthy debate and free inquiry are being suppressed for apparently ideological reasons. Example: the President of the Weather Channel called for the revocation of credentials of meteorologists expressing skepticism that climate change is in its crucial aspects driven by anthropogenic causes that imperil our existence on earth. This heavy-handedness towards tolerating even mild dissent is the kind of attitude Stein satirizes in his film.
     
     2. DavidOne stated "There is no such thing as 'Darwinism' except in the head of dishonest Creationists who wish to relabel the scientific theory of evolution in order to make it in to a personality-lead cult which they can then attribute with societal evils". That's a colorful definition I had never heard before ... is it a consensus? I prefer to use the first part of the Wikipedia definition, "Darwinism is a term for the underlying concepts in those ideas of Charles Darwin concerning evolution and natural selection.", which in my opinion is a reasonably good starting point for a discussion.
     
     As for cherry-picking, it is others that have done the picking: the quote is taken from a longer passage by Scientific American itself to rebut Stein's charge that Darwinism was improperly associated with eugenics and Nazism (see the related topic "Six Things in Expelled Ben Stein Doesnt Want You to Know"). Wikipedia, in its by no means sympathetic article on "Expelled", cherry-picked the exact same words I used in my quote by highlighting them in bold face. This emphasis suggests that far from cherry picking, these words are important. Scientific American (Rennie and Mirsky) argues that these words show that Darwin was humane, and that Stein (and not the Nazis(?)) incorrectly associates Darwinian ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.
     
     So if this line of rebuttal is correct -- "... but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil." -- what is Darwin talking about? Is it fair use to use Darwin's statement against those who blame Darwin for the societal evil of pro-choice?
     
     
     3. If memory serves, Forrest Mims was denied employment at Scientific American to save Scientific American the stain of being even indirectly associated with a Creationist. Forrest's job would be to write up do-it-yourself experiments, like measuring the ozone layer from your back yard. There was to be no Creation agenda in his column at all. Yet this was not good enough, and it was arguably an example of discrimination based on private beliefs, hence the interest of the ACLU. Refer back to point 1 re satire. Actually it's worse than that. It isn't that you aren't allowed to debate it ... you can't even hold the view personally.
     
     --
     Edited by pstanden at 04/21/2008 9:31 PM

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106. 106. jcrudd 06:16 AM 4/22/08

     DavidOne
     
     I was a little sarcastic with the harsh, and I wasn't looking for net links.
     
     But I appreciate your effort, really.
     
     I am mostly reacting to the seeming superiority and arrogance of the mass of facts being presented here as proof.
     
     You need to get a bit of air, get outside the facts for a while and come back fresh.
     
     Take Garrett Lisi for example, it would seem he's made inroads in an area that Lee Smolin and his generation of physicists have been working toward and hoping to see for the last 40 years, give or take a decade. Of course his work is being debated and contested. Lisi himself seems objective, knowing it could go either way.
     
     Lisi eschewed accepted institutions, airs himself out snowboarding and surfing.
     
     I don't know, I think you have to stay well connected with the base rhythms, somehow stay intimately connected with the phyisical world - outside of numbers and theories, in order to keep everything in perspective.
     
     Natural selection in my opinion is not going to stand much longer. Just as the Theory of Relativity will be found brilliant in its day but vastly incomplete - if we live long enough.
     
     Try not to take the Relativity thing to seriously, lighten up, get outside the numbers and regimented theories regularly.

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107. 107. DavidONE 01:36 PM 4/22/08

     pstanden,
     
     1. You wish to believe that Expelled is all about "healthy debate and free inquiry" while obstinately and dishonestly ignoring the deceit, dishonesty and suppression of debate used in the making and promotion of the film. It's hypocrisy defined.
     
     I'm not familiar with your Weather Channel example and could find no evidence of it. I notice on the xian side, links to evidence are always conspicuous by their absence. I did find http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11592.html - "[comments say] I want to silence meteorologists who are skeptical of the science of global warming. That is not true. The point of my post was never to stifle discussion". I'll take her on her word, and assume the president is providing tacit agreement by allowing that blog post.
     
     Outside of bible belt / right wing USA there is no controversy about anthropogenic global warming:
     
     [url http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy#Controversy_concerning_the_science]"The conclusion that global warming is mainly caused by human activity and will continue if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced has been endorsed by ... all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries."[/url]
     
     This fact is a real clue, in much the same way that Creationism is confined to bible belt USA within developed countries(http://images.livescience.com/images/060810_evo_rank_02.jpg). Even idiot Bush has publicly accepted it, FFS! It's denial has little to do with science and more to do with alleviation of guilt while driving your SUV and the contents of a 2000 year old book....
     
     
     2. This is where the Creationists shoot themselves in both feet with an RPG. You're arguing for Creationism to be taught alongside the scientific theory of evolution by attempting to discredit a strawman of [b]Social Darwinism[/b]. This is a demonstration of some combination of deep dishonesty and stupidity.
     
     
     3. "If memory serves...". That's it? That's your argument. Nothing further to add.
     
     --
     Edited by DavidONE at 04/22/2008 6:38 AM

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108. 108. DavidONE 02:12 PM 4/22/08

     jcrudd,
     
     You came here claiming to want to learn, to have questions answered. Now you produce:
     
     "I wasn't looking for net links" - links to the evidence you asked for
     
     "...seeming superiority and arrogance of the mass of facts being presented here as proof." - buy a dictionary, get a clue
     
     Along with the other hand waving drivel about 'relativity' and 'getting outside of numbers', you just proved what I suspected initially - another dishonest and insincere xian.
     
     No doubt you will pop up on some other forum and repeat the same list of idiotic beliefs, whilst feigning genuine interest in honest debate and learning. Shame on you.

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109. 109. Patrick 027 10:31 PM 4/22/08

     pstanden - a fetus is relatively weak and helpless. But at what point does it become a person?
     
     GinKirk - there are problems in the world; I will agree on that GENERAL point. You seem to want to blame them on scapegoats. Who should teach children to be good people? Is that the job of the state? Wouldn't you consider that indroctrination? (Would you want me teaching your children to be good people? - I might do a good job by my definition but you would probably dissaprove.) I think the state has some role to play (at the least, not to get in the way) but the parents/guardians have the bigger role.
     
     People have religious freedom - but public schools, with public money, cannot be endorsing religion. I somehow managed to pick up on our founding fathers' being generally Christian. I know religion had a role in abolishinist and civil rights movements. That's history. My impression is that you want more than that - you seem to want proselytizing.
     
     Tolerance can indeed go to far, but I don't think either most atheists, agnostics, or religious people really want it to go to far. I don't believe in moral relativism in that sense; I believe there is moral truth. Do you think lack of moral conviction is what drives concern for animal rights, or the environment (I don't remember if you said anything about that or not), or tolerance of other-than-strict-heterosexuality, or even protection of the right to choose...
     ---
     (which is a bit different than enthusiam for abortion itself, by the way. In the extreme, there may be concern that outright abortion bans could lead to witchhunts against women who experience natural miscarriages. Besides that, an embryo doesn't have a brain (I'm not saying being smart is necessary for right to life, I'm saying 'being' is necessary), and ... there will be gray areas. If you think people should come before other animals (which I tend to agree with, by the way), then not just any brain will do. --- I don't think abortion should be like going out for ice cream (especially later in the term - I have essentially no qualms abou the morning after pill, except for the concern I would have about any medicine - what are the side effects?); but it is an option for people stuck between a rock and a hard place - many people on either side would like to reduce abortions, and a good way to do that is move some of those rocks and hard places.) (By the way, abstinence only education doesn't work).
     ---
     Concern over rights can come from morality.
     Even concern about the economy can be about morality; after all, people need material resources to survive, and while some would disagree, I think it's good when people can have more than just the bare essentials. But fairness to others now and in the future necessarily puts constraints on that. Anyway...
     
     And yes, sometimes the justice system seems horribly flawed, and sometimes this may be reality, but whose fault is that? You compare the punishments in a case of stabbing to death and in a case of animal abuse. Are each of these representative of the average such case? I'm sure much harsher punishments have been given for stabbing someone to death. In these two particular cases - did someone have more money? You mentioned someone having an influential connection - I suppose the other one did not?
     
     It seems some are too willing to overdiagnose and overprescribe some medications, but their are genuine brain chemistry disorders and other conditions that medicine can help. Is medicine a silver bullet? Sometimes, perhaps, but often not. Other treatments will help too; sometimes they might be enough by themselves without medicine; sometimes not.
     
     Anyway, math, science and history and such fields of knowledge are important for informing our decisions, but they don't by themselves tell us what to do (what happens is we apply moral principles to knowledge/truth to make choices - but what if your principles are themselves dependend on facts? Then they are at least a level above the foundational principles, and are themselves the result of principles applied to knowledge) - nonetheless, while I would praise people's good intentions, presumably if people intend good, they would try to make informed decisions so that their good intentions are more likely to matched by good consequences. (Of course, people have limited brainpower and time and there are sources of uncertainty so one must take risks, so we can't expect perfection - waiting or working toward perfect decision-making can go to far and become wasteful. And how do when know when that point is reached? The decision of how to make a decision ... we can't even be perfect in our compromise, but if we use our gut, our instinct, our rules of thumb from experience, for the easy decisions, the decisions of small consequence ... this is the economics of morality...)

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110. 110. Patrick 027 11:09 PM 4/22/08

     Ginkirk - and spin off:
     
     What do you know about the souls of animals? That's a lead in to the topic of comparing humans to other animals. Maybe this contributes so some people's discomfort regarding evolution. And for that matter, that explanations for what happens in the brain may make people feel uncomfortable because they want to think of humans as special. Well, I think this is a case of misunderstandings based on half-truths. **THIS SENTENCE REWRITTEN: Parts of evolution and parts of neurology, taken by themselves, are halves of the truth.
     --- (That's not to suggest that their are 'two ways of knowing - rational and irrational' - no there aren't, what appears to be an irrational path to knowledge (instincts, gut reactions) can be seen as, in some cases, valid rational paths to knowledge when one realizes that evolution and life-experience have shaped these things, thus we don't need to think everything through all the time - that doesn't mean it always works, though, because the learning algorithms are not perfect in the first place and novel situations arise that render our rules of thumb innaccurate and our instincts not useful; but we can learn when and how much to trust and go with our guts, and when to think things through) ---
     That's not in the sense that scientists are trying to deliberately mislead. Afterall, how ofen have you ever told the whole truth? As in:
     
     "hey, the sun came out"
     
     verses
     
     "hey, the clouds that blocked the sun have moved out of the way; by the way, clouds are made of water droplets and ice crystals, and are moved by the wind; the sun is a nuclear furnace, so to speack - Don't look directly at it - the sun has gotten gradually brighter over geologically time, ..."
     
     Anyway, some people may be assuming that evolution renders us nonspecial or that physical explanations for our minds and behaviors means we are 'just a bunch of chemicals'.
     
     But we our special and definitely more than just a bunch of chemicals. And science agrees with that.
     
     Some objectivists (who are atheists) and some religious people want to believe animals are subhuman. Technically, OTHER animals are subhuman, but all animals besides dolphins are subdolphin. Humans are the best at being human. I am better at being me than being you and vice versa. In fact, I am the perfect me, even though I am not perfect.
     
     In so far as observable phenomena go, it might not be that humans are the only animals with certain characteristics (well it depends on whether you think of a characteristic as a dimension to be measured/counted or as the state of having a particular measurement/count), but that humans 'score off the charts' on certain characteristics compared to most other animals.
     
     Furthermore, if you just through all the chemicals in the brain into some random pile they won't become a human brain, much less anyone in particular. We as people, and our minds, even us as biological organisms, are the emergent properties, the behaviors and structures, that are made out of chemicals. Is a tornado 'just a bunch of molecules'? Is the sun 'just a bunch of particles'?
     
     Our brains are chemicals but they are that and more, not 'just' that.
     
     Humans are animals, but they are that and more, not 'just' that.
     
     ------
     
     By the way, on the half truth phenomena -
     
     Knowing your audience:
     
     When a Nazi comes to the door and asks if you are hiding Jewish people, it's okay to lie (I'm assuming you are hiding Jewish people for the sake of the argument). Why? You know why, but there are different ways of putting it into an actual argument, and that can yield more general insight. Here's my take: The Nazi likely is either unaware of or unwilling to act on the other half of the truth, which is that his mission is evil. Thus, in a way, telling him the half of the truth regarding the hiding of Jewish people would have the effect of a lie.
     
     --
     Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/22/2008 4:14 PM

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111. 111. jcrudd 12:36 AM 4/23/08

     DavidOne
     
     I did not come here looking for answers.
     
     The questions I ask, that of irreducible complexity, and the lack of fossil evidence of transitional LINKS bear relevence in that if they can not be answered, the ensuing postulates of natural selection, evoluttion, neo-evolution, or whatever other label you wish to evoke, will not stand. They (postulates) are strewn across the sands, blown wither and wan by unsettled winds seeking intellectual justification for their existence.
     
     Relax, embrace the natural world, without seeking definition for a time. Feel it as it is, you may find clarity, you may also sense the presence of God.
     
     --
     Edited by jcrudd at 04/22/2008 5:50 PM
     
     --
     Edited by jcrudd at 04/22/2008 5:55 PM

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112. 112. DavidONE 01:01 AM 4/23/08

     jcrudd: "YOU HAVE AN EXPLANATION TO MY TWO QUESTIONS, RIGHT?"
     
     [b]I provided answers to your questions, believing you to be sincere.[/b]
     
     jcrudd: "I did not come here looking for answers."
     
     You're either an idiot or a liar. Your choice.

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113. 113. Patrick 027 02:24 AM 4/23/08

     jcrudd - there's plenty of supporting evidence for the theory of evolution.

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114. 114. jcrudd 04:57 AM 4/23/08

     David I did read your links. But, in my opinion evolutionist theory tries to link disconnected data and from my perspective is sometimes pure conjecture.
     
     I do believe Wilson's ant studies are profound.
     
     Any of the below sound familiar?
     
     Exerpt from Edward O. Wilson: "Stalking the Wild Taboo"
     
     [i]By adopting a narrow criterion of acceptable research deserving the title of science, Lewontin freed himself to pursue a political agenda unencumbered by science. He purveyed the postmodernist view that accepted truth, unless based upon unassailable fact, is no more than a reflection of dominant ideology and political power. After his turn to political activism, around 1970, he worked to promote his own accepted truth: the Marxian view of holism, envisioning a mental universe within which social systems ebb and flow in response to the forces of economics and class struggle. He disputed the idea of reductionism in evolutionary biology, even though it was and is the virtually unchallenged linchpin of the natural sciences as a whole. And most particularly, he rejected it for human social behavior. He said, in 1991, "By reductionism, we mean the belief that the world is broken up into tiny bits and pieces, each of which has its own properties and which combine together to make larger things. The individual makes society, for example, and society is nothing but the manifestation of the properties of individual human beings. Individual properties are the causes and the properties of the social whole are the effects of those causes. "
     
     Now this reductionism, as Lewontin expressed and rejected it, is precisely my view of how the world works. It forms the basis of human sociobiology as I construed it. But it is not science, Lewontin insisted. It cannot be made into science. And according to his own political beliefs, expressed over many years, sociobiology or any other social theory based on the biology of individuals cannot even possibly be true. Here is how he summarized his postmodernist argument: "This individualistic view of the biological world is simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century that placed the individual as the center of everything."
     
     By adopting a narrow criterion of acceptable research deserving the title of science, Lewontin freed himself to pursue a political agenda unencumbered by science. He purveyed the postmodernist view that accepted truth, unless based upon unassailable fact, is no more than a reflection of dominant ideology and political power. After his turn to political activism, around 1970, he worked to promote his own accepted truth: the Marxian view of holism, envisioning a mental universe within which social systems ebb and flow in response to the forces of economics and class struggle. He disputed the idea of reductionism in evolutionary biology, even though it was and is the virtually unchallenged linchpin of the natural sciences as a whole. And most particularly, he rejected it for human social behavior. He said, in 1991, "By reductionism, we mean the belief that the world is broken up into tiny bits and pieces, each of which has its own properties and which combine together to make larger things. The individual makes society, for example, and society is nothing but the manifestation of the properties of individual human beings. Individual properties are the causes and the properties of the social whole are the effects of those causes. "
     
     Now this reductionism, as Lewontin expressed and rejected it, is precisely my view of how the world works. It forms the basis of human sociobiology as I construed it. But it is not science, Lewontin insisted. It cannot be made into science. And according to his own political beliefs, expressed over many years, sociobiology or any other social theory based on the biology of individuals cannot even possibly be true. Here is how he summarized his postmodernist argument: "This individualistic view of the biological world is simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century that placed the individual as the center of everything."[/i]
     
     --
     Edited by jcrudd at 04/22/2008 10:07 PM

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115. 115. DavidONE 01:20 PM 4/23/08

     I've no idea what point you're trying to prove with the duplicated copy and pastes. No doubt it's further confusion and strawman, but at this stage I no longer care - you've proven yourself to be another liar for Jesus.
     
     I'm probably 'whistling in the wind', but consider these:
     
     1. Every reputable university on the planet teaches evolution as accepted fact, supported by mountains of evidence. Only a handful of religiously-motivated institutions (concentrated mainly in bible belt USA), along with some unpleasant theocracies, deny it.
     
     Why is this? Is it a global 'Big Science' conspiracy? Have thousands upon thousands of scientists over the last 149 years simply made a massive, multi-faceted mistake? Or could it be because the religious see evolution as a threat to their cherished beliefs and are suffering some combination of delusion, cognitive dissonance and Dunning-Kruger effect?
     
     
     2. Consider that the god you believe in is almost always dependent on when and where you were born. Your belief is simply an accident of time, geography and parentage. It is not a matter of truth, just an accident.
     
     If you were born in India today you might be Hindu, in Iran you would certainly be a Muslim. If you were born 2000 years ago in Denmark, you'd think Odin was the real deal and 500BCE in Greece, you'd be worshipping Zeus.
     
     It's not really a convincing scenario if there was one true god, or any gods. Wouldn't it be trivial for the creator of the universe to have all his little creations singing from the same book? Especially when most gods threaten eternal torment for choosing the wrong one. What sort of omnipotent, omniscient, 'merciful and loving' god would that be?!
     
     This should be an enormous clue to everyone that gods are man-made.

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116. 116. Natedog 09:33 PM 4/23/08

     "Relax, embrace the natural world, without seeking definition for a time. Feel it as it is, you may find clarity, you may also sense the presence of God."
     
     Why not just quote "Footsteps In The Sand"? It is far more poetic and just as meaningless.

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117. 117. jcrudd 11:19 PM 4/23/08

     DavidOne - I will try this one more time.
     
     The exerpt cut and pasted had nothing to do with an argument for or against evolution.
     
     More to the point, it is an example of a disagreement between accredited scientists. You will note that they are both belittling the other; I believe accusations of practicing non-science, and bourgeois fair.
     
     Nate, you're right it is meaningless; that's the point.

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118. 118. Patrick 027 02:19 AM 4/24/08

     jcrudd - This is probably tangential to the point you may or may not have been making, but a note about reductionism vs holistic views:
     
     'larger' phenomena generally consist of combinations of 'smaller' phenomena. The behavior of the smaller things within and amongst themselves produce the larger things. Some properties of the larger thing may be seen as the result of additive or averaged properties of the smaller things, in which case the relation is easy to understand. But other properties are more complexly related from one level to the other, and may even be 'emergent' properties of the larger things, properties that one couldn't describe by only looking at the smaller things individually, perhaps not even by single one-on-one relationships among them. On the other hand, sometimes the larger thing is actually simpler in some ways than the smaller things - a simple macroscopic object, which may be composed of many complex molecules, etc...

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119. 119. Patrick 027 02:24 AM 4/24/08

     jcrudd - you may be coming across as a bit presumptuous or condescending by giving advice in the manner that you are - as if other people (perhaps those who disagree with you?) have not previously or recently taken the time to relax and feel as one with nature or have a reflective moment, whatever.

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120. 120. jcrudd 04:25 AM 4/24/08

     Yea, like maybe you can't see the forest for the trees. Or completely neglect the trees for the forest.
     
     But then again, it's not about reductionist vs holistic views at all. It's about two scientists, diciples of a dicipline, a profession, a strict adherence to objectivity resorting to name calling, an almost comedic science slam in order to discredit one or the other.
     
     But never mind the discourse, the object here as in The Wild Taboo Lecture is to establish superiority.

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121. 121. pstanden 05:07 AM 4/24/08

     DavidONE,
     
     My final responses to you.
     
     DO: “You wish to believe that Expelled is all about "healthy debate and free inquiry" while obstinately and dishonestly ignoring the deceit, dishonesty and suppression of debate used in the making and promotion of the film. It's hypocrisy defined.”
     
     I guess I ignored the “Streng Verboten!” sign. Should I sign the confession now, or wait until I return from re-indoctrination camp?
     
     DO: “I'm not familiar with your Weather Channel example and could find no evidence of it.
     
     Try this genuine official US Government link:
     
     http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528
     
     “... I notice on the xian side, links to evidence are always conspicuous by their absence.”
     
     I deconstruct the use of gratuitous slurs, obscure references and other rhetorical devices later in the post.
     
     Fact Correction: Refers to the Chief Climatologist, not the President of WC. My mistake.
     
     DO:
     "The conclusion that global warming is mainly caused by human activity and will continue if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced has been endorsed by ... all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries."
     
     The import of that is that the checks and balances working to keep the conclusions honest, and the wisdom of including dissenting opinions, must meet an even higher standard. See Feynmann’s et. al. remarks on the ease of which science can descend into tyranny.
     
     The scientific discussion of this issue cannot be separated from its political ramifications: the political establishment has made it so.
     
     E.g., Nov. 17,
     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm
     The Origins of the Global Warming Theory theory: Margaret Thatcher wanted nuclear power plants, so the government went shopping for scientists:
     http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
     
     ... and others with an agenda hopped on board.
     
     No agenda? And this recently from the BBC:
     “Opening a UN forum on the global impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, Mr Morales said that capitalism should be scrapped if the planet is to be saved from the effects of climate change.
     "If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system," he said.”
     
     It’s never ... never ... just about the Science.
     
     DO: “This fact is a real clue, in much the same way that Creationism is confined to bible belt USA ...”
     
     The real clue is what it says about your reasoning process. The clue is a self-administered vaccine. What you have done is to set up a conceptual linkage, an actual neural pathway, between the categories of Global Warming and Creationism. The practical effect is that this inoculates you from processing arguments against Global Warming. Logically these categories are unrelated -- evidence for one is not related to evidence of the other. Evidence against Global Warming cannot be processed to support both the demands of logic and this conceptual linkage, as evidence against Global Warming is also categorized as reinforcing evidence for Creationism. This absurdity creates an unacceptable level of cognitive dissonance. The tone and style of your rhetoric indicate that you have a very low tolerance for cognitive dissonance and have difficulty processing conflicting or ambiguous data.
     
     The motivation for this analysis is an application of the principle of psychological projection: that is that we tend to project our own thoughts, feelings, motives etc. on to others. I am quite sure you are familiar with it. We all do it. It’s unfortunate. The problem is how to keep it in check. Naturally I entered into a dialog with you on the basis of certain expectations as to how logical arguments are developed. I was soon met with a barrage of frankly puzzling conceptual labels such as “dishonest”, “obstinate”, “straw man”, “conspiracy theories”, “wishes” “deep dishonesty”, “hypocrisy” etc. etc. So I think your badgering and hectoring speaks for itself.
     
     Oh, and the implication of the clue as originally stated is bogus.
     
     DO: “... within developed countries(http://images.livescience.com/images/060810_evo_rank_02.jpg).”
     
     A Nation that delivered Europe from the clutches of Fascism, invented the transistor, was the first to put communications satellites in orbit and a man on the moon, was and is the world leader in microprocessor technology, invented the Internet (cognitive dissonance alert: IMO Al Gore was unfairly treated over the “I invented the Internet” affair), is the world leader in medical research, etc. etc. etc., has done spectacularly well in light of what you perceive as a huge handicap. For a more sophisticated treatment of religion and culture, spend some quality time perusing The Complete Spengler, whose column originates from the Bible Belt bastion of Hong Kong:
     
     http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/spengler.html
     
     DO: “You're arguing for Creationism to be taught alongside the scientific theory of evolution by attempting to discredit a strawman of Social Darwinism. This is a demonstration of some combination of deep dishonesty and stupidity.”
     
     I agree. You have described your fantastic confabulation accurately.
     
     Game over.

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122. 122. DavidONE 05:44 PM 4/24/08

     ps: "My final responses to you."
     
     Thank the gods.
     
     As a general comment, your lack of reading comprehension, conflation of issues, barrage of strawmen and meandering, tangential arguments makes it difficult to respond. It's akin to wrestling a well-greased piglet, I would imagine.
     
     Also, the verbage you expend on my "gratuitous slurs" makes the phrase "the lady doth protest too much" spring to mind.
     
     Anwyay, I'll attempt a concise and structured response:
     
     [b]1. Global Warming Denial[/b]
     You produce one link from the BBC which is a 'VIEWPOINT' from John Christy, an ex-missionary who holds a master's in divinity from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. On the same page is a link to climatology scientist's viewpoint, titled 'AS GOOD AS IT GETS' - the title is self-explanatory. Christy is considered a contrarian in the climatology sciences and appears to have been *looking* for data points that disproves the consensus. There's a strong case to suggest he is suffering from confirmation bias. You also reinforced my argument that global warming denial is confined mainly to bible belt USA. I don't need any help in this argument, but thanks.
     
     However, Christy is on record as saying:
     
     "It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way."
     
     So, he's saying global wamring IS anthropogenic. What was I saying about blowing your feet off with an RPG?
     
     You produce another link to a wingnut nobody who has evidently spent considerable time producing nice flow charts and vomiting up a conspiracy theory whilst sat in his basement, wearing a tin foil hat.
     
     Congratulations on cherry-picking a quote which confirms your conspiracy delusion that it's all an attempt to destroy capitalism. However, it's a little suspect when the best you can do is quote Evo Morales, a radical activist from Bolivia, who tends to use any vehicle to attack 'USA Capitalism'. This kinda sums up the depth of your thinking.
     
     I'll leave you with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change. That should keep you occupied for a while, constructing conspiracy theories to dismiss each and every one of those cases. If you manage that, you're a bigger wingnut than I first imagained - and it was BIG to start with.
     
     
     [b]2. Evolution Denial[/b]
     I couldn't pull anything coherent out of your last diatribe, so I'll assume you've run out of steam on this one. I understand.
     
     
     [b]3. USA! USA! USA![/b]
     I can't help but repsond to your "USA is great because..." list. The British invented the internal combustion engine, television, the jet engine, penicillin, the World Wide Web, rubber bands, the vacuum cleaner and Viagra... and yet none of this says anything about the validity of Creationism or global warming denial, or why the USA is separated from the rest of the developed and educated world with regards acceptance of evolution as fact.
     
     
     As for delivering "Europe from the clutches of Fascism", d'ya think the British, the Polish, the French, the Australians, the Russians, the Greeks, etc, etc. had anything to do with it? Your bullshit on this subject might fly in the evangelical echo chamber you live in, or the Republican rallies you attend, but not so much in the reality-based world. In fact, that's true of all the arguments you've aired in this thread.

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123. 123. placeholder 07:16 PM 4/24/08

     Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
     
     KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.
     
     "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
     
     Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."
     
     Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.
     
     According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.
     
     The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."
     
     "We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.
     
     Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.
     
     "Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."
     
     Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.
     
     "Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."
     
     "Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"
     
     Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.
     
     "Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

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124. 124. DavidONE 10:06 PM 4/24/08

     Nice one, placeholder :D
     
     To swing this thread back on track, and maybe wrap it up as it looks like the Creos have taken their toys home:
     
     A great interview with the producer of Expelled, which really exposes him, and a short review of the film (http://www.realdetroitweekly.com/article_4101.shtml):
     
     [b]Unevolved[/b]
     Mark Mathis
     by Jay Davis
     
     Mark Mathis, one of the producers of Expelled, wants the “theory” of Intelligent Design (ID) taught in science classrooms alongside evolution. Proponents of ID are fond of saying that it's not the same as creationism (read: creationism sans the talking snake and the magic rib). But if ID isn't creationism, then oral s*x [censored by SciAm] isn't sexual relations. Beyond semantic nuances, the underlying argument of creationism and ID is the same: If there is any phenomenon that science has yet to provide an explanation for, there clearly is no scientific explanation—God did it.
     
     In the film, Mathis argues that instructors who want to incorporate theology into their science curricula are being censored. But it’s not a question of censorship—it’s a question of classification. Theological concepts like ID could certainly be taught to students in a course on religion or philosophy, but these concepts are simply not scientific. Science is concerned with evaluating hypotheses which are testable and falsifiable, and God’s existence does not meet these criteria.
     
     I confront Mathis with this point, and he counters that evolutionary theory is also untestable. This is patently untrue—to give just one example, scientists have witnessed speciation, the arisal of a new species from an old one.
     
     When I point this out, he interrupts me immediately: “Whoa! Wait a minute! Please send me whatever material you have that demonstrates that we can observe speciation because I have not seen anything. I’ve never heard anyone even claim that!”
     
     Is he serious? He’s just produced a film about evolution, and he’s never heard of the fact that speciation has been observed and thoroughly documented in the scientific literature? I’m stunned. I send him peer-reviewed research confirming this fact via e-mail, and he later responds, “This isn’t an important argument for me.”
     
     So I ask him about falsifiability. Clearly, evolution could potentially be disproved, but how could one ever disprove the existence of a deity? He laughs. “You can’t apply falsifiability to Darwinian evolution. How is it falsifiable?”
     
     I respond by quoting the biologist J.B.S. Haldane: “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” One instance of fossils appearing in the wrong strata would disprove current evolutionary theory in an instant. Mathis pauses before saying, “If you want to get into the science...” He then trails off and mutters something irrelevant before finally confessing, “Look. You can get into the intricacies of the science on both sides. And I am not qualified.” On that point, we can both agree.
     
     It gets worse. According to a March 21st New York Times article, evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers—who is interviewed in Expelled—tried to attend an advance screening of the film and was denied entrance by Mr. Mathis. Surely this was some kind of comic mix-up. No producer who releases a film called Expelled would actually expel an individual who appears in his film from seeing that film. Right?
     
     Mathis laughs before offering two reasons why he told the security guard at the screening not to let Myers in. First, Mathis says, “He has viciously attacked me personally and attacked the film.” Just to clarify, Myers did not break into Mr. Mathis’ house in a drunken rage with a bowie knife—he has simply been critical of Mathis’ arguments.
     
     The second reason? Mathis assumed that the incident would engender “some additional attention” for the film. I’m not joking. He actually called that a reason.
     
     “He was not invited to the screening,” Mathis says. “I don’t have time to read P.Z. Myers’ oral diarrhea.”
     
     “But the screening wasn’t done by invite, was it?” I ask.
     
     “It’s still our screening. I’m still the producer on site. And I still have the ability to say, ‘I didn’t invite you. And you’re not coming.’” Mathis repeats, “I denied him entrance to a film that he was not invited to.”
     
     “But just to clarify, others who weren’t invited were allowed in, right?”
     
     “Done by discretion! Done by discretion!” In case you’re wondering, this means yes. It seems safe to say that discretion is something that Mark Mathis lacks entirely. I let him scream for one more minute.
     
     “We have the option of ex… uh, of kicking, uh, of not allowing P.Z. Myers to come to the film he wasn’t invited to. Okay? Who cares?!”
     
     If we do decide to teach Intelligent Design along with evolution, let’s at least be consistent and give equal time to other supernatural theories. Here are a few suggestions:
     
     * The theory of relativity will be taught alongside the theory of divinity, which maintains that E = whatever God good and well pleases.
     * Gravitational theory will be taught alongside the theory of Deliberate Motion, which proposes that celestial bodies do not move as a result of gravitational force, but as a result of an Intelligent Mover pushing them around.
     * The germ theory of disease will be considered, but so will the Divine Retribution theory, which posits the existence of an intelligence who distributes diseases in order to punish sins. Of course, this will necessitate that medical schools give time to traditional pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare, as well as "faith-based" approaches, which will rely on prayer and the sacrifice of baby rams.
     
     
     
     
     Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
     Starring Ben Stein. Written by Kevin Miller, Walt Ruloff and Ben Stein. Directed by Nathan Frankowski. Rated PG. Now playing.
     
     Those who think that evolution is “just a theory” will probably revel in Expelled, a film in which a mountain of evidence garnered by decades of rigorous empirical study is challenged by the stuffy economics teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
     
     In addition to the standard creationist claptrap, Ben Stein argues that there is a link between acceptance of evolution and Nazism. To be fair, this would explain why so many of the world's leading evolutionary biologists have a penchant for slaughtering scores of Jews. Thankfully for Stein, the name of God has never been used as a justification for heinous acts—otherwise his argument would seem laughably inconsistent and intellectually dishonest.
     
     Since this movie is more chuck-full of errors than Kim Jong Il's Ethics final, I'll direct those who are interested to www.expelledexposed.com. | RDW

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125. 125. jcrudd 01:49 AM 4/26/08

     Try to read through this, before you respond. This individual has the most scientifically consistant rational approach to a case for intelligent design.
     
     Try to be objective in your responses.
     
     
     [i][Note: The "Beads of Waitangi" were created to facilitate this discussion. They were not created by the Maori Natives of New Zealand.]
     
     The "Beads of Waitangi" are a string of 347 beads which spell out Genesis 1:1 in Morse Code.
     
     Are they the result of random chance or deliberate design?
     
     Since they constitute a string of 347 elements, chosen from an alphabet of two, the probability of this occurring by unaided random chance is less than 1 in 2347, or 3 (2.8669 actually) x 10104. (A probability less than 1 in 1050 is defined in mathematical physics as to be so rare as to be considered absurd.)
     
     Comparisons
     
     Contrast the complexity of:
     
     1) A simple binary string, 347 elements assembled from an alphabet of only 2, having a random chance of 1 in 2.8669 x 10104.
     
     2) The Hemoglobin molecule, consisting of 574 elements, in a specific order, selected from an alphabet of 20 amino acids. The formula for the probability of a specific linear arrangement of n items, taken p at a time from a candidate alphabet of q items, etc., is N=n!/(p! x q! x r! ...). For hemoglobin, the random probability is less than 1 in 10650. (If these elements occur in a different order, it results in hemoglobin opathy, a fatal disease.)
     
     3) Our DNA, a 3-out-of-4, error-correcting, self-replicating digital code, consisting of over 3 billion elements defining the manufacture and arrangement of hundreds of thousands of functional devices, each consisting of unique assemblies selected from over 200 proteins, each involving as many as 3,000 atoms in 3-dimensional configurations, all defined from a base alphabet of 20 amino acids, all of which make up the human genome.
     
     This goes far beyond any calculations which would be meaningful. And the fact that the same coding scheme is used throughout all life indicates they all came from the same Designer. The entire creation bears His signature. It is ironic that attributing the occurrence of the Beads of Waitangi as occurring by unaided random chance is clearly (and by mathematical definition) absurd, and yet we teach our children in school a far greater unlikelihood - that life itself occurred from random chance, and this is the cornerstone of our lives, not only in biology, but in all of our social and legal structures. It's time we diligently advocated evidence-based education and stopped inculcating our children with falsehoods and mythology.[/i]
     
     --
     Edited by jcrudd at 04/25/2008 6:50 PM

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126. 126. pstanden 04:11 AM 4/26/08

     Patrick 027,
     
     You asked "pstanden - a fetus is relatively weak and helpless. But at what point does it become a person?"
     
     Sorry for the delay in responding. If you would like to engage (in the next day or two), I have a few thoughts, though mostly indirectly related to your specific question.

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127. 127. jcrudd 08:10 AM 4/26/08

     Fact is boys there is actually few facts - most things are relative. What's a fact today will be a half fact tomorrow and but a memory in a week.
     
     One thing absolutely for sure is, evolution, natural selection, whatever you chose to call it is not a Fact, it is a theory. Right along side of your well chosen diatribes on my strawman conflated conflagrations, you promote global warming evidenced by attestations of the mass of higher learning institutions and "all the other major powers."
     
     Try to look past the apparent political inner conflict, these links are conservative independents, they hammer the elephants and the donkeys mutually. They do their research.
     
     http://patriotpost.us/news/chill.asp
     
     http://patriotpost.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=520
     
     A short exerpt from this link
     
     [[i]i]Notable Dissenters
     
     Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist notes, "When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works."
     
     In fact, there remains substantial doubt that the production of CO2 by human enterprise has any real impact on global temperature, and if it does, that such impact is, necessarily, negative. Human activity may contribute a maximum estimate of three percent of CO2 to the natural carbon cycle (the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth), but there is broad dispute about the total production of CO2 from natural sources, which is to say the human contribution may be a much smaller percentage. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased from about 315 parts per million five decades ago, to about 380 ppm today, which is to say, there are major factors influencing the amount of CO2 levels in the atmosphere besides our burning of hydrocarbons.
     
     Case in point: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has maintained the world's longest continuous worldwide record of atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels -- those cited by global-warming alarmists. In 2002 and 2003, NOAA recorded increases in atmospheric CO2 of 2.43 and 2.30 ppm respectively -- a 55 percent increase over the annual average of 1.5 ppm for previous years. In 2004, however, this increase fell back to 1.5 ppm per year.
     
     Did human industrial output somehow increase 55 percent during those two years, and then decline by that amount in 2004? Of course not. For the record, NOAA concluded that the fluctuation was caused by the natural processes that contribute and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
     
     Al Gore would be hard-pressed to explain NOAA's findings within the context of his apocalyptic thesis, and he would be hard-pressed to convince any serious scientists that his Orwellian solutions could correct such fluctuations. This is because his thesis is based largely on convenient half-truths.
     
     For instance, Gore insists that the increased incidence of hurricanes, tornadoes, drought and other weather phenomena is the direct result of global warming.
     
     Renowned meteorologist Dr. William Gray takes exception: "The degree to which you believe global warming is causing major hurricanes," he says, "is inversely proportional to your knowledge about these storms."[/i]
     In a recent issue of Discover Magazine, Gray, described by Discover's editors as one of "the world's most famous hurricane experts," wrote, "This human-induced global-warming thing ... is grossly exaggerated. ... I'm not disputing there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and '40s, and then there was global cooling in the middle '40s to the early '70s. Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical ... about this global-warming thing. But no one asks us."[/i]

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128. 128. pstanden 12:32 AM 4/27/08

     The Intelligent Falling parody is very funny.
     
     However, the quote by the putative “ECFR senior fellow Gregroy Lunsden”
     
     “This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."
     
     can be compared with the real life Seth Lloyd, MIT Professor in Quantum Mechanics, in this WIRED Magazine March 2006 interview:
     
     Q: What is the universe computing when we are not hijacking it for our own purposes?

     
     A: It computes itself. It computes the flow of orange juice as you drink it, or the position of each atom in your cells.
     ...
     
     Q: Would it be fair to say the universe is a mind?
     
     A: You could use that metaphor. And if you did, then you and I and my cat are its thoughts. But the vast majority of the universe's thinking is about humble vibrations and collisions of atoms.
     
     Q: You seem to be saying that the concept of the universe as one huge quantum computer is not just a metaphor - it's real.
     
     A: 
Absolutely. Atoms and electrons are bits. Atomic collisions are "ops." Machine language is the laws of physics. The universe is a quantum computer.
     -------------------
     It is ironic that the parody, when stripped of the fluff that makes it funny, contains the germ of an interesting idea.

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129. 129. Patrick 027 02:22 AM 4/27/08

     jcrudd -
     
     Probability of sequences: How many times have those bead sequences been replicated with some chance for mutation, and to what extent was a match, via a code, to Genesis 1:1, an advantage in replication? How many generations were there before the sequence you mentioned become dominant in the population of bead sequences?
     
     If there is about 25 years between human/hominid generations, then since 1,000,000 million years ago (1 Ma), there have been 40,000 generations. Going back further, assuming an average of 5 years per generation, there would have been at least 100,040,000 generations since 501 Ma. Supposing an average of 1 year per generation going back a bit more, 500,040,000 generations since 901 Ma. Supposing a generation every month going back a bit further, 12,500,040,000 generations since 1,901 Ma (1.901 Ga). Supposing a generation twice a month before that, 24,500,040,000 generations since 2.401 Ga. Supposing a generation four times a month before that, 48,500,040,000 generations since 2.901 Ga. Before that, supposing a generation every 3.6525 * 24 hour period (I don't say every 3.6525 days because the Earth use to rotate faster; last I checked the evidence indicated an 18 hour day 900 Ma, for example), 108,500,040,000 generations since 3.501 Ga. And in each of those generations, for any particular extant lineage, how many members were there? How many aunts and uncles ... etc. In any generation, for any one offspring, there is x chance of any one mutation occuring, y chance of some general category of mutation, etc. (PS for multicellular organisms, this may be more than the mutation rate per replication, because, for example, the cells that produce sperm and eggs are not themselves zygotes but the decendents of zygotes). Over some number of generations n, following surviving lineages, there may be some number of accumulated neutral mutations, some number of accumulated benificial mutations, some number of accumulated deleterious mutations; over time, the later are less likely to be propogated to a large fraction of future generations while the benifiicial mutations are more likely to be propogated to a larger fraction of future generations, thus changes occur...
     
     [ADDED DURING EDIT: And it's not like we had to end up with the exact sequences that we have. Look at the variety in humans, for example. Remember, it's very unlikely that a person in the world would happen to be one person in particular, and yet, every person is someone and we only expect it to be so.]
     
     And the very first cellular lifeform - well, one possibility is a compositional genome, but in so far as the first genetic code is concerned, ... well I should come back to that when I have more time; now for the other issue:
     
     ----------
     
     Anyone making that argument about anthropogenic contributions to increasing CO2 (aside from CH4, CFCs, etc, and the aerosols...) is quite ill-informed on the carbon cycle.
     
     1. The atmospheric CO2 level was relatively steady for thousands of years in comparison to what has happenned in the last couple centuries. I don't think variations farther in the past associated with glacial-interglacial transitions have generally occured so rapidly as now (see Ch 6 of IPCC AR4 WGI).
     
     2. Burning of fossil fuels is a CO2 source to the atmosphere, and it is not as if this can't be quantified. There is also CO2 from cement production (independent of energy inputs) and deforestation. The total amount released in not left in the atmosphere because the increase shifts the fluxes among the atmosphere, biomass, and ocean. There is also reforestation. PS we can't take it for granted that these fluxes will continue to remove the same fraction of anthropogenic CO2 additions going into the future.
     
     3. Carbon isotope analysis can clarify what is happenning to the carbon cycle; obviously, fossil C and C from cement production is essentially devoid of C-14. The atmosphere should have the highest proportion of C-14 relative to C content as C-14 is produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays converting N-14 to C-14 (C-14 decays back to N-14); C reservoirs more intimately coupled by fluxes to and from the atmosphere will have higher C-14 contents then the reservoirs which, relative to their size, are less well connected to the atmosphere (as judged by flux size and directness) - the deep ocean will tend to have lower C-14. There is also C-13, though I am less familiar with the implications of C-13 values (I think they would be different for cement and abiotic ocean sources and geologic emissions, etc.)
     
     Over the longest timescales, geological C emission may vary, but through climate feedbacks, the chemical weathering rate will tend to adjust. Geological C emissions are somewhere around 0.2 Gt (gigatons) per year - very small. A few years ago anthropogenic emissions were somewhere around 7.0 Gt/year.
     
     The fluxes between the atmosphere and the biomass and soil, and between the atmosphere and the surface ocean, are very large, but they tend to be balanced over time. Short term imbalances will occur - there are seasonal cycles and then there will be some low-frequency variabiltiy. But if their were a long term imbalance, you would have to see the quantity of C in one or more of the other reservoirs increasing or decreasing. This will happen with deforestation and re/a-forestation. There is some CO2-fertilization effect and change in oceanic uptake due to atmospheric concentration - these things don't seem likely to spontaneously cause an imbalance by themselves. There is also the effect climate has on the carbon cycle (and short term climate variability may be responsible for short term fluctuations in the carbon cycle). That was a positive feedback important for glacial-interglacial transitions.
     
     Taking a short term fluctuation in CO2 as evidence for lack of understanding of the longer term trend is analogous to confusing weather with climate, and short term fluctuations like ENSO with longer term warming or cooling.
     
     --
     
     As for William Gray - it's fine to have interesting ideas and question things, and it's true that the global warming-hurrican link is not quite so simple (there is some evidence that global warming may be increasing the severity of hurricanes but not necessarily their frequency; water temperature is important but so are other factors like wind shear. But as you read on the subject, it is important to remember that the whole world isn't the North (as in north of the equator) Atlantic basin.)
     
     Aside from that, please see my comment 102 above. (It's not enough that someone with some reputation dissents. Their reason for dissenting should hold water.) My impression is that Rush Limbaugh, or people like him, like to point out that the sun is ultimately the source of most of the heat energy of the Earth's surface, ocean, and atmosphere (geothermal heating from below is less than 1/2000 of solar heating, and I don't remember the exact number but it may be closer to 1/3000). But if that were the end of the story, heat would just build up continuously and we'd be swimming in magma right now (if we could somehow still be here). The other half of the story - almost all heat lost from the surface, ocean, and atmosphere, ultimately is lost to space by thermal (blackbody) radiation - mostly longwave radiation because of the temperatures of the radiating bodies. Changing greenhouse gas concentrations changes the longwave opacity of the atmosphere; changing the opacity changes the radiative fluxes among different levels and between them and space, and the imbalance is nonzero until the temperature profile of the atmosphere changes enough to restore balance. That adding CO2 in itself can cause significant warming is established beyond any reasonable doubt. There are some feedbacks - water vapor and snow/ice albedo feedbacks both seem quite likely to be positive. Cloud feedbacks are less understood, but the burden of proof doesn't revert back to the side of proving CO2-significant warming as a result.
     
     I can't by myself say that it will be a bad thing on the balance with quite as much confidence as I can say it will happen (depending on future emissions), but:
     
     1a. Length of growing season is not the only important factor in farming. There's soil conditions (soil doesn't migrate very fast) and precipitation. (Where the growing season lengthens where crops are already grown, can all the additional time be used? Perhaps by switching crops, if there isn't enough time for a second crop. Actually, farming would work better with greater flexibility anyway, but I don't have time to get into that now). And for some parts of the world, temperature doesn't define the growing season. Precipitation has to increase a little just to balance evaporation increase due to an increase in temperature.
     
     1b. CO2 fertilization is not a panacea. Not all plants can make good use of the opportunity. It's possible food quality may be negatively impacted. Climatic effects are still important.
     
     2. Ecosystems and species will be less able to adapt to large rapid changes than to small or gradual ones, and I would think familiarity of conditions is a factor (we are warming up from an interglacial, so we are heading towards climate territory unseen since well before the last ice age - it could be a few million years).
     
     3. Economies also take time to adapt. Some infrastructure is already in place and yet to expire. Also, I would think nomadic tribes in sparsely populated areas would find it relatively easier to migrate (to follow food or get out of the way of rising water) than people in sturdy settlements with jobs and property, etc. Houses and other things are often designed for some climate.
     
     Summing up 2 and 3 - adaption isn't generally infinitely fast and tends to have costs (it's not like we're working on evolutionary timescales).
     
     4. Droughts and floods.
     
     --
     Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/26/2008 7:28 PM

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130. 130. Patrick 027 02:39 AM 4/27/08

     pstanden - that is an interesting idea. I actually wrote something similar about a year and a half ago on the sciam blog comments - the universe (or anything in it) is a computer model of itself.
     
     But just to be clear, that's in no way in disagreement with evolution by natural processes.

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131. 131. Natedog 10:19 PM 4/28/08

     jcrudd the flaw's in your argument are clearly outlined in points 8 and 15 of the article:
     
     "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense"
     
     http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist
     
     ...but I suppose you already know that since you pasted the exact same post into that thread as well.
     
     --
     Edited by Natedog at 04/28/2008 3:27 PM

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132. 132. Patrick 027 02:34 AM 4/29/08

     Clarifications and addendum to comment 136:
     
     What I meant about people 'miraculously' being who they are:
     
     1. With so many people, while you would be very surprised to win the lottery, you may expect that often someone out there does win it. Yet it is very unlikely to be any one person.
     
     2. Life didn't have to turn out exactly as it is to still be broadly similar (cells, ecosystems, predator-prey/parasite-host/endosymbionts-etc, development of land creatures, development of senses, development of inteligence, development of a science of evolution (and some of these are 'optional').
     
     3. I might come back to origin of life issues sometime but fore the next few weeks I'll have to put a moratorium on blog participation.
     
     ---
     
     Global warming:
     
     The economy and ecosystem are connected to each other, are parts of each other.
     
     Unless many people are no longer carbon-based hominid lifeforms in 50 to 200 years from now, we can include nutritional needs and wants (I think chocolate and maple syrup should remain available!) in long range planning. And shelter, education, jobs, etc...
     
     Some of the risks with global warming are not entirely physical/ecological but social/political/psychological/cultural. Human's deserve to keep psychological tendencies - liking scenery, good food, each other, appreciation of home... - but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm refering to is in part climate change's ability to inflame conflicts.
     
     Leading off of that note, back in the day, nomads could wander with out worrying about political boundaries (well, tribes would have territorial disputes, I suppose, but there wasn't a border fence). (They also didn't have the luxury of having so many possessions to worry about).
     
     [Pardon the typos, I'm working on a tight time budget]
     
     --
     Edited by Patrick 027 at 04/28/2008 7:36 PM

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133. 133. Patrick 027 01:27 AM 4/30/08

     Another point on probability of life:
     
     It isn't necessary for all our DNA to even be all that similar to what we have, for this conversation to be taking place.
     
     We could have had the conversation a year earlier, chosen different words, using a different language. We could have different food preferences. We could have descended from dolphins. We could have webbed feet and tails. We could have tetrachromatic vision. And still, one might wonder, what are the chances that everything ended up the way it did? It's just too unlikely. It must have been designed... Or else, we could have ended up as trichromatic-visioned mammals with opposable thumbs, typing on QWERTY keyboards...
     
     ---
     
     Those numbers of generations since time t - obviously that's just a sample figure, based on what I figured might be plausable, but others might actually have some idea of generation times for various past species.
     
     ---
     
     One possible scenario for the origin of life: (PS inspired in part by article in this magazine ~ a year ago?; Also, a book by Andrew H. Knoll ? ("Life on a Young Planet - the first 3 billion years of..." ?)).
     
     abiotic chemistry, energy sources and sinks maintain a state of thermodynamic disequilibrium. Some environments more favorable for occurences and concentration of certain substances. Minerals with catalytic surfaces (could some be chiral?). Serpentinization of Fe+2 bearing minerals (oxydizing Fe to a +3 state, producing reduced C, H substances). Reduced metals in meteors, phosphorus, non-racemic mixtures in meteors (circular polarized radiation from ...?). Atmospheric aerosols, cloud droplets circulating through air, water waves and sea spray... Landslides off of volcanic islands trap air in rock cracks at depths below ocean? (Highly speculative and possibly superfluous: Nearby supernova irradiates atmospheric N-14, C-14 produced in abundance, C-14 in sediments, decay to N-14, N free radicals combine with other elements to form HCN, etc..???) Shock waves in atmosphere from impactors, impact ejecta, sediments, hydrothermal vents, caves, ice caves?, freeze thaw, dry wet, convection cycles, redox, pH, other chemical gradients... Lightning, dust blows around, hurricanes...
     
     Some chemical complexity builds up.
     
     Some catalytic properties develop in organic substances. Might still depend on mineral surfaces and enclosed spaces. Chemical selection occurs - variation in properties. Chiral selection?
     
     Chemical reaction networks inhabit pores, mineral enclosures, stick to surfaces, until some substances are produced that form their own enclosures.
     
     Autocatalytic chemical reaction networks in enclosed spaces of own making; metabolism. Grow until physically unstable, split - or forced to split during flow through porous rock (see article - no time to track it down now). Compositional genome - daughter cells inherit composition of parent (lamarkian?). Mutations occur in part by chance chemical gradients during splitting, in part by changes in environment causing changes in nutrient supply.
     
     ---
     
     Cells that metabolize faster grow faster, split more, take over environments. Selection for higher efficiency. Perhaps specialization of enzymes, perhaps some substances specialize as proto-genome? Assembly lines ...
     
     Cells meet environment where RNA has been produced (see article in Acientific American ~ a year ago? - inset box mentions minerals that might have helped make RNA or some part of it). Metabolism of RNA. OR mutation of cell causes RNA to be produced. RNA a waste product. RNA accumulates. Accidents happen. RNA starts to do things.
     
     ---
     
     Specialization of genome substance, gene's copied multiple times, specialization of members of gene families, further specialization of enzymes, other proteins, other substances. Assembly lines... perhaps with rRNA, mRNA, etc.
     
     Selection of greater efficiency selects for more organized reproductive/replicative behavior. Each gene copied once (most of time). Programmed time for cell to split. Assembly lines...
     
     ---
     
     Different metabolic pathways evolve. Methanogens, methanotrophs. Photosynthesis. Fermentation. Oxygenic photosynthesis. Oxygen builds up in atmosphere. Evolution of ability to survive with oxygen. Respiration.
     
     Endosymbiosis -> Eukaryotes.
     
     Multicellular organisms.
     
     etc.
     
     ----------
     
     Many things can be lifelike - a crystal lattice 'replicates catalytically' by adding new layers when environmental conditions are right. Thunderstorms can seed new storms with gust fronts. Thunderstorms metabolize energy in the atmsophere, as do larger scale atmospheric phenomena. Hurricanes metabolize warm water. The atmosphere and the economy (especially the economy) can be thought of as ecosystems. Evolution by selective processes occurs in the economy, though reproduction isn't exactly how it typically works (growth, stasis, change, grow, stasis, shrink, change, grow ...).
     
     Memories of climate and other things are stored in the geologic record. But that memory is not interactive.
     
     What life (as also the brain) has is an interactive quasi-permanent memory that can accumulate over time. The genetic code.
     
     A compositional genome has some similarity, but (SPECULATION ON MY PART; I'M ONLY FAMILIAR WITH AUTOCATALYTIC NETWORKS AS A GENERAL CONCEPT): memory might be more fragile - some portion of old memories might ultimately fade when a new environment is encountered with new nutrients to metabolize. Thus it might be hard to accumulate a large memory. Genetic codes can also lose old memories with time as selective pressures change, but my guess is this is quite a bit slower than the former case, so memory can accumulate a lot more, I would think.
     
     Since much if not all of the phenotype is the genotype in the case of a compositional genome, evolution would be somewhat Lamarkian, I think.
     
     DONE FOR NOW.

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134. 134. Leader 09:16 PM 5/4/08

     Criminal Brief (http://www.criminalbrief.com/?p=798) dissects Expelled. The article includes a reference to Scientific American's June (or July) 2002 article.

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135. 135. sephers165 08:18 PM 5/9/08

     I am being open minded with this question since I am a Bible thumping creationist who generally refuses to listen to anything (I've learned that actually hurts my understanding more than it helps me). So please hear me out, I'm not trying to prove you wrong, I'm giving you an opportunity to show me why I am wrong.
     
     Why is it wrong for me to believe that all the species on earth were placed here at once and the ones we see today are just slight variations of the original species (Like poodles, and rottweilers are both dogs)
     
     Do you guys have any information on this, because for instance if we found a fossil that looks like it has similarities between two species of today, what is wrong with just believing that it was just a third species that existed at the same time as the other two and just had genetic similarities like many species do that exist today, but this one just went extinct. (Like there are similarities between Chimps, gorillas and humans, so if gorillas went extinct maybe it could be mistaken, that they were chimp's and human's common ancestor, since both share DNA with gorillas?)
     
     Does this make any sense? Any information would be helpful.
     
     Thanks

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136. 136. Patrick 027 04:26 AM 6/5/08

     Re sephers 165 -
     --------------
     "Why is it wrong for me to believe that all the species on earth were placed here at once and the ones we see today are just slight variations of the original species (Like poodles, and rottweilers are both dogs)"
     --------------
     
     You can believe that if you want to, but the evidence indicates otherwise. (I think you can always construct a logically-consistent alternative explanation, such as God creating the universe 10,000 years ago complete with fossils and photons en route as if from distant bodies (or a few seconds ago complete with all the neural networks of your brain) - but that's not a scientific answer.
     
     Following the patterns (and the inferred causal relationships) of the present, one can infer things about the past using the geologic record and physics, chemistry, etc. One can try to 'predict' the past just as one may predict the future, assuming unchanging underlying patterns (physics) - or if the patterns are found to change, search for a deeper pattern that doesn't change but encompasses the changes of the other patterns, etc. To test the theories involved, predictions can be made about what additional data would look like, and then that additional data can be searched for and/or gathered to test the predictions. The data doesn't have to be from a lab experiment or a future event - it can be from newly uncovered fossils (or additional study of already known fossils).
     
     The fossil record and other aspects of the geologic record go back too far to just stop at an original dog. Poodles and rottweilers both descended from a common dog ancestor (PS how do we know this?) that descended from wolves that along with other placental mammals descended from some placental mammal that descended from a mammal that descended from a reptile that descended from a fish that descended from a chordate that descended from some multicellar animal that respires that descended from a eukaryote ...
     
     PS note also that it is possible to place constraints on what the picture is without knowing all of it.
     
     --------------
     "Do you guys have any information on this, because for instance if we found a fossil that looks like it has similarities between two species of today, what is wrong with just believing that it was just a third species that existed at the same time as the other two and just had genetic similarities like many species do that exist today, but this one just went extinct. (Like there are similarities between Chimps, gorillas and humans, so if gorillas went extinct maybe it could be mistaken, that they were chimp's and human's common ancestor, since both share DNA with gorillas?)"
     --------------
     
     Generally speaking, that could be a possibility, but for specific cases it may or may not be supported by evidence. For example, it is understood that humans, chimps, and gorillas had a last common ancestor, more recently than that ancestor of those and of, say, dolphins. But any given related species found in the fossil record may or may not be that last common ancestor; the relative timing in the record is obviously of great importance in constraining possibilities in relationships.

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137. 137. CptSnark 01:48 PM 9/12/08

     let every creationist flunk science class.
     they can go to seminary and argue about what species of turtle carries the earth on it's back.
     
     Keep Science and Math scientific and mathematical.

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138. 138. True Believer 11:43 PM 1/29/09

     Your six posits that undermine Ben Stein's film in your mind are the exact reasons I stopped subscribing to your trash magazine years ago.
     
     I read your multi-issue discourse some years back about "evolutionary theory" and why the anti-evolutionists were nut cases. And with a very open mind I was very interested in how you were going to finally settle the argument. Your article's said absolutely "nothing" and was as unitelligible as is the theory.
     
     It was then and there I decided that your publication was more political than scientific and was no longer of interest to me. Just like the 6 posits - what the hell does any of that have to do with the premise of the film - nothing.
     
     I'm afraid Scientific American is filled to the brim with idiot writers and staffers and has not one iota of intelligent thought in it articles, rather you have an agenda - end of story.
     
     Quite frankly I find liberal atheists such as your people have the lease amount of intelligence of anybody and are far more prey to causations based on emotion rather than thought.
     
     Have a nice day - we'll keep looking out for you - regardless of your quixotic notions!!

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139. 139. Darwin Harmless 04:27 AM 4/24/09

     On my website I have described "Expelled" as a hate film. Some take exception to this, but what is the difference bettween calling a Jew a "Christ killer" and saying that a atheism automatically leads to fascism and eugenics? I object to religious people claiming a lock on morality, even more than I object to their ignorance and stupidity. I think all atheists have a duty to speak out against this kind of thing. For too long we've given religion a respect it does not deserve.
     I invite you to read my comments on "Expelled" at http://www.themaninchina.com/issues.htm and would welcome any feedback.

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140. 140. Maximus Peperkamp 09:19 AM 9/7/09

     Thank you Ben Stein for your self-promoting, stupid movie, which is surely going to speed up the process of keeping those who still oppose Darwin out of science and out of the teaching profession. Your pandering with the Holocaust to promote Creationism is disgusting. People like you may be able to put many things on their resume, but scientific credibility is never going to be one of them.
     -Maximus Peperkamp
     
     
     

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141. 141. Maximus Peperkamp 09:42 AM 9/7/09

     
     Thank you Ben Stein for your movie, which is surely going to speed up the process of keeping all those who still oppose Darwin out of science and out of the teaching profession.
     
     Your pandering with the Holocaust to promote Creationism is both dishonorable and disgusting. People like you may be able to put many things on their resume, but mind you, scientific credibility is never going to be one of them.
     
     Lastly, I want to comment on your voice, which because of its pessimistic, depressive qualities has sales potential. If I feel drained by listening to you, I can only begin to imagine how you must feel. Those who buy into your message tune into your misery and pretension. You have nothing else to offer.
     -Maximus Peperkamp MA

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142. 142. kaleid11 12:02 AM 12/11/09

     In peer-reviewed scientific journals, scientists provide conflict of interest statements to certify that their data are unbiased by conflicts of financial interest, etc. I find it interesting that this documentary is the product of Motive Entertainment and Rocky Mountain Pictures. A quick google search of these companies would suggest that this is not an unbiased production, but rather another piece of media to push creationism into the mainstream. "Motive was founded by Paul Lauer, who has pioneered the development and marketing of media, entertainment, and consumer products worldwide for the last 20 years. Lauer is also one of the most well connected entrepreneurs in the family, values, and faith-based Markets."- direct quote from their website (http://moviemarketing.biz/aboutmotive.html)

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143. 143. Slann 08:23 PM 12/13/09

     This was a repulsive and cynical excuse for Ben Stein to exhibit his meanest voice-over attitude while mocking science. He never puts forth any "evidence" for "intelligent design/creationism", but spends quite a lot of time commiserating with those who have been (quite rightly) ostracized for suggesting creationism has any legitimate claim to being a plausible hypothesis for the origin of species on earth.
     In fact, he seems to go out of his way NOT to discuss what "merits" creationists believe their explanation may have.
     Instead, he attempts to trap people into explaining they don't know precisely what animated organic compounds in that initial "spark of life" billions of years ago (on this planet). This is certainly a withdrawal from a direct debate of Darwin's theories, as he changes the subject!
     I got a very queasy feeling as I watched this. I fear Stein's politics and beliefs are rooted in 19th century mysticism and ignorance.
     He doesn't appear able to perceive why many hypotheses don't bear up to scientific scrutiny.

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144. 144. NotBrainwashedByAcademia 11:10 AM 1/17/10

     Wow I'm completely shocked that a magazine that is a proud part of the establishment would be against a movie that exposes what a joke "the establishment" has allowed itself to become. Pretending that people are incredibly smart when they're not stupid at best just because they follow the party line is a big part of the reason that we're losing our standing in the world, the pathetic amount of intellectual openness in classrooms throughout America is another big part, George W. Bush was a very small part (and at least he prevented further attacks, something Obama seems incompetent to do..guess that's what happens when you elect someone with no experience because you like their smooth talking!)

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145. 145. Digital Samzon in reply to jjreding 08:21 AM 2/27/10

     For this they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water,
     
     This is taken from II Peter. How interesting that this verse from a non-scientific book, addresses a point in science.
     
     And what do Evolutionist do with the verse in Genesis that command Adam to Replenish the earth?
     September 11, 3 B.C. makes for an interesting Google Search.
     
     

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146. 146. Rod Farmer 12:03 AM 7/24/10

     The "Big Bang" is the mind of God touching the Holy Ghost, pure void, or what is beyond the speed of light; creating a specific binary chain reaction that leads to life. (Therefore your super-collider will never reach the speed of light.) Science and Religion are one and the same, each half truths. Ben Stein has much to reason out. But a university degree is not a license to stop thinking either.

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147. 147. Rod Farmer 01:34 PM 7/25/10

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     Ben Stein has seen truth in religion, problems in science, and gone looking for answers. He has not found them because he can't detach himself from his feelings about the holocaust. But at least he's thinking. Perhaps he means that we are each responsible for our own actions but without a moral context even truth is monstrous.
     For a species to survive there must be an evolving moral imperative. Life must be worth living.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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148. 148. dadhaml 07:55 PM 10/3/10

     Ben Stein's 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed' for Christs sake. It is not unlike the various inaccurate presentations that purport to be the be all, end all, of factual narratives. An example is Al Gores foolish creation which received rave reviews from Hollywood which we all know for certain never lies or cheats on anything.
     
     Your own credibility become questionable when you refer to a Theory as though it is fact and dismiss, as did those who in the past claimed the World was flat, the possibility you are mistaken. Heaven forbid any of you realize and admit error.
     
     D.

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149. 149. Veritas1 12:11 PM 1/19/11

     I agree with some of your comments, mindless arguing and bashing are no way to have an argument.
     I, however, agree with Ben Stein's argument that ID should be allowed in schools.
     This is why:
     The origin of the planet(as stated by engr.student) is entirely based on faith. In either case, there was no one there and therefore all suppositions are just that, suppositions.
     Whatever you believe, I hope that you all believe in the right of free speech, and the right of a person/parent, to chose what their children are learning. There is still a law in effect that parents are in control of their children(under the age of 18.)
     You could argue that the Theory of Creationism is hazardous to a child's learning, but one could also argue that the Theory of Evolution also has negative affects-it goes both ways.
     Therefore, the fact that evolution as the ORIGIN of the creation is taught as a fact in public schools is biased toward the Evolutionist Theory, and against the Creationist theory. This is a fact.
     
     Secondly,
     Ben Stein's point that the Holocaust stemmed from a believe in Evolution is indeed true:
     -Evolution states that the strongest and best of the creation survive.
     -The Nazis believed they were a superior race to Jews, Pollocks, Gypsis etc.the strongest of the creation.
     -The Nazis used Evolution as a selling point for their theory(they, sadly, used guns and bombs and political ties as a way of carrying out their theory.)
     I will also point out that Hitler was a claimed Catholic and was supported to some extent by the Catholic church.(This also is incredibly wrong, for the highest crime-in my eyes- is using religion for the purpose of supporting war, crime, and any choice that places one man higher than another, for we are all the same in God's eyes.)
     
     
     
     

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150. 150. Veritas1 12:11 PM 1/19/11

     Many of your comments are just as biased and emotional as Ben Stein's(as John Rennie said above,) so please do not accuse him of the same things that you are doing yourself.
     
     (If I was talking, I would be out of breath by now!)
     
     My final point is this: If Ben Stein, and his movie/the Creationist Theory is wrong, then let it prove that it is indeed.
     

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151. 151. Veritas1 12:11 PM 1/19/11

     
     My *personal* opinion, and the opinion of many great Scientists both today and in the past(i.e. Isaac Newton, Bacon, Redi, Pasteur...all Creationists,) is this:
     
     God does not need to prove Himself to His creation, but He has put it in every mans' heart to know that He exists. Evolution is man's way of trying to dispel the still quiet voice of the Creator speaking to their hearts.
     
     There is no need for arguing for God, especially if arguing causes hatred and slander, but it is essential to find the truth AND encourage the study of both sides in today's schools.
     The truth will prevail.
     
     Please feel free to email me directly, i am sure many of my points do not agree with you.
     vanessjpierce@yahoo.com

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152. 152. gnagy 04:33 PM 5/7/12

     Sorry to wake you up but consider this info below:
     
     Never underestimate the power of human imagination run wild. They can even make monkeys out of us.
     
     On December 9, 2010 in The New York Times science writer Nicolas Wade wrote: "Anthropologists have been thrown into turmoil about the nature and future of their profession after a decision by the American Anthropological Association at its recent annual meeting to strip the word “science” from a statement of its long-range plan.?
     
     A NY Times (March 12, 1961) article, “There Are Neanderthals Among Us” that discussed fossil skeletons found in La Chapelle in Europe that turned out to be those of contemporaries who were bent over from bone disease.
     
     In pro-evolutionist Bill Bryson’s best seller, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” he writes about “The American Museum of Natural History Hall of Human Biology and Evolution in New York that has an absorbing diorama that depicts life-sized creations of a male and female walking side by side across the ancient African plain. The tableau is presented with such conviction that it is easy to overlook the consideration that virtually everything above the footprints is imaginary.”
     
     He asked the curator of the museum and paleoanthropologist, Ian Tattersall, if “he was troubled about the amount of artistic license that was taken in reconstructing the figures,? Tattersall replied, “It’s always a problem in making recreations. You wouldn’t believe how much discussion can go into deciding details like whether Neanderthals had eyebrows or not…We simply can”t know the details of what they looked like… If I had to do it again, I think I might have made them slightly more apelike and less human.?
     
     In 2004 National Geographic tested four paleoartists by giving them the same fossil bones at different times without telling them other paleoartist would be creating drawings from the fossils. The results were that not one of the drawings looked like the others and none of them had any body hair on them!
     
     This whole field has proven again and again that many of these researchers have lied and continue to lie. The most brazen and unfounded theories are proclaimed only to find the research was faked or non-existent.
     
     This is chicanery not science.
     This is imagination run wild not science.
     This is absolute fraud.
     
     Talk about honesty in the "sciences."
     

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