Posted by Mike O on: 12.06.2007 /
Here is a trailer for Ben Stein’s Expelled, which is being released in February. It looks like it may actually be a worthy opponent to the Nova Special we just talked about.
If it’s as scientific as it they’re are making it out to be, it should be very good.
For more in-depth information, go here - there’s a much better trailer on the “Playground” link.
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Comment by: Siamang
1 12/6/07 11:30 AM | Comment Link |Lie about science is more like it.
If ID proponents had any real science, they’d be proving it with experiments and publishing the results, not making movies.
These folks have got multi-million-dollar budgets to hire lawyers, make propaganda movies, etc. Why don’t they set up a lab? Okay, lets say they’re “expelled” from universities, not for gross incompetence in the field of biology, not for scholastic underperformance, not for using tricks to get around the safeguards of peer review, but for upsetting the status-quo.
Okay fine. Build a lab. Do experiments. Publish your results.
Here’s where it gets interesting. They DID build a lab.
But it’s TOP SECRET! YES! AWESOME! We are doing experiments in SECRET that will prove ID is true! That’s just like real science! One director is a retired business school teacher from a small Christian college! AWESOME! That’s a perfect cutting-edge science lab!
I’m sure they’ll be publishing their results on their website any day now. Oh, dang. It’s been a blank website for years with a “welcome, coming soon” message.
But, you know, they COULD publish it themselves. Intelligent Design advocates, frustrated that their (non-existent) experiments couldn’t even get published in those journals that (peskily) require evidence and peer-review, started their own journal!
Which would be awesome. This would be “put up or shut up” time. They could publish their methodology and experiments for all to see. Other people could use that methodology to see if they could reproduce the results that the Intelligent Design folks get. (That’s how science is done.)
So, in theory I should be able to read their journal, do their experiments and get the same results.
Except one thing. Even though they created their own journal, it went belly up years ago, because even THEY couldn’t come up with stuff to put in it. The last issue was in 1999. That was it. No more.
They have no science. Read it at the link above. Lots of speculation. Lots of guesses, lots of hand-waiving and hypotheses about the implications of their “theory”– as if they’ve already proven it and now they’re going to wrestle with the deeper implications and the way this idea will change the world. There’s stuff like “round-table discussions” and reports on their meetings and conventions. A lot of philosophy. A lot of abstract discussion and a few theoretical assaults on mainstream biology. No experiments. They’ve proven it their own satisfaction, now they just sit back and puff their pipes and wax philosophically about their privledged place in a universe created with them in mind. Just castles in the clouds.
Not ONE experiment has ever been done that confirms ID. Not one.
They make movies instead.
Yeah, real science.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
2 12/6/07 12:04 PM | Comment Link |Some of the atheists interviewed for the movie aren’t happy that they weren’t told it’s a Creationist movie:
PZ Myers
Richard Dawkins
New York Times article
Comment by: Siamang
3 12/6/07 12:52 PM | Comment Link |Gullermo Gonzalez, is one of those scientists that ID proponents are saying was denied tenure because of supporting ID. He’s an astronomer, not a biologist.
But anyway, he was denied tenure and a promotion to associate professor (though it’s not clear if it was because he was an ID supporter or if it was because of his lack of scholarly output.) Another thing is that tenure is not automatic. Lots of assistant professors don’t gain tenure for various reasons. Funding is limited, budgets are tight, and some people just don’t make the cut.
You know the saying in academia: “Publish or Perish”? Well, it looks like Gonzales didn’t, and so did.
http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2007/12/a_handy_graphictimeline_of_gon.php
But to hear the ID folks proclaim it, this was blatant discrimination, and an attack on ID. He’s still an assistant professor there. He wasn’t fired. He wasn’t drummed out. He just didn’t get a promotion from assistant professor to associate professor, a promotion that is not automatic.
Comment by: cautious
4 12/6/07 3:12 PM | Comment Link |Two things I learned here so far:
1) Expelled comes out on Darwin’s birthday. If they’d waited one more year, it coulda been on his 200th birthday.
2) This video is horrifyingly not funny. At least in my perception of funny.
Comment by: Siamang
5 12/6/07 3:49 PM | Comment Link |Actually I heard Expelled is getting its release date postponed.
Comment by: Siamang
6 12/6/07 4:00 PM | Comment Link |Wow, I clicked that link, Cautious.
I guess that’s why the movie is getting postponed. They’re too busy making flash animations like that, and trying to forment a cultural revolution in which Ben Stein is somehow ….
I can’t even come up with the words… what the hell is this stupid thing? I think what’s going on is that the filmmaker is really proud of the fact that he hired a (very) minor celebrity and he thinks he’s found the right wing’s answer to stephan colbert or something. It’s just wierd… is he trying to create some kind of a fan following for Ben Stein? Thinking the legions of Ben Stein fans are going to flock to his film? What the hell?
That video is just plain wierd. Kinda stalker-y:
“Did I mention I made a creationist movie? Oh yeah, and BEN STEIN is in it. Remember him? BEN STEIN? Yeah, THAT BEN STEIN. He’s in it. He’s all over it. He’s BEN STEIN! BEN STEIN is cool. In fact, he’s SUPER cool. He’s my best friend.”
Comment by: Pseudonym
7 12/6/07 5:14 PM | Comment Link |Perhaps this is a personal failing, but I tend to ignore anyone who uses the word “Darwinism”. It’s almost always a content-free word.
Comment by: Siamang
8 12/6/07 5:51 PM | Comment Link |More on Gonzalez.
Comment by: Blondie
9 12/6/07 9:03 PM | Comment Link |http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles_chron.htm
Comment by: cautious
10 12/6/07 11:28 PM | Comment Link |Siamang, I’m confused on the connection between Ben Stein’s Presidential campaign website and the Expelled website, eg, if the same people are involved. Someone else out there on the internet has probably investigated.
Pseudonym, I find the term “evolutionist” to be much more ridiculous. Being a Darwinist can just mean that a person agrees with Darwin’s ideas on evolution. In much the same way that Neo-Darwinists agree with the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. However, yes, the creationist side is very resolute in using the term “Darwinist” as if people worship Darwin and evolution. (Do Marxists worship Marx and communism?)
Blondie, good work mentioning the CRSQ, a creationist peer-reviewed journal that has been around since 1964. It’s weird how a creationist publication can still be around, but its younger relative ID can not fund a magazine.
There’s not much I really need to say about the CRSQ; how many scientific organizations require its members to accept religious tenants? I’ve been a student member of four scientific organizations and I’ve never had to say that I love Chucky Darwin, so why do they have to say they don’t?
To go back to pseudonym’s point, the CRSQ magazine instructs authors to avoid using the term “creationism”. In spite of the fact that they call their organization and magazine “creation research”, they know that attaching -ism to the end of a word automatically makes it less trustworthy. The creationist movement, a long time ago, figured out that framing their argument was more important than actually finding scientific support for their hypothesis.
Comment by: Pseudonym
11 12/6/07 11:56 PM | Comment Link |cautious: I agree with that, on the term “evolutionist”.
Quite frankly, I don’t think we need a word for someone who believes that evolution is a fact. What would you call someone who doesn’t believe in gravity?
Comment by: Siamang
12 12/7/07 12:41 AM | Comment Link |Derek Schwitters is the creator and head of “Loadstar Marketing Group.” They’re a marketing company specializing in website design.
Check the link. Their client list at the top of the page includes both “Expelled” and “Premise Media”.
Comment by: Outchurched » Blog Archive » Expelled: Ben Stein vs. “Big Science”
13 12/7/07 12:50 AM | Comment Link |[...] (h/t eBay Atheist) [...]
Comment by: SchriteFallow
14 12/11/07 2:56 PM | Comment Link |You guys are all missing the point… While you’re all caught up in the Evolution Vs. ID debate and supporting one side or the other, it’s NOT about supporting one side. It’s about an impeding of the FIRST AMMENDMENT of our Consitution by different organizations in our culture. It’s about a voice being silenced. It’s not about WHETHER OR NOT THE VOICE IS RIGHT, it’s the fact that the voice doesn’t even get to speak… which is an atrocity in regard to the Liberty and Freedom that America stands for…
It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about the RIGHT to say whatever the hell you want and how that’s being attacked.
Comment by: Siamang
15 12/11/07 6:59 PM | Comment Link |Hello Schrite,
Who is attacking whose rights to speak? It seems to me that nobody is being censored. Those folks who support Intelligent Design obviously have many, many, many ways to speak legally.
The folks who support standard evolutionary biology also have many, many, many ways to get their message out.
So you say that people are being “silenced.” How so? These people are making a movie. They’ve got TV shows. They’ve got a multi-million dollar a year think-tank. They issue press-releases. They have websites.
How is it that their voice doesn’t get to speak? Seems to me they can speak as loudly as they want, and they DO speak loudly.
Unless you know about anyone whose been arrested and held at Guantanamo for speaking verboten ideas, I don’t think you quite understand the concept of freedom of speech.
You do realize that the First Amendment only applies to GOVERNMENT censorship, right?
Do you know what government censorship is? It’s banned books. It’s tv stations with their transmitters shut down. It’s people rounded up and arrested. It is NOT “I taught intelligent design and my employer fired me from a teaching position.”
That is not censorship. Censorship is a muzzle. If these people can legally say what they want to say, they are NOT being censored by the government.
These people are playing the victim card. If their First Amendment rights really were in danger, they’d be arguing about it in front of the Supreme Court.
They’re not doing that. They’re making movies. If there really WAS censorship, you wouldn’t be legally able to watch the clip Mike’s embedded above.
(And no, to my knowlege, no jackbooted thugs from the Government Evolution Compliance Office have shown up at Off-The-Map’s door with a takedown notice.)
Comment by: Blondie
16 12/12/07 9:20 PM | Comment Link |Siamang,
I dont think that this film is saying that it is “illegal” for them to be supporting id. Rather, I think its referring to the scientists who have research that does not support evolution, but that feel like they can’t publish it without endangering their jobs (ex. being denied tenure).. And that this is resulting in a one sided argument in favor of evolution..
However, it is true that some id scientists do speak up.
I actually just started looking up some of the research in favor of id, and was surprised at how many holes actually exist in the evolutionary theory..
Im starting to have doubts about what i once thought about evolution…
Comment by: Siamang
17 12/12/07 10:01 PM | Comment Link |Blondie, which scientists have been doing this research, and why can’t they self-publish? Why can’t they publish anonymously? Why can’t they tell their super-secret techniques to the folks at the Discovery Institute and they can publish it for them?
Tell me, Blondie, what experiment has ever been done that confirmed Intelligent Design? Who performed it? What was their methodology?
You think there are holes in evolution? There’s no substance at all to Intelligent Design. Tell me, what’s Intelligent Design’s answer for how old the earth is? What’s ID’s answer for the question, ‘are humans descended from a common ancestor with chimps?’ ‘Did the designer design malaria and HIV?’
The ID folks have conflicting answers to these. You can’t pin them down. I smell a scam.
Ah, so how recently were you an evolution supporter? What is your education level on the subject?
Comment by: Pseudonym
18 12/12/07 10:34 PM | Comment Link |Blondie, first off, thanks for your comment, and your honesty.
I think there are enough people around who could address your doubts. I’d certainly be interested in knowing what they are.
(Disclaimer: I’m no biologist, but I do have a very thorough grounding in information theory, enough to know that the ID arguments that I’ve heard are really not arguments for anything at all.)
There’s a lot of good stuff on talkorigins.org, well-categorised on most topics you can think of, of course. But I don’t know of a “friendly” forum where non-experts could honestly ask questions and get answers without running into a lot of heat. Does anyone know of such a place?
Comment by: Blondie
19 12/12/07 10:52 PM | Comment Link |Well, if I knew the answer to all those questions there would be no reason for me to watch the movie!! hahaha
Yes
I was an evolution supporter in highschool… And I am working on my bachelors in biology right now
Comment by: Siamang
20 12/13/07 12:07 AM | Comment Link |And you’re swayed by the IDers arguments? I’d love to know which ones.
To answer pseudonym, we often have friendly conversations on the topic here. I’m fairly well-read on evolution, and there’s at least student of evolutionary biology who posts here regularly.
Comment by: Pseudonym
21 12/13/07 12:13 AM | Comment Link |Siamang: Sounds good to me, but this probably isn’t the right blog entry for it.
Blondie, what do you think?
Comment by: Siamang
22 12/13/07 12:56 AM | Comment Link |Ha! But we don’t have a discussion board anymore!
I honestly don’t see anything wrong with using this thread, if Mike doesn’t object (since it IS his OP).
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
23 12/13/07 4:46 AM | Comment Link |Blondie how about if you e-mail us what changed your mind about ID and evolution (you can use the feedback form) and we post it as a new topic here?
We used to say “let’s take it to the discussion board” if a conversation seemed to be going in a particular direction somewhat different from the original topic. Since we don’t have a discussion board anymore, how about we take it to a new post here instead?
Comment by: Pseudonym
24 12/13/07 9:29 PM | Comment Link |One more thing… I’d also be happy to discuss the… uh… creative theology behind creationism and ID, if it comes up.
It’s pretty clear from the “wedge document” that the basis for ID is, and was never, the scientific evidence, and nor was it ever about the Bible. It’s about the idea that something called “Darwinism” is responsible for something called “moral decay”. That’s an interesting topic in and of itself.
But yes, it would be best for Blondie to set the topic.
Comment by: cautious
25 12/14/07 12:03 AM | Comment Link |Oh wow this thread is still alive.
SF, I think Siamang covered most of the points you raised. The people in this movie seem to have, at most, suffered credibility issues and academic blacklisting. Which isn’t very surprising, the ID movement often times has to use untruth to advertise itself, and when its adherents redefine science to suit their needs, is it surprising that other scientists might be the tiniest bit offended?
Also, blondie,
I’m sorry you got either a substandard education in high school or are getting one now in college. The good news is that you aren’t doomed yet.
Comment by: Pseudonym
26 12/16/07 12:06 AM | Comment Link |cautious, I think that sort of remark is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to avoid.
When I was teaching science undergraduates, I used to tell them that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. I still believe that. I’m also optimistic about individual people.
I believe that most cdesign proponentsists believe this out of some genuine misunderstanding. (Those who are behind the movement are a different story, but we’ll leave that for another time.)
I think we can address the misunderstanding. Unlike the Discovery Institute, scientists are in the business of discovery, not the business of proselytisation. So I’m not thinking in terms of “conversion”. However, if there’s a misunderstanding, we can address that.
Comment by: cautious
27 12/16/07 11:44 AM | Comment Link |Pseudonym, if there’s no such thing as stupid questions, doesn’t that mean that there are stupid people? :-)
Yes, mea culpa, my attitude was not constructive, and yes, misunderstanding of scientific concepts is rife in this land. Most of the time, this misunderstanding appears to be due to one of two main factors:
1) the education system / American society failing to do its job in raising a critically thinking individual (what some hasty writers might call a substandard education)
2) an otherwise critically thinking individual’s own mental or ego blocks.
The first, yes, something can be done about this. The second factor… well, to abuse an old expression, you can lead a creationist to knowledge but you can’t make them think.
The internet is full, to the brim, of nincompoops. To go OT a bit, I once read a comment to a amazon.com book review about climate change warming which stated that trees emit more CO2 than human activity.
This person was full of misunderstanding, and several helpful people replied to the comment, but there’s no evidence, at all, that any educational moment happened here. I’m heavily pessimistic about online scientific ‘proselytisation’. The ability of people to not look at facts because they disagree with their opinion is made even easier when the person isn’t actually looking at the facts or dialoguing with an actual human being, but instead merely reading words on a computer monitor. There are mature, adult arguments that happen online, but they tend to be as rare as unicorns.
Why is this? Why does our species have the most advanced form of technological communication, and then abuse it by remaining ignorami? IMHO, the internet becomes a self-fulfilling positive feedback loop. It doesn’t matter what zany idea you have, you can find support for it online. Someone thinks Elvis is alive? So does some guy on the Internet, so he must be! Most people are not looking for truth, they’re not looking for facts, they’re looking for an authority figure to agree with. (really OT, is this why religious people tend to be convinced that evolution accepters are Darwin followers?)
From my experience, people who come to evolution v creationism discussions come there with their side decided and are not going to be swayed. I’m not being very constructive here, mostly because I fail to see a reward for constructive commentary. Blondie, please, I implore you, come back in here and let us know what’s going on in your mind. Otherwise this thread is kinda a three-person evolutionists anonymous meeting.
Comment by: Blondie
28 12/16/07 10:32 PM | Comment Link |Do you guys think evolution occured gradually, over a long period of time, or rapidly??
Comment by: cautious
29 12/16/07 11:06 PM | Comment Link |Blondie, I think it depends on the organism, the structure/behavior being evolved, and the situation.
To give a less general answer, I think that most speciation events follow the pattern described by Gould and Eldredge as ‘punctuated equilibria’, wherein a species shows very little in the way of morphological change for thousands (or more) of generations, and then a quick, rapid period of change occurs.
Comment by: Siamang
30 12/17/07 1:04 PM | Comment Link |Blondie,
What do you mean when you say “evolution” in this sentence?
Do you mean the process of evolution, as cautious takes it? If so, why the past-tense? Evolution is occurring right now… all life on earth is evolving.
Do you mean the history of evolutionary change on the planet?
If so, then the fossil record clearly shows a history of life on earth that took billions of years.
The next question is, what do you mean by “gradually” and do you expect me to answer the question for all life on earth, or just some life on earth? As cautious says, it depends on the organism. Some organisms at some times evolved really, really slowly, while others occured “rapidly”. But make no mistake, the word “rapidly” is used advisedly to mean “over hundreds or thousands of generations”.
Evolution is a gradual process. We have no evidence in the fossil record for anything like instantaneous large changes.
Comment by: Siamang
31 12/17/07 11:38 PM | Comment Link |Somebody has seen expelled and has given a none-too-kind review of it.
Sounds like the film doesn’t cover the science much at all, Mike.
I can’t say I’m surprised by that.
Comment by: cautious
32 12/18/07 9:56 AM | Comment Link |Well, as Pseudonym said up in #24, ID and creationism have precious little to do with science. Religious people disagree with evolution mainly because they think it causes moral decay or changes kids into nihilists, not because they have contradictory scientific evidence.
So it is the job of this movie to promote ID v science as a fight in the culture war, between Judeo-Christianity and us evil atheists. From the review, it seems like the movie tries its best at doing so, while apparently never discussing the science behind evolution or the ’science’ behind ID.
Suggested action day for when the movie releases: atheist families stand outside movie theatres, promising that their atheism doesn’t make them evil. (warning: self-identification as an atheist in the South not suggested)
Comment by: Pseudonym
33 12/18/07 7:30 PM | Comment Link |I agree with cautious, but would add one more thing.
This sentiment is, of course, found nowhere in any religion’s sacred text that I’m aware of.
Comment by: cautious
34 12/18/07 11:33 PM | Comment Link |Since most religions have a creation myth, it’s a safe (although not certain) bet to say that most religious sacred texts mention, somewhere, that animals and humans were created differently. This notion that humans are “mere animals” is repugnant.
To throw out a question, does anyone know what Hinduism has to say about humans and animals and their relation or lack thereof? I know that souls can be reincarnated between different species, but is that because species are related naturally?
Comment by: Stephan
35 12/19/07 8:41 AM | Comment Link |I’m really not party to this discussion, but I wanted to throw in that when I met Siamang online a few years ago I was basically an ID kinda guy and felt like evolution had huge holes in it. Through his tutelage I have come to realize that, A) evolutionary theory is the best idea out there, and 2) evolution is not antithetical to theism.
That said, I believe evolution explains the development of life, but science still can’t tell us much about the origin of life. Ergo, I can see how it works, but I still don’t know why.
Comment by: cautious
36 12/19/07 11:18 AM | Comment Link |I’m currently reading through Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, and I think it does a really good job at introducing the science and ideas behind evolution and then gives a quick (lecture-sized?) view at several transitions in life. e.g., to paraphrase a section, “its probably difficult to imagine how ichthyosaurs evolved, but, here’s some fossils that show how the evolutionary changes could have happened”
There is a chapter on origins-of-life research which discusses, in order: the oldest microfossils we have from North Pole, Australia, Stanley Miller’s experiments back in the 1950s and how successful that and similar experiments are at producing some complex organic molecules, potential scaffolding sites for early complex organic molecules, endosymbiosis, and then a summary section.
It’s a really quick review on some current and historical investigation into abiogenesis, but at the end of it I felt …well, no more educated on abiogenesis than I was before. Which is somewhat of a drag, all of the evolutionary transition chapters have been very good in talking about fossils that I never heard of because they’re not in the part of life’s family tree I care about.
The books that the author suggests in the “further reading” section for his origins of life chapter include:
The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview,
Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth,
and Life’s Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution
I have not read any of these last three books (I’ve had the last one on my amazon wish list for a few years now, I’m very obviously slacking in my science readin’) but they sound like they do good jobs at presenting what we knew and thought (as of publication) about life’s origins and should be worth the read if anyone in here is interested in seeing what we know (and what we think we know) about the naturalistic origin of life.
…or we could just hire Siamang to read all three and condense everything down into a podcast. He’s not a busy man, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
Comment by: Siamang
37 12/19/07 11:28 AM | Comment Link |Thanks, Stephan.
One thing that I feel I missed out on was the ability to speak theologically about the topic. I can give you my perspective, but since we don’t share religious beliefs, I felt like that part of that discussion was silent on my part.
I’ve since found an interesting blog by a guy named Steve Martin (not the comedian). It’s called An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution, and I’m really enjoying it. He’s got a great quote that I think speaks to the topic of your post, Stephan. It’s by the particle physicist and theologian Sir John Polkinghorne:
Anyway, check out the blog. It’s interesting.
Comment by: Siamang
38 12/19/07 11:36 AM | Comment Link |Cautious, the best thing I’ve ever read on abiogenesis is Carl Zimmer’s article for Discover, What Came Before DNA?.
I don’t think you’re going to get anything much better currently than this (except perhaps much more depth), although the relevant chapters in Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” give a (not as deep) summary of several of the various ideas. The extremophiles get short shrift in this Zimmer article, for example, and I suspect they’ll have something very important to say about the origin of life before the entire story is told.
Comment by: Stephan
39 12/19/07 12:42 PM | Comment Link |Siamang, good stuff on that blog. Thanks for the tip.
I am not going to go as far as “because science cannot show how life began, I believe in God,” because someday science will be able to show us much more than we already know. This “God of the gaps” theory is full of holes, so to speak, as the gaps get smaller and there is less room for God. I believe in God because of what I know, not because of what I don’t know.
Comment by: Siamang
40 12/19/07 12:50 PM | Comment Link |Cautious, I know you’re a fan of whale evolution. Did you check out Carl Zimmer’s new blog post today?
It includes a nice juicy Carl Buell illustration!
Comment by: Pseudonym
41 12/19/07 6:36 PM | Comment Link |Siamang, that’s a very interesting blog, thanks for the link. I respectfully disagree with a lot of what he’s saying, but the perspective is great.
Comment by: cautious
42 12/19/07 7:22 PM | Comment Link |Siamang, I remember reading a little bit about extremophiles in Rare Earth. I forget if it mentioned life being found in rocks? And the potential for life first starting underground, and then moving to the oceans?
I’m definitely not up to date on abiogenesis. My study organisms came a long time after :) And, cool, I had not seen that whale article, I guess I will have to read that Nature article.
Comment by: Siamang
43 12/19/07 9:56 PM | Comment Link |Read the discover article by Zimmer about abiogenesis. It rocks.
Comment by: Mike O
44 12/21/07 7:18 AM | Comment Link |Sorry I’ve been absent from my own party lately - some things came up that drew me away for a while work-wise, and I’m just now getting back. Anyway …
I can’t speak for all religious people, because frankly, I don’t know most of them. And lumping “religous people” all into one group is kind of a silly thing to do. I can only imagine the response I would have gotten if I had said something equally biased against all atheists. But that is neither here nor there.
But I can speak for myself on this - I don’t disagree with evolution because it causes moral decay - there’s plenty of moral decay even within the religious community. I disagree with evolution because the more I look at it, the more improbable it seems.
I went to the chiropractor a couple of weeks ago. He had a picture on his wall of the musculoskeletal structure of the face. In one picture, it showed the bones. In another, it showed the muscles, and in a third it showed all the nerves.
I was looking at that picture and noticed that near the eye, there is a notch in the bone. This is a little nook that a nerve goes through that somehow manages the face.
I look at that and think, evolution? Highly improbable. Design? More likely. Especially given that we all have this little “notch in the bone” through which passes the nerves to the face. How did the notch get there? By accident?
I was at the audiologist yesterday (I wear hearing aids). She had a picture on her wall showing all the bones, structures, etc. in the ear. Evolution? Highly improbable. Design? More likely.
We’ve gone around about this before and for me, it has nothing to do with moral decay or a rejection of God or anything like that. To me, I look at everything around me, and I see the balance in everything - yes, the good and the bad - and the different life forms, plants, animals, water, minerals, etc. I see that we only seem to have life on one planet in the entire universe (although I admit we could find it elsewhere, but for now, as far as we know, we’re alone).
I look at the evidence you say is evidence for evolution, and accept the evidence, but reject the conclusion. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me that the evidence leads to the conclusion that there is no external design(er).
I just don’t see how evolution is reasonable. I try, but it’s all too intricate and balanced to have happened by chance. But then again, I believe in a designer so design makes sense to me.
What I can understand, however, is why people who don’t believe in God believe in evolution. In that case it makes sense, for obviously, if there is no God, and I don’t believe there is any other intelligent designer, then it had to have evolved. So I understand that. And given all the evidence you have, fine.
But I believe there is a God. And all the evidence you see that leads you to the conclusion that no designer is necessary, it leads me to the conclusion that one is.
I see no evidence to the contrary.
Comment by: Mike O
45 12/21/07 7:31 AM | Comment Link |Siamang, I loved your kettle quote (#37)
Comment by: Mike O
46 12/21/07 7:41 AM | Comment Link |I just reread my post … when I refer to “evolution,” I mean a designer-less evolution. It could be that evolution was guided by an external design(er).
However we got to this point, whether by evolution or creation or whatever, I think God did it.
Comment by: Siamang
47 12/21/07 2:09 PM | Comment Link |No. The eye existed millions of years before the skull. The nerves of the eye are basically an extention of the brain. The skull grew around it, over millions of years.
But beyond this, I’m sensing a pattern here. It goes like this:
Mike O: Look at this (cool thing). DESIGN! I SEE DESIGN! No way is this random, therefore DESIGN!
Siamang, Cautious, Raghu Mani, et al: Well, actually we know quite a bit about how that formed, and really it wasn’t random, but it was formed by millions of years of trial and error on the part of natural selection.
Mike O: Okay, that one… but look, the Bacterial Flagellum! DESIGN! I see Design!!!
S,C,RM: Well, actually… (many, many pages refuting the idea that the flagellum was an engineered micromachine right off of God’s CAD program)
Mike O: Okay, sure. But LOOK! The EYENOTCH! DESIGN! DESIGN!!!
We can go over the evolution of the eyenotch, but the pattern is overwhelming, and really, why continue?
I think there is a default position with you, Mike. It’s :
if input $see = cool then declare “DESIGN!!”
You seem unable to grasp that a natural or even understandable process is able to create novel forms.
It’s as if you were unaware of the concept of erosion, and one day you came upon a babbling brook and said:
“Look at all these round stones in the water! They’re all rounded, yet the stones of the canyon walls are all sharp! There’s no way that these round stones are all just randomly in the water! Someone must have come here with a big dumptruck and dumped all these round stones in the water! DESIGN!”
Comment by: Raghu Mani
48 12/21/07 3:34 PM | Comment Link |Mike,
I was hoping not to get sucked into one more of these evolution/creation debates but, what the heck, here goes :-).
Anyway, most of my response has been made by Siamang so I’ll just add a couple of things.
It is interesting you mentioned the ear because, unlike the eye, ear bones do fossilize and we have a pretty amazing fossil record of the evolution of the mammalian ear from reptilian jaw bones. You can almost literally see it happening step by step.
There is a small writeup on talk.origins and, one of the links from that page takes you to Lenny Flank’s website which has an even better writeup. Unfortunately that website has exceeded its bandwidth quota and isn’t accessible right now but I am sure that will be remedied soon enough. The other articles on the site are well worth checking out as well.
Regarding eye evolution, PZ Myers talks about it here and here, there is an article on talk.origins here and there is a small PBS special about it here. Talking about the latter, the scientist involved has constructed a computer simulation that shows that a complex camera-type eye could have formed in around half a million years.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
49 12/21/07 10:52 PM | Comment Link |I’m not trying to pick a fight, I just see it different.
True statement. So sue me. I believe in God, why is it so hard for you to understand why I see design in everything?
Comment by: cautious
50 12/22/07 9:18 AM | Comment Link |I wasn’t trying to lump all religious people into one group, I was trying to lump the majority of creationists/ ID proponents (at least in the general public) into one group.
Some of us in the evolutionary biology / paleontology field think that trying to argue with creationists about science is counter-productive. This is based on the fact that the vast majority of scientific discoveries are available, in some form, to the general public, so the existence of creationism can not be attributed to just scientific illiteracy. Instead a mental / moral block exists, in which, to make it cartoonish in simplicity, evolution -> godlessness -> the Holocaust. This “Expelled” movie feeds people who think this way, which is why it’s so bloody annoying.
There are few other scientific areas that are as emotionally disagreed with as evolution. The utility (or lack thereof) of stem cell research and the existence and magnitude of anthropogenic climate change seem to be as emotionally charged. Often times, the people who are arguing for a viewpoint that is contrary to the scientific consensus are arguing based on faith, emotion, or opinion.
This confuses me here.
You are saying that your belief in a God leads you to the conclusion that a designer exists and that there is no evidence to the contrary.
But, you also say that it’s understandable that atheists come to the conclusion that there is no designer.
In light of your other conclusion, doesn’t that mean there is no evidence supporting the atheist position?
Comment by: Mike O
51 12/24/07 9:43 PM | Comment Link |There are data points. But atheists are only looking at things through one lens - science. If you only look through that lens, then you have to find a way for the data to come to a conclusion that is purely scientific, giving evolution.
But there is another lense - a spiritual lens. It seems unreasonably “lucky” to me that all these systems evolved by chance. Even with the data, the odds are so incredibly stacked against pure chance that evolution is beyond my ability to fathom. I don’t discount the data, I just see that the data also fits if there is a designer with a purpose.
I’m not talking about young-earth creation here - I’m just looking at the scientific data - data that supports evolution - and accepting it for what it is, and wondering why in the world people think this could *all* happen without a designer.
So yes, there *is* evidence supporting evolution. My point is that the same evidence supports ID. Maybe it’s a guided evolution. Maybe it’s a young-earth creation created with a history. Maybe it’s any number of things. But I see no reason to think this all happened by chance. Why is “chance” so important to evolutionists? Evolution works with a designer, too, and it’s much more likely that it happened that way - at least the way I see it.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
52 12/25/07 11:46 PM | Comment Link |Here we go again. Evolution is not anti-religion. There are plenty of religious people who do believe in a designer and evolution. The question is do you believe in a grand designer who set up the laws of nature and had things just work or do you believe in the one who had to keep tinkering to get things right. If you believed in the former you’d have no issue with evolution. Unfortunately your idea of God seems closer to tinkerer rather than grand designer.
Raghu
Comment by: cautious
53 12/26/07 4:32 PM | Comment Link |*shrug* Effects in the material world are assumed to be the result of material causes. That’s post-19th century science. Most (all?) social sciences use the same logic.
Comment by: Mike O
54 12/26/07 6:26 PM | Comment Link |I never said it was. But all the anti-ID bias here does give me cause to believe that where atheists are concerned, there is an inability to even consider that there are additional inputs to science. Evolution is not anit-religion, but atheists tend to be. I don’t mean to imply that that’s a good thing or a bad thing, just that it seems a reasonable conclusion.
Put another way, there are Christians who are evolutionists. but there aren’t any atheists who are ID-ists. That’s all I’m saying. Sure, it’s within the realm of possibility (it *could* have been aliens, not God). But c’mon - are there really any serious atheists out there who don’t believe in God AND don’t believe in evolution??
Comment by: Pseudonym
55 12/26/07 11:01 PM | Comment Link |That’s not my experience, but I can see how you could come to that conclusion by looking only at Pharyngula and Evolution Blog. You couldn’t come to that conclusion here.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
56 12/27/07 12:29 AM | Comment Link |That’s because science has certain ground rules and rule number one is that it has to be naturalistic. The supernatural has no place in science. Regardless of all their evasions and denials, the “designer” of the ID proponents is God who is most definitely supernatural. Saying “God did it” takes it out of the realm of science. That does not mean that it is not true - it is just that science has no means of testing such a claim. If all naturalistic explanations prove wanting, the only thing a scientist can say is “we don’t know” and hope that a naturalistic explanation turns up somewhere down the road. This point of view is held by nearly all scientists - regardless of whether they believe in God or not.
Says who? In what sense am I anti-religion? Only in the sense that I do not believe in it. I am not against the notion of ID because it involves God. I am against it because it tries to pass itself off as science when it is actually nothing more than religion in disguise. If people admitted it was religion and stopped pretending it was science, I’d have no problem with it. As I have said a couple of times before, I have no desire to convince you or any other ID proponent that evolution is true. My only desire in these discussions I have been having with you is to get it across that to be a science, a discipline has to follow certain ground rules and that by those criteria, ID does not qualify.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
57 12/27/07 10:14 AM | Comment Link |I knew I was going to be called on the “atheists tend to be anti-religion” comment, but that’s not what I meant. I meant it in the same way Raghu meant when he said “evolution is not anti-religion.” I merely meant that atheism and religion are mutually exclusive, not that atheism is by definition “against” religion.
Comment by: Mike O
58 12/27/07 10:23 AM | Comment Link |Yes, Raghu, I agree. I have come to the point where I understand why ID can’t be taught as science.
I think there are two different questions on the table here that are getting mixed together. Whether or not ID is a scientific approach (it’s not) is a different question from whether or not it’s actually what happened. Neither evolution nor ID will ever be “proven correct.” But we can approach the question scientifically and look at how things work and how things *may have* come to this point. And if that raises questions about design or God or whatever, just because the questions leave the realm of science doesn’t mean they’re not valid questions.
Comment by: Mike O
59 12/27/07 10:26 AM | Comment Link |I appreciate that. Me, too. Maybe the disconnect is that y’all are talking about whether or not ID is scientific, and I’m talking about whether or not it’s how things really occurred. That’s two different questions.
Comment by: Eliza
60 12/27/07 11:43 AM | Comment Link |Mike, atheists (or at least the vast majority of atheists) don’t subscribe to ID because it’s not an explanation - it just moves the problem or question from “how did things which look designed in the natural world come about” to “how did the designer come about” - or, “who designed the designer?”. This would be the root problem whether or not one thinks God was the creator, or aliens were. This is the problem of First Cause or the Cosmological Argument. (I know the discussion here is about ID v. evolution, not about the origin of life or the origin of the cosmos, but the same problem is there as you work up the ladder.)
Different question, perhaps rhetorical (because IMO it’s moot, given the whole First Cause problem above): For ID adherents, even if life/nature/everything appears to have been designed, how does that necessarily lead to the conclusion that any one particular designer (or group of designers) should get the credit? Why the triune God of Christianity, or Yahweh or Allah, rather than the powers, spirits, and forces behind any number of other creation stories?
Comment by: Raghu Mani
61 12/27/07 1:58 PM | Comment Link |I’m glad you understand where I am coming from. I’m sure there are a lot of people on this message board who do want to convince you that evolution is true. So your above statement may not be true in their case but it certainly is true in my case.
I am really not bothered about what other people believe unless it affects me in some way. The belief that ID is some kind of alternate scientific theory that should be taught in schools alongside evolution does affect me because it could end up compromising my kids’ education. The notion that believing in evolution means that you have to abandon your faith is another thing that could lead people to oppose evolution in schools.
Your lack of belief in evolution because of your personal faith in God is not something that bothers me very much.
Raghu
Comment by: Eliza
62 12/27/07 7:56 PM | Comment Link |Ah, yes, one of those “aevolutionists”!
Or would that be an anevolutionist? :-)
Comment by: Mike O
63 12/27/07 10:11 PM | Comment Link |Well, I can answer for myself … I’ve come to the logical (not emotional) conclusion that the God I believe in exists, and according to writings attributed to him, he’s the only one. I have my own extra-biblical reasonings as to why the Bible can be trusted as inspired, and thus why I am a follower of Christ rather than Islam, Judaism, Buddhism or any other theology.
It’s not provable - I know that. Without getting all “Christian” on you, it has to be experienced to be believed. I’ve experienced things that convince me that the God I believe in is real. But I can’t prove it via argument.
Comment by: Pseudonym
64 12/27/07 11:44 PM | Comment Link |Neither! Alpha privative is Greek, but “evolution” has a Latin root. “Non-evolutionist” would be more correct.
Now aren’t you glad you asked?
While researching that paragraph, I discovered that Darwin only used the word “evolve” once in any of his writings. He preferred the term “descent with modification”. It’s less snappy, but arguably more accurate.
Comment by: cautious
65 12/29/07 5:27 PM | Comment Link |It is two different questions, which in my mind, have the same answer (no), but can be argued and discussed and debated in two entirely different ways.
The first question can be answered in the courts, and I think all of us here agree on the answer.
The second question…well, scientists, not all of whom are non-theists, can hypothesize and/or show naturalistic ways in which stars can form, solar systems can arise, life could begin abiotically, organisms could become eukaryotes, humans could speciate away from other apes, etc., etc. And then the ID response is (to be glib) shrug, say “so what?”, and then invent supernatural answers.
The primary piece of evidence that supports the existence of an ID is the assumption that one exists. Mike, you yourself explain why you support ID: you read the Bible, you assume it’s true, and thus therefore life, the universe and everything must be explained by a Creator.
Assumptions are the basis for everyone’s subjective view of the universe around us, so I am not picking on assumptions. When assumptions stop a human brain from thinking critically, I get slightly concerned. When assumptions cause a human to interfere negatively in the lives of others, I get annoyed. Since that’s not happening here, well, I guess there’s no need to be annoyed.
Also, where the heck is blondie at? He or she could be learning from this insightful forum thread.
Comment by: Mike O
66 01/2/08 6:46 AM | Comment Link |From your perspective and assumptions (there is no designer), perhaps. But I could easily turn this statement around on you and say the same thing from my perspective with my assumption (there is a designer) - “And then the non-IDist response is (to be glib) shrug, say “so what?”, and then invent natural theories.”
Ah, if only there were a way to *prove* whose base assumptions are correct. But there’s not.
True statement. Except I would say “is most likely” explained by a creator - not “must be.” I could be wrong, I’m just pretty sure I’m not. :)
Me, too. Not ‘concerned,’ so much as interested in how easily people (including myself) accept what supports their assumptions and reject what doesn’t without critically examininging their assumptions. It has been a very good experience for me to seriously consider the plausibility of evolution.
Comment by: cautious
67 01/2/08 5:19 PM | Comment Link |This is my attempt to turn around my run-on sentence/paragraph on myself:
…doesn’t seem to have the same impact.
Anyway, I’m going to stop beating this dead horse, advertise for this book again, and hope that the new year is treating everyone well.
Tomorrow: I go to a wake, and get angry about Iowa caucus results.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
68 01/2/08 5:36 PM | Comment Link |The key difference in all of this is that I cannot just “invent” natural theories. All natural theories are constrained by the laws of nature. Any natural theory can be shot down if evidence is found that contradicts it.
Suppose I came up with a theory that the universe was created fifteen minutes ago. On scientific grounds, that could be disproved in less time than it has taken me to write this message. But if I put it into the realm of the supernatural by saying that God had done it (violating every known law of nature in the process), there is no way anyone could disprove this.
This is why there are hundreds of creation myths coexisting in the world today whereas the scientific theories of cosmic origin are down to one
Once again there is a difference here. Most non-believers have plenty of experience with religion. We have religious parents, relatives and friends. Often, our significant other is religious. Many of us were religious at some point in time. Our assumptions are being questioned all the time.
For me personally, my family is full of believers, my wife is very religious. With a couple of exceptions, all my close friends are believers. I’ve attended more religious sermons (Hindu and Christian) than atheist lectures. I’ve had my beliefs and assumptions challenged quite a few times.
I am pretty sure that there are tons of atheists out there who could say something similar. Would you be able to attest to having a similar kind of experience with non-believers? Pardon me for jumping to conclusions, but I doubt it.
Raghu
Comment by: onein6billion
69 03/20/08 9:25 PM | Comment Link |“I’ve come to the logical (not emotional) conclusion that the God I believe in exists.”
You wish to claim that this conclusion is “logical”. Quote from The Princess Bride - I do not think that word means what you think it means.