To Hell With Expelled! ...

Funny story: I thought it would be a good idea to collect and summarize the stories of the people who have been harassed, persecuted and even assaulted for teaching evolution and opposing creationism. It's a dismayingly long list. After I spent twenty-one hundred words laying out the moral problems caused by creationism — you know, little things like extra human suffering — I got a comment accusing me of endorsing a "No Rules No Morality" view of life.

Sigh.

But hey, it's Friday!

Well, just saw the dreaded movie you want to go to Hell, and I must say it is very interesting. And to think with all this fuss and the proclamations of the demise of the dreaded "Creationists" and "IDers", THEY CONTINUE! With all the billions of dollars behind "BIG SCIENCE" and the Academic monolith, the thousands of bloggers railing against it all (your "twenty-one hundred words laying out the moral problems caused by creationism"), it goes to show me that ID is much more dangerous to BIG SCIENCE then I first thought. After the Dover trial, I thought it had been given a death blow, but now a major motion picture! Hah! I just have to smile and say "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks"

On the off chance you aren't a troll, Roland, has anyone told you shouting doesn't make your point any better?
And all the billions spent on science is actually beign spent on science. The ID Creationists spend millions on propaganda, but the scientists spend their money on research. How come the Creationists don't produce any research?

First off ad-hominems don't work as arguments, they compensate for weakness in logic. Second it's not shouting, it's emphasis. Shouting is a loud physical vocalization with one's voice box, keying in capitals is just that, (geeeez cyber space really makes some lose contact with reality, tsk, tsk, tsk). Third one man's propaganda is another man's proclamation of the Truth, and Darwinism has had hundreds of years of propaganda, now it's crumbling. More than half of Americans now reject it, and spend millions countering it because they see it as a threat to the general well being of the average person. If you see the movie, note poor Dr. Provine in the film, obviously suffering from brain cancer, left with nothing but the abyss of his thinking, and the bankruptness of Darwinian influence that robbed him of his onetime faith that could give him hope and comfort in his time of suffering. Of the majority of Americans that reject Darwinism, those that are scientifically inclined in school right now will eventually become scientists (unless of course BIG SCIENCE starts monitoring people's belief systems before they are allowed to enter science as a career), and the "dreaded Creationist IDers" will become scientists doing research with the Design perspective. All evolutionary thinking or conclusions based on physical evidence can be interpreted from a Design perspective (actually science has nothing to do with it; it's the world view or perspective that determines the conclusions of the evidence). So you see the research is coming, but there is much of it already, I can't list it here but it's out there. One of the main points of the movie concerning this is: what if Science proves God or allows research to enter into an area of discovery of reality that just can't be reached with the false perspective of neo-Darwinism. Like discovering mechanisms of reality that bridge the meta-physical with the physical so evident in the almost alien super advanced technologies of the Cell. What's going on down there is so much more than just chemistry and nano-mechanics. It's evident that something so advance is occurring down there that has a meta-physical element just waiting to be discovered, but can't because neo-Darwinism says there is nothing meta-physical that bridges the physical. Exploring it from a Darwinistic perspective is hindering the understanding of it. And hindering the advances that could be discovered and used for things like a cure for cancer, re-engineering of broken cellular systems, utilizing the principles of it that can be used in macro technology of computers, mechanics, etc. etc. You Darwinists are just blind to all this.

First off ad-hominems don't work as arguments, they compensate for weakness in logic.

This is illogical. An ad hominem argument may be a bad thing, it may be a good thing. But if someone uses such an argument, it is not possible to then assume that the logical part of the argument is weak, and that the ad hominem part is a compensation.

You are obviously an illogical person. I will not, therefore, bother to read the rest of your comment.

Again weakness, and an inability to address the heart of the matter. A feeble attmpt and another ad-hominem. And you with several PHDs and an MD. Tsk, Tsk, Tsk

Ya. Damn scientists blocking research that could save people's lives. Like stem-cell.

...

Wait. If "Science proves God" doesn't that remove the possibility of faith? Does that mean everyone becomes an atheist?

Or we could let some scientists continue thier research in Eugenics, help evolution along, finish in creating the "Master Race", then "select out" those pesky inferior minority races.

...
Logic flaw: the negation of faith is not atheism. Whether you believe in God or not, means you believe in one or the other, or whatever. The negation of faith is believing in nothing.

Roland,

Please tell us about the scientists who are doing continued research in Eugenics. Be specific.

Thank you.

The negation of faith is believing in nothing.

In a word, atheism.

Elizabeth, I was being fecetious to kid's first comment. I know no one is doing Eugenics research anymore (THANK GOD!). The point I was implying to kid's comments on stem cell research is a question of morality. Science misapplied, without a framework of morality, can lead to terrors that led to 6 million Jews being horribly murdered. The origin of this view was from a Darwinistic perspective that saw them as inferior, necessitating elimination as a form of accelerated natural selection. I'm not making any moral judgement on stem cell research (as of yet), but some do consider it as immoral.

Skemono, you haven't thought it through. Atheism is faith in no God. Faith is not negated in atheism, what's negated is the object of faith.

I do not believe that umpa lumpas exist. Is that faith?

Science misapplied, without a framework of morality, can lead to terrors that led to 6 million Jews being horribly murdered. The origin of this view was from a Darwinistic perspective that saw them as inferior, necessitating elimination as a form of accelerated natural selection.

Of course it is.

Skemono, you haven't thought it through. Atheism is faith in no God.

Of course I've thought it through, and I've seen the "atheism is just another faith/religion" bullshit far too often to even be annoyed by it anymore.

Atheism is not "faith in no God". That doesn't even make sense. Atheism is the working assumption that no god exists--i.e., no faith that it is real.

I guess you have thought it through, you just don't like it. You fit he term "faith" the way you want it (so I guess if you don't want 2 + 2 = 4, you change it to 2 + 2 = 5). Faith is "belief in" without giving it an object of the preposition "in". You both define faith as "belief in God". OK so what is your term for "belief in" regardless of the object of the preposition? So let me term it another way: whether you believe that God exists, or belive that God does not exists, you are not eliminating or negating belief. So whether you are a theist or an atheist, belief persists (you can say the sky is red but it doesn't change the fact that the sky is blue).

Roland, creationists have been predicting the imminent demise of the theory of evolution since the theory was first posited (then again, they've been predicting the imminent arrival of Jesus Christ for almost two thousand years).

Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a post made just for you: William Dembski: Prophet for Hire

Elizabeth, I was being fecetious

I'm gathering that this means you trying to be funny while instead being full of crap...

MH, I for one (and most like me) am not predicting the demise of evolution. It's an idea, and I believe in the free exchange of ideas. I just know it's false. Not the whole theory, just the origin of life part and the species transformation part. Change over time is of course evident and true, species modification due to environmental changes is also true, but it takes a massive extrapolation to get from these, to species transformation which is not supported by the evidence. And as Ben Stein called them, "replicating joy riding crystals" as one of the best evidences is p-r-e-t-t-y weak evidence. Going from a replicating crystal to the hugely sophisticated information processing systems of DNA & RNA, that are doing thier processing about 25 trillion times a second within each of our bodies, all in sync with each other, and the transformation of fish to amphibians, to a land mammals, back to a sea mammals, by mere chance in four billion years, (no not four billion, fish did not appear until about 500 million years ago, and mammals until about 200 million, so much less then four billion), is what I would call a "LEAP OF FAITH", NOT SCIENCE. I certainly believe that this idea can be discussed and taught. But to teach it as scientific fact is a contradiction to the scientific method of establishing scientific Truth.

And in reference to the "Second Coming", yes this is religion and should not be taught, discussed or equated as science, but how this relates to the evolution discussion I don't know. Actually I do know, its called the "red herring" or "Ignoratio elenchi" argument which is a well known logical fallacy, used to take focus off the target of the debate and place it on something else that has nothing to do with the target but is easily refutable instead of the target.

I guess you have thought it through, you just don't like it. You fit he term "faith" the way you want it (so I guess if you don't want 2 + 2 = 4, you change it to 2 + 2 = 5). Faith is "belief in" without giving it an object of the preposition "in". You both define faith as "belief in God". OK so what is your term for "belief in" regardless of the object of the preposition? So let me term it another way: whether you believe that God exists, or belive that God does not exists, you are not eliminating or negating belief. So whether you are a theist or an atheist, belief persists (you can say the sky is red but it doesn't change the fact that the sky is blue).

What the fuck are you talking about?

Guess it goes right over your head, eh Skemono? Oh there's a typo, "he term" should be "the term" at the beginning. Read it slowly again, and try to not let all the "F-words" floating around in your head, cloud up your thinking.

Roland, does popping in and smugly lecturing people on your semantic stylings make you fell better? 'Cause it ain't winning hearts or souls, you know. If there was a wavering mind reading this thread, I think you've made your faith look less appealing than Greg usually manages.

The phrase you're looking for to describe what we do is "weighing the evidence." It's a lot more work than faith, but unlike faith, it produces results that are useful in the real world.

And next time you want to convince an atheist of something, you might consider that they've been weighing the evidence for a while. An atheist isn't an atheist solely because s/he's never met anyone who thought they just needed a little more information. The word for the idea that you'll be the one to waltz in and supply that miraculous piece of data they've lacked is "pride." I think your bible has something to say about it if you need a reference on the topic.

Stephanie, if you think I'm trying play the role of the Evangelical Christian and win souls, then you've totally missed my message in this thread. I AM an Evangelical Christian, but my purpose in this thread is definitely NOT evangelism to "win hearts and souls". There are many more platforms to do that. What I am doing here is to show that the bankruptcy and falsity of macro evolution is now becoming more and more evident to the main stream where it's consensual rejection is becoming more and more prevalent. The monolithic wall of protection in academia for Macro Evolution is now being chipped away, just as Stein portrayed in his film Expelled. Again like MH, you are simply presenting a "red herring".

Roland,
You should try taking some biology classes at a respectable University where you live. You'll see that what you just described is quite the opposite of what's really going on.

So you came here to sing, "Nyah, nyah," at people who are working harder than you are to understand the world as it is? How very playground. It might have more impact if you could use words as they're defined in the dictionary to do it instead of having to make up your own definitions. Or did someone make them up for you, like your "arguments" against evolution?

Go away, child. We're neither your monkeys nor your windmills.

Roland, I am not a biologist but I think you are, as S.Z. suggests, tilting at windmills.

And as Ben Stein called them, "replicating joy riding crystals" as one of the best evidences is p-r-e-t-t-y weak evidence.

Have you any idea of what hypothesis is being misrepresented here?

transformation of fish to amphibians, to a land mammals, back to a sea mammals, by mere chance in four billion years,

Not by mere chance. You really don't have a clue about the theory of evolution, do you?

BTW Roland, as far as I can make out, not one of the poor, persecuted victims in 'Expelled' was actually expelled from anything, unless they mentioned the guy who lost his new job because he refused to do what was clearly laid out in the advert.

Ok folks, the weekend's over I enjoyed the debate but I gotta get back to my day job, so this will be my last post. As far as I can tell most refuting posts to me are ad-hominens or red-herrings, which don't merit response. But two comments by Richard and Serena merit refutation. They imply that I don't really understand evolution. The implication being that my proposition of "mere chance" has nothing to do with the process of natural selection, unpurposely directed by environmental pressure or stressors, acting upon an organism to transform it from one species to another. In other words once the organism exists (which is an impossible hurdle in itself for evolution), the environment, and natural selection remove the element of chance. PERPOSTEROUS! Evolution is fundamentally defined by random activity (chance) occuring within an environment, without direction, without purpose, to create and transform organisms. Once you remove the elements of randomness, purposelessness, and directionlessness, what do you have: INTELLIGENT DESIGN!

Oh, some are theistic evolutionists but this is a cop out and dishonesty. And I agree with atheists in that theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms. It's like saying God created 15 billion years ago without the intention of creating life, then came back 11 billion years later and said "Geeeeez look what happened! Guess I gotta go in now and control everything".

Oh, I do love how the "Big Science" parrots squawk about ad hominem attacks. It's almost as nice as the way Roland declares something substantial only when he doesn't think anyone can refute him. But then, I like my irony in big doses.