They couldn't even get the title right: A Meeting of Minds. It's more like a meeting of the mindless. Ben Stein has had a friendly meeting with that old fraud, Ken Ham, and apparently they were perfect for each other. The sexual tension is palpable in the accompanying photo; the mutual praise flowed like champagne between the two of them, although Ham finally won the prize for high sycophancy.
Expelled is hosted by the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer—a 21st-century Einsteinian figure.
Einstein? They're comparing a 3rd rate actor best known for playing the most boring high school teacher ever to Einstein? I think there must have been a few typos in that article. Here, I fixed them.
Expelled is hosted by the soporific Ben Stein, character actor/failed economist/eyewash huckster/Nixon apologist/creationist—a 21st-century Pecksniffian figure.
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Sure. Weren't you aware of Einstein's stint as a speechwriter for a president who had to resign in disgrace?
My god, he's a renaissance tard.
He's sucked at so many things.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
"science observer".
einstein was not a "science observer". einstein was a scientist.
these people are so clueless.
Expelled is hosted by the soporific Ben Stein, character actor/failed economist/eyewash huckster/Nixon apologist/creationist--a 21st-century Pecksniffian figure.
Damn. I mean, I don't like Bet Stein either, but...
Damn. Somebody got told.
I see no great rush on the Black Market to make cheap copies of "Expelled" - or is there is a special 'Christian' bootleg market with copies for sale behind the church?
Just when you think Stein couldn't sink any lower, he does. Einstein said it long ago, Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And he wasn't too sure about the universe.
Stein is playing a weird and dangerous game. In times past, the most antisemitic segment of the US population were the fundies. While the leadership might have learned to lay off of Jew bashing, the rank and file are always very slow to get the message.
Ham is just a Falwell/Dobson/Robertson class religious extremist. A truly evil human being who disgraces that species.
"Science observer"
And yet, on 'Win Ben Stein's Money," he ALWAYS sucked at the science questions. It was predictable: if it was a science-related question (especially biology), he would get it wrong more often than not.
I love it.
No need to buy a shovel for Mr. Stein, now is there? Keep digging Ben,,,
Does Stein not realize that the fundie crowd considers Jews to be useful idiots, to be thrown from the bus (and then run over) when the time comes?
...Well, no, probably not.
From the article:
and
How can someone who is NOT a Bible-based Young Earth Creationist call a museum with dinosaurs wearing saddles in it "wonderful?"
Intelligent Design is a form of creationism crafted to fool and suck in moderates. It mimics the rhetoric of "theistic evolution" and adds in enough science-y sounding arguments on flagella and statistics to appear to be a reasonable halfway between YEC and "atheism." Teach the controversy; let students make up their own minds; the theory is a product of its times; the theory inspires racists. Those are all lures directly designed to catch the educated and more liberal mainstream.
So what's with endorsing Ham's incredibly stupid museum, which goes full-tilt boogie for the most extreme form of Creationism -- one that is rejected by the very mainstream ID is after?
Stein must not think there's a lot of communication between Christians.
Had to look that one up, but it's perfect.
You learn something new every day.
(Actually I learned something else today too--Galapagos marine iguanas and land iguanas occasionally hybridize!)
The "palpable" sexual tension (whose "palps" are we talking about, by the way?) is so intense in the photograph that Ben Stein looks like he is about to pass out.
Or fall asleep.
oh i get it ben stein ...einstein. It's a rhyming game.
ken ham ..sham i suppose, knew my english lang. 'o' level would be handy.
I'm just happy they found one another. Life is lonely without a soulmate.
Oh, wait... you need a soul, first.
Never mind.
Glen, re: "Renaissance tard".
How about 'Polytard'?
Polymuff?
Using the verb meaning of muff.
Well, Stein already had Glenn Beck halfway up his arse. Now it's just getting positively crowded with stupid up there.
Like Lewis Black said:
"They are crazy. They are stone...cold...fuck...nuts. I can't be kind about this, because these are people are watching The Flintstones as if it were a documentary."
To be expected from them. I am, however, interested in seeing how the mainstream media spins this movie once it is released.
Pecksniffian = unctuously hypocritical.
It's not at all surprising that AIG would compare Stein to Einstein, since, as we all know, Einstein was well known as a YEC and fundamentalist Christian.
The sexual tension is palpable
Isn't Ham more attracted to piglets?
oh, wait...
I guess Stein is rather porcine.
still, isn't he too old for Hammy?
Courtesy of Internet Infidels' forum, I see there's a YouTube video of Stein being interviewed by religious nut RC Sprouls. Sorry if this interview has been linked to before.
Ben may be a failed economist but it looks like he's smart enough to start shoring up his retirement by getting on the pandering, science-denialist gravy train.
Once again PZ, you made my day with this one.
"Of Two Morons" could be their blogspot.
talk about desperation:
quote from AIG:
"1)Call or go to your local movie theater and ask the manager to show the film. If you are not sure where/whom to call in your area, then call this toll-free number in the U.S. and someone will share that local information with you: 800-705-0485.
2)Go to your church leadership and encourage them to buy out a local theater so that Expelled could be shown there--and then make sure as many people from that church attend as possible.
3)Send the following e-mail link about the film to your email contact list: www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php and also send them this AiG article you are reading.
These actions are key to a successful promotion of this heroic film, for a backlash is already building against it by the evolutionist community.
Ken Ham declares that this movie "is a must-see. Encourage your local school board members to watch this well-produced documentary. Even pay for their tickets, but get them there! This is a much-needed perspective on the erosion of freedoms in America.""
end quote from AIG.
To someone with the intellect of Ken Ham (the 21st Century DuhVinci figure) Ben Stein might well appear brilliant.
That's strange! I only just learned about Pecksniffian the other day and here it comes up.
The best picture was the AIG title banner with the majestic sauropods and what seem to be minute pronghorn antelope on a rolling prairie. It's kind of beautiful in a jarringly inaccurate creationist sort of way.
"Of Two Morons" could be their blogspot.
"Brokebrain Mountain"
My dog is a science observer.
And as far as he is concerned, I am his god. When I tried to tell him I intelligently designed him he turned around and licked himself. Who's the god now? ;)
Einstein reacts:
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/architecture/oregon/xeinstein.html
Literal ROFL!
Sweet finds PZ and QrazyQat!
Here's an old limerick that I've updated:
The remarkable family Stein,
There's Ep, Gertrude and Ein,
Ep's sculptures are junk
Gert's poems are bunk,
And nobody understands Ein.
There's also a cousin named Ben,
Who hangs out with a Ham-let named Ken,
Though Ben was once funny,
Now he's all about money:
"I'll shovel your shit for a ten!"
Heck PZ, your revision is much too mild! Here let me do a
fix job on the moron's resume: "A half-witted, slurry
mouthed clownish moronic dolt, whose freaking non-existing
god molded him from the bowels of it's rectum instead of
the bowels of the earth, and whose every breath of insane
puke purports to be mildly intelligtent, but does not
know enough to realize that his rectum is supposed to
function at the other end for the excrement of deranged
religious crap."
QrazyQat -
I went to the Stein-Sproul You Tube discussion. I hadn't seen it before so thanks. I have to give Ben props for calling ID a hypothesis (rather than a theory) and to Sproul for acknowledging that it's a philosophical argument. Possibly unintentionally.
After that it's all down hill beginning when they both express their incredulity that complexity is so complexly complex that invoke God is the only logical thing to do (I mean really, really deep down passionate intuitive intuition...really...very deep down.)
The next 15 minutes, that I could get through, was Ben and Sproul mutually abusing the freedom-of-speech, the something-out-of-nothing, and the chance strawman arguments to support their incredulity-driven, gut-instinct God hypothesis. I left before they could climax - couldn't take the risk of having that burned into the old thought factory.
Sounded an awful lot like the endless circular discussions that would occur outside of 100- or 200-level philosophy class (or in high school sans the benefit of intro philosophy) about the meaning of life and like god and stuff. Maybe throw in a bong and some serious herb. Damn, now I'm hungry.
If you want to hear the Florida press conference with Stein, Luskin, etc., go here:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/03/listen_to_ben_steins_comments.html
I'll warn you, it's horribly stupid. Stein really sounds retarded on the subjects, once again bringing up the origin of life, the origin of gravity, the same old shit that he shoveled before. This time he mentions that Darwin didn't even discuss things like the origin of life, so why can't we discuss that? Then he brings up civil rights and how no one should be second class citizens (you know, except for people who accept science, who are supposed to stand aside as science is perverted--unlike every other professional scientist or educator).
Apparently he knows absolutely nothing about these subjects except what liars like Luskin and the other IDiots told him.
Luskin actually says that the Florida Citizens for Science spokesperson who called the "academic freedom bill" crap called "academic freedom" crap (actually, he did say something like that, but was clearly referring to the "academic freedom bill."
There's a whole lot of gibberish about the need for quality teaching of evolution by "allowing questioning" (as if it is not allowed), which this bill will supposedly make mandatory.
I will say that if you don't want to hear a bunch of canned bullshit, and aren't concerned about what was exactly shoveled out to Fla's legislators and press, don't bother with this useless pack of lies. There's nothing new, and little that is honest.
Glen D
Need's more cowbell: "He's the Moses and Jesus figure of the new millennium, all wrapped up in one person. He can part the water as well as walk on it. No miracle is too small, no fee is too big."
As an aside: How do people like Ken Ham get to emigrate to America and become citizens? I thought you had to have some sort of technical skill or be a refugee or something. And can he be deported?
Ben Stein = Man of Jewish Descent who didn't believe in the literal truth of the Golem of Prague. Did not change his name to Albert Brooks.
Albert Einstein (1) = Man of Jewish Descent who didn't believe in the literal truth of the Golem of Prague. Did not change his name to Albert Brooks.
Albert Einstein (2) = Man of Jewish Descent who didn't believe in the literal truth of the Golem of Prague. Did change his name to Albert Brooks.
So by some (very contrived) measures, Stein is more like Einstein than a guy actually named Albert Einstein by his parents.
Ken Ham ... can he be deported?
What makes you think we want him back?
I'm just not seeing the sexual tension. Guess Stein's just not pig-like enough for Ham. :P
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/ken_hams_new_book.php
Why do you think we care? I don't really hate Australia, but we already have our quota of hateful cranks with no sense of logic here, thanks. Besides, we don't want his genetic material mixed in with the pork supply (allegedly) - that much stupidity delivered orally would probably be lethal.
I saw something that made my blood run cold in the last issue of mental_floss magazine. They had Ben Stein as a contributor. I was very sad that there was at least one article that I couldn't believe a word of. I wrote them a letter.
You guys are all in a state of denial and you're gonna burn in hell. Burn, burn, burn. It's not too late and you can still 'fess up. And PZ should start, since he's responsible for corrupting so many minds:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/03/13/online.confessions/index…
(The rest of you can just flood that site with all those shameful little masturbatory relapses you've had over the years.)
Is "soporific" derived from "soap opera"?
:-D :-D :-D
The limerick is also priceless and prizeworthy. Though what about the Epstein-Barr virus that most of us carry around in our brains?
#23
Intentionality=Design. And how can a speck of mud have intention? Darwinists say that it's false consciousness. What a couple of tards!
Hitler was right if life originated randomly. Sheesh, these people really could excuse the Holocaust, or actually, Stein is excusing the Holocaust, since evolution did happen.
Stein calls us evil once, then corrects himself.
Darwinism is the end of human dignity.
Anyhow, the whole thing is so much creationist stupidity and PRATTs, misuse of philosophy, and near-complete ignorance of science and of the issues of freedom in science.
If you want to hear the mindless prattle of college freshmen just starting Phil 101 trying their hand at these questions at a keg party, listen to the link at #23. At best, that's an optimistic take on their uneducated blather.
[Oh yeah, I'm right at the end of the podcast, and Sprouls thinks that the Big Bang is ruled out by the law of inertia--Christ, you second rate idiot, momentum is conserved in the Big Bang, which is why it expands uniformly (where the energy came from is a legit question, but momentum is not the slightest problem). Stein exclaims about how really well-educated Sprouls is, and the fact is that he never gets out of Phil 101, and never once into a good high school understanding of science. Tells you what we're up against with Stein]
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
..excuse me, while I go throw up.
we don't want his genetic material mixed in with the pork supply (allegedly) - that much stupidity delivered orally would probably be lethal.
just make sure Ken has plenty of condoms when he comes to visit.
http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/stupid.wav
@ edemilo #44
Um... Yeah... Like threatening us is going to do anything. Also, it helps if you use something real to threaten people with, not an imaginary underworld.
Is there anyone brighter than Einstein? Cuz I'd like to know if Hawkins is better so I can call myself a Hawkinian figure. Obviously Einstein is a lower intelligence rank.
"Did you know Answers is available at a discounted rate for your library? For only $18 a year, you can supply your entire community with this evangelistic and worldview-altering magazine."
-shudder-
Answers in Genesis?
They *believe* in answers and then constrain questions to conform their preconceptions :-(
Perhaps we might do the same?
... not with regards to science, but with regards to Genesis?
However, in this instance the preconceived notion is that AiG is a box car full of clowns (not such a stretch) ;-)
In any event, might some creative individual(s) invent some conceptions slightly more ridiculous than dino's with saddles, and promote those images as YEC "theories" ... soon to be followed with slight more ridiculous images ... one step at a time even toddlers, they prey upon with their cartoonish museums, will eventually come to recognize these deluded (sic) agents for god as the incredulous clowns they are.
MW Martin (post #32) gets a pat on his back for that one.
(So does his god..., er, dog.)
I think the "Einsteinian figure" thing was a play on his name...
Pecksniffian:
We are in the company of Messrs Pumpkinskull, Sweedlepipe, Bumble, Tappertit, Honeythunder, Pumblechook, and Muddlebranes, whose names all came out of the mind of Charles Dickens. His ability to create memorable and frequently sarcastic names for his characters, his villains in particular, is surely unmatched in literary history. Pecksniffian derives from his Martin Chuzzlewit of 1844, in which Seth Pecksniff is a land surveyor and architect, though the author remarks that the only surveying of land he did was of the view of the countryside from his windows and that "of his architectural doings, nothing was clearly known, except that he had never designed or built anything." In truth, Mr Pecksniff, though in appearance the most upright of men who prated about high moral principles and benevolence, was an awful hypocrite, full of meanness and treachery. Dickens remarked scathingly that "Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there." In common with some other Dickens' characters, including Gradgrind, Micawber, Podsnap, Scrooge and Uriah Heep, Pecksniff has become an archetype. He was turned into an adjective as early as 1851 and later became a noun, Pecksniffery.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pec1.htm
@ edemilo #44
Um... Yeah... Like threatening us is going to do anything. Also, it helps if you use something real to threaten people with, not an imaginary underworld.
You mean that wasn't parody? C'mon....
They should add a 4th request of their audiences. To sign a nondisclosure form so that anyone thinking doesn't write a negative review.
re: tenebrous #40
Ken Ham ... can he be deported?
What makes you think we want him back?
We don't have to send him back where he came from. Like the bartender says when the bar closes "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here". Or even "don't go away mad... just go away".
Cheers,
Ray
Barf. That ridiculous description of BS made me want to throw my computer across the room.
Well, there you go MandyDax #43.
I guess you will have to cancel your subscription to mental_floss. Current issue:
Ben Stein's Two Cents: America the Rich
By Ben Stein
Ben Stein doesn't believe the hype about America's collapsing economy. To hear him share a bit of unexpected optimism, turn to page 19.
"Expelled is hosted by the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer--a 21st-century Einsteinian figure."
Maybe he can't hold down a job? Einsteinian figure? Is that what they are calling out of shape people these days?
As an actor all he's done is say things in a monotone voice. Even Keanu Reeves is a better actor. Same monotone voice but at least he can move when he acts.
As for "science observer" does that make someone watching Baywatch an anatomy observer?
holy shit PZ
you should warn us before linking to a site like that,
I looked around and fell into a rabbit hole of delusion like an acid trip.
luckily, I have you on a toolbar to reconnect to reality
jimmbo
I'm late to the party, but can't help pointing out...
Ben technically is "ein Stein". But not the useful kind, from which you can drink beer.
Because nothing stymies the promotion of a heroic film like an evolutionist backlash.
So.... when is someone going to make a pro-evolution film?
It seems like the scientific community is basically sitting around with their thumbs up our test tubes and letting the creatards walk all over us. We need a latter-day Carl Sagan; Someone charismatic that can help educate the public.
I understand that responding to them only implicitly validates their claim, but come on -- how many jabs to the face do we want to take before we throw a haymaker back at them?
@rick longworth (#60): No, that's the issue I was talking about. When I said last, I meant most recent, latest. Maybe I should have included the months (Mar-Apr 2008).
I'm just really disappointed in them for letting Stein be a contributor. I love Ken Jennings' 6° and the Know-it-all. It's really a great mag.
I've been suspicious of mental_floss ever since they recounted that the report on the Pepper Moth adaptations was horribly flawed as an example of evolution, (or a hoax, don't remember which exactly; I skimmed through it on the rack and then put it right back) .
I'm glad I resisted the urge to subscribe. What a shame.
So.... when is someone going to make a pro-evolution film?
there was an excellent entire television series delving into evolution on PBS.
Nova has done multiple specials related to it.
frankly, a movie just ain't gonna get funded.
It seems like the scientific community is basically sitting around with their thumbs up our test tubes and letting the creatards walk all over us.
uh, you're posting on this blog, and that's your conclusion?
ever heard of the NCSE?
http://www.natcenscied.org/
there are plenty of scientists spending time on this issue.
we just don't have the money the fundies do, nor the political support from EITHER party.
don't yell at the scientists, yell at the damn politicians who prefer zombie voting blocks consisting of fundies.
I remember when I first saw a photo of the infamous dinosaur with saddles, a dragon like Baryonyx, and other models made by one of Ham's cronies' Buddy Davis on Ham's idiot site while showing a collection of photos taken at a creationist summer camp one time. The moment I saw the model of a dinosaur with a saddle, I could've just sworn Davis had borrowed such a concept while reading James Gurney's Dinotopia.
I have to give Ben props for calling ID a hypothesis (rather than a theory)
I haven't seen anything that raises ID to the point where it can be properly called a hypothesis -- speculation, perhaps.
BTW, since others are claiming title of the realm based on Stein being "Einsteinian", I figure I must therfore be at least at the Tycho Brahe level, so you are all now to refer to me as "Brahenian". Better even, cause I still have my own nose.
@Karley (#67):
D: Maybe that was before I started getting it; I can't believe I'd miss something like that. The adaptation was that gypsy moths used to be a light color to blend in with the birch trees in the area, but when the Industrial Revolution started, and smoke- and soot-belching factories sprang up, the birch trees became darkened by the pollution, the population of gypsy moths quickly became dark-colored because the light-colored ones were selected out by predators that could now see them. It was the first example I was taught of natural selection causing a change in the population of a species.
It may have even been in one of those reference books that they publish...I really can't remember.
Bwah, I suck at being helpful. The Google, it does nothing.
frankly, a movie just ain't gonna get funded.
March of the Penguins?
Sure, maybe not scientific in terms of theoretical biology, but a pretty damned popular nature film that, although appropriated by certain wingnuts in amazingly stupid ways, as far as I know didn't get too much critique from scientists/biologists. Popular film can have a positive impact in building interest and educatiing. (I'd also say "An Inconvenient Truth" was actually important, including in shifting the discourse--unfortunately that hasn't translated into policy in the American context.)
PBS is actually fantastic, if you're looking. Journey of Man, Guns, Germs and Steel, Nova, Scientific American Frontiers......none perfect, all adult-oriented, but also all good popular science education (if you have an attention span longer than 30 seconds). Hell, the NOVA on Kitzmiller was fantastic as a science program, best when it wasn't re-enacting the courtroom scenes and trying to get all dramatic.
Hell, I don't even have a clue as to what's being produced for iMaxes attached to Science Museums. But there's probably some amazing film-making going on there as well.
There's plenty of stuff out there.
We've got one film that's attempting to go mainstream....and being destroyed in the critical venues for mainstream media discourse (I honestly can't wait to see what Ebert and Roper do to it). Its intended audience--the already lost--won't care about the criticisms, but they've got their own parallel media industry, catering specifically to their delusions.
This film will fade into that industry of non-Disney imagination and disappear from popular public distribution and imagination fairly quickly.
Note to ben Stein after reading one of his mindless, nonsensical knee-jerk articles
=================================
Hello Ben
This note is in response to your epistle, My confession.
I am very impressed that you are a Jew and that MOST of your ancestors were Jewish [altho I doubt that every single one of them was a Jew].
I am also a Jew but if you give my family tree a good shake, I am sure that several nonJews will fall out, including some Sumerians, Akkadians,
Arameans, Egyptians, Canaanites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and other assorted Europeans. Since you appear to be Ashkenazic from your family name, I imagine you share this geneology with me.
I happen to be one of the East Coast quasi-liberal Jews who agrees with you on several points in your article. I also don't mind "Merry Christmas" although many gentiles that I know do mind "Happy Channukah." So what? I also don't mind a Nativity scene in public altho I realize that it may be set up in an unConstitutional manner. I don't know any seriously knowledgable person who says that America was set up as, or is currently, an atheist country. As a matter of fact, as I look at the Pledge of Allegence and the American currency, I think quite the opposite. Atheism was not written into the Constitution but neither was religion. It's just that over the centuries, a sufficent number of Christian white males have found the power to make it appear that America is explicitly a Christian or religious country. The simple fact is that out of 300,000,000 American citizens, 250,000,000 of them appear to believe that the rest of us are bound for hell. Again, so what? It's their right to believe that; G-d bless America.
So far, so good. We seem to be in agreement about basics.
Here is where the facts stop and the paranoia begins.
I hope this letter will get you thinking. That's what it is intended to do.
I am not sure where you received the idea that you are not allowed to "worship God as we understand Him?" Believe me. Plenty of people worship G-d as they see fit. They even have the right to worship Her as they see fit and then condemn others for worshipping the way THEY see fit.
But hey! That's what a good Fundamentalist is all about, and he/she has that right, BARUCH HASHEM.
I don't know what exactly has been shoved down your throat but what makes ME gag is going to a publicly funded library and finding Harry Potter not allowed on the shelf. I always thought that the library was publicly funded and now some of them are becoming publicly fundamentalist. Tch tch!
You mention Billy Graham's daughter. Is that the same Billy Graham who complained to president Nixon about the Jews and their "stranglehold" on the media, and blamed them for "all the pornography"? Hmmm. Or is that the Billy Graham that told Nixon that "the stranglehold of Jewish journalists and TV writers has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain" and that "if you [Nixon] get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something"? I wonder. While Graham's daughter, that wonderfully devout Christian lady, was telling America that it deserved to be hit on 9/11 for
kicking G-d out of public school, young YESHIVA students in new York were in downtown Manhattan, where the poisonous debris from the Towers was wafting through the air, visiting the wounded and dying, and reciting psalms for them. I know that at times both Jews and Christians are disgustingly
self-righteous, but in America's moment of extreme pain, this woman's inhumane, INDECENT comments will stand as an albatross that she can never shake off. All decent and compassionate people of any religion or no religion have to shudder at the complete and unforgaivable insensitivity of her remarks.
Well then, you are of the opinion that terrorists attacks and school shootings are result of prayer being removed from public schools. I remember my nephew going to public school in the South back in the 1950s and coming home from his kindergarden class singing JESUS LOVES ME. Well, I asked his mother, my sister, why she stood for her child being made to sing a Christian song when he is Jewish and her Jewish tax dollars are supporting the school. Her response was, "This is the Bible Belt. I don't make waves. I just tell my son that Jesus does NOT love him, and he gets the message."
Yes sir, Ben. You must be getting old, as you say. Say, do you remember those good old days when there was prayer in public school and fags could be attacked with impugnity, and kikes could be kept out of certain neighborhoods, and niggers could not be in school along with G-d and prayers, and women were forced into the back alleys with coat hangers? I sure do.
Weren't those good old days? Yes I remember that everyone had to think one way and there was no real freedom of expression.
Anyway, these are the good NEW days when people are supposed to be free and diversity of opinion is allowed. Except .....
Except that today, in order to be elected president, a man or woman has to pass a religious test .... which goes counter to what the Constitution says. Not only that - but the candidates feel that they have the right to impugn the religious beliefs of others or to call their opponent's faith a
cult or worse. In no other civilized Western country in the world does that happen. This land is a religious laughing stock in Europe, and rightly so.
I don't even know who the hell Nick and Jessica are - but it is probably no more ridiculous to worship them than the ridiculous gods we worship now.
In fact the gods we worship now are all too human. But they display the worst aspects of humanity, not the best and noblest. And their worshippers, like the Billy Grahams of the world, are religious hypocrites. That's why they think that believing that Jesus is a god is more important than following the words of the Sermon On The Mount - where all we have to do is make sure that the poor have what to eat, what to wear, and are taken care of by society when they get sick and can't afford to take care of themselves. Once so-called religious people start doing those things, I'll take them seriously. But right now, after 2000 years of persecution by the so-called religious against free-thinking men like Galileo or Darwin or even freethinking Americans, where do they get the CHUTSPAH to claim that THEY are the victims of persecution here in America? People are forcing atheism down someone's throat? That's a new one on me. The burning of Harry Potter books is more serious to me than the ACLU fighting to get rid of a creche.
I just want to say that as far as this EastCoast, politically effette, homo, commie, lezbo, pinko, jew, fellow-traveler, beatnik, hippie is concerned, I won't force my skepticism down your throat; don't force your pre-modern ideas about science and sex and health and religion down mine.
I don't want fascist fundamentalists to take over America and put my Jewish ass back in the second class ghetto. G-d forbid that!
And really, G-d is all powerfull. She can fend for Herself. She doesn't need non-critical-thinking people making her look worse than She makes Herself look by stupid comments.
January 3, 2008
somebody needs to get down to the florida quick and stop this man. or at least make sure that the legislators down here actually understand that ID = creationism in disguise and creationism = religion, and that you cannot teach religion as factual in public schools.
cause he's going on about how people are losing their jobs over "just asking questions."
Here, have some mead, QrazyQat. Just make sure you get up and go pee every once in a while, 'k?
You know, I'm not seeing the sexual tension in the photo. I'm sorry, PZ, you rock in all kinds of ways, but on behalf of homos everywhere, I gotta ask: Could we try to avoid using intimations of Teh Gay as a punchline denoting general ickiness? Really, I respect you a lot, but that shit is insulting as hell.
Me - I have to give Ben props for calling ID a hypothesis (rather than a theory)...
QrazyQat - I haven't seen anything that raises ID to the point where it can be properly called a hypothesis -- speculation, perhaps.
Sometimes I can be to generous, but I thought it a refreshing refrain from the otherwise rabid nutwackery. How many on the ID side even make this much concession to reality? Maybe I've been spending too much time at the Expelled blog the last few days. As I said though, my goodwill faded fast after that.
How many on the ID side even make this much concession to reality?
Paul Nelson has, on several occasions, mentioned that he felt that ID wasn't ready yet to be branded a hypothesis, let alone a theory.
fortunately, he also knows that the target audience for ID will completely ignore his saying this.
Nelson and Dembski and Luskin... these people KNOW this stuff is crap. they also know that it's the perfect dish for the rubes to eat up.
just sciency sounding enough for them, without making them scratch their heads too much.
mmm, mmm.
that's good shit!
It's just so hard to pin these guys down on anything.
take common descent as a perfect example.
every major pusher (yes as in drug pusher) of ID has been on record at one time or another saying they do not deny the mountains of evidence in support of common descent....
they just choose to *slighty* redefine what common descent means (to something that has never been used within the scientific community, ever), and then apply a totally ridiculous mechanism to try and explain their own definition of it.
thus, they can say they support the idea of evolution and common descent to placate the journalists who don't know better, and still say with a wink "goddidit" to the actual target audience.
seriously, I can understand how so many rubes eat it up, even though their machinations sound far more clever on paper than they actually are.
nothing has changed since the wedge document was released, just the names have changed to protect the guilty.
Sure, maybe not scientific in terms of theoretical biology,
yeah, that's basically how I was thinking of it.
trying to figure out who would have funded the PBS series into something like a feature length movie.
who knows? it may come down to NSF itself funding something like that if the situation gets much worse.
peppered moth history....
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/welcome-article.html
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/09/peppered-moths-and-confused-idiots…
and the more recent Majerus stuff on it:
http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/majerus.htm
er, btw the stuff on peppered moths was for #67 and #71
Ben and Ken..... really. No wonder Barbie fucked off!
OT, but does anyone know why the ScienceBlogs sidebar has changed from "Top 5 Most E-mailed" to "Top 5 Most German"??
sidebar has changed from "Top 5 Most E-mailed" to "Top 5 Most German"??
I believe what kind of thing that part of the sidebar displays changes every time the page is refreshed.
just hit the refresh button on your browser, and it should change again.
who the hell left the door to the asylum open??????
Ichthyic- Thanks for those links.
Also, I found out that the search on mental_floss's own site can do what Google cannot. Here's their own words.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/trivia/questions/?p=43
(The word they used was "fraud". Yikes)
Also, I found out that the search on mental_floss's own site can do what Google cannot.
that's not uncommon. Google uses a generalized algorithm to spider sites for search terms. It's pretty easy to fine tune a search engine to generate better results if it's specific to the site.
(The word they used was "fraud". Yikes)
yeah, they like to use that word a lot, actually.
see re: piltdown man, Haeckel, etc.
whatever. It almost always turns out that they were either completely wrong about the fraud (in Kettlewell's case, the picture used for the article was just an example; it had nothing to do with the experiment itself, so it hardly mattered that he pinned a specimen to a tree), or else it was scientists themselves that discovered and fixed the error (just about every other "fraud" they try to raise as an issue; piltdown man and Haeckel being excellent examples).
btw, I'm sure you've heard of it, but just about every claim of "fraud" spewed by creobots is covered in the Index to Creationist Claims, which tends to be a good place to start if one wants to figure out what's really going on.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
from your "floss" link...
the scientific community huddled together and rejected Bernie Kettlewell's study, finding it strictly "for the birds."
considering I'm a behavioral ecologist that has studied evolutionary biology for 20 years, that's news to me. It's still considered a good field experiment for the time by everybody I know. again, creationists have mutilated the fact that kettlewell took a picture of a moth nailed to a tree (just for a photo for the article), into the idea that the entire study was of moths nailed to trees.
whoever wrote that deserves to be flogged for incompetence.
I've never seen that site before, but if this is the quality of an average article there, somehow I don't think they are doing much to actually make people smart again, regardless of how it makes them "feel".
I'd say they should title it "Butt Floss", but that would just be too crude and obvious, right?
Thanks again for the heads-up, PZ!
Gotcha covered, parody-image-wise. (Click my handle.)
To Andrew Willett :
I don't think you're right in thinking that the "sexual tension" stuff has homophobic connotations. It would be just as appropriate and just as funny if one of the two characters was a woman. Or if it was Ann Coulter.
As insulting as the homosexual connotation may have seemed, I think anyone will understand that the reasons they were referred to is the assumptions that that's what would scare these two hosebags the most -- GASP! :D And of course, any of us would make them as uncomfortable as possible if we could.
It's their fault for being braindead, closed-minded troglodytes.
It never ceases to amaze me that AiG and fundies in general can piously accuse the scientific community of insufferable arrogance and then serious describe one of their spokesmen in terms like this, apparently in all seriousness:
Have they got no sense of irony at all?
George Carlin has these idiots' number: http://www.standupkings.com/george-carlin-bible-americas-favorite-theat…
Ken Ham declares that this movie "is a must-see. Encourage your local school board members to watch this well-produced documentary. Even pay for their tickets, but get them there! This is a much-needed perspective on the erosion of freedoms in America."
All the more reason to NOT see this movie.
Oops...the showing in Florida didn't go well.
But the evening at downtown's IMAX Theater, which was rented out to Mr. Stein's group for $940, was a bust, with only about 100 people attending the movie. And most of those weren't lawmakers who were (tiptoeing out on that limb now) apparently not really interested in wading into a dispute that exacerbates two controversies.
Thanks to Brandon at Florida Citizens for Science for the news item.
Thanks for the update James F. I particularly liked this last bit from the article you linked to:
Such glorious incompetence! The Expelled PR guys can't even avoid a basic scheduling clash whilst organising a major screening of their "world-changing" movie to (amongst others) vital legislators in Florida at a time when the "Academic Freedom" Bills they are arguing for are going through the Legislature?
No, no...the part that was supposed to be funny is the sarcasm. Look at the picture. It's like a portrait of the complete absence of sexual tension: two schlumpy, uninteresting men sitting in positions suggestive of boredom. There's absolutely nothing at all dynamic in that particular picture.
Peppered moth:
the criticisms of Kettlewell are mainly methodological - locally enhancing moth densities and mingling wild-caught and lab-bred specimens in his experiments involving recapture. Kettlewell assumed that the moths rested on trunks in plain view in daylight, which may not be the case.
That said, the conclusions are accurate. Melanism has declined across the board in moths in post-industrial Britain since the air got cleaner. See Cooke et al 2005 J Heredity: http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/96/5/522
I have to say it. Every time I see one of those creationist videos containing Ken Ham spewing out his crap, I often am drawn to the fact that out of all of the humans in the world that man shows the proof that man has a common ancestor with other modern primates. The man bears a striking resemblance to a Macaque with his beard that goes all the way around his face (the monkey-look probably being the best feature he has).
I have a creationist commenting on one of my posts. I said that he was grasping at straws and he retorted that I was grasping at telephone poles.
Remember the proverb is, "A drowning man grasps at straws."
Bwa-ha-ha!
Ah, Ronald. He's been here before, as well as over at EvolutionBlog. Don't expect to make any impact whatsoever.
Certainly a lot of science has been developed since Darwin proposed his conjecture. Dark rabbits are easy prey in snow leaving only white rabbit DNA in polar areas; this type of natural selection within a species is rather irrefutable. Scientific American magazine stated that if the rough draft of the human genome were stored on compact discs stacked on edge in their cases, shelf space would need to be nearly one half mile long! Yet mutations- never having added ANY scientifically detectable NEW DNA, leave macro evolution wholly inadequate to explain such extreme complexity even given a great time span. Think about it, what is a partially formed heart good for? Really do you believe both human eyes evolved with 3d focusing... at the same time- TWO SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes? The evolution theory is even more weird as each male AND female 'randomly' developed the same two type eyes, That's four SIMULTANEOUS randomly formed eyes, dual random simulataneousness/duplicated!
Perhaps the following analogy can lend clarity:
Eons ago deep in the ocean iron ore began to develope and form into sheets, the sheets came together over time and formed holes- a process known to theorists as 'mutealotofstuff'; soon a fully formed ship floated into harbor...PLEASE- Where there's a watch there is a watch maker, where there is a world there is a world maker!
OMG! and two hands, each with exactly the same number of fingers just randomly formed on the ends of 2 identically formed arms! What are the odds? They must be absolutely zero that such a thing could happen!
What a freakin idiot. "Symmetry", look it up.
And try to come up with some original objections that haven't been answered thousands of times before.
Wow "Symmetry" you Are a deep thinker. But Thanks Steve you're catching on- two kidneys, ears, lungs, the list goes on. But who/what do you credit such human complexity? I mean how do you say we got here? Some have proposed we came on the back of Crystals or perhaps it was panspermia-seeded from some unknown "intelligent beings from outer space". You know Richard Dawkins believes that's a possiblility. The word only describes what we see, yes we are symmetrical beings.
"moving goalposts", you were talking about the incredible improbability of forming 2 eyes simultaneously. The answer to while 2 is not anymore improbable than one is symmetry. That was my point, which you disregard entirely and move on now to the hypothesis of panspermia.
As for panspermia, so what? Yes, it is possible, but is not a refutation of evolution. Oh, and panspermia does not assume nor require an "intelligent seeding".
Expelled is hosted by the soporific Ben Stein, character actor/failed economist/eyewash huckster/Nixon apologist/creationist--a 21st-century Pecksniffian figure.
PZ, you forgot "crybaby." ;-) (Or Mrs. Haver-sham-ian?)
Gotcha. I guess in my case the joke never made it as far as my sarcasm-processing centers, and I'm sorry for assuming the worst here. I hope, at least, you can understand how a life spent at the pointy end of that sort of humor, when it is used in an intentionally homophobic context, might condition a rapid outrage response -- especially when it seemed in this case to come come from such an unexpected source. Thanks for helping me see the alternate interpretation.
Woelfel is woeful.
Nice strawman... eyes are SPONTANEOUS! Have never seen anyone claim that other that scientists... are we gonna get the eye is perfectly designed argument next???? We got the one eye douchebaggery... what's next?? We're dying to hear it.
I wanna know WHICH eye is perfectly designed... man's? eagles? falcons? squid? bees? cows?
Why isn't there a one arm arugment? a two tail argument?
wow... didn't mean scientists claim eyes are spontaneous and random... creationists, of course. Uhg.
Some have proposed we came on the back of Crystals
??
that's a new one to me.
anyone know the details of this wooful* tale?
*intentional
anyone know the details of this wooful* tale?
Sounds like he's mangling Cairns-Smith.
Sounds like he's mangling Cairns-Smith.
damn, forgot to put a code break in.
try again:
Sounds like he's mangling Cairns-Smith.
O.o
I see...
how bout:
"If our ancestors were crystals... WHY ARE THERE STILL CRYSTALS!!!!!"
did i get the balance of caps lock and multiple exclamation marks right?
thanks, btw, don't know how I ever missed that one.
I put salt on my fries today. Does that make me a cannibal?
hmm, I thought the idea was that you could compare "self-replicating" crystals to things like prions, not things like DNA?
I hope nobody minds, but I'm going to spam-comment this comment-spam on every thread in which I find it.
I just love it that much.
Michael Woelfel, that ever-resplendant deep-thinker #104 INSISTS: "PLEASE- Where there's a watch there is a watch maker, where there is a world there is a world maker!"
So, if I follow you correctly, where there are bozos there must be a bozo-maker.
And where there are all manner of nasty or inconsequential things, or consummate stupidities, there must be a maker of nastiness, the inconsequential and the consummately stupid.
I had no idea you held God in such high esteem...to give Him the exhalted status of a specialist who worries over all details, even the lousy bits that obviously demonstrates a divine streak of IMPERFECTION.
Oops, I suppose you require a God-maker with that one. You'll need the maker-maker and the maker-maker-maker...and so on. Wow, that's pretty friggin' deep shit.
Ever hear of concepts like natural mechanism and process (um, like "evolution") and self-organizing systems, dynamics and criticality?
You know, those nasty concepts that expert scientists actually manage to do some explaining with?
Or are you just fond of being an ignorant bozo?
RE #119
http://www.humorlinks.com/python/songs/allthing.htm
Is "soporific" derived from "soap opera"?
:-D :-D :-D
The limerick is also priceless and prizeworthy. Though what about the Epstein-Barr virus that most of us carry around in our brains?