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Forums - General - Ben Stein to take on Darwinism on April 18

godf on 07 March 2008
timmah said:
godf said:
dabaus513 said:
I dont think its so much as "creationist propaganda" (whatever that is) but more a documentary of how if a scientist dare question darwin's theory (emphasis on theory) of evolution they are ridiculed and lose their jobs. I think it's pointing out the irony that people who claim to be "open minded" are only open minded towards things that they agree with and if anyone dare question it then they are trying to create propaganda or other such bullcrap excuses.

What evidence are creationists brining to the debate? Nothing more than their own faith. If they were purely evidence based scientists, that would be fine. To try to deliberately misrepresent evolution, or try to present any current gap in our understanding as a fatal flaw... people aren't going to keep falling for that. Almost as soon as scientists started looking at the claims of ID, they were able to take them apart. There will always be some areas of uncertainty, but ID proponents have already been pushed far back from where they started. How much more attention should they be given?


HEY! *knock knock*! Anybody there?? Did you read my earlier post?? We don't just bring 'our own faith', and where's the evidence you're bringing? All I've heard so far from you people is attacks on the intelligence of creationists and bigoted notions of what 'all of us' are like. That's your fatal flaw. You don't want to debate anybody on the merits of their arguments or positions, just to group us all into one big group of blind morons and write us off without so much as using one bit of intelligent debate to do so.

I'm done with this thread, as I see there is nobody here who is willing to actually debate (not insult and demean).

Edit: @dabaus513, don't expect too much actual debate on this issue. You're right, most of the self-proclaimed 'open minded' ones are the quickest to lump people into a group and insult them in order to avoid real debate when they don't agree. Notice godf basically said we aren't even worth talking to and should be ignored. You just can't debate people like that, they have nothing of any substance to say at all. Notice that nobody has actually countered a point, but just regurgitated biased insults on the 'stupid creationists'.


I can't reply to every post at once.  I've done yours now.  Happy?



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highwaystar101 on 07 March 2008

Yeah I hope it's funny. I thought Ben Stein would be darwinist, but hey I suppose he is entitled to his opinions.



Paul on 07 March 2008

The creationist should take a look at the thread AOA made the other day about the frog baby. The lord works in mysterious ways.



godf on 07 March 2008
Coca-Cola said:
I don't the documentary is about proving creation and disapproving evolution.
I think it's about the science community, media, schools and their bias against creation theory.
Ben mentions in the trailer that maybe they are trying to hide something. I want to see the movie to find out if Ben actually found something that they are trying to hide.

Or maybe the movie will be just fun. like i said, I find him to be smart but very funny.
I loved his show on t.v.

Oh no.  It's certainly not about trying to prove anything.

 

It is about presenting the widespread rejection of ID as being a bias, rather than an evidence based judgement.  As if all academics got together, flicked a coin, and then decided to stick with evolution regardless of what the evidence says.  The idea of that sort of global conspiracy, especially in academia, where careers are made by original ideas, and disproving old ones, is just absurd.

 

Anyway, I'm off.



Kasz216 on 07 March 2008
godf said:
Kasz216 said:
godf said:
Kasz216 said:
godf said:
This movie looks like it should be funny.

It's so heavily edited, it's beyond propaganda. He didn't ever speak to some of the people he's shown interviewing: they just spliced conversations together (that's certainly what happened with dawkins).

Creationists are the funniest thing.

You know this how...?

Either way, if a paper on intellegent design is actually well written and has research to back it up it should be published somewhere. I've seen less well written propaganda research studies published in journals on a weekly basis.

That's the brilliant part of journals though. They are supposed to offer different viewpoints. You let the guy you disagree with publish a study, then you redo the study to get a different outcome to prove him wrong... and if you get the same results, you simply point a flaw in the methodology. Or do it the other way around... either way.

He does have a point that lately a lot of less popular scienfitic theories do seem to not get their fair share of publication due to the fact that money and poltics have pretty much infested everything sceintific.

Though a side effect to this is also where people will continue knowingly flawed or intentionally biased studies for monetary gain.

So whether intellegent design follows the first path or the second... who can say. (i'd guess the second) though most second path research studies do find their way published in journals so they can properly have their day in court, even if their intentions are less then honorable.


I've read a few articles about the film. The film makers have been open about it too.

I don't see how any paper could put foreward ID in the manner you require. The evidence isn't there to back it up. That's why it's treated with the disdain it is. Maybe evidence will one day come to light to support ID, but it's not there now, and that doesn't seem to trouble its current proponents.


Sure there is, the evidence he states he found. You let him post his article in some minor scientific journals, it causes a big stir and then those who are experts in the fields he are addressing publish counter articles where they take apart his methods as faulty.

That's how it works.


The evidence he stated? What was that? Why should scientific journals need to endlessly repeat the same creationist nonsense that has been shown lacking for all these years? How many more times does it need to be shot down?


This is intellegent design though. It's completely new nonsense.

Besides the Sternberg peer review controversy is one of the things they talk about. That paper though it reaches some weird conclusions isn't particularly horrible in any way. It does bring up a lot of things we fully don't understand yet. It seems fairly informative when it comes to science and aside from the personal conclusions he draws would actually educate a creationists a fair amount.

I've seen worse studies published in fields of research.

After reading it i'm a little more hyped for Spore as well. Spore is going to rock.  It's Intellegent Design everyone can get behind.



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highwaystar101 on 07 March 2008
Paul said:
The creationist should take a look at the thread AOA made the other day about the frog baby. The lord works in mysterious ways.

The frog baby had a disease called "harlequins" it's actually suprisingly common and some people have lived with until they have been 8-9. It's a problem that occurs in the womb and when a child is born it's skin will shed 10x faster than an average person, this makes it green and full of cracks. They die mostly because they get infected from the skin constantly being cracked.

Just thought I would share some info on harlequins.



timmah on 07 March 2008
GotchayeA said:
There are several problems with all of that, timmah. First, no one's talking about the origins of the universe here. This is creationism insofar as it is opposed to evolution, and evolution says nothing whatsoever about the origins of life or of the universe before life began (if in fact there was such a time). All of your talk about the big bang not being explicable by modern physics is interesting, but it's completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. Science doesn't have a rigorous theory as to how or why the Big Bang occurred - you're not really arguing with anyone here.

Your only defense of intelligent design (of life) is your talk about DNA. You ask for a plausible nontheistic mechanism, which is somewhat surprising to me. Biologists call this mechanism 'natural selection' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection). It should be apparent how this can result in a logical order without design, but, if you'd like real-world proof of the same idea, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation.

Anyway, none of what you offer is particularly useful evidence for a theistic theory of anything.

Known facts invariably underdetermine an explanation. Knowing that the bus arrives at the corner every day at 9AM, I can't choose between a theory about a person driving the same bus in from elsewhere every morning or a theory about a deity creating new buses ex nihilo every morning.

In science, we choose between underdetermined theories by testing their predictions, which could have been otherwise. Every scientific theory that enjoys widespread support in the scientific community (including evolution) enjoys that support because the theory has successfully predicted the outcomes of many experiments.

Something like intelligent design, however, makes no useful predictions, and so no rational person can sensibly choose it over other theories which are indicated by the same set of facts. One might maintain that it is equally as likely as other theories which are equally untested, but you simply cannot maintain that it is particularly likely to be the explanation.

To clarify, let's consider the difference between the sort of predictions evolution and ID make. Evolution predicts that ecosystems which are similar will have similar sorts of animals in them and that animals will be more like each other when their habitats are geographically close. We can imagine that this would not be the case, and so each time these predictions are confirmed, evidence for evolution grows. ID, however, does not make these predictions. It is compatible with these predictions, yes, but it is equally compatible with the opposite outcomes, and so neither can be taken as evidence.

I only have a short time, so I can't answer all this. You're missing the point, I'm not saying that changes in species can't happen, I'm not saying that there are not types of 'evolution' or natural selection that change animals and plants over time to better adapt to their environment. My belief is that an intelligent being (God) created the universe as we know it, and that he created a set of animals, plants, and humans that were designed to adapt. It doesn't have to be one or the other, it's very obvious that animals adapt over time, I'm not denying that. My contention is that there's no way life could START on it's own. Scientists haven't even been able to create basic life in a test tube from nonliving substances with their intelligence. They've created building blocks for life, but not life.

My contention is that a godless system has no way of explaining the ORIGIN of life and our universe for precisely the reasons I mentioned before. Creationism is not so narrow as to deny natural selection or changes in species, that is where you are missing my point. I personally believe that there can be DRASTIC changes in animals over time as one genetic trait affords for better survivability, i just differ on how the whole thing got started, as physics does not allow for things 'starting' without an external starting force. We are not all as narrow as you think.



Escherichia on 07 March 2008

No, you don't have to be stupid to believe in creationism, however I do believe it takes a bit of ignorance. 

I don't like arguements made from ignorance, especially when they assume that they are right. 

Basically I don't think you understand biology or physics as much as you think you do, specifically genetics and evolution. Therefore with these gaps in your understanding it makes it easy to fill in those gaps with supernatural explainations. That constitutes a very big logical fallacy.

So just let me pick on one of your arguments, let's go with entropy.

You said "This law is fully accepted in the scientific community, and states that nature takes a natural course from order to disorder (stars go from burning fission reactions to dead and lifeless over time) without the introduction of an outside force (such as life, a plant turning random molecules into it's cells, or humans turning dirt into bricks into buildings). By this law, it should be impossible for life (perfect order) to come from non-living nature (pure disorder, chaos).

You are oversimplifying and obviously misunderstand entropy.

Without entropy you would have equilibrium and you could never have life.

It's the driving force behind life, behind stars, behind how your car works, etc.

All catabolic reactions in cells are entropic reactions, the breakdown of glucose for example.

What are the prducts of glucose metabolism? ATP, H+, Pyruvate, and H2O, and heat these are all more disordered than glucose. Furthurmore when building a house you create order, the house, and disorder, the heat you expend, the fuel you burn and the mess you make doing it.

Anyway, do yourself a favor and research these arguments a little bit, I'm not saying that they will change your mind or anything, but they just might.



Legend11 on 07 March 2008
stof said:

Stein is a smart man, though I find his political and religious views are pretty far from mine.

But one major issue I took from that trailer was the following line.

" The article (the one that promoted creationism) would not have been an issue if we were living in the time of Galileo or Einstein, but we live in a different era, an era of darwin and in such an era those who challange the status quo seldom go unpunished"

 

Does he really want to use Galileo as an example of a more understanding time!? A man who was sentenced to house arrest for advocating that the Earth revolved around the Sun? His book was banned and he was ordered to abjure his ideas. If the movie is going to do things like compare Galileo's legal persecution by an all powerful church favourably to Dr. Sternberg's falling out with the scientific community for promoting ideas with little to know basis in the scientific process... Then I'm inclined to think the movie might make some other dramatic missteps in logic and bias.


 He is very likely making a joke.  Sort of a wink to those who know the point he's really trying to make.



Sqrl on 07 March 2008
timmah said:

DNA: When scientists look for proof of intelligent life in outer space, they point their radio telescopes at the sky and search for ANY repeating, logical 'code' in the radio waves. It could even be a simple code, but science says even that would be solid evidence for intelligent life, as nature cannot produce such codes on it's own. DNA, on the other hand is the most complex code known to man, how then, is that not concidered to indicate the possiblity of intelligence behind the code?


 There is a big difference between a chain of polypeptides which have a proven method for selecting beneficial combinations and a radio signal that can both naturally reach across the galaxy and naturally contains a repeating pattern.  But you of course completely overstate the scientific position as a straw man.  Scientists would not simply take a repeating radio signal as proof of other life by itself, there would have to be something more because quite simply we don't know if there are things capable of producing such a signal.  Although if such natural signal producers existed it would be quite odd that we hadn't picked them up yet considering all of the natural signals we do pick up already and none of them have a pattern.

In short, the DNA code isn't considered ID because we can show basic simple rules that are fundamental to the laws of physics that produces that evolution and increasing complexity.  The radio signal would be widely considered as proof because we don't know of a way it can be done...although any scientist worth his salt would tell you that alone is not proof. 

timmah said:


The laws of physics:

Newton's first law of motion: This states that 'an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion UNLESS something acts upon it. The 'big bang' theory has absolutely no way of explaining this. It claims that an infinitely small, infinitely compact ball of matter exploded WITHOUT anything acting upon it, on it's own. This is completely contradictory to this well known law of physics.

Newton's third law of motion: This states (in a nutshell) that For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, for a 4000 pound load to be lifted, it would have to have a force of 4000 pounds or more pulling it upwards. Where, then is the action that caused the 'big bang' to happen?? Where did the infinite energy required to explode a stagnent object of infinite density that had been there for an infinite amount of time come from without some kind of 'creator' force?? Physics cannot answer this without the inclusion of an infinite amount of energy at one end of the formula to create the energy at the other.


 

For both of these points you're proving quite ignorant on the topic and I mean that in the strictest sense. I don't believe you've even made a good faith attempt to understand what the current (or even former) big bang theories truly state.  The piece you are so clearly missing is that the big bang's biggest weakness according even to the scientist who aspouse it is that they cannot explain what causes it...they don't say it has no causal event..only that they cannot explain it. Although it is fair to say that there are two theories for a causal event which are being tested.  Neither of those theories break Newton's third or first law. So really the issue here was that you hadn't done enough research but were playing the critic anyways. 

 

timmah said:


The law of entropy: This law is fully accepted in the scientific community, and states that nature takes a natural course from order to disorder (stars go from burning fission reactions to dead and lifeless over time) without the introduction of an outside force (such as life, a plant turning random molecules into it's cells, or humans turning dirt into bricks into buildings). By this law, it should be impossible for life (perfect order) to come from non-living nature (pure disorder, chaos).

Entropy also states that all differences in energy will equalize themselves naturally over time, eventually becoming inert. (If you turn the heat off in your house at night, it will cool inside to the temperature outside). This makes the big bang impossible without a HUGE outside energy source that is completely independant. Since time is concidered to be infinite, the matter at the center of the 'big bang' would have to be there for an infinite amount of time before exploding. The law of entropy says that the mass would have been in complete equilibrium, no one part would have been at a different energy level/temperature than another, making a reaction or explosion impossible without outside force.



I'm not entirely sure that you have a good grasp on what entropy truly is.  Generally speaking the principle of entropy is usually applied to thermodynamics.  I see the direction you are trying to take however and I have to ask how did you go from "without the introduction of an outside force" to the requirement that that outside force be something alive in the first place? 

As for your big bang require an outside energy source I think if you read up on the current theories I mentioned above you'll find that a multiversal approach is precisely the one scientists have taken.  As for timing being considered infinite I think you need to check your facts, to my knowledge there have never been experiments done that prove time is infinte and no scientists relies on this information because it is unproven.  But that portion is a secondary topic in this discussion since the outside force is precisely what  the top scientists from around the world are attempting to prove.  Again I would urge you to read up on these things before you make statements you are woefully uninformed about.

timmah said:

This is just a brief synopsis of the many credible arguments that can be made for intelligent design. It's not possible to 'prove' either theory, because nobody (but God if you believe in him) was there to see & document what actually happened, but reasonable arguments can be made for either belief.

But I'm apparantly stupid, just like all other 'creationists', so just keep thinking like you do. It's virtually impossible to have an intelligent, civil discussion with people who think of themselves or their group to be superior.



 None of these arguments are crediable, and while you're correct that there will never be enough proof for the diehards on either side you are actually incorrect if you think that only a "God" could have documented the events.  In fact with our recent replacement of the hubble telescope with the JWST we are recieving information and data about periods of time only a few hundred million years after the big bang, a period of time before even our sun was formed.  With better equipment it is not only possible, but likely, that in the future we will be getting similar data from only a few million years after and potentially even within a few years with good enough equipment.

Stay tuned, things will get exciting! 


 


 


 
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