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Fundamentalist Theatre 3000 BC – Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed Part III

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Here’s the last part of my refutation (it’s a good thing midterms are over). This one will be shorter, since many of the points Stein tries to bring across are redundant.

1:00:52 – Hitler’s views on superior races mirrors Darwin’s own theories, and a necessary pre-requisite to Nazism was Darwinism. At the time, many eugenicists used Darwin’s theory to justify the slaughter of Jews, Slavs, and infirms en masse.

The Anti-Defamation League respectfully disagrees -

“The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness. Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.”

It’s sad that Stein resorts to Godwin’s Law to bring his points across. Persons of all walks of life supported the Nazi Regime because, like the fascist regime in Italy, it promised to get the economy back on track and the trains running on time. Genocide is not linked with atheism – in fact, the Bible details and supports the genocide of the Caananites in Deuteronomy of the Old Testament, and the arrogance and superiority complexes of many Christians played a major role in the near-genocide of the Native Americans. There have been so many genocides that have taken place since even before Darwin came up with his theory, and many of those have been committed by people claiming to be Christians as well as persons of other religions.

1:13:21 – Stein quotes from Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, and seems to make the claim that Darwin was for weeding out those “undesirables” in society just like Hitler and the Nazis after him.

James Watson is a racist, but one cannot discount his research on the double helix because he was, just as one cannot discount Martin Luther’s claims that the Catholic Church of the time needed to be reformed because he was an anti-Semite. That’s not to say that Darwin was even a eugenicist; Stein conveniently omits the next passage in the book (this taken from Expelled Exposed) -

“The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.”

1:25:27 – Richard Dawkins doesn’t know how the first self-replicating molecule (life) came to be. How could the exemplar of Darwinism not know? Surely Intelligent Design has won…

He’s evil and communist. How could Stein’s righteousness not prevail?

While there is no hard evidence, see Tom Cech’s Experiments under Part II of my refutation. While definitely more experiments need to be conducted, especially in finding an evolutionary basis for an RNA-based polymerase, but there is already far stronger evidence for abiogenesis than Intelligent Design.

1:25:55 – Dawkins claims that an advanced civilization evolved through Darwinism and then could have “seeded” this planet with life. Dawkins is only against God as an intelligent designer.

It’s an entirely plausible explanation that requires no supernatural forces that we can’t prove exist or don’t exist. In any case, this was not the crux of Dawkin’s argument and more of an aside; the film again disingenuously exploits this quote to try to push through the supposed ignorance of the evolutionists.

1:28:33 – In a speech, Stein says that “America is all about freedom”, and that the freedom to impose intelligent design as a legitimate theory in the scientific community is an essential right of the people!

We’re not out to squelch your personal views; you could be a Young Earth Creationist and I wouldn’t particularly care. But to say that ID is legitimate science when it doesn’t even follow the scientific method and instead basically says “I give up, God did it” is something that the film overlooks.

1:28:53 – Stein basically mirrors his own staged speech with Reagan’s memorable speech at the Berlin Wall.

I’m not particularly a fan of Reagan, but that speech did take political courage and was definitely one of his better moments. But to mirror where Ben Stein basically paid pro-ID people to give a seemingly spontaneous standing ovation after the speech is ridiculous.

If you don’t believe me, see for yourself (it’s a vidcap, so quality is terrible) -

[youtube]C4TQlljLfhM[/youtube]

Tags: Adolf Hitler, Anti-Defamation League, atheism, ben stein, Charles Darwin, expelled, Genocide, Godwin's Law, intelligent design, James Watson, richard dawkins, Ronald Reagan
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Fundamentalist Theatre 3000 BC – Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Part 2)

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Here it is, Part II of my grand, time-wasting refutation.

31:22 – A cell could not have been the result of Darwinian evolution because it is a machine of at least 250 perfectly ordered proteins, each of which has to work to maintain a lifeform. Therefore there must be an intelligent design to make something this ordered and precise.

That’s assuming that proteins have all-or-nothing function, which is COMPLETELY false. There are countless mutants of even just one protein and different mutants of different proteins have different catalytic efficiencies. Most mutations don’t even have an effect on fitness, and are silent due to the degeneracy of the genetic code (multiple codons encode for the same protein). And different cellular structures can be analogous but not homologous, meaning that they have different evolutionary bases but the same function, just as with the flagella of the archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes – demonstrating that there are multiple pathways to adaptations that essentially do the same thing.

Furthermore, the longer back a protein’s lineage is, the more conserved (unlikely to change over time) it is since said protein has undergone selective pressure and any new non-silent mutations would be even more likely to be catastrophic to function. This can lead to some very inefficient proteins, such as Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase (Rubisco), which has enzymatic activity of only 4 molecules per second (most enzymes have activities of hundreds or thousands per second) but is critical for the carbon fixation cycle. If everything were so intricate and intelligently designed, Rubisco would be far more efficient and not have to consist of 40% of total proteins in the cell NOR would it be sensitive to something as simple as oxygen.

Rubisco. If it were intelligently designed, God must really have been on something.

Life can loosely be defined as a structure that is capable of metabolism, can self-replicate, and can regulate its own environment. There is strong circumstantial evidence that all three can occur individually even through very simple, immediate phenomenon; lipids, which were created by the Miller-Urey Experiment, can spontaneously form into micelles given a certain concentration of lipids (the Critical Micelle Concentation). These micelles are enclosed structures capable of forming a basis of a micro environment.

Abiogenesis Goes Far Beyond “Lightning Striking a Mud Puddle” – Thomas Cech’s Experiments

Nobel Laureate Thomas Cech showed through a fragment assay where he stripped away various portions of the bacterial ribosome that if 95% of all proteins were stripped away, the ribosome would still be capable of peptidyl transferase activity. He also found that the protein did not exist around the active sites of the ribosome. Through this and various other experiments, Cech demonstrated that RNA functions as both an encoder and a catalyst (a catalyzing RNA is referred to as a ribozyme).

Cech further demonstrated that such an RNA molecule can be relatively simple and can form through a variety of pathways. Cech sequenced random RNA sequences and found that out of a total of 10^85 possible molecules with just 172 bases, around one per 10^15 molecules was capable of some peptidyl transferase activity. Thus there are 10^70 different molecules with different bases capable of PT activity – and just for those molecules with 172 bases! Thus, one does not need a intricately and intelligently designed ribozyme to perform seemingly advanced metabolic activities – random polymerization and then selective pressure for those molecules best able to self-replicate will suffice.

39:31 – Ben fawns over Capital Hill town idiot Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN), who has proposed a bill preserving “academic freedom” at the Smithsonian in response to Sternberg’s “persecution”. This is just one of many examples of “The Academy”, a shadowy organization dedicated to eliminating God from the science lab.

Congressman Souder’s admits that he is from a district where the Democrats need to be conservatives to survive and the Republicans are even more far to the right. Belief in the literal truth of the Bible hardly makes him some sort of nonpartisan arbiter in the Evolution-ID debate. Oh, and parroting the Expelled movie ON his house website doesn’t really help.

41:29 – The National Center for Science Education is at the forefront of keeping Darwinism in power. They are one of many watchdog organizations, along with that demonic ACLU, which is in cahoots with The Academy.

And there are numerous watchdog organizations that do exactly the opposite. To imply some sort of liberal conspiracy theory is one of the many disingenuous claims this movie makes.

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family and more guilty of spamming peoples’ e-mails than half of Nigeria

43:35 – Darwinism turns goodly, God-fearing Christians into Atheists! Just look at Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers! Beware!

(See 57:22 for more)

Although the percentage of Americans who believe evolution stand at an appallingly low 40% (only several percentage points above hardcore creationism), almost 80% of Americans consider themselves Christians… meaning that even if we assume that everyone in the remaining 20% believed in evolution, 50% of evolutionists would have to be Christians. I’m sure that they are Christians In Name Only, because they probably belong to some liberal church that supports gay marriage or is maybe just a front group for *gulp* humanism.

44:18 – Ben uses the example of the Abrams Report on MSNBC (now Verdict w/ Dan Abrams), who absolutely dismantled a lawyer from the Thomas More Law Foundation representing the defendants of the Dover School District Trial to show that the media is firmly in the hands of Big Science.

Kudos to Dan Abrams; he called out the IDers for what they really are – closest creationists. And while Abrams, Keith Olbermann, and maybe even Chris Matthews on MSNBC lean to the left, there have always been more conservative pundits on cable TV. Right-wingers Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck all gave the Expelled movie itself glowing reviews. I also have yet to see an unabashedly far-left organization that masquerades itself as “News”, just as FOX News does for the right.

45:41- Pamela Winnick “refused to take sides” in an article on the evolution-ID debate. But the Darwinists still persecuted her because she refused to show enough deference to evolution.

This is actually one area where Ben Stein gets it partially right. Winnick’s original article does try to set a neutral tone between the evolution-ID debate… although it does make the false assumption that ID is a serious theory that needs to be debated. But Stein gives no examples of how she was “persecuted”. And now Pamela Winnick cannot be considered a non-partisan journalist – her new book “Science’s War Against Religion“.

46:36 – Darwinism has infiltrated the courts in a last-ditch attempt to stop Intelligent Design. Representing the vanguard of the effort is the ACLU.

A court is a forum where all the evidence for or against Intelligent Design and/or the Theory of Evolution can be debated, discussed, and refuted. Oh wait, I forgot you don’t have any evidence – maybe that’s why you’re so afraid of the judicial system.

49:44 - Darwinists have given up on defending their own theory, and have simply resorted to attacking their opponent (religion and intelligent design) like a dirty politician.

On the contrary, this film and the IDers do the very same thing you’re decrying, and I have the liveblog to prove it.

53:12 – There have been plenty of religious people who are also scientists like Isaac Newton and Galileo. Darwinists don’t have a monopoly on good science.

No one said they did except the film, which is just used to build up a persecution complex. Francis Collins is a relatively conservative evangelical Christian and a very accomplished scientist who worked on the Human Genome Project – but the difference between him and the ID people is that the ID people use religion to manipulate science despite the overwhelming evidence.

57:22 – PZ Myers was not only converted to atheism through Darwinism, but now also actively seeks to marginalize religion, bring it down, and make it irrelevant in the public sphere.

Just one in a long line of fear-baiting arguments that this film makes. There are plenty of religious people who believe in the Theory of Evolution; even the Catholic Church and the very conservative Pope Benedict XVI’s doctrine (while not altogether rational) claim the theory as valid and leave it up to the (real) scientists.

Furthermore, Stein is insinuating that atheists are out to overthrow Christianity or something, which is completely false. This is to suggest that atheists are one monolithic force that is “out to get religion”, whereas in reality atheists are just as diverse in world view as the various Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other religious denominations. There are atheists like myself who are more or less content with keeping the separation between Church and State, and more “hardcore” atheists who seek actively to challenge the views of religious people just as Christian evangelicals do the same to nonbelievers.

The EVIL ATHEIST CONSPIRACY is coming! Watch out, or you may become one of “Them”.

There is also no conflict between religion and the Theory of Evolution as long as one sees The Bible and other holy books as a damned (pardon my language) allegory rather than word-for-word truths – as many moderate and liberal Christians have… not to mention that France during the Enlightenment experienced an upsurge of atheism up to a point in time where even the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame ceased to be a religious institution for a time – all of this before Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle.

Finally, the context of the question posed to PZ Myers is also severely lacking – if you were to ask an evangelical Christian what would be their ideal world, it would almost certainly be a monotonous one where there might not be homosexuality and every single individual were an evangelical Christian who adhered to the same brand of Christianity and was “saved”. It was obvious that PZ Myers would say that he preferred a world where scientific research would marginalize in all aspects of life.

Tags: ben stein, evolution, expelled, intelligence, intelligent design, science
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Fundamentalist Theatre 3000 BC – Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Part 1)

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Yes, I am a science major… you wouldn’t know it from all the political and historical stuff that I’m writing around here (it is election season), but this should make up for the next five political posts. Seeing as how I’m sick this week and don’t really feel like writing up a full article, I dugg up a comprehensive refutation of Ben Stein’s steaming pile of success, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” that I had written a while back. Again, this is so you don’t have to watch the movie (this time I can only provide illegal links anyways) and know what dumbass comments that the pseudointellectual Stein is making. This is only part one however, since there are too many stupid comments to put it all on one post.

00:42 – Ben Stein brings up the example of Dr. Richard Sternberg, who didn’t “tow the party line” and agreed to publish an article by IDer Stephen Meyer. Sternberg was subsequently forced to resign.

According to the Biological Society of Washington which had to bear the shame of that particular article being in their publication, Sternberg did not follow conventional procedure when deciding to publish the article, which was to have a board consisting of councilors, former and current presidents, and officers. But knowing that the Meyer article would not survive the rigors of peer review, Sternberg decided to personally fast-track the article to publication.

04:05 – Stein challenges Michael Shermer, using the moniker of “academic freedom” to contest that Stephen Meyer and Sternberg should have been allowed to publish their article without incident, and says that IDers are being persecuted.

I’ve already argued that Sternberg basically fell on his sword to look like a martyr.

05:11 – Dr. Caroline Crocker got fired from George Mason University for simply mentioning – not promoting – intelligent design. She is now blacklisted and is a persecuted individual.

Yes. She wasn’t promoting intelligent design. I’m sure some non-partisan independent source like… oh say the Washington Post will back her up…. right? The fact is that Crocker was pushing intelligent design in the classroom, and anything short of screaming at the top of your lungs “GOD DID IT” would be considered “neutral” in the eyes of Ben Stein.

“[...] this highly trained biologist wanted students to know what she herself deeply believed: that the scientific establishment was perpetrating fraud, hunting down critics of evolution to ruin them and disguising an atheistic view of life in the garb of science.”

She even resorts to Godwin’s Rule during the very lecture TO HER STUDENTS. No wonder she was disciplined; This was indoctrination and even if she wasn’t playing the victim card and crying “persecution!”, George Mason was completely justified in what it was doing.

“The students sat stunned. But Crocker was not done. From this ill-conceived theory, she concluded, much harm had arisen. Nazi Germany had taken Darwin’s ideas about natural selection, the credo that only the fittest survive, and followed it to its extreme conclusions — anti-Semitism, eugenics and death camps. ‘What happened in Germany in World War II was based on science, that some genes and some people should be killed,’ Crocker said quietly. ‘My grandfather had a genetic problem and was put in the hospital and killed.’”

06:35 – Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor asserts that doctors do not need to study evolution, and the Darwinists went on the attack, pressing him to retire or resign.

Right. The study of evolutionary biology in doctorates varies… and within that range is little or none at all. In any case, we’ve already shown in the case of Richard Sternberg how ID’ers love to play the victim card… and since Egnor still retains his post and cannot substantiate any of his claims, he’s probably just pissed off at a few bloggers.

07:20 – Professor Marks of Baylor University was forced by academia to shut down his research and return grant money for links to the intelligent design movement.

First of all, Marks is a professor of electrical engineering, not evolutionary biology – just to make things clear. And Baylor University did offer to keep the site hosted on the university as long as Marks changed the title from “Evolutionary Informatics Lab” to something less deceiving and if he disassociated the site from being affiliated with the university; even this evangelical magazine lauded Baylor’s compromise. But Marks, determined to be a martyr, refused, and the site is now hosted on non-university servers.

08:53 – Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University was denied tenure because he claimed in his book the Privileged Planet that the universe had an intelligent designer. All this despite his “stellar research record” – no pun intended.

[If there are any astronomy majors who would like to add to this, please e-mail Edger]

“By assessing the elements that compose our planet, they argue, we can tell that it was designed for multicellular organic life. The presence of carbon, oxygen and water in the right proportions makes it possible for organic life to exist; and this combination of minerals and chemical elements exists only on Earth. [...] our planet is exquisitely fit not only to support life, but also to give us the best view of the universe, as if Earth were designed both for life and for scientific discovery.”

So not only organisms now, but the Earth itself? So no chance through naturalistic properties a planet in the Goldilocks Zone and of the right size could have formed in the Sun’s accretion disc? And I suppose that stars are incapable of generating heavier elements that are later expelled via a supernova or that the proportion of chemical elements can change on this planet or on other planets has changed over these billions of years to one of more or less accommodation towards multicellular life? This guy deserves to get laughed out of the scientific community, not just potentially reprimanded.

By the way, there is a video version of The Privileged Planet on Google Video narrated by none other than John Rhys-Davies, AKA Gimli and Treebeard of Lord of the Rings. And just when I thought I couldn’t lose any more respect for him after his appearance in the Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie “Chupacabra: Dark Seas” -

Yes, it’s El Chupacabra. On a fracking cruise liner. It’s that bad.

15:02 – Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman claims that the notion of ID masquerading as religion is a “red herring” and that the Discovery Institute relies on scientific evidence and has persons of all religions, “including agnostics”. Intelligent Design is simply the study of patterns in nature that are best explained by an intelligent creator.

I suppose posting the image of your organization’s former logo won’t exactly help -

20:17 – As Newtonian Physics has been supplanted as well, Darwinism is an obsolete 19th century theory that is falling apart in the face of new evidence.

On the contrary, Classical Darwinism was based on very flawed Lamarckian principles that basically assert that if a physical adaptation confers an advantage, an organism’s offspring will have that adaptation enlarged or lengthened. This of course is ridiculous and was supplanted as the “engine” of natural selection by genetic mutations caused by environmental hazards and errors by the cell’s DNA polymerases. This mechanism is far more plausible than Lamarck’s, and only serves to strengthen the Theory of Evolution.

21:50 – Dr. Stephen Meyer states that it’s his job as a scientist to stop “one hand from clapping” and challenge the conventional theory of Darwinism. He claims that for every shred of evidence supporting Darwinism, there is a counterargument that supports ID.

That’s like saying that we should give the flat-earth “theory” equal time too… because the round-earthers have been monopolizing the science world, you know.

22:54 – Jonathan Wells claims that Darwinists are distorting the evidence and are “harming science”.

I wonder which group is going “hm, this looks too complex to undergo gradual genetic mutations, so I’m not going to attempt to try to find out how” and ignoring the scientific method.

25:15 – Mathematician David Berlinski claims that evolution is so vague about so many things that it cannot fit mathematical models like other theories and points to the vague definition of “species” as one of Darwinism’s fallacies.

There have been debates over the definition of species that lie well outside the realm of Darwinism; in fact, there are at least ELEVEN different ways to define and differentiate a species, and evolution directly involves only one of them. A straw-man argument… although this vagueness can allow for inter-species breeding, which can be a huge source of genetic variation which only works more to the detriment of ID/Creationism.

27:04 – Darwin was arrogant in titling his book “The Origin of Species” rather than “The Origin of Man”, and presumed to know more than he could prove.

A low-blow character attack that I wouldn’t put past this movie – not to mention that Darwin observed finches and not humans. No matter Darwin’s supposed arrogance, scientists are allowed to make bold hypotheses IF they are grounded in reality, but the latter element would be missing from the Creationist’s mind.

28:13 – Ben Stein incredulously points to a “Darwinist” documentary film that states that “perhaps the chemicals in the early Earth’s atmosphere were jump started by lightning”

Nonspontaneous, or thermodynamically unfavorable reactions such as the formation of the various compounds in the Miller-Urey Experiment (see below) NEED energy to work. Lightning is a perfectly good source, and Stein’s incredulousness stems from his own ignorance.

28:45 – The Miller-Urey experiment, where a chemical composition believed to mimic that of the early Earth’s atmosphere and catalyzed with lightning, failed to produce life.

A visual representation of the Miller-Urey Experiment

This is such a common straw man argument used by many ID’ers/Creationists. The objective of the Miller-Urey Experiment was NOT to create life, but to see if a simulation of Earth’s early atmosphere consisting of simply inorganic compounds along with an energy source (lightning) could generate organic compounds. It was NOT a failure, and in fact after just one week, amino acids along with sugars, lipids, and nucleic acid precursors formed. It is impossible to have this happen in today’s atmosphere because oxygen turns the atmosphere from neutral to reducing – of course, oxygen was nonexistent due to the lack of photosynthetic organisms on the early Earth.

The many simple organic molecules formed by the Miller-Urey Experiment in just a week

More to come… the entire movie is approximately 90 minutes long.

Tags: ben stein, Charles Darwin, creationism, Discovery Institute, evolution, expelled, Guillermo Gonzalez, intelligent design, Jonathan Wells, Miller-Urey Experiment, pseudoscience
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Next Time a Creationist Asks for Transitional Fossils…

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

…you go ahead and whip out this link:

http://www.transitional-fossil.com/

It is pathetic how many creationists are out there. It is even more saddening that they don’t even know what evolution is! Not one creationist I’ve ever spoken to has ever ever ever defined evolution correctly. They are arguing against a straw man. But the worst of it all is that they do not even listen when they’re told that they don’t know what evolution is. They never bat an eyelash. They just move on as intellectual zombies, slaves to their religious beliefs that don’t let them see reality.

So, I have a suggestion. If you ever encounter a creationist, don’t debate about evolution. It is a pointless exercise when the creationist does not even know what evolution is. Instead, it would be more useful to either leave the guy alone or try to educate this person about what creationism really is. Only do the second option if you yourself are well informed about what evolution is.

On a side note, I doubt that link will change any creationist’s mind.

Anyway, let’s still give three cheers for the Tiktaalik.

Tags: creationist, fish, ID, intelligent design, land, lizard, tiktaalik, transitional fossil
Posted in Media | 6 Comments »

The world still seems to exist

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Reports are still coming in, but so far it seems that the Earth has not been destroyed by the LHC. We don’t have enough information yet, but it seems to still be here.

It is potentially arguable though, that we don’t have any transitional Earths between yesterday and today, and so the theory of the Earth still existing remains just that. It seems equally likely that the Earth was destroyed yesterday, but then instantly recreated by God an intelligent external agent this morning in the exact state that it would be had the Earth not been destroyed.

In fact, both the “theory” of the Earth still existing and the instant re-creation are equally valid, so both ought to be taught with equal time in our public schools. Otherwise we are denying our children access to the best science available.

In fact, I would wager that the idea of external re-creation is being dogmatically kept out of our schools and academic institutions by established Big Science. We must expose the ivory tower frauds for what they are. Support the Theory of External Re-Creation!

Tags: creationism, intelligent design, LHC, parody
Posted in Commentary | 2 Comments »

ID’s REAL Equal Weight

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Via Steve Greenberg

Tags: cartoon, creationism, evolution, ID, intelligent design, teach the controversy
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McCain’s VP pick is Not Good for Science

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I wake up this afternoon and check the news and my e-mails from my bed on my iPod touch. It has become an enjoyable morning ritual of mine. As I perused the top stories of the day, I find that McCain chose a VP, Sarah Palin. She was an intriguing choice and I started doing some research on her.

I found out that she:

is the governor of Alaska.
is a mother of 5.
is an evangelical Protestant.
is pro-life and a member of Feminists for Life.
is a creationist.
is a creationist who wants creationism taught along with evolution.

I shall let her speak for herself:

In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:

“I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”

(…)

Palin said she thought there was value in discussing alternatives.

“It’s OK to let kids know that there are theories out there,” she said in the interview. “They gain information just by being in a discussion.”

That was how she was brought up, she said. Her father was a public school science teacher.

“My dad did talk a lot about his theories of evolution,” she said. “He would show us fossils and say, ‘How old do you think these are?’ ”

Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, “I believe we have a creator.”

She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact.

“I’m not going to pretend I know how all this came to be,” she said.

From Anchorage Daily News

Again, this is the usual tripe creationists try to push: “Teach both sides!” “Teach the debate!”

There is NO debate. Evolution is fact. I bet you Palin won’t be able to define evolution if you asked her to. In my experience, almost all deniers of evolution do not know what evolution is. It’s rather pathetic that they would deny something without knowing what it actually is.

Wired also had this to say about her:

Palin’s statements track with the official Alaska Republican Party platform, which support creation science and intelligent design by name, and says that “evidence disputing the theory should also be presented.”

According to Fordham Institute science education expert Lawrence Lerner, Palin’s nomination is less worrisome in terms of education than the broad relationship of science and government.

“In the direct sense, vice presidents don’t have much to do with what goes on in classrooms. But a person who’s a creationist doesn’t understand science and technology at all,” said Lerner. “It doesn’t bode well for science, and doesn’t bode well for interaction between science and government.”

From the Wired Website

Personally, if someone believes in creationism, it does not bother me. If their belief does not have negative effects on my life, then I don’t mind it. BUT this is just not the case with regards to Palin and most creationists. Their unscientific demeanor does have negative ramifications. It does affect me negatively. How could they possibly make informed decisions about scientific policies when they are scientifically illiterate? They are dangerous people. Palin is dangerous.

So…who wants to move out of the US with me if McCain gets elected?

Tags: creationism, creationist, government, ID, intelligent design, sarah palin, science, science advocacy
Posted in News | 8 Comments »

ID: Failing at theology and at science

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. [The Wedge Strategy]

Despite their religious motivations, what the IDists don’t seem to realize is that ID actually damages Christian doctrine. OH NOES!!

God-of-the-gaps (Behe/Dembski)

Michael Behe’s version of intelligent design posits a god that tinkers now and then with his creation to design “irreducibly complex” structures such as the bacterial flagellum and the human eye. The idea that god is a tinkering mechanic does not hold water in light of the Biblical doctrine that god is actively involved in the world at all times. Behe’s theology is one where god resides in the gaps of human knowledge, and that god can and should retreat every time a scientific discovery is made. Behe is claiming that the study of nature by material beings would somehow destroy faith in a god, and asserts that science is superior to religious faith.

Behe’s creator is one who lies back for long periods of time, merely appearing to design one complex structure or another. The extension of William Paley’s idea of a watch requiring a watchmaker and design requiring a designer does not work in the case of Behe’s arguments, as his criteria for detecting design is merely what has not been explained by science at the time.

Behe has placed his religion in conflict with science as his argument leads to using ignorance as a reason for belief in god. This god-of-the-gaps theology ultimately undermines religion by shrinking the role of god as science marches on, and affirms the notion that religion has been disproven by the mechanisms and tools of science. When you look for god in things that science has not explained or what you think science has not explained, all you get into is a big pile of trouble.

God as a tinkering mechanic (Johnson)

Philip Johnson posits a god or an ‘intelligent designer’ which intervenes at specific moments in history to create organisms separately without any evolutionary history whatsoever. While traditional Biblical creationists claim that the earth has to be younger than 10,000 years old, Johnson accepts an old earth but rejects the common ancestry of all life due to what he claims are gaps in the fossil record.

Johnson’s view is based on the idea that god is a magician who interferes sporadically in the natural world. However, if we were to look at traditional Christian doctrine, it is theologically inconsistent because god is said to be always active in the natural world. Johnson’s ideas not only rests on a misunderstanding of punctuated equilibrium and the nature of the fossil record, but also lends a disservice to his god by casting doubt on the supposed creator’s competence.

When we look at the vast number of species that have gone extinct, we wonder why Johnson sees a necessity for an all-powerful god to perform “failed experiments” in the course of creation. Explaining design that gives an appearance of evolution and the necessity of extinction cannot be tested, disproven or investigated, and would contradict the nature of god that is revealed in his own Bible.

As we have seen, ID fails as a science and as a theological standpoint. Therefore, ID is an epic failure.

Tags: christianity, creationism, evolution, ID, intelligent design, science, theology
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