Movie Review: Expelled
posted at 3:00 pm on April 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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While at CPAC in February, I had an opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new documentary, Expelled: The Movie. Ben Stein focuses on a perceived lack of intellectual freedom afforded to those who either believe in or investigate Intelligent Design theories in the scientific community. I wrote the following review at the time; the producers may have made some changes since, but I don’t believe it would change the thrust of my review. I plan on seeing the theatrical release this weekend, and would recommend it to everyone as at least a way to discuss the values and limitations of scientific inquiry and intellectual openness in American Academia.
The bloggers at CPAC received an invitation to screen a new documentary on academic intolerance called Expelled: The Movie this evening. The documentary features Ben Stein on a quest to understand the near-hysteria caused by scientists who so much as broach the idea of intelligent design in papers or in research. It follows Stein as he interviews professors denied tenure, editors fired, and journalists shunned for touching the subject even at its most innocuous levels.
Before discussing my feelings about the film, which is still in post-production and will not go into release until April, I should explain my approach to the ID/evolution debate. I believe evolution is demonstrably proven in enough examples to say that its effect on variation in species cannot be denied. The example I used tonight in discussing this with another viewer (certainly not the only example) is antibiotic effects on bacteria. Antibiotics that kill 99% of bacteria eventually promote the survival and the expansion of the 1% that resist them, created superbacteria that require another set of antibiotics to cure, and so on.
That said, evolution does not interfere with my faith in God. God certainly could have created the universe with a design that included life. The rational laws of nature would include evolution, as well as the myriad of other rational and mathematically provable mechanisms that undergird nature. In fact, the impulse of man to discover the rational laws of nature began with the belief in a rational God, as scientists understood nature’s rationality to reveal an intelligent Creator.
I’d go deeper than that, but Dinesh D’Souza covers it nicely enough already in his book What’s So Great About Christianity, and it’s getting late enough as it is. Suffice it to say that evolution doesn’t present a threat to my worldview.
Rationally, we have to admit that some use ID as an excuse to teach the more literal form of Creationism that has been used to argue against evolution entirely, especially against teaching evolution in primary-school classrooms. That admission does not appear in Expelled, which is a glaring omission. It tends to take out of context the frustration some scientists have about ID, and its place in polarizing the debate over its use. Properly framed, ID accepts all of the science without accepting its transformation into its own belief system.
What do I mean by that? In this, the film does an excellent job of demonstrating atheism as a belief system. Atheism as represented by Richard Dawkings and others in this film gets exposed as exactly the kind of belief system they claim to despise. They can’t prove God exists — and they can’t prove God doesn’t exist. They make the common fallacy of arguing that absence of evidence amounts to evidence of absence.
But in a way, this is all secondary to the real issue of the film: academic intolerance. The debate over ID vs Darwinism sets the table for a truly disturbing look at academia. Science should be about the free debate and research of ideas and hypotheses for duplicable results and provable theorems. However, as the examples Stein and the film provide amply show, the Darwinist academic establishment will brook no dissent from the orthodoxy — and scientists have to be shown with hidden faces to speak to the issue for the film.
Amusingly, Stein asks people how the first cell came to be. None of the scientists could give him a straight answer. Dawkins himself admits he doesn’t know and that no one else does, either — but postulates that aliens could have brought life to this planet, and then postulates that another alien civilization could have brought life to that planet, and so on. He then concedes that one entity could have been the original source … but insists that entity could not possibly have been God. For this he gives absolutely no evidence at all, relegating it as a belief system somewhat akin to Scientology.
All of this is extremely effective, as are the many allusions made to the Berlin Wall during the film. The theme runs throughout, and it explicitly refers to the defensive academic establishment as having built a wall that tramples on freedom of thought and discourse. Less effective is the heavy references to the Nazis in the movie. Although emotionally affecting for some obvious reasons, the fact is that while the Nazis were mostly Darwinists (along with a lot of other things), the vast majority of Darwinists aren’t Nazis. Certainly the eugenicists in Nazi Germany were mightily influenced by Darwinism, but America had its own eugenicists, which the film points out.
I should point out that the film has not finished production, and that changes will be made between now and its release in April. The filmmakers just completed an interview with Christopher Hitchens and will include it in the final cut. I believe other changes may be made which could address some of the criticisms I’ve written here.
Overall, though, the film presents a powerful argument not for intelligent design as much as for the freedom of scientific inquiry. If scientists get punished for challenging orthodoxy, we will not expand our learning but ossify it in concrete. Expelled: The Movie is entertaining, maddening, funny, and provocative, and well worth your time.
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Come on, guys, let’s carry this friendly-fire-fest out to 2000 posts!
Merovign on April 20, 2008 at 1:32 PM
Agreed. Hitler’s eugenics-like behavior was far from Christian. He used religion as a tool, just like class-warfare. Also, Pol Pot declared God dead, and reset the calendars, if I’m not mistaken. Thanks for the shout out ronsfi, it’s not like these jokers were popes or apostles.
Cold Steel on April 20, 2008 at 1:34 PM
there is one god and that is Darwin, and ronsfi is he
prophetbell ringerDaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:36 PM
Always a few hundred years ago, never contemporary. You see because the Christians went through a reformation, our goals are just can be and are redefined from man’s desire, to God’s commands…and the goals of atheists are what?
Once again, name the atheist organizations, that has provided you with anything of value. If you came up with even one, I would counter with thousands of faith based organizations.
The challenge, name the atheist organization that helps society (please don’t say the UN). Just asking for one…just one…
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 1:36 PM
AP and Ed will need to index this and provide a TofC after this thing completely melts down.
Cold Steel on April 20, 2008 at 1:36 PM
We can do it, it will evolve to 2000
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 1:38 PM
love to sit here but I have things to do..
fun reading all of the comments..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:38 PM
and doing what I can to stretch it out to 2000..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:39 PM
one post at a time..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:39 PM
1,601st!
Akzed on April 20, 2008 at 1:40 PM
I want the godess and Cipher to get back to the brain-damaged giraffes and cigarette-smoking gay dinosaurs.
That was cool.
shibumiglass on April 20, 2008 at 1:42 PM
Looks like the atheists are all at church today…
fossten on April 20, 2008 at 1:44 PM
How about something more contemporary.
http://afgen.com/racism_catholics.html
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 1:26 PM
See my quote be MLK as well. Contemporary enough for you? Iam not saying all Christians are racist. Not at all. Your statement that Atheism and racism are kindred indeed grew one from the other is rather ridiculous. I think you are confusing racism with Eugenics which, it can be argued, sprang from evolutionary ideas.
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Precisely.
This is a quote from Darwin’s own book, “The Descent of Man,” in a chapter called “The Races of Man.” Darwin wrote:
“At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the SAVAGE RACES throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now BETWEEN the NEGRO or AUSTRALIAN and the GORILLA” (1874, p. 178).
When Darwin uses the word RACES here was he talking about different animal species? Uh huh. (tap tap tap taptaptap) Mmm hmm. (tap tap tap taptaptap) Put ol’ Charlie on Larry King Live. Tell the “genius” (NOT!) to say this again, today, NOW! The liberal attack dogs like the ACLU who love his evolution would have a field day with the “genius”… lol
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 1:49 PM
sure, Christianity had a dark phase, and if you examine more of those events more closely, you will see that the people in charge where doing things they wanted, but using Christ’s name as the moral authority.. Al Gore does the same thing in his climate change crusade ‘To Save Mother Earth’.
but in defense of darwinism and to silence it’s critics, you smear the name of Christianity. Do you have anything else?
why does the theory of ID scare you?
you are proving the point of the movie, that freedom of thought (what if..) is censored..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:50 PM
yes, I did read it..
yes racism still exists, sad but true..
racism is also found in several other third world types of countries where the thug dictator is in charge and
takes awaynationalizes producing farms for the ‘good of the people’..DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:54 PM
for the record, i’m not a catholic in South Africa..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:55 PM
I would be very surprised if “the Nazis were mostly Darwinists”. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a highly influential antisemitic fraud endorsed by Hitler in Mein Kampf and made required reading in German schools, described Darwinism as a Jewish plot.
dorkafork on April 20, 2008 at 1:56 PM
Have we reached the “we can’t discredit evolution so let’s just claim Darwin was racist” stage of the debate now?
e-pirate on April 20, 2008 at 1:59 PM
i’m not trying to take away from your post but it seems that any conspiracy theory, taken to it’s roots, has some sort of Jewish Plot to it..
(Bildabergers, the troofers..)
i’m only sayin’..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 1:59 PM
I have an interesting news report for you.
As I posted before, the Bible teaches that God made the world about 6,000 years ago. If you add up the dates in Scripture, it comes to about 6,000, not millions and billions. The Bible says God made the world about 6,000 years ago; 4,400 years ago there was a Flood that destroyed the world; 2,000 years ago Jesus came, died on the cross, and here we are today. Here we are today, waiting for the Lord to come back in about 10 minutes.
NOTE: This theory not only explains how the dinosaurs died, but how so many fossils were preserved (A gigantic flood with tons of dirt and water covering you instantly would result in a fossil).
Okay now check this out: Did you know that in 2005, scientists found traces of soft tissue, including blood vessels, inside the leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur? This tissue was “stretchy” and it had blood cells, I mean real flesh and blood from a T-Rex dinosaur! Of course this soft tissue was quite a shock for evolutionists. If these dinosaurs are supposed to have been dead for at least 65 million years it doesn’t make sense. Finding soft tissue is not so surprising if the bones are only a few thousand years old though. Again, the findings are consistent with what the Bible teaches — a young earth. That is the real story here my friends, but one you will never hear in the media whose religion is evolutionism and whose writers are prejudiced.
Here’s the T-Rex video, it never dawns on them that maybe the T-Rex tissue is not 70 million years old, but only a few thousand years old like the Bible teaches. I think they are missing the real question: Are dinosaurs that old? As you know, evolutionists won’t even ask that question because of their strongly-held religious beliefs.
Stick with it til the end, she’s at a loss to explain the excellent quality of the sample.
T-Rex Found with Soft Tissue
Scientists recover T-Rex soft tissue
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 2:02 PM
woo hoo.. Jurassic Park is closer to a reality than ever!!
send in the lawyers first, just in case it all goes wrong..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 2:06 PM
If your point is that because Darwin was racist his work has no merit then you better throw out the Constitution along with the ideas of such notables as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill.
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 2:13 PM
No.. ronsfi keeps saying that Christianity is..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 2:13 PM
Your defense of darwinism is trying to silence it’s critics and people who ask, ‘what if chucky was wrong?’…
it went the racist route because you brought it there..
blah blah..christians practicing racism long before CD.. blah blah blah..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 2:18 PM
Your second link is subtitled “70 million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels.” How on earth does this prove the Earth is 6000 years old?
e-pirate on April 20, 2008 at 2:20 PM
Everybody just needs to go read some Velikovski.
Then come back and tell me if it’s possible to believe in God and Velikovski’s theories at the same time, like I do.
Que meltdown in 3… 2… 1…
shibumiglass on April 20, 2008 at 2:20 PM
It helps to try and think a linear fashion. I was responding the claim that Atheism produced racism or vice versa by right2bright. I also stated outright that I don’t think all Christians are racist.
Step 1
Read comment.
Step 2
Post coherent reply.
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 2:29 PM
Homo sapiens is a single, interbreeding species. There is a lot of variation in physiognomy, hair form, skin color, blood chemistry, and other phenotypical characters, which of course have a genetic basis, but there are not distinct species or sub-species. Humans breed at a very slow rate, compared to many other organisms, so to develop distinct species populations would have to remain in isolation for a very long time. The idea of ‘race’ is a social construct that has no basis in biology. This was not well understood in the mid-19th century; remember when Darwin was writing, but a glance at a page of photographs of people from around the world—Eskimos, Melanesians, Mongolians, Swedes, Bushmen, Tibetans, Kurds,Nilotes, etc., etc.—will make it quite clear. There is no such thing as ‘race’.
MrLynn on April 20, 2008 at 2:31 PM
The ACLU’s view on common descent isn’t any more relevant than their view on plate tectonics.
dedalus on April 20, 2008 at 2:34 PM
GOD willing !
stenwin77 on April 20, 2008 at 2:43 PM
Ed, with all due respect, the evolution theory is in complete contradiction to what the Bible teaches. A god that has to use suffering, misfits, death, a god that doesn’t know what he wants the first time and can’t make it right in six days like He said, that is a retarded god. I would not worship that one at all — such a god is — certainly not the God of the Bible.
The Bible makes it very clear God created the world in 6 literal, 24-hour days, and rested on thu\T
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” Exodus 20:11
God took six days instead of a single instant to finish His work of creating and making all things for us (Genesis 2:1-3). Ever stop to notice God’s week was of precisely the same duration and pattern as man’s regular week? Frankly, I don’t see any Scripture that supports evolution. There are no long creation days. Someone show me where God said He took billions and billions of years to create the world, cuz I’d like to see. I’m just pointing this out to you, Ed. I mean no disrespect. Like I said, just because you don’t agree with someone doesn’t mean that the rest of them is bad, but um, I really think you should take another look at this issue or at least keep an open mind about it. The main historic position of the Church has been young earth creation. It is primarily only in more recent times that the Church has sought to accommodate its views to “scientists” and believe in millions of years. Really, but the Bible’s simplest interpretation is for a young earth creation account. One must ignore large portions of Scripture to claim otherwise.
“The works were finished from the foundation of the world. And God did rest the seventh day from all His works.” Hebrews 4:3, 4
We have the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th literal days of creation laid out for us in the book of Genesis, where the “LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is…” then:
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Genesis 2:1-3
It’s very simple.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 2:44 PM
Pirate, evolution states Dinosaurs lived approx. 65- 70 million years ago (somewhere around there). If the T-Rex tissue is that old there is no possible way we could open up it’s leg bone and find soft tissue, ie, Dinosaur meat…. if they are supposed to have been dead for at least 65 million years it doesn’t make sense. However, finding soft tissue, including blood vessels, inside the leg bone of a T-Rex does make sense if Dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old like the Bible teaches. The Bible states there was a world wide flood that killed of most Dinosaures about 4400 years ago. This explanation better explains the preservation of the tissue.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 2:57 PM
Isn’t that the God of the Bible? He casts his first human creations out of Eden. He wipes out most of his creation in a flood. He sends plagues. He sends his son to die on a cross and redeem mankind. There is no shortage of suffering and death in the Bible.
Also, isn’t the idea of God “resting” not literal? God is omnipotent and doesn’t get tired like a man.
dedalus on April 20, 2008 at 3:07 PM
What do any of these things have to do with Christians or Christianty? You think slavery is a Christian idea? That it was not found outside Christian countries?
flenser on April 20, 2008 at 3:09 PM
This thread reminds me why I became not only an agnostic, but an independent as well.
JFS61 on April 20, 2008 at 3:10 PM
Exactly. This speaks volumes doesn’t it.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 3:13 PM
Evolution doesn’t say anything about when the dinosaur lived. That would be archeology, geology, etc.
Why doesn’t it make sense? Just because you personally don’t understand the process of preservation and fossilization doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
e-pirate on April 20, 2008 at 3:15 PM
and would recommend it to everyone as at least a way to discuss the values and limitations of scientific inquiry and intellectual openness in American Academia.
I agree that evolutionary theory shouldn’t affect one’s belief in God. But I think you miss the larger point. ID isn’t scientific inquiry, it’s a set of religious beliefs derived from religious teachings and documents. Would anyone deny this?
I don’t have any problem with the introduction of ID in the classroom, except for the fact that many of its proponents want to present it as a scientific theory, which it is not. ID is an alternative to scientific inquiry, not another form of valid science.
We would have the same debate over Galileo’s theories today if not for the fact that the position of the sun relative to the earth wasn’t such an incontestable fact. Yet it’s not plausible that we require every scientific theory to be as provable as Galileo’s radical ideas.
bayam on April 20, 2008 at 3:21 PM
And it’s especially simple when you don’t let things like higher brain functions interfere with a perfectly elegant boneheaded theory. The calendar was invented by fundamentalist Christians, so of course it matches what they read in the book of Genesis! (Although, predictably, they didn’t read it correctly, which is why our days begin at sunup instead of sundown.)
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:22 PM
Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
- Robert A. Heinlein
MB4 on April 20, 2008 at 3:23 PM
If you’re going to cherry pick posts to reply on you might want to read what was previously posted. Clearly ronsfi is the one filled with rage, you might want to give his post a read before you run off at the keyboard.
kongzilla on April 20, 2008 at 3:24 PM
Again, this is exactly correct. You have to believe approx 20 billion years ago there was this big bang where nothing exploded and produced everything. They believe it all started about 18 to 20 billion years agom and that all the matter in the universe was concentrated into one very dense, hot region that may have been much smaller than a period on this page. Yep. All the matter in the universe was squished into a dot no bigger than a period on this page. Wow. That’s one crowded dot man!
This is even in major science journals. Some guy said, he said in the May 1984 issue of Scientific American. “The observable universe (that is us) could have evolved from an infinitesimal region.” (In the Greek, that means a dot.) He said, “It’s then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.” Talk about having faith… mama mia..
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 3:24 PM
longest. thread. evah.
JetBoy on April 20, 2008 at 3:24 PM
Apparently you haven’t been reading St. Olaf’s posts.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:27 PM
Again, I agree.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 3:28 PM
I think an ironic and entertaining part of this thread here on HotAir is the disagreement on the ID side. Supposedly its the evolutionists who refuse to hear alternative theories.
However, when you have some on the pro-God side (like Ed) who attempt reconcile creationist beliefs with the well established theory of evolution by saying things like “Genesis refers to years, not days” or “God directs evolution” you get some creationist purists like Olaf & apacalyps saying “no, that’s wrong, the Bible is the literal truth.”
Maybe the ID side should square up its own arguments before coming after science, eh?
e-pirate on April 20, 2008 at 3:28 PM
Actually the previous accepted estimate of soft tissue surviving was 100,000 years. 94,000 longer than your creation myth. There are Australian cave paintings dated to 100,000 years. That God. What trickster. Also if you accept the Young Earth claim then you must also toss out Geological Science along with Plate Tectonics which operate over vast expanses of time. Of course you can’t trust lying, satanist “Scientists”. What do they know? Especially when compared with a towering intellect such as yourself.
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 3:28 PM
Science is not a popularity contest. It does not matter if Darwin spent his free time caring for disabled veterans or molesting sheep; it is his ideas that count. Further, science is not a cult of personality, so his ideas that were flat-out wrong, like the racist ones, were excised out of the corpus of scientific thought long ago (and in much less time than it took for similarly pernicious ideas to be driven out of Christian theology). Ad hominems against early adopters of a theory are not an adequate substitute for refutation of the underlying scientific principles.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:33 PM
In 1650 AD, Archbishop James Usher, calculated that 4004 BC was the date that the earth was created. His timeline places Noahs Flood (appropriated from the Semrian Epic of Gilgamesh), at 2500 BC. The Egyptian First Dynasty began around 3600 BC. Seems like big problem to me.
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 3:37 PM
Yes they did….the majority of them were Christians, but many of them were satanic freemasons.
I will not argue that the US government is Christian…it is certainly not.
The majority of citizens of America was Christian at the time of it’s founding, as it is today.
But the actual government of the US is not Christian, but is satanic.
Washington D.C. was built with satanic freemason symbolism.
Even the white house sits at the base of a giant satanic pentagram.
http://z.about.com/d/altreligion/1/0/w/Y/washington.jpg
All this proves is that the non scientific religion of evolution/secular humanism is the official state religion of the U.S.A.!
That is why you see extreme examples of stalinist like censorship (and even imprisonment) of any one dissenting from the official state religion.
Some people are foolish enough to think that this does not violate our first amendment.
Well it certainly does violate it!
If you know that this kind of censorship and lying has been going on in the “scientific” community regarding evolution..and you continue to believe their fairy tale…
You have no one to blame but yourself.
That only leaves your position with two defenses..
A. You’re too blind and clueless to realize what is happening around you.
B. You know the Truth that there is a God who created the universe..but you refuse to acknowledge this fact because then you would have to acknowledge God’s existence and be held accountable to Him for your actions.
SaintOlaf on April 20, 2008 at 3:38 PM
Sorry, no sale.
I don’t care how an Atheist chooses to cobble together their personal set of BELIEFS, it still amounts to a belief system that they will defend. I realize that Atheists think they are BELIEVERS in a nonreligion, but they are believers none the less.
Just as anyone who follows any religious faith isn’t automatically excluded for not following 100% of their religion’s tenets to the letter, neither is an Atheist allowed to declare their belief system a nonreligion just because one of the tenets of their faith is a lack of codified beliefs and the belief that their religion isn’t a religion.
Atheists like to fool themselves into believing that they are superior to anyone stupid enough to follow any religious faith that they don’t agree with. Any religion with a God, basically. They do this because they feel that all of the biggest atrocities in history were due to one religion or another. Therefore, Atheism can’t be a religion because that would be bad. I could create a much longer post showing the parallels between this kind of logical blindness and how liberals use a system of good/bad labels to distinguish themselves from conservatives. They choose “good” labels for themselves (open-minded, tolerant, kind, caring, etc.) then they distinguish themselves by applying the opposite labels to all conservatives. They then turn their brains off and happily go on about their day feeling superior while not actually being open-minded, tolerant, kind, caring, etc…
I found this part of your text very interesting:
So, a belief system cobbled together from other belief systems, some of which may qualify as religions, isn’t a religion? And, there are “positive beliefs” within Marxism/Paganism/Scientology? I won’t argue with this last line, only because I don’t totally disagree with it. My concern is, that Atheists go looking for pebbles of good within swamps of garbage. How well can people who have fooled themselves with a false belief in their intellectual superiority continue to discern between gems of knowledge and crap? Good chance they will pick up a little crap while on their quest for knowledge.
My view is that all religions are a system of beliefs. Atheism is a system of beliefs.
If I were blind and someone read me all the text from the bible, but never told me that they were reading a book and I decided to base my actions/beliefs on what they told me, would I not be part of a religion? Of course I would. I would be following a belief system. If I then told someone else what I had learned and what my beliefs were, that person might say “Oh, you are a Christian”. All that means is that they are putting a label on a belief system.
Atheism=Belief System=Religion.
Sorry…
TheCulturalist on April 20, 2008 at 3:40 PM
I agree in the sense that science should be about the study of God’s creation. Christians have a reason for doing science — to study His laws of nature. In fact, this is the way science got started by Christians who understood the biblical view. A creationists like Isaac Newton is a perfect example. Newton regarded by many as the greatest figure in the history of science wrote, “The solar system itself could not have been produced by blind chance or fortuitous causes but only by a cause “very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.” Even right now, amazing work is still being done by Christians. For instance, young earth creationist, Dr. Raymond Damadian, invented the MRI.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 3:42 PM
okay, good.. you were reading what I wrote..
you didn’t start the racism thread.. but you sure as hell furthered it..
but that would fall under the evolution umbrella, would it not?
or are you arguing for the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ orgin.. that the Earth is one giant computer that was constructed by the Magratheans.. (spelling might be off on that)
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 3:43 PM
I guess it all depends on what the meaning of sex is and what the meaning of years is and what the meaning of days is and what the meaning of directs is and what the meaning of is, is,
MB4 on April 20, 2008 at 3:45 PM
I guess the Swedes are in on the satanic conspiracy.
10,000 year old tree.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7353357.stm
ronsfi on April 20, 2008 at 3:48 PM
No it gets down to what the meaning of Yom is. That is the ancient word for what you are saying is day.
Do a little research (I posted about 600 ago on it) and it will answer the question what a “day” (a word never used genisis).
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 3:49 PM
There is no question that Christians do less evil and more good now than they used to. What I am alleging is that the good that Christians do now has nothing to do with Christianity as such. You share the same holy text and the same faith in the same Messiah as the Inqisitors did. You serve Jesus by volunteering in nursing homes, and they served Jesus by torturing and murdering heretics like me. Clearly, either Christianity was responsible for all of it, good and bad, or none of it.
As to why you don’t see atheist hospitals, I can offer two most excellent reasons: First, we atheists are far less sanctimonious that you religious types. And second, there really is no such group as “we atheists,” any more than there is such a group as “we people who haven’t watched caber tossing” or “we people who have never been to Boca Raton.” I don’t wake up in the morning saying, “how can I not serve Jesus today” any more than I say, “Man, I sure am glad I’m not going to Boca Raton!” At the extreme risk of sounding Zen, we are what we are, not what we’re not.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:49 PM
this relates back to the movie,…
Damadian invented the MRI.. two other people improved the design.. The Nobel board awarded the prize ( can’t remember what prize they give away for medical advancements,) to the two other people.. NOT to Damadian because he was a creationist..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 3:50 PM
The “one” that you believe you won is the allegedly unrebutted advancement of the assertion that Richard Dawkins is the emperor of atheists. It is a hollow victory, if it can be called a victory at all.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Oh don’t listen to those Swedes, they are just Norwegians with their heads chopped off!
MB4 on April 20, 2008 at 3:53 PM
You don’t get it, to prove his theory on certain man “species” to be defective, he had to believe in evolution, evolution had to be created, or we could not have a “super race”…that is the ultimate statement of evolution. That species evolve differently. Therefore you can make the argument (as he did) that blacks have not evolved.
I don’t care that much that he was a racist, just what drove him to create his theory, science or his disgust of his fellow man. When he says whatever race is inferior, he can justify it by saying that it isn’t him, it is evolution. Sheeesh…read the summary of his books.
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 3:55 PM
Save me a little time. How many minutes in one of these Yom thingies?
MB4 on April 20, 2008 at 3:56 PM
It is astounding to me that you’ve never heard of this before. If the galactic clusters of the universe are not moving apart with sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational pull of each other, their motion will slow and then be reversed. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that gravity isn’t still considered heresy.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 3:58 PM
Yeah, you go right ahead there buddy and believe a 70 million year old Dinosaur bone can still contain soft meat inside it. You have no comprehension of 70 MILLION YEARS. It flies right over your head man. This is what happens with the millions and billions of year thing… it’s so long ago and far away that people can’y comprehend it so they assume it’s true. You’re deluded into believing a lie man, just like the Bible says:
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” 2 Thessalonians 2:11
The penalty for not accepting God’s truth is delusion.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 3:58 PM
going in circles here..
what I said earlier.. Most of what was said about that is if you study the history of said events more closely, you will see that it was to further the power of the ruler at the time.. claiming ‘Moral Authority’ from god gave him a blank check..
again, like Al Gore has claim ‘Moral Authority’ regarding global warming and manbearpig sitings..
Not just ‘christians’ have done bad things too..
is this going to back to the circle argument again?.
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Christians have made great contributions to science, and continue to. However, man was engaged in scientific inquiry long before Christianity.
dedalus on April 20, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Unrelated but sort of is: anyone think that Fox New’s coverage of the pope is a little excessive?
Honestly, this morning when I turned it on, I thought BrightHouse had changed the channel line up and I was on a religious channel. Geeze.
stenwin77 on April 20, 2008 at 3:59 PM
ronsfi, wtf is about teh satanistic thing.. you sound like a douche bag every time you mention it.. it’s like warren jeffs screaming ‘heretic’..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 4:00 PM
That is unbelievable…serving man, helping people in disaster is sanctimonious.
This is a sarcastic post, right…no one would ever seriously post something like this.
The Baptist have a cargo plane and a warehouse full of relief items to be flown anywhere in the world for relief because they are sanctimonious….HAHAHAAHA! You crack me up, for a few posts there I thought you were sincere.
Try standing in a food line, feeding the poor everyweek for a few months and then see how “sanctimonious” you feel. And then next time you have a medical problem, do not seek out a sanctimonious hospital, and God forbid that anyone of your family gets cancer and in the last days of despair, a person of faith sits with the day and night and “sanctimoniously” cares, deeply and completely cares for them so they go out in peace.
You must be a very young person, not to have been through such ordeals.
Spend a month with a church feeding the poor, and come back and report to us how “sanctimonious” those that give are…I think you are in for a shock (so you won’t, you are too afraid of seeing the truth).
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 4:05 PM
OK that all brings up an interesting question, how many douche bags are there in a yom or how many yoms does it take a douche bag to screw in a light bulb?
MB4 on April 20, 2008 at 4:06 PM
You don’t get it, when one theory becomes obsolete, another is created…big bang is running out of favor, so they create something new (like Global warming, now change). So I came up with a new one…this post was sarcastic.
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 4:06 PM
ronsfi..
I get it now.. you are equating people who would like to ask, ‘What if ID DID happen’ to the people in charge of the salem witch trials wanting to burn evolutionists at the stake..
When in reality, people who are the most fiercest apologist for evolution are screaming for the heads of someone who wants to ask, ‘What if?’. metaphorically speaking..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 4:07 PM
MB4?
8? or when it is raining, 12?..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 4:08 PM
A dinosaur from 5,000 years ago wouldn’t disprove evolution. A living dinosaur wouldn’t disprove evolution. However, a dinosaur fossil from 900 million years ago would put a radical dent in current thinking.
dedalus on April 20, 2008 at 4:10 PM
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 4:17 PM
sure? because that would mean the herd of dinosaurs would have survived long enough to last out the ice age(es), meteor hit of the planet, and whatever else is on the evolutionary timeline..
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 4:18 PM
Unbelievable. Aliens? Boy he’s really stretching it. Anything but God! He hates God. Hmm. Is it possible that many cannot find God for the same reason that a thief cannot find a policeman? Is that the reason they want to believe in no God? Not because of the evidence, but rather because many want to continue doing what you want to do?
The Bible, in I Peter 3:3-10 tells us that there will be scoffers, mocking the creation, flood and coming judgment of God, saying they don’t believe it. The reason they scoff is because they are “walking in their own lusts.”
“Beware lest any man (Dawkins) spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:20 PM
I had nearly the same, verbatim reaction to your post as did
Dude. Just pointing out that we are noticing your need to put negative labels on charitable work to denigrate Christians’ motives for doing it. Several positive descriptors could be selected for the reasons for doing charitable work but you chose “sanctimonious.”
Frankly I had far more respect for another atheist’s post further up the thread, who simply pointed out that there were far fewer atheists than Christians, and some other less inflammatory reason for the lack of atheist hospitals.
inviolet on April 20, 2008 at 4:26 PM
I was very serious. Atheists don’t start charitable foundations just to yell, “Atheists give to the poor! Believe in Atheism! Atheos loves you!” When an atheist gives to charity, he gives to a religiously-netural charity, like the March of Dimes or the American Cancer Society. If your church’s soup kitchen existed for a reason other than sanctimony, it wouldn’t be your church’s at all; it would be your neighborhood’s soup kitchen.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 4:26 PM
No, you don’t get it… the Big Crunch was an implication of the Big Bang from the beginning. This discussion would go much easier if you had just a little bit of knowledge of the science you so detest.
hicsuget on April 20, 2008 at 4:29 PM
Incidently, if evolution was true, you have to get two cells to evolve out of the rocks in the same place of the opposite sex at the same time in history. It is a big world you know? Cells are kind of small; they have to find each other. You’ve got a bunch of problems there Richard. Consider a space shuttle — one of the most complex non-living things around. Each human cell is more complicated than a space shuttle.
Space shuttles are designed.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Just curious…if these galactic clusters had such large gravitational pulls, how did they manage to split apart in the first place? We’re talking about a force of energy (causing the Big Bang) that is so immense as to be…well, a miracle. Where did that force of energy come from?
Keep the faith, brotha.
fossten on April 20, 2008 at 4:31 PM
Huh. And all this time I thought you were referring to a candy bar.
fossten on April 20, 2008 at 4:33 PM
Crocodiles survived. There are examples of species first discovered as fossils only to be later discovered as still extant. A meteor hitting the planet, killing off some species, doesn’t prove or disprove evolution.
dedalus on April 20, 2008 at 4:34 PM
Let me see if I understand you correctly. So true selfless [Jewish/Christian/fill in religion] love cannot exist, in your worldview? It’s GOT to be for sanctimonious reasons, is that your view?
Make your answer quick though. Am going out in just a few minutes to (no I’m not kidding) help lead our regular Sunday Catholic inner-city teen youth ministry. Sorry if that irritates you :).
inviolet on April 20, 2008 at 4:34 PM
Is Michael Moore or Ben Stein behind this? Just because a so called Republican (a Nixonian Republican, not a Reagan Republican) makes a so-called documentary film, many self-described conservatives are willing to give it a thumbs up instead of examining it against the facts. This movie is just a religious version of pretty much every Michael Moore movie, not to mention Algore’s An Inconvenient Truth. A short expose of this movie can be found at:
http://www.expelledexposed.com/
Its time to expell the likes of Ben Stein, Algore, and Richard Dawkins to the scrapheap of history. Every one of these clowns has the right to say what they want, but to present their religious views as fact, be it Creationism (which is what so-called intelligent design is), Envirinmentallism, or Atheism as science does all mankind a great disservice.
Lurker1970 on April 20, 2008 at 4:36 PM
What difference does it make who’s more sanctimonious than the other? After all, we’re all just random collections of molecules doing what comes naturally, right? So what’s your problem?
fossten on April 20, 2008 at 4:36 PM
Finally a decent question…yom is one of those words that is heavily debated…because it was from a language that relied so heavily on other descriptive words, and because one word could mean so many different things, this word (this week) means one thing, and next year (with further study) will mean another. It can mean a day, but in genisis it meant a “period of time”, it is used 56 times in the old testament, and many of them are used to define different time periods.
When you say “have a good day” do you mean the whole 24 hours, or just the 12 hours of day? And do you mean only for this day and screw you tomorrow? Or do you mean as a part of life, have a good day now and in the future…
Here is the best and most convenient.
Simply put it talks of a second day, not the second day.
Have a good Yom…
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 4:36 PM
Coming after science? LOL. That’s funny. Evolution is not science. It is a belief. Sir Arthur Keith, the scientist who wrote the preface for the 100th anniversary edition of The Origin of Species, said, “Evolution is unproven and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation and that is unthinkable”
Evolution is not proven. You have to believe it happened.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:39 PM
The ID crowd is conveniently able to fall back on ignorance as support of their argument.
Cells didn’t have to evolve as male and female because cells reproduce asexually. They just split. Come on now, you’re being deliberately dense.
How is a living cell more complicated than a space shuttle? You’re taking an apples and oranges comparison and going to cells and space shuttles.
This is just more of the intellectually lazy “gosh stuff is so complicated so God must be involved” argument.
e-pirate on April 20, 2008 at 4:40 PM
As I posted before this is a common misconception — this notion that ID & Creation are the same thing. When Creation says that “God created the world in 6 days, roughly six thousand years ago”, and Intelligent Design that “Somebody, or something, was involved with in the process, at some point — or points — in the past (ie, it could be Jehovah, Allah, or Nilly, from the planet silly), that is not the same thing. ID & Creationism are two very different things. The Bible says God made the world about 6,000 years ago; 4,400 years ago there was a Flood that destroyed the world; 2,000 years ago Jesus came, died on the cross, and here we are today. Here we are today, waiting for the Lord to come back in about 10 minutes. You better be ready.
“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all.” Jude 1:14-15
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:41 PM
It’s nice to see you continue to prove my earlier post…
One of the tenets of the Atheist faith is that they are not actually a religion, because that would be bad. They follow this tenet of their religion by actually avoiding giving money to nonreligious charities. Thereby affirming their Atheism.
Many of the Atheists posting here are quite knowledgeable. However, like elitist liberals, they feel that knowledge equates to intellect.
As I posted some time back, I think this is analogous to having a shiny new Porsche 911 (knowledge) with a lawnmower engine (intellect) under the hood. No matter how good it looks, it will always be in the slow lane…
Sorry…
TheCulturalist on April 20, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Uh, dude, you really need to bone up on your biology. That was a very irresponsible and ignorant thing to say.
Complexity of a cell
fossten on April 20, 2008 at 4:43 PM
Do you believe in “Pangea”? The theory that all the continents used to fit together into a single super-continent.
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:44 PM
you keep referring the Atheism as a religion..
saying what a ‘good’ atheist would do..
so would a bad atheist give to a fund for widow’s and orphans if it was started by a church?
DaveC on April 20, 2008 at 4:48 PM
You are funnnnny!!
So now I detest science…because I made fun of scientists and there scramble to cover their A’s. So you blindly follow where any scientist tells you to go, you don’t question him?
Let me type real slow so you understand…the reference to the Big Thigh theory was a joke…i.t…w.a.s…a…j.o.k.e.
Fine now you are relying on a science fiction book for your information…
The “big crunch” came about 1961, I think the Big Bang preceded that by many years (1912?).
right2bright on April 20, 2008 at 4:49 PM
Big Bang has nothing to do with evolution. Stop saying it does.
RoPa4life on April 20, 2008 at 4:49 PM
And I’m still waiting for your best example of a transitional species. There are trillions & trillions & trillions of fossils out there. They must have existed - billions and billions of missing links should be there if the theory is true.
Charlie Darwin said, “If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed… .” That’s correct Charlie.
We should have countless transitional species or animals, far more than you have of the final product. In fact, we should see them walking around living amongst us right now. Thousands of them.
Where are they? Oh, wait… I think I see one!!!!!
apacalyps on April 20, 2008 at 4:50 PM
Hey apacalyps, thanks for linking us in your screen name to seminars given by a convicted felon :D
RoPa4life on April 20, 2008 at 4:52 PM
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