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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Probably because the laugh at you.
ronsfi on April 18, 2008 at 8:55 PM
Alot.
ronsfi on April 18, 2008 at 8:56 PM
kid: what about this penny I found out in the yard?
authority figure: “that penny shows the existence of and incredibly sophisticated civilization capable of mining, crafting, molding and minting a coin.
kid: what about the double helix DNA strand?
authority figure: “just HAPPENED”
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 8:59 PM
But dead :(
exception on April 18, 2008 at 8:59 PM
I imagine that more people are turned away from Christianity by people like you, who set yourself up as an arbiter of what Christianity is, demanding for it a definition which is simultaneously narrow and ever-shifting, than by any systematic inquiry into the course(s) of history or the nature of nature.
So who’s really doing Satan’s business?
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 9:01 PM
I believe it takes less faith to believe the penny “just happened” which I don’t, than to believe the double helix strand of DNA “just happened” which I don’t.
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:01 PM
But that’s not the answer science gives. That answer is long, complex, and incomplete.
Actually, how the copper and zinc for the penny were origially made is pretty crazy too.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:03 PM
…and Again…
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 9:03 PM
jack_in_the_box,
Allow me to turn your analogy around.
If there was a nickel in the grass, and you asked me “where did they come from?” The process for backtracking is the same, with science.
With the nickel, I could immediately infer it is artificial - it’d be like finding God’s signature on the moon. I could further find out when it was minted, how it was minted, what it was made of, and trace it back to a coin minting press in the Treasury Building where it was stamped out by a machine operated by a guy named Moe. I could further go back and find who designed it, the history of the nickel, the history of the US, the history of coinage in general (at which point I’ve already traced the nickel back to a point before there was a nickel), and bring myself right back to the first community who decided they could use bits of rock or shiny beads as a trading medium to represent bartered wealth.
Science is merely taking the same line of conclusions across a much more complex and vast scale. I’d have to go through different species of grass, trace back the history of grass in general, find the botanical roots (no pun intended) of the particular blade I’m studying. Eventually as I go back I find in the fossil record that my grass was bred from an older grass, and that *that* grass species appeared around 40,000 years ago. Then I’ll find similar grass going back even further (which I can logically infer - not *prove*, which is why evolution remains a theory - that my predecessor grass came from). Eventually I’ll hit perhaps a sort of stubby, spiky psuedo-grass… but it’s the only kind of grass in the fossil record, and therefore likely the ancestor of my grass. But even further back, there’s no spiky grass either… now I’m back to a funny sort of elevated moss, another sort of moss, and further still some kind of lichen. That lichen might trace even further back to some form of seashore slime, which would trace back to some floating primeval plankton, which trace back to before there was even large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere to a lovely blue-green cyanobacteria.
But as with the history of coinage, there will be gaps in the record. Only instead of “where did they decide to use nickel instead of gold or silver?”, it’s “why did this spiky type of grass disappear and get replaced by a softer kind of grass that looks more like my grass?”
But at no point, unlike the nickel, can I point to one spot and say “this is where algae turned into grass.” Because it didn’t happen, any more than a penny transmogrified into a nickel.
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 9:05 PM
Tzetzes,
You are right. I believe most atheist are more devoted to their feeling of being fed up with organized religion than their belief in no God.
Alas, religion is made up of people who do not appoach others with any respect or kindness, while claiming to represent love, that is God.
just muddlin’ along
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:05 PM
I haven’t used transmogrified in a while. Maybe I will tomorrow.
So you really believe it takes no faith to believe that you and the blade of grass have the same ancestor back there… you know… hundreds of billions of years… you know… hundreds of billions of mutations… all by chance, coincidence and happenstance?
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:09 PM
You know what I’m hating on: Rush Limbaugh and his disgusting and nauseating binge of religious claptrap. His recent shows were almost 0% content and 99% jingoism and religious fervor. I want to hear more funny Stacks of Stuff! I want more SUV updates and funny news! First it was his McCain Derrangement Syndrome, now it’s the Founding Doccuments, the Greatness of the USA, and how magical the freaking Pope is! Gimme back the Rush I used to know that was funny and informative!
Can I get an Amen from anyone?
Viscount_Bolingbroke on April 18, 2008 at 9:11 PM
It takes faith to accept Newtonian gravity, if you don’t actually study it to know how the conclusions are justified. And that’s not so hard to understand.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:13 PM
One thing that my university professors were never able to explain to me, was how a giraffe grew valves to keep It’s blood pressure from it’s big heart from causing brain damage while it was drinking water. Which came first, the long neck or the valves?
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 9:13 PM
Also, glad to see some people intelligently responding to idiocy on this thread. Keep your mental knives sharp; you might have to face a real opponent some day.
Viscount_Bolingbroke on April 18, 2008 at 9:14 PM
I transmogrified from a person who likes chocolate to a person who like romantic comedies.
It reminds of the time we watched that show, “Transmogrified Green Tomatoes”
Prez Bush: The idea I had to invade Iraq, kill Saddam Hussein and the get out, got all transmogrified once we invaded.
Somebody stop me.
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:14 PM
May has well stick this in here…
And I can speak only as a Catholic, that again…evolution and creation should go hand in hand. Even man may have evolved from our original form (no, not ape) but we cannot deny God’s hand in creating the soul.
There may have been a “big bang” to create the universe…but God created the “big bang”, from nothing.
I see no reason not to teach both creationism AND evolutionary science…together. For it’s usually in the middle, where the real truth of anything can be found.
JetBoy on April 18, 2008 at 9:14 PM
He’s gathering up stray ducklings. Quit tapping your foot.
RushBaby on April 18, 2008 at 9:15 PM
Viscount_Bolingbroke on April 18, 2008 at 9:11 PM
no.
VolMagic on April 18, 2008 at 9:16 PM
I gotta run and reset my transmogrification settings on my new blackberry.
cya
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Riding a dinosaur.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Sadly, “those” people can be found both on both sides of the stained-glass windows.
Weight of Glory on April 18, 2008 at 9:18 PM
or maybe I should just leave them on the default setting. That just happened. No programmer needed for those.
Pray for my wife, she has to deal with me ALL the time.
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:19 PM
Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away, I didn’t see your reply until about 30 minutes ago. These multiple pages make it hard to keep track of replies without missing one. Anyway… here we go.
If I understand your argument, you are saying the changes are so small and gradual that that all species are transitional.
But here’s the problem, it is no subtle difference between a dinosaur and a bird….. their flesh and bones and structures are radically different. So once again, no matter how subtle or gradual the changes or how long it took, we should see fossils of dinosaurs beginning to sprout wings….. and then more developed wings and bones beginning to hollow. But we don’t see that in the fossil record.
So the arguments for how long the transitions took or how minute the changes are moot. The fact still remains… if evolution is true…. that these transitional species had to exist at some point….. yet, in the fossil record they do not exist.
You ask for Lucy links…. some of the articles are long so search the page for “lucy”.
Lucy1, Lucy2, Lucy3, Lucy4 and Lucy5.
Maxx on April 18, 2008 at 9:22 PM
Maybe I should have just said,
“Religion is made up of people.”
jack_in_the_box on April 18, 2008 at 9:23 PM
transmogrified people or just regular ones?
TheCulturalist on April 18, 2008 at 9:25 PM
Any of you evolutionists tell me HOW the big bang ‘banged’ and then I’ll listen to your argument about evolution.
Neither the string theory nor 11 dimension ‘branes’ can explain “the beginning”.
.
I doubt you can even prove or disprove love in its many essences, but start here ( its easier) then try the big bang (terrible misnomer, s/b singularity) theory with out God.
shooter on April 18, 2008 at 9:27 PM
Why would it? I can trace the progression logically and inference via reason. I also acknowledge we *don’t* know more than we do, and that theory is up for revision if at any time new evidence disagrees with the current model of the theory. It happens constantly, and is the very *purpose* of science.
It sounds like your issue is mostly with the concept of organization as a product of apparently random selection. I suggest you look for a good fractal program… it should prove illuminating. You can find a good example in the book “Jurassic Park”, actually - Chricton includes a fractal demonstration across the head page of each chapter. Basically you start out by creating a very simple set of random values - the program has two or three choices it can make, which replicated a second identical choice, so the second iteration has two choices, and so on. And then you run it five times. Ten. A hundred. A thousand. A hundred-thousand. Ten million times. As it progresses, it creates an *enormously* complicated pattern that looks like the sort of thing you might see on an oriental rug if the weaver was on LSD and made the rug three miles across. Insanely complicated, yet logical - and all traced back to three random values in each iteration.
With life, we’re talking about a set of variables infinitely more complex across so many iterations we can’t even calculate them.
But what are the odds of that? Depends on the assumptions you make. Statistics basically fail us, because we have one sample: Earth. We have to make assumptions to even start guessing at how common it is. I also recommend checking out the Drake Equation here, it is relevant. The key point in deciding how likely we are - are we a fluke, or is life common as dirt in the universe - is totally unknown.
Personally though - I suspect life is pretty common. Life is tenacious as hell, and expands to fill all available niches - even on Earth we have life that can exist in volcanic vents three miles beneath the ocean, life that can exist in clouds, and even bacteria that adapted to eat radioactive grunge in storage tanks in Chernobyl. It also survived quite a few unimaginably destructive events here, including several that nearly set the clock back to zero. I suspect that across the universe, anywhere life *did* get started, it flourished.
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 9:27 PM
shooter,
That’s an impossible hurdle, and I expect you know it. As I said earlier, we can theorize, we can speculate, but at this time, science has no answer.
But that’s not the point - the point of science is trying to figure it out. Saying “don’t bother figuring it out, God did it” is a cop-out that if accepted would have left us in the Dark Ages. ;)
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Jurassic Park is on in 1 1/2 hrs
TheCulturalist on April 18, 2008 at 9:31 PM
Thus religion is Soylent Green.
Viscount_Bolingbroke on April 18, 2008 at 9:31 PM
I hope he covered the “Cambrian Explosion” :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
All the fossil evidence, and even Darwin acknowledges in his famous book, that almost all life on earth appeared very suddely 542 million years ago. The major groups of species did not evolve slowly, they appeared very very quickly during the Cambrian explosion.
I`ve asked two friends who did Biology degrees what the Cambrian explosion was - they had no idea. When I told them they didnt believe. One of them after reading about went back to his Uni to complain to the Biology department that they deliberately hid from their students, the most important period of evolutionary science
gozzak on April 18, 2008 at 9:33 PM
no matter how you slice it, it’s an argument of faith. the fight btwn evolution and creationism is simply a disagreement in the details. it’s no different than the fight btwn Christians and Muslims and Jews. all of these religions claim to start w/ the same god, but diverge from there.
besides the killing that has taken place due to this, what else has come of it? ideally, the separate but equal ability of each group to practice their faith as they see fit.
so, where does that leave us in regards to academia? currently, for the most part, they only allow a single vision of the origin of life, the one their faith allows for, which is evolution.
so, the argument could be made that the teaching of evolution as a matter of faith would make any school teaching it exclusively a religious school. therefore, that school could not receive state or federal money as that would be the equivalent of state sponsored religious training.
solution: if academia is to be a true venue for the free discourse of ideas and thought, it must allow for the teaching of more than just evolution.
oh, and allow a conservative point of view free expression w/o fear of reprisal.
i won’t be holding my breath for either one though. there is nothing that gets people stirred up more than a threat to their faith.
i think that is caused by a lack of conviction with ones faith. I have no problem hearing someone else’s point of view. sometimes i will even change my opinion based on new knowledge. but not very often. i would have to hear a pretty solid argument before i would consider changing my view. but i am not afraid to hear it and don’t feel so insecure as to need to silence anyone who has another view.
TheCulturalist on April 18, 2008 at 9:36 PM
If I understand your argument, you are saying the changes are so small and gradual that that all species are transitional.
But here’s the problem, it is no subtle difference between a dinosaur and a bird….. their flesh and bones and structures are radically different. So once again, no matter how subtle or gradual the changes or how long it took, we should see fossils of dinosaurs beginning to sprout wings….. and then more developed wings and bones beginning to hollow. But we don’t see that in the fossil record.
So the arguments for how long the transitions took or how minute the changes are moot. The fact still remains… if evolution is true…. these transitional species had to exist at some point….. yet, in the fossil record they do not exist.
You ask for Lucy links…. I tried the post before with more links, but the HotAir server won’t take it with a lot of links…. so here are a couple. Some of the articles are long so search the page for “lucy”.
Maxx on April 18, 2008 at 9:36 PM
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:38 PM
Someone please expain to me how the big bang can be rationally explained, and still obey the laws of thermaldynamics.
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 9:41 PM
Hang on a second. Does ID stand for “intelligent design”? D’oh! Here I was, thinking it stood for “irrectile disfunction”.
;)
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 9:42 PM
You might be interested in reading about Marfan syndrome - “a genetic disorder characterized by long limbs and… cardiovascular abnormalities.” It’s caused by a mutation on one gene, affects several features simultaneously, and sticks around in the gene pool despite not immediately helping the survival chances of those carrying the gene.
To answer your question, one didn’t necessarily come before the other.
RightOFLeft on April 18, 2008 at 9:42 PM
Jeez, Louise, not even this thread is long enough for that. Will we have to cover GR, or take it as read?
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:44 PM
exception on April 18, 2008 at 9:44 PM
So perpetual motion really exist?
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 9:49 PM
i read through them briefly, but i didn’t see what the problem was, can u explain which law is broken and how? thx.
TheCulturalist on April 18, 2008 at 9:50 PM
.
So it was created that way?
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 9:51 PM
ok…ok
I am beginning to see a pattern here…. (was I given the ability to see patterns by God or as an advantageous mutation?) I digress.
I think the bigger question is: Why do we believe what we believe? I mean both “Theories” are full of holes and neither FULLY explain anything. so why do we believe either?
or flying spaghetti monster for that matter? for me? all I can say is I have my own answers and I am happy and I do not need to convince anyone else of what I believe to cement it in my head and heart. I suggest y’all do the same look at both! yer hearts and heads and examine why you believe what you do!!! I think that will help y’all to not be so belligerent to others in this incredibly LONG thread!
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:00 PM
I’m going to see the movie!
Wise Golden on April 18, 2008 at 10:00 PM
Which claims to?
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:03 PM
Yes, or any of the bodily organs for that matter. For example, how could the eye gradually develop? Without eyes there is no sensory input to know there is something to see. And if the eye starts to develop anyway…. what good is half an eye?
Evolution requires a person to believe BOTH of the following statement are true:
1: Life is so simply it can happen by accident.
2: Life is so complex that all the knowledge of the ages cannot reproduce it.
One statement is the opposite of the other, both statements cannot be true.
Maxx on April 18, 2008 at 10:03 PM
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 9:01 PM
So according to your theory..God is doing satans work because God is repelling people from Him, as people flee from God/try to pretend He doesn’t exist, because they don’t want to be held accountable for their sin.
Another “brilliant” theory from Tzetzes.
What is next..are you going to tell me that we gradually evolved from a fish BILLIONS of years ago?
SaintOlaf on April 18, 2008 at 10:03 PM
A couple of thoughts-
-yes, there are transitional fossils linking birds to dinosaurs. See here.
-Fossils are exceptionally rare. It’s unreasonable to demand that every animal that has ever existed must exist in the fossil record. Dinosaurs with half-formed wings would have been exceptionally rare, themselves, as the mutations might have been expressed as recessive genes and wouldn’t offer a significant survival advantage without further evolution.
-it’s entirely possible that relatively few mutations were necessary to produce a radical change in the dinosaurs’ phenotype, in which case there wouldn’t be any transitional forms as you’ve described them.
-Evolutionary scientists are no doubt hard at work researching the topic. Tell me, what exciting research has the intelligent design lobby produced on the subject of the ancestry of birds?
RightOFLeft on April 18, 2008 at 10:05 PM
Maxx,
Uh… we do see such changes, across the tiny fragment of fossil record we have access to. Therapods began developing air sacs in their skeletal structures by the middle of the Jurassic. The most recent fossil evidence suggests that troodontids had hollow bones, and several finds in the past decades suggest that quite a few of the therapods, including velociraptor, actually *did* have feathers. Indeed, their reversed hip posture and correct forearm position is *heavily* indicative of basic bird biology. The evidence *is* there, but if you’re looking to see reptiles (which dinosaurs by now we are quite sure were not) and brontosaurus turn into a bird, you won’t find it. Even there, we find what are basically early birds *before* the K-T event, coexisting with bird-like therapod dinosaurs. The dinosaurs who were “almost” birds were snuffed out - the ones that basically were birds already survived. Were conditions different, and all birds died out in the K-T aftermath, perhaps we would have many more batlike species occupying their ecological niche. ;)
And on review of those links… sorry, I’m not impressed. The first one is a page from a guy who basically claims he created a new science, and his complaints about the Lucy skeleton hinge entirely around the presentation for photograph sessions. That’s weak at best. The impression I get is not unlike some of the Troofer sites about 9/11. The second contains no sources, no author I could find, uses the twisted social perversion of “social darwinism” to argue against evolution, and I found at least a handful of factual errors on a casual perusal. Sorry, but no dice.
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:05 PM
WOW! this debate has been going on for a LONG Time!
Jocko Homo Heavenbound
-Wasteland Man.
P.S. Just doing my part for the 1000 post mark :D
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:06 PM
WOW 739 comments in only SIX HOURS??
Is this a record?
allrsn on April 18, 2008 at 10:06 PM
No, it was a result of a series of random genetic mutations occuring over millions of years.
RightOFLeft on April 18, 2008 at 10:08 PM
Dragons hunted to extinction makes me want to join the Sierra Club.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:11 PM
I’m tempted to post a “Darwin Fish” image, but I think Saint Olaf’s head would explode in sheer self-righteous outrage.
On second thought, might be fun. ;)
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:11 PM
Sigh theres that belligerence again
thats what I meant! folk’s put a LOT of trust in theories that don’t give a complete picture. The creationist theory does NOT claim perfect knowledge of HOW things were made, just that they were made. (at least at Mans level THe old testament was not meant as a Earth species cook book) Most religions will obscure the details of how by the need for us to perfect ourselves being of more importance.
if you want me to go on then we still aren’t at 1000 comments LOL. I can go on….
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:11 PM
When I was a kid you could climb the fence at the Audubon Zoo and feed the giraffes grass. They lick you with those freaky black tongues. Can’t do that these days.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:12 PM
You are not God. God does not repel people. You do. You do not speak for God. You quote some verses and shout at people that they’re going to hell and then wonder why people are turned off. You’re a crazy street-preacher and wouldn’t be worth the time except that you go out and call yourself “conservative” and thus spread the notion that conservatives are buck-tooth Bable-thumpers. Meaning that you turn people off from God & Buckley both!
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 10:13 PM
And you know this as a fact? or do you have faith in it from what you’ve observed and studied?
…not unlike religious folks.
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:13 PM
Ha! So you admit it. Colonel Sanders hunted the dinosaurs out of existence — I for one am happy that he switched his KFC recipe to chickens.
Yes. That’s right. I’m back. It’s snowing like crazy here in Seattle. My meeting tonight was cancelled on account of inclimate weather.
My collie says:
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:15 PM
That’s not belligerence; you don’t warrant it.
But modern synthesis explicity states its limitations. No complete picture is claimed scientifically.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Gore of course we can prove that Gore is wrong
allrsn on April 18, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Think about this:
No matter what happens or comes about, mutates, or evolves, it is all in accord with the laws of physics. Those laws have been “written” or established since day one. Nothing can happen that doesn’t follow the laws of physics. So, believe in creation or evolution as you so choose, but understand that nothing exists or happens that is not in accord with those laws. Some one or some thing “wrote”, “created”, or “established” those laws before - or at the latest at the beginning - of the universe.
That, to me, is all the evidence I need to believe in Creation or Intelligent Design. Oddly enough, Evolution fits in as a viable part of Creation or Intelligent Design, but not vise versa. There is no doubt here which of either the chicken or the egg came first. Nothing can evolve without it first being created.
Got that?
Good!
Woody
woodcdi on April 18, 2008 at 10:18 PM
And how did the giraffe drink water in the mean time?
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 10:19 PM
Just by looking out the window.
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM
Can anyone here say that reading Olaf’s rantings has brought them closer to God?
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM
Can anyone here say that reading Tzetzes comments brought ANYONE closer to the truth?
My collie says:
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:22 PM
The simple answer would be ‘less successfully’. A lot of animals are less than ideal; I know that’s true for me. The better complete answer would probably be long and take a specialist in giraffes. It’s easy to underestimate how complex this stuff is.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:23 PM
Thank you :)
thats all I was saying, Much like Stein I am trying to raise a bigger question. WHERE DO OUR BELIEFES COME FROM? I am stating that both theories have HUGE gaping holes for so many people to be SO invested emotionally in them. that and the fact that neither are 100% provable. folks should examine where their attraction lies to either. is it coming from their heart or head or both? I think it would be a good introspective exercise is all I’m saying.
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:23 PM
And you know this how? And so does the ostrich.
Johan Klaus on April 18, 2008 at 10:24 PM
Obeserved, studied, and reasoned. I have faith that I’ve reasoned correctly, I guess. It doesn’t take much to shake that faith, though, just a good argument. That’s a little different from the religious approach, imo.
RightOFLeft on April 18, 2008 at 10:24 PM
hey, i have a dumb question…
if everything was created at basically the same instant in time, then why do we find a chronological fossil record?
meaning, we have dated algae fossil records going back almost 3 billion years, then lots of nothing (due to a massive die off event), then more very simple lifeforms, then more and more complex lifeforms, some times a huge decrease in species due to other massive die off events, all dating later and later on the timeline.
why don’t all the fossil records all show one common beginning?
just asking…
TheCulturalist on April 18, 2008 at 10:25 PM
His dinosaurs and dragons gave me much joy. I think we should could our blessings. I don’t think he reflects Christianity so much as wackiness.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Yeah I hear ya! I live in New Mexico (Ya know dry hot dusty desert?) and its frickin’ freezing here! so I suppose all the folks that saw Gores movie and killed them selves to save the planet (or probably just killed themselves for watching it :P ) must have helped to cool the planet. cuz I am still turning up the heat and using blankets to sleep!!!
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:27 PM
2″ and counting in Mill Creek. You?
fourstringfuror on April 18, 2008 at 10:28 PM
Here is something mildly tangential (don’t you love an oxymoron), but only so because it takes this current thread out of proving origins, and places it within modern history. This is really an attempt to add a small catalyst to squeeze out 1000 comments, by adding another angle. So let’s stir the pot, shall we?
Weight of Glory on April 18, 2008 at 10:29 PM
See thats where we disagree again but this time its a good thing :)
I am on the other side as you I tend to go a bit more religious in my thinking but I completely agree with you that I can be open minded and have my perceptions changed by a good argument! (That doesnt mean I lose my core but a lot of time arguments are not exclusionary but the opposite to me!)
-Wasteland Man.
WastelandMan on April 18, 2008 at 10:30 PM
Not me, there was a time when the buffalo wings were a lot bigger.
Maxx on April 18, 2008 at 10:30 PM
Maxx,
The eye is a good example of what we’ve been talking about. You’re looking for “half-eyes” which you won’t find.
What you *will* find is photosensitive cells, which have existed from almost the start - photosynthesis is one of the most basic ways for life to process energy. So it begins with a photosensitive patch of cells on a given creature. Early on, it might allow a cold-blooded creature to more easily stay in sunlight, and provide it with an advantage over another member of the species without it. Over a million generations, you might end up with several subspecies all with the useful patch. Each generation sees a slight improvement in the resolution and sensitivity of that patch or two. And so you end up with a species trait. Tack on a few more million generations, and further mutations have increased the contrast of those cells to allow the creature to distinguish between bright and dark, and distinguish movement. Right there you’ve got a primitive “eye”. Another few billion generations, diversification, and you’ve got something on par with a modern fish’s eye. And over time as suceeding successful mutations pile on, the resolution and sensitivity of the eye improves still further.
And in higher mammals where reflexes must be faster, and predators agile, the eye develops commesurately. Eventually you come to our age, where the human eye is an incredibly complex structure composed of hundreds of types of cells that have over billions of years adapted to compliment each other. And the resolution and sensitivity of our eyes is a joke next to many bird species. At the same time, the squid has a very large and visible eye that’s not too far removed from the eye of a 700 million year old ammonite… because it didn’t need much improvement for its environment, and there was no special advantage to a squid with good eyes.
But nowhere along the line will you find “half an eye”… evolution doesn’t work that way.
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:31 PM
Again, I’m glad I’m Catholic. No bible-thumping, accusatory damnation from me.
One can’t shut out evolution completely. It’s all a part of God’s master plan. It’s truly the soul that is His real art.
JetBoy on April 18, 2008 at 10:31 PM
I could throw a rock a hit you.
I just drove up from Renton. It was a bit warmer down there, and it wasn’t snowing.
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:32 PM
Klaus,
We know it because we have several velociraptor skeletons with the imprints of feathers in the rock around them. That’s fairly conclusive. ;)
And yeah, it is kinda like an ostrich. This is not a coincidence, which is sorta the point of all this. :p
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:37 PM
Anyway, I lost track of time and I’ve gotta get packed to head upstate tomorrow morning. So, good arguing with everyone, but I’m gonna call it a night. I’m kinda hoping this thread hits a thousand before the morning at this point. :D
See ya’ll Monday.
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:39 PM
Yes, physics and metaphysics, the laws of the universe (universes?) that God obeys in order to be God. I mean, if he didn’t have to act in accordance with them — which is the Mahometan position — then he could just have created us perfect and automatically, eternally felicitate, instead of having to take us through this big life-process and whatever precedes and follows it. (I’ll skip over the obvious point, made by heretics like Kazantzakis, that a God who feels the need to shape us is a God who feels a need.)
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 10:39 PM
With its mouth?
The enlarged heart valve and long neck could have evolved simultaneously. Mutations on a single gene can produce holistic changes in phenotype, as in the example of Marfan syndrome.
Mutations don’t have to be immediately beneficial, either. Maybe millions of years ago there were a buch of brain-damaged giraffes running around because they hadn’t developed enlarged heart valves yet. Or maybe the heart-valves evolved first, which wouldn’t really hurt a short-necked proto-giraffe, after all. Just because a giraffe needs both adaptations to function ideally doesn’t mean it can’t function at all without one or the other.
Don’t forget, also, genes sometimes express recessively. Even if a phenotype can’t survive long enough to reproduce and develop the right adaptations, a genotype can.
Lots of possibilities for how the giraffe evolved.
RightOFLeft on April 18, 2008 at 10:41 PM
Wow, and you waited a whole two minutes!
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 10:41 PM
I typed in a lengthy comment invoking Godwin’s law several pages back. It fell flat. But I admire your enthusiam for “stirring the pot.”
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:42 PM
DON’T confuse MY comments with the STUPID dog’s comments, okay?
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:43 PM
I’ve been trying to see how it all ties to flag desacration, foreign or domestic. No luck.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:44 PM
To which no one evolutionist can say anything but “Umm it gradually evolved over millions of years”.
It doesn’t take a brilliant genius to realize that evolution is a lie.
I’ll say it again: The thing is these people know that evolution is impossible, but they will continue to state it as fact because they do not want to acknowledge there is God and that they will have to face Him in their unholiness!
Just because you do not want to acknowledge God’s existence does not change the fact that He exists!
Nor does it change the fact that God will judge you in righteousness!
The reason why people(even some so called Christians)believe evolution is true is because THEY DO NOT KNOW GOD.
Evolution is a fairy tale that leads people AWAY from Christ. In other words…it’s demonic.
Christians, the “Gap Theory” is completely un-Biblical..there is no way to reconcile evolution with the Holy Bible. Evolution has allowed satan to have a stranglehold on this society.
It is prophecied that man in the end days would believe in pseudoscience..
I guarantee you the vast majority of those who believe in evolution are not even aware of the fact that they have a soul.
“The reason why you believe evolution is because you do not know God”.
There is much more to everything than just the material…materialism will never explain this all to you, nor will it save you!
SaintOlaf on April 18, 2008 at 10:44 PM
Rush is off message. Instead of focusing on pushing conservatism, which is the ostensible theme of his show, he’s focused on beating Obama/Hillary in the political election, which has nothing to do with conservatism. Even if McCain wins, we still get liberalism in government.
fossten on April 18, 2008 at 10:45 PM
And not one strong statement based on any real empirical data. You’ve demonstrated the entire evolutionary premise: Guesswork. Bravo.
fossten on April 18, 2008 at 10:47 PM
It’s a short comment on a blog. Conversation.
exception on April 18, 2008 at 10:49 PM
That’s why we have St. Olaf to inform us. He’s not even a mediocre genius.
(…And you’re right, O, neither am I.)
Tzetzes on April 18, 2008 at 10:50 PM
Guesswork? You are too kind.
My collie says:
CyberCipher on April 18, 2008 at 10:51 PM
I save my rocks for liberals. Needless to say, I’m running low.
I’m glad you made it out of Renton alive. I have heard three emergency vehicles flying down Bothell-Everett since it started. It seems we forget how to drive when it snows.
fourstringfuror on April 18, 2008 at 10:51 PM
E1701 on April 18, 2008 at 10:05 PM
Well that’s great, now we’re getting somewhere. Can you provide me with a link that has pictures of an obvious dinosaur bone structure that has hollow bones?
Now you have disappointed me E1701, the above represents statements of pure faith. There is a very large gap between “suggests” and an actual find that “shows.” And the statement about feathers is really just a little too much. When did they find fossilized feathers…. on dinosaurs no less?
What difference would that make in the fossil record? The transitional species still existed and had to exist for sufficient periods and in sufficient quantities to effect the full transition to birds. Where are the fossils of the “almost birds” or even “getting kind of close to birds” or anything in between those two? Please don’t run back to the gradual change or very long time argument because those arguments are moot.
I’m not surprised you were unmoved by my Lucy links. That’s OK, I didn’t expect you would be, but I provided the links as you requested. I do have more if you would like them.
Maxx on April 18, 2008 at 10:51 PM
Well, it was worth a shot.
Weight of Glory on April 18, 2008 at 10:52 PM
It might help to think of the issues of ID and Evolution in terms of religion. Imaging the person of faith looking over the diner table and saying to the spouse, “Honey, I don’t believe in God anymore.” Well that same level of faith is required for evolution, so imagine the evolutionist looking over the table and saying, “Honey, Darwin was wrong.”
As we progress, we’re learning new theories. The newest that I am aware of is string theory. String theory has basic premises that help us to put the false implication of evolution behind us, but then again, so does ID. The reality is that evolution no longer fits. It’s a flat Earth theory with holes big enough to drive an alien spaceship through…literally. ID has a better explanation which fits more beliefs and more of the evidence that is before us. String theory lends support to ID and helps to disprove the basis of evolution.
Folks, the speed of light is not constant, it is slowing down. Gravity is not constant, it’s becoming weaker. We do not live in a two dimensional universe – it may have infinite dimensions. All of the premises of your science are disproved by string theory. It would require a degree of faith that I am not capable of to believe in failed science from the 1800’s, such as evolution. I live in 2007 and in my world, we have string theory, and a loving God that created us.
Wise Golden on April 18, 2008 at 10:52 PM
By the way, CyberCipher, your dog is way smarter than Lassie. “Timmy fell in the well” Sheesh!
Weight of Glory on April 18, 2008 at 10:54 PM
2008! Man am I drunk!
Wise Golden on April 18, 2008 at 10:57 PM
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