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Expelled generating buzz
The movie won’t hit theaters for another two weeks, but already the buzz about Ben Stein’s Expelled is burning up the blogosphere and overwhelming the web. A little over a week ago, Nielsen’s BlogPulse rated the documentary the hottest blog topic online. Since Friday, Hope Hodge’s WoW interview with the film’s associate producer, Mark Mathis, has generated 140-plus comments and was still going strong as of yesterday. And speaking of yesterday, Marvin Olasky’s review of Expelled from the current issue of WORLD set, as far as I can tell, the one-day record of views of a single article over at our WORLDMag.com site, accounting for nearly one quarter of our overall traffic. If all of these people talking and reading about the movie actually go see it, there’s no doubt it’ll be a hit. And one can imagine the amount of discussion that’ll ensue once everyone has actually seen the film.
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Can’t wait to see this movie. Once I challenged my atheist dad and some of his friends to take a sabbatical from the “Shut-up-you’re-stupid” strategy for a year. What a year! It totally changed the debate.
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Adios,
They can do that?!!!
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It was a very stressful year;)
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Adios sometimes though the people you are being forced to debate really are stupid. I think the Expelled people really are.
World might be for promoting it, but I think it is easier for Mickey McClean to just post some crap (hey if people are talking about it, it must be good right?) rather than think for himself.
The recent ‘controversy’ surrounding the previewing expulsion of a biologist who was unwittingly interviewed for Stein’s crockumentary has generated this internet activity.
In other words, the incompetence and idiocy of Mathis and his fellow travellers is the talk of the internets.
don’t believe me?
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Thanks for the ad hominem attack, Erasmus. My post never said all the buzz was positive, nor did it claim that the film was “good.” I can’t comment on how good or bad it is until I’ve actually seen it. All I said was that if everybody who’s talking about it (you included) went to see it, it would be a hit. Are your disputing my thinking on that? And if you’re going to criticize me, at least learn how to spell my name.
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Not interested.
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Mikki (lol) don’t you think that if you are going to mention this ‘buzz’ you should be honest about who is buzzing it?
That is an interesting statistic that you cited above. I am curious where most of these folks came from to get here? There are only a few remaining voices out there that support this Expelled foolishness. I am guessing that most of your audience is highly critical of this film.
of course I could be wrong. I fail to understand how christianists or thinkers in general can support either the message of Stein et al or the means by which they have deployed it. if you are going to reference this debauchery I for one would appreciate you analysis. otherwise, as others have noted on this site, we think you are just chumming the waters.
by the way, if you would like i can dispute your claim. most folks that are critical and curious about Expelled will likely buy a ticket to another movie and then switch theaters. no one wants to support this pseudoscholarship in our communities.
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“Adios sometimes though the people you are being forced to debate really are stupid. I think the Expelled people really are.”
Thanks for unintentionally proving my point. Now let’s try that sabbatical.
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Adios, when the creobots take a sabbatical from attacking science and reason then I will gladly sabbate.
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Stressful year indeed. But for whom?
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From Olasky – “All three [Stein, Berlinski, and Schroeder] are Jewish, and they don’t look or talk like the hicks portrayed in Inherit the Wind.”
I’m guessing he didn’t listen very closely to Stein, who does indeed sound like the hicks portrayed in “Inherit the Wind”!
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Adios has it exactly right. “Shut up, you’re stupid” is the only strategy, and Erasmus embraces it.
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In other words, the incompetence and idiocy of Mathis and his fellow travellers is the talk of the internets.
The scienceblogs graph was very telling! It is mostly pro-science people who are blogging about the “breathtaking inanity” of Expelled.
And one can imagine the amount of discussion that’ll ensue once everyone has actually seen the film.
One doesn’t have to imagine – there are plenty of reviews out there already, and the majority of them are overwhelming bad:
Reviews of Expelled from those who have seen it
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#12 – Loads of detailed discussion on the Mark Mathis interview thread prove you wrong Stubob. But they clearly aren’t any more persuasive to those with an anti-science fix idee’ than “Shut up. You’re Stupid,” which is a lot more concise.
And, in any case, “Expelled” is nothing more than “Shut up. You’re Evil.”
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And, in any case, “Expelled” is nothing more than “Shut up. You’re Evil.”
Really? When and where did you see it?
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I really want to see this film. Even thought the nearest theater is a 90 mile drive away, I’ll be there!
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Erasmus, could you show yourself truly intelligently by taking one point in the film and critiquing it?
For example,
*Did Nazi propaganda refer to evolution or not?
I personally think that is a very weak point in the documentary, although it is true on the face of it. It is a guilt-by-association technique that doesn’t work for me and seems intellectually dishonest. I think that it is important to learn about any correlation between evolution and racism, but evolution needs to judged on its own evidence (or lack thereof).
*Have scientists been fired from academic posts for espousing the Intelligent Design idea?
Yes, they have. And the question that raises is should they have been fired. That’s a matter of opinion, but the same folks who insist that other controversial figures, such as Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill should have academic freedom had better agree that Michael Dembski does too. Otherwise they show what hypocrites they are.
*Are all Intelligent Design proponents fundamentalist Christians, or do other people support it as well?
Well, obviously if a scientist in Israel who wears a yarmulke is discussing Intelligent Design, then at least one of its proponents is not an ignorant, bucktoothed Holy Roller in the Ozark Mountains.
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Expelled rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.
I like Olasky’s review, except for the sentence above. I think Olasky, and maybe Ben Stein, need to talk to those who lived behind the Berlin Wall.
True Communist enslavement and the stifling of ID views in some universities should not be equated and if so, it is never correct.
Such asinine equations do nothing but inure people to the real injustices and agonies of Communist rule.
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The trailer for “Expelled”
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#15 – I’ve seen a 10 minute trailer.
Actually, a better characterization would be “Shut up. You’re a Nazi.”
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I for one just love Ben Stein – even though he is for raising the taxes on the super rich. At least he knows what super rich is – since he is super rich. No, a millionaire is not rich unless they earn, no dividends or interest, at least $5 million a year after taxes.
Ben is a pro unlike the docuhacks; Moore and alGore. Not only is Ben a prolific and brilliant Renaissance Man, he is also just plain hilarious unlike Moore and alBore (did I misspell?) and you can’t help but love the guy.
Yep, it will be a hit or best seller like all of Ben’s work – even though he is wrong about raising taxes for anyone
Ben may also go down in history as the world’s most prolific writer of books.
He is an unusual Jew too and does not fit the far left whack job mold at all.
I usually do not go to movies but will for this one.
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*Have scientists been fired from academic posts for espousing the Intelligent Design idea?
Herein lies the problem – Stein intentionally conflates 1) the mere idea of believing in a Creator with 2) the god-of-the-gaps Discovery-Institute effort to pass religion off as science.
No scientist has been fired for #1. Actually, few if any scientists have been fired for #2, but they SHOULD BE! As a scientist, you can’t expect to have a career built on shoddy work. The god-of-the-gaps pseudo-science promoted by DI is certifiably rejectable in science.
The lie in Expelled is that the case examples shown are mostly #2, but they are mischaracterized as by Stein in the movie as #1.
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#17 Kyle, see the Mark Mathis interview thread where this issue has been discussed to death by Erasmus, Peter Leavitt, SteveG, myself, and others.
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#12 I disagree with you of course, but may we examine this more closely?
As an example, if you support the use of armed conflict to settle political and affairs of homeland security and other such ventures then you probably have an ontological commitment (here comes my assumption about you, just trying to clearly state it) to the idea that some point Enough is Enough. In other words, there are points where further dialogue is improbable to the point of dismissal.
There are a myriad of other examples. The issue is much deeper than this surficial instance. To put it another way, at some point you may safely assume the bear is fixing to get you.
We have long reached this point with the ID creationists. After 15 or 20 years of ‘ID’ theology, and a much longer time of creationist and design theology, we still have no results from this mode of thinking.
The whipping post of this form of creationism is ‘naturalism’. This term provides a wide brush to tar ideological enemies and handily define the other side. yet it means very little if not nothing in this usage.
the debate is over the narrative form, as mynym has recently discussed here, and as solon is ever willing to remind us. we should embrace ‘design thinking’ as others have said. again, there is no propositional form of these arguments. You may have heard this style of argumentation under other names: concern trolling, wanking, special pleading, etc.
The simple fact that we should all agree on is that ‘design thinking’ or ’supernatural agents’ or other non-empirical quantities and qualities should not be a part of empirical theories!!! You would agree. Our theories of disease or mental heath are not improved by considering the actions of demons or spirits for example. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist of course.
ecologists find it useful to talk about organisms or behaviors in teleological terms (succession of a community), but every attempt to demonstrate this organizing principle with data, since the debate began in modern form in the early 1900s, has failed. Our best science says that communities are not the products of ‘design’ yet they are more or less repeatable predictable entities in the world.
there are many more examples. in fact, i’d bet the number of examples where design thinking is a hindrance to heuristic explanation is equal to the number of biological facts needing explanation.
Whether or not you agree with their ideas, surely you can denounce their tactics. The arguments fail on their merits, even though they may be attractive for other non-scientific reasons, but the machiavellian tactics and rank hypocrisy of blaming atheism and darwinism for hitler and goebbels is surely worth the express and explicit condemnation from you guys.
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#5 – I think it’s a bit of a leap to think that the people who are talking about this movie are going to see it – or at least pay to see it! Most sciencebloggers strongly recommend against paying to see this movie!
E.g., “So I will urge people not to see this, this will be a huge flop at the box office. Though no matter what happens they will claim victory, even if one person goes…Do not financially support this movie, get the word out.”
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17
I am glad to hear it. Blaming darwin for hitler is like blaming alexander graham bell or the caveman who invented the wheel or tennyson.
Now, folks are getting fired? Name one kyle. Name one person fired from their academic post for naming ‘Intelligent Design’. We’ve been through the list but I’m sure there are others that Stein might have missed. I know a few. You won’t like them.
Lastly of course all bloody political movements have fellow travellers. You would be surprised if it were not so?
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Bill O’Reilly interview with Ben Stein regarding “EXPELLED”
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Spinoza: #5 – I think it’s a bit of a leap to think that the people who are talking about this movie are going to see it – or at least pay to see it!
I said if everyone talking about the movie actually went to see it … I never said they would. It’s like saying, “If I had a dime every time … I’d be rich.”
Why does Ben Stein and his movie threaten so many of you?
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M2. Dishonest ignorance promoting hate propaganda should be shouted down. Are Liars for Jesus your fellow travellers?
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Victoria if that is the interview I am thinking of, Stein refers to Intelligent Design as creationism and that people are being EXPELLED for thinking that God created the world.
now, that is fine. Not true, but he can say what he wants right. free country.
On the other hand, the ID theologians have been saying that this is nothing to do with religion and is a scientific movement.
Who is lying?
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#24 — I think your premise is right. So, if you think “enough is enough” and the argument is over, why do you participate? You’re on two threads today extolling the idiocy of those who maintain an open mind with respect to evolution. You must get some secondary gain, but I can’t imagine what.
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#31
not so. who has attempted to ‘maintain an open mind with respect to evolution’? you talking about science or narrative stories?
here is why: The machiavellian tactics and rank hypocrisy of blaming atheism and darwinism for hitler and goebbels is surely worth the express and explicit condemnation from you guys.
You up for it? What do you think about World continuing to push this dishonest and factually incorrect propaganda? It’s either chum, or they support it. Or both.
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Theater LOCATOR for “EXPELLED”
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Mickey McLean – 28
My husband and I are going to see the film. I’m glad you started this thread, and YES it will “threaten” many people. They can either see the film, or sit home and SULK-
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Why does Ben Stein and his movie threaten so many of you?
A better question – why are fundies so threatened by the truth of evolution that they would create political propaganda full of outright lies?
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World has editorialized emphatically in the past that intelligent design is science, not religion, because the “designer” is not necessarily “God”. “Expelled” says the opposite and strongly confirms that teaching of intelligent design in public schools would be an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
So help us out here, McLean – how are we to interpret this World Flip Flop?!
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Spinoza,
If the film bothers you, don’t see it. Obviously you haven’t viewed it yet, so you can’t make a definitive statement until you’ve see it.
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#37 – Oh I’ll see it, but I won’t pay to see it. As I said, I’ve seen a ~10 minute trailer and enough Stein interviews to know he’s lost whatever marbles he had in the first place. I’ve also read a half dozen reviews that describe what’s in the film, so I expect not to be surprised by what I see.
Expelled Exposed will have more detailed background prior to the public release, but currently has links to reviews, etc.
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We are bothered by its deliberate spreading of pseudoscience, the continued trend of demonzing science and knowledge and the reinforcement of the false notion that science and faith must be enemies.
Other than that, I have no probem with it.
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Victoria I expect that you will probably go see it with one of the free tickets given to your church youth group by the Expelled roadshow? they are giving them away.
#31
As far as open minds go, read what convinced Stein that he need to attach duh evilution.
Open mind, not found.
I had always been extremely dubious about Darwinism, because Darwinism is linked to Social Darwinism,” said Stein, who also has been a game show host, law professor and Wall Street pundit since being a speech writer for President Richard Nixon. “This is explicitly one of the problems of the Holocaust, which killed 6 million of my fellow Jews.
Open mind all the way. Not any argument from perceived consequences what-so-ever. Not a trace of the post modern philosophy of science that is best described as ‘may the best narrative win’. Not a bit.
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Erasmus, Steveg and Spinoza
Your little trio doesn’t surpise anyone – Keep jumping rope, each taking their TURN
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#41 – I’m really disappointed that neither my name nor the word “trio” are bolded in this post!
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Spinoza is truly gracious – at least today: He provides that he will(however grudgingly) ‘allow’ a scientist to ‘believe in a Creator’.
But if a scientist actually believes in a ‘Creator who can DO anything’, fire his or her ass, and bury the body.
There is something here that worries me. But I am afraid I will get fired if I speak out about it too loudly.
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#43 – No – As I’ve posted elsewhere, both myself and even the NAS are fine with the many scientists that have personal belief in both God and divine intervention. Contrary to the hyped and inaccurate claims in Stein’s movie, a large number of scientists believe this and are fully respected for it.
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p.s. I am a doubtful-but-hopeful believer in both God and divine intervention.
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p.p.s. Many of the strongest objections to IDC are theological. IDC implies that natural law is independent of God, so he needs to periodically contravene it in order to get his way. Frankly, it’s my spiritual side that finds this notion most repugnant.
I basically see no problem with this statement from the current pope:
A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.”
This basically says that there is no theological need to search for biochemical “miracles” that contravene known laws of chemistry or biology in order to attribute creation to a creator.
Amen!
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For some reason though, it is important for Drill and his little Drill Bits to believe that there is some conspiracy against religious-minded scientists.
I don’t understand this, but it’s illustrated in #43 perfectly.
The dialogue goes like this:
Scientists who belive in God are expelled!
Not at all. Many scientists believe in God. Nobody has a problem with it.
OK. But if a scientist actually believes in a ‘Creator who can DO anything’, fire his or her ass, and bury the body.
Now where do you get that from? Myself and even the NAS are fine with the many scientists that have personal belief in both God and divine intervention. Contrary to the hyped and inaccurate claims in Stein’s movie, a large number of scientists believe this and are fully respected for it.
All right all right. But if the scientists believe in a Creator who can do things, puts moral limits on people and sent his Son to die in our place, he’s going to be laughed right out of the room, right?
Have you heard of Francis Collins? John Polkinghorne?
(silence)
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… I’ve seen a ~10 minute trailer …. I’ve also read a half dozen reviews that describe what’s in the film, …
Wow. You’re pretty obsessed with this thing.
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#48 “Wow. You’re pretty obsessed with this thing”
I have students who are, so I need to be up on it as well.
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Spinoza – 49
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#50 aww – geeze, Victoria, you can always see right through me.
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#50 It’s kind of like driving by a multi-vehicle accident. I can’t not look!
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Your responses are predictable as well!
Maybe you are the one in the accident?
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Spinoza: Thanks for the clarification, although I am not so sure that one can separate or isolate the Creator from active participation in His Creation any way He sees fit, quite so neatly as you would seem to imply.
Steveg: I doubt you will get silence out of me, as long as I am checking this evening, which may not be long. I do like the drillbits comment though. That is funny.
Actually, it would be very nice if things were as you portray – however, in general, it is professional suicide for a young or unrenowned scientist to admit any belief system rooted in a Christian framework (or recognizably Christian from my standpoint) in a National Lab or University. The best they can do is maintain a kind of silence; sometimes that is not even good enough.
Note that Francis Collins is a poor example from the standpoint of showing this statement is ‘not true’ as he is established and has done seminal and recognized work already – he is a bit too big to easily knock down. Also note that I am not referring to a scientist who would unscientifically interpret (or discard and sort) data to fit their theological picture of either the universe as it exists or how it appears to have come to be. I am speaking of those individuals whose views would be essentially similar to Francis Collins.
I do not know anything about Stein’s movie and probably won’t see it because I am not that interested in such movies in the first place, as they (right, left, secular, or non-secular) tend to be more propaganda than not.
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Spinoza: Thanks for the clarification, although I am not so sure that one can separate or isolate the Creator from active participation in His Creation any way He sees fit, quite so neatly as you would seem to imply.
Umm – I thought that was my point. I especially don’t like IDC because it separates God both from matter and from “natural law”. Then he comes in flicking a supernatural finger from time to time. Yuck!
I picked “Spinoza” as a handle because he was a pantheist. I may actually be a panentheist, myself, but at the least, I don’t like a God-nature rift!
As Einstein said:
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”
I would like to believe in more than Spinoza’s God, but I believe in at least Spinoza’s God!
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drill
in general, it is professional suicide for a young or unrenowned scientist to admit any belief system rooted in a Christian framework (or recognizably Christian from my standpoint) in a National Lab or University. The best they can do is maintain a kind of silence; sometimes that is not even good enough.
wow. is that so. who told you? why do I of all people know the exceptions to the rule? I guess I’m just lucky to know so many christian scientists even my own particular narrow field. Should play the lottery.
Do you have any evidence to back your claim up drill? We’ve already been through most of the cast of characters of Expelled.
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Erasmus: Indulge me for a bit.
You say you know so many scientists who are Christians even in your own field (biology, evolutionary biology).
How do you define Christian? (traditional definition of believing in the life, death, burial, resurrrection, deity, etc. of Christ and an infinite-personal active God – or something different)
I guess the following questions are predicated on a traditional definition of Christian:
Are these Christians you know who are scientists competent?
Are they competent DESPITE their being Christians?
Do you view them in any general way as being handicapped because of their Christianity?
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#57
I am not sure the question ‘How do I define Christian’ is the important issue. That is the fact that these people identify themselves as Christians. I have not polled them on their beliefs in resurrection, trinities, councils of nicea, chicago statement, etc etc. I do not care if they believe Jesus made grape juice or real wine. All I can say is that these folks claim to be Christians. I suppose one common thread might be that most folks would probably call themselves ‘Theistic Evolutionists’ or some sort of thing.
Are they competent scientists? I’d have to say that some of them sure are. The one that made me think of this has named more than 200 species of insects and as many publications on evolution, cladistics, biogeography, ecology and systematics.
I know a great botanist that is very devout. Baptist Church (of course this is one of the uptown baptist churches and not the type I attended in my youth). She is a TE’er. I don’t really care for her, but it has nothing to do with her faith and more to do with her eccentric character.
I know another great botanist that is very devout, but this one is a grad student. She is a fantastic rising scholar and has some really interesting ideas about the evolution of plant sex and reproductive isolation. She is open about her faith and there is no one waiting to Expell her from our program even though there are some miliant atheist types hanging around.
I know another good student that recently told me that she teaches sunday school to four year olds. Baptist Church. She is into the evolution of mating behaviors in spiders. No one is hanging around telling her that she has to Ixnay Onyay the Odgay.
Are these folks competent despite being Christians? Unpack your assumptions here a bit and I’ll indulge this. As the question stands it is indistinguishable from bait.
Drill of course I do view them as ‘believers’. That’s what they are. It is also the way I view those who are active in politics. To me, I think there is not much difference in believing in gods and believing that voting is a worthwhile activity.
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hey Mickey, here is your chance to suck it up and take a stand for something instead of just kow-towing to Marvin’s pandering to the neanderthal contingent.
Expelled is EXPELLING invited undesirables from preview screenings. In order to do this they are LYING ABOUT A SCHEDULING CHANGE.
When will you do the right thing Mickey? When will you and Harrison and Marvin come clean and admit that the Stein-Mathis-Ruloff circus is a complete fabrication from the bottom to the top?
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#57 There are some data on this taken recently by Ed Larson in a repeat of a historic survey by Leuba. 40% of scientists believe in a personal God and an afterlife, for what it’s worth:
Scientists are still keeping the Faith
Anecdotally – in my experience – many scientists are still church-goers, but they tend to belong to more moderate (i.e., less fundamentalist) Christian churches. In my own department, we have a Baptist (the department chair no less), a Congregationalist (UCC), a Ukranian Orthodox, a Catholic, and a Mormon. None of these people have a problem with evolution, and I don’t have a problem with any of these people!
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None of these people have a problem with evolution,…
…which makes them irrelevant to the presumed topic of the movie, which is the fate of people who do have a problem with evolution.
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StuBob, we have yet to establish a single case of someone being mistreated because of their problems with evolution.
We have several instances of incompetence that is sooooooooo often coupled with ‘a problem with evolution’ . We have muddled statements about “ID is not religion” and “X was refused tenure because of his religious beliefs”.
There are no Expellees. They are fabricated. We’ve been over this. Catch up.
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Drill.
I can’t speak for others, but my own experience is mixed:
For example, the head of our department is an internationally recognized clinical and basic scientist, recent editor-in-chief of the most important journal in his field and soon-to-be president of the largest professional association for his specialty. He’s a Christian who meets all the criteria you describe, and has been so, quite expressly, throughout his career, remaining a member of a conservative branch of the Presbyterian church. Even the most venomous atheists in the department have nothing but respect for the guy. Why? Because he does good science. Because he delights in being shown on the basis of evidence where he might be mistaken, and because he cares deeply for progress and continued understanding of his chosen field.
I know this is a generalization, but I suspect that a devout and orthodox Christian who does good rigorous science is more likely to succeed with broad acceptance in his or her field, regardless of religion, than a Christian in the humanities, or theology for that matter (if success is measured by wide respect and recognition)!
On the other hand. There is an environment in the sciences (and most of academia) that can be brutally hostile and derisive of Christians who discount scientific inquiry and discovery out of hand because the results don’t fit this or that apprehension of “Biblical truth.” They don’t hold back out of respect when this is the case, and it can be daunting and discouraging to young scientists who, for instance, were taught early on that evolution is a threat to true Christian faith. When this is the case, either their faith or their scientific pursuits lose. This is part of why ID and its propagandists are so harmful to Christianity, and by extension harmful to science by excluding otherwise competent thinkers from particpating meaningfully in their fields.
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A blogger on pharyngula and panda’s thumb points out known examples of Fundies Expelling folks who aren’t creationist enough.
Posting the list of who is really being beaten up, threatened, fired, attempted to be fired, and killed. Not surprisingly, it is scientists and science supporters by Death Cultists.
There is a serious reign of terror by Xian fundie terrorists directed against the reality based academic community, specifically acceptors of evolution. I’m keeping a running informal tally, listed below. They include death threats, firings, attempted firings, assaults, and general persecution directed against at least 11 people. The Expelled Liars have totally ignored the ugly truth of just who is persecuting who.
If anyone has more info add it. Also feel free to borrow or copy the list.
I thought I’d post all the firings of professors and state officials for teaching or accepting evolution.
2 professors fired, Bitterman (SW CC Iowa) and Bolyanatz (Wheaton)
1 persecuted unmercifully Richard Colling (Olivet)
1 attempted firing Murphy (Fuller Theological by Phillip Johnson IDist)
1 successful death threats, assaults harrasment Gwen Pearson (UT Permian)
1 state official fired Chris Comer (Texas)
1 assault, fired from dept. Chair Paul Mirecki (U. of Kansas)
1 killed, Rudi Boa, Biomedical Student (Scotland)
Death Threats Eric Pianka UT Austin and the Texas Academy of Science engineered by a hostile, bizarre IDist named Bill Dembski
Death Threats Michael Korn, fugitive from justice, towards the UC Boulder biology department and miscellaneous evolutionary biologists.
Death Threats Judge Jones Dover, who was put under the protection of Federal Marshalls.
Up to 11 with little effort. Probably there are more. I turned up a new one with a simple internet search. Haven’t even gotten to the secondary science school teachers.
And the Liars of Expelled have the nerve to scream persecution. On body counts the creos are way ahead.
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Expelled becomes secret Two Minute Hate, Richard Dawkins as Emmanuel Goldstein.
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Erasmus: StuBob, we have yet to establish a single case of someone being mistreated because of their problems with evolution.
David Klinghoffer in Unintelligent Design Hostility toward religious believers at the nation’s museum. from a federal government government investihgation of Richard Sternberg who edited A Smithsonian journal article questioning the merit of Darwinism.
Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions…During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.
Actually Ben Stein is doing a service to the American people in bringing out the viciousness of Darwinian fundamentalists towards anyone who raises serious questions regarding the pieties of Darwinian theory.
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Erasmus: StuBob, we have yet to establish a single case of someone being mistreated because of their problems with evolution.
David Klinghoffer in Unintelligent Design Hostility toward religious believers at the nation’s museum. from a federal government government investihgation of Richard Sternberg who edited A Smithsonian journal article questioning the merit of Darwinism.
Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions…During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.
Actually Ben Stein is doing a service to the American people in bringing out the viciousness of Darwinian fundamentalists towards anyone who raises serious questions regarding the pieties of Darwinian theory.
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Nice try Solon. We’ve already been over this one.
Sternberg violated the process of editorship and failed to disclose conflicts of interest in publishing an article, which he indicated he had planned to do after he submitted his resignation as editor.
Retaliation against Sternberg by his superiors has been completely in his head. See here, (again, Solon, I’ve linked this before. If you are going to keep trotting out Klinghoffer we will have to keep pointing out that he is lame). It would be nice to get to the part where you admit that there is no evidence for your claim.
You see the viciousness of Darwinian fundamentalists towards anyone who raises serious questions regarding the pieties of Darwinian theory, we see continual and incessant religiously motivated science denial, assertions that are wrong on every count but trumpeted hither and yon by those with special agendas.
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There’s a movie coming out soon which evidently purports to give examples of scientists being blackballed for having doubts about the Darwinian faith. My own education suggests that this is quite possible. Rather than take Erasmus’s word that that just doesn’t happen, I think I’ll see the movie.
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When you view a scientific theory as something that by it’s nature can have such things as pieties then you are drunk off the postmodern wine and it’s probably a good idea to lay off the solipcist juice for a while.
It’s a continued example of how the philosophy of science of ‘design thinkers’ is so depauperate as to be completely useless save as a mechanism for getting the children to go to sleep. And in this case, to beat the drum for theocracy and the Dumbing of AMerica.
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Stu by all means don’t take my word for it.
Go to the many links I have provided for the evidence you need. The examples given in the movie are widely discussed. The thesis that these individuals are blackballed by science for having dissenting scientific views is classic EPIC FAIL.
Now, what about your experience?
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Stubob – “…which makes them irrelevant to the presumed topic of the movie, which is the fate of people who do have a problem with evolution.”
No – the principal topic of the movie and of Stein’s continuous narrative rant is expulsion for belief in God! This is obvious from the many trailers on YouTube and from Stein interviews.
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Erasmus, your source for Sternberg’s treatment at the Smithsonian, Jonathan Coddington,was actually part of the movement to ostracize Coddington. The federal Office of Special Counsel investigated the Sternberg matter and came up with the following:
Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions…During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.
The Office of Special Counsel based this on an impartial investigayion of the matter.
According to Sternberg himself the Smithsonian did the following:
Supervisor replaced. I was transferred from the supervision of a friendly sponsor (supervisor) at the Museum to a hostile one.
bullet
Office space. I was twice forced to move specimens from my office space on short notice for no good reason, my name plate was removed from my office door, and eventually I was deprived of all official office space and forced to use a shared work area as my work location in the Museum.
bullet
Unprecedented work requirements. I was subjected to an array of new reporting requirements not imposed on other Research Associates.
bullet
Access to specimens limited. My access to the specimens needed for my research at the Museum was restricted. (My access to the Museum was also restricted. I was forced to give up my master key.)
In sum, it is clear that I was targeted for retaliation and harassment explicitly because I failed in an unstated requirement in my role as editor of a scientific journal: I was supposed to be a gatekeeper turning away unpopular, controversial, or conceptually challenging explanations of puzzling natural phenomena. Instead, I allowed a scientific article to be published critical of neo-Darwinism, and that was considered an unpardonable heresy.
Ben Stein highlights Sternberg’s treatment by the Smithsonian for good reason.
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Now, what about your experience?
My experience as a physiology major at the University of Illinois, 1979 – 83, was that any student who dared question Darwinian orthodoxy was mercilessly belittled by professors and jeered by fellow students. In Bio 110, a giant lecture class of nearly 1000 students, the professor spoke of Darwin in Messianic tones, but accused followers of the real Messiah of being rubes. The message was clear: We hold these truths with religious fervor — don’t cross us.
Your refutations don’t hold much weight. Of course there’s some alternative, official explanation. I wouldn’t expect a tenure committee to come out and say, “Dr. Jones is not fit for tenure because he doubts Darwinian orthodoxy,” even if it was true.
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Ben Stein highlights Sternberg’s treatment by the Smithsonian for good reason.
Mainly, because he couldn’t find anybody else?
The “Office of Special Counsel” report was a politically motivated investigation prepared by the staff of right-wing congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) and is contradicted by its own internal evidence.
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My experience as a physiology major at the University of Illinois, 1979 – 83, was that any student who dared question Darwinian orthodoxy was mercilessly belittled by professors and jeered by fellow students.
I’m sure that kind of behaviour is still true in some quarters, but this does not constitute infringement of academic freedom, however unpleasant it may be! Remember, evolutionary scientists and even atheists also have academic freedom to speak their beliefs in no uncertain terms!
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but this does not constitute infringement of academic freedom,
No, but it does send the message that Darwinism is not to be questioned, and encourages many intellectually curious students to leave the biological sciences, leaving the field poorer.
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As a conservative Christian, it is totally incomprehensible in my mind how World would support Stein in his dishonest propaganda.
Here is an excerpt from a letter I sent to Marvin Olasky:
“it is indefensible
> that WORLD should fail to condemn, and even condone Stein’s propagandistic
> tactic of blaming the Holocaust on Darwinian evolution. Natural selection
> has to do with differential reproductive success, not Hitler’s idea of
> “superior races.” Hitler claimed support of his views from a variety of
> sources, including a twisted view of Darwinism. Yet he also claimed that he
> was “acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator” and doing
> “the will of the Lord.” Does this discredit belief in God? Of course not,
> yet Stein and WORLD use the exact same reasoning so support their own
> twisted argument. This is supremely illogical. It is wrong for WORLD to
> participate in Stein’s dishonesty in such a way. The fact that critics of
> evolution, in order to support the supposed link between Darwinian evolution
> and the Holocaust, cite the writings of one of the most twisted, deprived,
> and perverted minds in the history of mankind is very telling indeed. Those
> in “academia and the media” are right to be infuriated, and WORLD should be
> too, instead of approvingly citing Hitler and supporting others who do the
> same.”
WORLD has some explaining to do. If WORLD is really so caught up in the poor science and poor science of Intelligent Design that tactics like this become acceptable, there are problems.
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the professor spoke of Darwin in Messianic tones, but accused followers of the real Messiah of being rubes
StuBob … as long as people on both sides insist that this is an either/or proposition, there will be tension.
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Spinoza said:
From Olasky – “All three [Stein, Berlinski, and Schroeder] are Jewish, and they don’t look or talk like the hicks portrayed in Inherit the Wind.”
I’m guessing he didn’t listen very closely to Stein, who does indeed sound like the hicks portrayed in “Inherit the Wind”!
———–
And as for their looks, Stein obviously went out of his way in his dress for the promo pics to look ridiculous.
And they wonder why no one takes them seriously
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Kyle A said:
“I personally think that is a very weak point in the documentary, although it is true on the face of it. It is a guilt-by-association technique that doesn’t work for me and seems intellectually dishonest. I think that it is important to learn about any correlation between evolution and racism, but evolution needs to judged on its own evidence (or lack thereof).”
—-
Precisely. It is blatantly dishonest of them, and shame on WORLD for condoning it and participating in it themselves. Don’t they recognize that Hitler “justified” his actions based on theism as well? Or that the belt buckles of the Nazis read “Gott Mit Uns”?
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Mclean 28:
“Why does Ben Stein and his movie threaten so many of you?”
It doesn’t threaten the scientific establishment one little bit. Evolution has withstood 150 years of testing and validation, and these recent arguments have been answered ad nauseam as well, if only people would listen.
The problem is that this documentary and the peculiar position of ID that it supports threaten to take a big leap backwards in our understanding. Many people will be swayed by the “guilt by association,” the shoddy scientific claims, and the propagandistic techniques of the movie. And many people will take a step backward to a time when “God did it” was the only explanation allowed. Sure, it’s an important explanation, and in light of evolutionary discoveries, it still holds. But a worldview stripped of our scientific understanding of “how” God acts in the world is a pathetic worldview indeed. And to do this in the name of Christianity is even worse.
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Spinoza, The Office of Special Counsel is a rigorously independent agency of the government. Sternberg appealed it to it. What is your source for the improbable connection betweenb Congressman Strouder’s staff and the OSC report on Sternberg?
The following is fromt the OSC website: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an independent federal investigative anprosecutorial agency. Our basic authorities come from three federal statutes, the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and the Hatch Act.
Anyone who care to understand the real facts in the Sternberg matter should read the letter to of the OSC to Dr.Sternberg Here
One of the key paragraphs in the letter states:
At this same time, many e-mails from within the management of the SI and from outside sources stated that the only way the Meyer article was published was through “serious editorial oversight.” Other managers called it an “egregious instance of editorial incompetence…” They could not fathom that they Meyer article had been peer-reviewed and, if it was, it could only have been reviewed by “like minded individuals.” In fact, there was a serious effort by some to take the drastic step of piercing the veil of peer review, an unprecedented and unethical act within your field. They assumed that you violated editorial regulations of the Proceedings because you were the primary editor of the article. These comments were made to and by SI and NMNH managers and were published to several outside organizations. It was later revealed that you complied with all editorial requirements of the Proceedings and that the Meyer article was properly peer reviewed by renowned scientists. As an aside, the information received by OSC does not indicate that any effort was made to recall or correct these comments once the truth was made known.
Note that the Meyer article was properly peer reviewed.
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81 Oh no, we know now for certain that the belt buckles said “Darwin Mit Uns Uber Natural Selection”.
Stubob, I can’t say much about your story. Very interesting I would like to hear more. What was this professor’s name? Was he ever prosecuted? I wonder what ‘Messianic tones’ sound like? Did he explicitly say “All you that follow any other messiah than Darwin are rubes?” Did you fail the class? Did any atheists ever fail the class? Please do tell.
As far as ‘there are always alternative official explanations makes it sound like you think there is a big conspiracy. You don’t seem to acknowledge that this means you are saying that anyone who questions Darwinism should get special treatment for being a denialist.
Remember, these are not scientific objections to darwinism, they are religious objections (Expelled says so!!!). It is important to distinguish these when discussing cases of purported persecution.
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Solon, there is still a modicum of reasonable doubt about whether or not ‘proper peer review’ was given to the article. Of the reviewers, one was Sternberg himself. Since there is a conflict of interest between Sternberg and Meyer, he should have given the article to another reviewer (the others are anonymous to this day). He did not, because he knew it would never fly. Meyer presented no new data and no conceptual clarifications that comprise a unique or innovative contribution. He just played Argument from Incredulity and even mangled his facts. Read my sources. You are ignorant of what happened.
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David you are right. Shame on World Magazine. That is the only point to continuing any of this discussion. Shame On World for promoting lying post modern science denial in the name of other peoples gods.
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84 Erasmus said:
“81 Oh no, we know now for certain that the belt buckles said “Darwin Mit Uns Uber Natural Selection”.”
—
haha, yes indeed. But remember; it takes some Stein-esque “teaching” to gain that sort of revisionist “knowledge”!
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#72 Solon no Coddington was Sternberged by Sternberg himself, and I have linked to his response to Sternberg’s dishonest claims.
As to the rest of your inaccurate information, the OSC found no evidence of religious discrimination. The OSC never gave the Smithsonian any chance to respond to the allegations.
The report written by Souder and Santorum is not an official report of the The House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. It was written by a Souder staffer and published on Souders web page.
Souder and Santorum are long known to associate with the intellectual and financial descendants of Rushdoony and Ahmanson. This is a political movement by neanderthals.
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SteveG (79): I agree completely.
Erasmus (84): Very interesting I would like to hear more. Despite my doubts, I’ll take you at your word.
What was this professor’s name? Don’t remember. It was 29 years ago. I do remember the day his morning shaving injury broke loose all over the overhead projector, splattering six-foot blobs of blood on the screen.
Was he ever prosecuted? For what?
I wonder what ‘Messianic tones’ sound like? Reverent. Very reverent. And easily offended by dissent.
Did he explicitly say “All you that follow any other messiah than Darwin are rubes?” No.
Did you fail the class? Got an A or a B. Can’t remember exactly. It was a pre-med weed-out class. I stayed in.
Did any atheists ever fail the class? I have no idea.
Please do tell. Happy to oblige.
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Thanks StuBob. Do you agree with me when i say that this story is hardly what Solon calls the viciousness of Darwinian fundamentalists towards anyone who raises serious questions regarding the pieties of Darwinian theory? Instead, a teacher with a communication problem (and perhaps in need of an electric razor?)
I think it is worth mentioning that the ‘either-or’ affair is one that is brought about by folks like we meet here at worldblog that say you cannot believe in the evilution and still love baby jesus, or if you think that men came from monkeys then the bible is worthless.
If there were not religious zealots with authoritarian missions to convert the populace, then there would be no need for evangelical atheists. It is one thing to say “I see no evidence for gods”. Quite another to say “You are stupid for believing in God”. I do the former, I don’t do the latter. I do say, wrt the latter “The evidence you cite for the existence of your gods is not evidence for the existence of gods but evidence of the evidence”. This often is spun around as “You are stupid for believing in God”.
Until literalist and inerrantist types can resolve the contradictions inherent in their model of the real world, then we will face an assault from these square circlers.
The most interesting thing is as enlightened christianist types, you should recommend that your fellow believers get a better witness. We’ll figure out what to do with PZ by then.
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Erasmus (90): No, this is hardly “the viciousness…” It’s just one example of how I saw Darwin doubters treated when I was a physiology major. Such treatment leads me to believe it’s entirely possible that non-Darwinists are discriminated against in certain hirings and promotions. I also believe such professors discourage qualified people from entering the biological sciences.
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After reading a little and scrolling a whole lot, “Me thinks the Evolutionists doth protest too much.”
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Bob we are trying to help you here. How wonderful it would be if Christianists were to rise up and say “We do not support dishonest scholarship and outright dishonesty, and we do not expect to see such behavior given approval by World Magazine”.
Every single one of those cases that Solon has listed in Expelled is an example of something other than being Expelled for believing in God, which is what Stein tells you is the reason. THAT IS A LIE. YOU ARE LYING BY ASSOCIATION IF YOU DO NOT DISOWN HIS REMARKS.
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What’s a “Christianist”?
When you use deliberately inflammatory language, it weakens your argument.
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Spinoza, The Office of Special Counsel is a rigorously independent agency of the government. Sternberg appealed it to it. What is your source for the improbable connection betweenb Congressman Strouder’s staff and the OSC report on Sternberg?
I think there’s confusion here (including w/me!) between the letter from the OSC with a report issued later. But a letter w/”preliminary investigation” saying they have no jurisdiction and refusing to field the case is certainly not a persuasive document of Sternberg martyrdom! And in the time of a Republican-controlled congress is unlikely to be non-partisan!
Erasmus has already linked to a review of the later report above. Here’s the link again: Creating a Martyr
From Wikipedia -
Sternberg claims that he was “targeted for retaliation and harassment” and subject to efforts to remove him from the museum in retaliation for his views in support of creationism. He continues to cite a letter by the United States Office of Special Counsel as supporting his version of events, despite the Office of Special Counsel ultimately dismissing his claim. Pim Van Meurs and other critics observed that the Office of Special Counsel lacked jurisdiction over the matter and so his claim was unlikely to proceed, and that even though it made no official findings or conclusions, the response from the Office of Special Counsel provided Sternberg and the Discovery Institute putative evidence and talking points supporting their claim that the scientific community discriminates against intelligent design proponents. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer portrayed Sternberg as a martyr and victim of discrimination, a tactic used often by design proponents.
In December 2006 a partisan report was issued by Republican representatives and intelligent design advocates Mark Souder and Rick Santorum, author of the pro-ID Santorum Amendment, calling into question the Smithsonian’s treatment of Sternberg and repeating many of Sternberg’s claims. The report was commissioned by Souder in his capacity as subcommittee chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, written by his subcommittee staff, but published by Souder as an individual representative without it gaining any official standing by the Committee, which never formally accepted it. This is contrary to oft-repeated claims by the Discovery Institute and other design proponents that the report represents an official position by the Committee supporting Sternberg’s claims of discrimination.”
Observers have said that facts of the case simply do not support the conclusions of the report nor is the report an official report of the committee. They say that the Discovery Institute is using the report to portray Sternberg specifically, and design proponents in general, as victims of persecution. They also say the Souder report is a repackaging of the Office of Special Council’s previous findings from August 2005 and contains nothing new, consisting of “the OSC findings restated and used as a form of evidence in and of themselves” and attacks the Smithsonian for “not accepting the OSC’s findings at face value.” They cite as evidence of a biased motive behind the report the longstanding connections of the report’s instigators, Congressmen Souder and Santorum, to the Discovery Institute, whose Program Director is Stephen C. Meyer, author of the paper Sternberg published. In 2000 Souder co-hosted a congressional briefing on behalf of the Discovery Institute intended to drum up political support for intelligent design and read a defense of intelligent design prepared by the Discovery Institute into the congressional record. Santorum worked with the Discovery Institute’s program director Phillip E. Johnson in 2000 and 2001 drafting the pro-intelligent design Santorum Amendment and in March 2006 wrote the foreword for the book, Darwin’s Nemesis: Phillip Johnson And the Intelligent Design Movement a collection of essays largely by Discovery Institute fellows honoring Johnson as “father” of the intelligent design movement. Contained in the appendix to the Souder report is a letter from the director of the Smithsonian where it is revealed that Sternberg demanded that they give him a $300,000 grant to make up for his allegedly lost research time; he was turned down. Sternberg’s appointment as a Smithsonian Institute reasearch associate was from January 2004 through January 2007. Research associates are not employees of the Museum and appointments are typically awarded for up to three years.
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#92 – hmmm – And here I thought “Expelled” was doing the protesting!
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Erasmus: #72 Solon no Coddington was Sternberged by Sternberg himself, and I have linked to his response to Sternberg’s dishonest claims.
Coddington was part of the Smithsonian attempt to discredit Sternberg. From reading the OSC report and Sternberg himself, it is rather clear that 1) Sternberg, a biologist with two PhDs, properly published the Myers paper and 2) was punished by the Smithsonian authorities for publishing a paper that questioned Darwinian arguments.
Myers, a PhD from Cambridge in the history of science, has come to question certain tenets of Darwinism. Why is it that the Darwinists are so defensive that they are willing to attempt destroy a man’s career? There is something rotten here.
Ben Stein’s film has included Sternberg as one of the scientists who has suffered from the truly vicious tactics of the Darwinian fundamentalists. I’m sure the lawyers for the film’s backers have made sure that he is on firm ground and not subject to charges of libel.
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StuBob, a Christianist is an ignorant soul who doesn’t understand the fundamentalist pieties of Darwinism, even if they are a physician with substantial scientific knowledge. It is usually used by ignorant and ill spirited secularists.
Spinoza, note that I haven’t cited the Souder/Santorum sponsored study of the Sternberg case. Further, you still haven’t provided a credible refutation of the OSC investigation.
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For those looking for examples — here is one:
Guillermo Gonzalez
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Guillermo Gonzalez’s case is another interesting one, though the facts on it are not as clear as those in Sternberg’’s case. Gonzalez was an assistant professor in astronomy and physics at Iowa State with a distinguished record who made the mistake of declaring that he favored the tenets of intelligent design. He was denied tenure, most probably more for his intelligent design views, as his accomplishments in astronomy and physics are impressive. The following doesn’t pass the smell test, however flexible tenure decisions might be.
Faculty involved in the tenure decision were well aware of Gonzalez’s support for ID. More than one year before his tenure evaluation was scheduled, one ISU professor wrote an e-mail that left no doubt that Gonzalez’s tenure application would never receive a fair evaluation.
“He will be up for tenure next year,” wrote the professor. “And if he keeps up, it might be a hard sell to the department.”
Contrary to his public statements, and those of ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, the chairman of ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Eli Rosenberg, stated in Dr. Gonzalez’s tenure dossier that Dr. Gonzalez’s support for intelligent design “disqualifies him from serving as a science educator
Of course, the Darwinian mavens will tell us all about Prof. Gonzalez’s considerable deficiencies.
I’m looking forward to seeing how Expelled deals with this case.
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Spinoza, note that I haven’t cited the Souder/Santorum sponsored study of the Sternberg case. Further, you still haven’t provided a credible refutation of the OSC investigation.
There was no thorough OSC investigation. There was a “preliminary investigation” and a refusal to investigate, together with a letter from Bush appointee James McVay conveying prelmiinary opinion of the OSC under Scott Bloch who is reputed to have used this office for political purposes here: How the Office of Special Counsel got the Sternberg Issue so wrong. That is, your claim that the OSC is a “rigorously independent” entity is improbable. McVay’s opinion in a letter to Sternberg cannot be construed as evidence of any kind, since no complete investigation was undertaken.
In any case, it’s very clear that Sternberg acted VERY improperly. Nevertheless, he suffered no serious consequences at the Smithsonian.
From Lippan Blog:
It almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison.
This explains how the OSC managed to produce an preliminary investigation on the Sternberg affair that is so completely divorced from reality. Put simply, it was a political hatchet job, yet another in a long line of abuses that the OSC has become infamous for. What’s perhaps most telling about all of this is that in spite of having a major backlog in cases, in spite of trying to pare down this backlog by dismissing meritorious cases without investigation, the OSC somehow found the time to investigate a case for which they knew they had no jurisdiction. Amazing, isn’t it? If you are a whistleblower who needs protection, or a gay federal worker who’s been discriminated against, the OSC simply doesn’t have time for you. They’re too busy pursuing cases outside of their jurisdiction in service of the Culture Wars.
Considering that Sternberg should have known that the OSC lacked jurisdiction, it is my belief that the Discovery Institute referred him to Bloch’s office knowing that even though the case was outside the OSC’s purview, even though there were more appropriate venues for handling a legitimate grievance of this kind, Bloch and McVay would dutifully issue a preliminary report that would serve the propaganda purposes of the DI. One even wonders if the DI wrote the report for them.
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p.s. Thanks, Peter, for making me look all this up! I feel so much more enlightened!
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100. Guillermo invited rejection of tenure by doing little or no important professional work after he took the appointment. I wouldn’t have given him tenure at ISU either, and evolution (or “Darwinism”) has nothing to do with it!
GG’s ID publications did not have anything to do with evolution or “irreducible complexity” or any of the classic DI/ID stuff. But it was complete and utter nonsense all the same. I have the book and the DVD – I can hardly watch it without wretching.
Still – if he had done worthwhile professional work at the same time like he didn’t during his UW post-doc, and if he’d bothered to get professional funding, he certainly would have gotten tenure. He didn’t.
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He had a nice result prior to ISU on the correlation between stellar metallicity and the presence of Hot Jovian planets.
I also very much like his observational astronomy text! But you don’t get tenure for texts – you get it for original research!
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Spinoza, We’re supposed to bow down to the Lippan blog analysis of the OSC findings on the Sternberg case? Read the OSC letter to Sternberg; however, preliminary, the OSC very factually found that 1) Sternberg properly published the Meyer article with sufficient authority and peer review and 2) although Smithsonian couldn’t fire him, they harassed him in rather specific ways well delineated in the letter.
Since Sternberg was a research associate- not a full fledged employee- OSC decided not to pursue the matter further, though the preliminary investigation found plenty of evidence that Sternberg was unfairly treated.
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This debate is like trying to teach a pig to sing — it’s a waste of time and it annoys the pig. Those willing to die on the Darwinian hill will never admit that proponents of Darwinian evolution theory (sorry — it doesn’t “evolve” into fact just because you declare it repeatedly over time) will go to great lengths to discredit–if not silence–all opposition. And truth is always the first casualty in the war to silence opposition. They characterize their efforts as necessary to protect the integrity of “pure science”, but it is actually an ideological and political (read $$$) struggle. If Darwininan theory is valid, it should be able to withstand scrutiny and open, honest debate. Unfortunately, there is too much at stake for too many people for that to ever occur.
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Solon you are lying again.
Sternberg was NEVER ANY TYPE OF EMPLOYEE OF THE SMITHSONIAN. NEVER.
Sternberg had a conflict of interest as a reviewer of the paper. He had discussed the paper with Meyer, ironically, at a baraminology study group meeting a year or so before. There is circumstantial evidence that Sternberg scheduled the publication of the Meyer paper (and the associated end run around peer review processes) to coincide with the end of his tenure as editor.
Why is a serious biologist consorting with baraminologists? Because they are working against science from the inside.
You are supposed to acknowledge facts Solon, no one is asking you to bow down. The Discovery Institute gives you your opinion. I was amazed (not really, but it was news) to find that your buddy here Klinghoffer is a DI Fellow. Wow, no one is pushing this ID science denialism business except the Ahmanson funded Discovery Institute and their fellow travelers.
Why should we be surprised that Marvin Olasky and the editors at World are spineless unprincipled Liars For Jesus? This is just the latest installment in a long sordid affair.
To those who are approaching this from regions outside of the nether cavities of the Seattle Based Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, please send your regards to World and the journalist poseurs Mickey Mclean, Marvin Olasky and Harrison Scott Key.
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#94 that is not inflammatory language at all. Many folks on this site will immediately play No True Scotsman games with believers who don’t score high enough on their JEsus Test. I use Christianist to capture the true diversity of christian thought, not just the blinkered identity politics of those who run this site.
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#106
There is no challenge to the scientific theory of evolution, nor to ‘Darwinism’ whatever that is.
The Expelled circus show and the squeakings of Casey Luskin and John West are fine examples of what you say being true, but in the opposite manner in which you meant it. Since the Expelled fiasco begin (with the initial lie that DAwkins and Myers were being interviewed for a documentary ‘Crossroads”), the DI and Expelled outfit have piled dishonesty and downright lying on top of itself.
There is no big bad scientific bully atheist meany conspiracy or establishment. There are a lot of frauds who want to use a degree or a post for a bully pulpit. When they come up for tenure, like GG, or when they get caught teaching falsehoods in a class, like Crocker, or when they get caught sneaking their creo buddies worthless pseudoscholarship into an honest journal, we get pissed about it. We’d like for you guys to admit that these folks are lying and being all around jerks about it.
But you are too busy protecting your ideological comrades since you have your own agenda for denialism. Just wondering what your agenda is personally. For Solon, at least I understand what part of the problem entails. Those meany empiricists won’t accept god-dun-it as an explanation for genetic isolation by distance, or panbiogeography, or even allow for a God parameter in their ANOVA. Pfffffff.
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Look here for more info about the kickback schemes Expelled is using to indoctrinate young minds with the stupid.
Why doesn’t World denounce this? Harrison, Mickey, Marvin? Are you guys scared?
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Spinoza, I’ve questioned your facts and views but never accused you of being a liar. One fact that is well established in the Sternberg matter is that he had a formal appointment as a research associate at the Smithsonian Department at the National Museum of Natural History.
The following from Wiki refers to his status as a research associate at the Smithsonian:
Sternberg has two PhDs; the first from 1995 in molecular evolution from Florida International University, and a second in systems science from Binghamton University. He did post-doctoral work between 1999 and 2001 at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) at the Smithsonian Institution and in 2004 he was given a 3 year appointment as an unpaid research associate.[3] On 15 November 2006, he received a further three year appointment as an unpaid ‘research collaborator’ at the NMNH.[4]
Were you a gentleman, I should expect an apology from you.
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#105 Peter I read McVay’s “OSC” letter a long time ago – it’s just a letter from a political appointee who was unqualified to be on the OSC in the first place. It’s not an “investigation”, and its conclusions are not supported by any facts I’ve seen. BTW, if the OSC knew it had no jurisdiction in the first place (which is surely the case), why did it bother to have a “preliminary investigation” unless it was doing the Discovery Institute a favor in providing pre-scripted talking points?
You treat this “letter” as if it is independent and irrefutable legal evidence of something. It is not. Its “conclusions” are not supported by any facts on public record that I’ve seen – and I’ve just done a lot of combing.
What is public knowledge is that Sternberg railroaded through a religious and unscientific paper covertly and against editorial policy, knowing full well that his superiors at the Journal (not the Smithsonian) would not have approved it. They later repudiated this paper and stated that the editor did not follow protocol – who cares what McVay said? I read the article itself – it’s a joke! Anyone who would do this as editor is a sorry and dishonest looney tune. The martyr whining afterwards sounds even sorrier. I hope and expect that there will be an “Expelled” backlash that fully exposes the fraud behind Sternberg and the Discovery Institute-OSC connection.
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#111 – I think you’re replying to Erasmus in #107, not me??
What you fail to understand, though, is that an RA “at the Smithsonian” is sponsored by a different organization and does not mean that the Smithsonian is your employer.
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Peter – 1) Sternberg properly published the Meyer article with sufficient authority and peer review
This is just not supported by public fact
2) although Smithsonian couldn’t fire him, they harassed him in rather specific ways well delineated in the letter.
I found the e-mails cited in support of this conclusion to be quite the opposite. The real problem is that Sternberg’s superior had died and there was no mechanism for oversight of him whatsoever. SI was just trying to figure out what was appropriate to do about this. E-mails that discuss options not later taken do not constitute “harassment.” McVay was extremely remiss to report these in a letter. Smithsonian did consult with NCSE and e-mails on record show they advised SI to be good this guy – but McVay’s pseudo-investigation does not report this. Fact is, he never lost his job or any privileges whatsoever. Claims about a “hostile work environment” are undermined by the fact that this guy never came in until after hours anyway!
Since Sternberg was a research associate- not a full fledged employee- OSC decided not to pursue the matter further, though the preliminary investigation found plenty of evidence that Sternberg was unfairly treated.
Eramus is right, here, Peter. It even says in the letter you cite: “The Smithsonian Institution (SI) has taken legal steps to ensure that RAs are not employees of the SI.” Maybe you should read all the letter. OSC probably knew well beforehand they couldn’t pursue the matter, because Sternberg was not any kind of employee of Smithsonian. I think you just misunderstood this – but then, that’s what McVay/DI/Sternberg want you to do!
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Erasmus #58 Well, I just got back to this thread and read your #58.
Astounding. I think you are going all soft on us, friend. Before long we will have you singing in the choir, cooking the baked beans at the church socials and designing the bulletin boards for Vacation Bible School.
Of course we will have to run the bulletin boards you design past the Elders, of course. So keep the references to the Jurassic down to a minimum?
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My husbands father was a scientist, graduating from Cal. Berkeley. Banks, my husband, has just viewed the ‘trailer’ for the film “Expelled” and is looking forward to viewing it.
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Spinoza, you’re merely taking the effusions of the Lippard blog as Gospel truth. The Lippards basically are involved in ad hominem attacks on the OSC and McVay. In fact the sort of tactics you and Erasmus are involved with on this thread are the stuff of Ben Stein’s film. in defending Stenberg’s vicious colleagues at the Smithsonian, you have stooped to mainly argumenta ad hominem.
While Sternberg was not a paid employee of the Smithsonian, he had a perfectly formal appointment as a research associate, as the emails make clear. Had he improperly published the Myer, the Smithsonian would certainly have fired him as an research associate rather than harass him on office space and access to a key.
You’re the one who hasn’t read all of the McVay’s OSC letter including emails. As McVay remarked in the letter:
These e-mails are consistent with many others at this time. Your managers are still attempting to find a way to terminate your access. However, they have decided that the politics aren’t right for them to let you go. They wanted to make it clear that you should “do the right thing and resign.” This supports your allegation that you were subjected to a hostile work environment. Finally, the last e-mail cited sets forth a troubling summary of events were people had to be investigating your work activities beyond that which is done for other RAs. They are even inspecting what you have been checking out from the library. We are very concerned where this type of scrutiny can lead. Your job as a scientist is to ask the hard questions and make other scientists think about their positions. This type of scrutiny does not engender the correct atmosphere. From the information received by OSC, not a single e-mail shows that a manager attempted to halt this type of retaliatory investigation or admonish those that had already taken place.
It is rather revealing that you and Erasmus are caught in the position of defending the Smithsonian that manifestly was involved in serious harassment of an employee with two PhD s in biology who happened to be interested in Stephen Myer’s views of Darwinism. Myer is no slouch intellectually with his PhD in the history of science from Cambridge. But of course, both Stenberg and Myer simply due to questioning the pieties of the Darwinian fundamentalists have been caught up in what amounts to a classic witch-hunt.
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As science grows so does the questioning of evolution and the expansion of creation science. Expelled has to do more with censorship than with other issues. I am just amazed at the interest and high emotions this movie which hasn’t been released yet, has caused.
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Actually, Expelled has everything to do with exposing censorship, much to the dismay and apoplexy of the Darwinian fundamentalists.
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#118 yeah it’s amazing how emotional people get when others run around telling lies that slander their profession. And rubes like Peter Leavitt suck it up.
Solon, if Sternberg was never employed by the SI and never paid by the SI, how was he an employee?
According to the testimony of everyone else involved (note that the OSC has not allowed the SI to make an official response) Sternberg kept a sloppy office and was in possession of materials he had never been cleared to loan. according to reports, specimens were strewn about his office, including the ones that were not even loaned to him, and after several requests to straighten up someone tried to make it stick officially.
And he started whining about these big mean atheist bully types don’t like me being a creobot. What a cad.
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While Sternberg was not a paid employee of the Smithsonian, he had a perfectly formal appointment as a research associate, as the emails make clear.
As an employe of NIH.
Had he improperly published the Myer, the Smithsonian would certainly have fired him as an research associate rather than harass him on office space and access to a key.
Where do you get that? E-mails quoted in your canonical Gospel according to McVay show that the reason he could not be “expelled” from SI (which is not the same as being fired from NIH) for publication of the Meyer article was because this editorship was separate from his NIH appointment at SI and therefore “private.”
Of far more legal import than the OSC “letter” disavowing its jurisdiction in the case is the Dover vs Kitzmiller ruling that ID is NOT science, but religion. Sternberg published pseudo-scientific religion in a science journal by being secretive and deliberately hiding his actions from his superiors at the journal. He deserves the full weight of freely expressed academic opinion against him. I’m happy to add my voice wherever and whenever possible.
The Lippards basically are involved in ad hominem attacks on the OSC and McVay.
Ah the classic WOW rebuttal – ignore all substance of the article and cry ad hominem. That way you can simply sidestep all criticism. Why should I believe that Scott/McVay are a “rigorously independent” legal source as you claim? Given the politics and history of this topic (remember that at that time, Bush was on record saying ID should be taught in schools and Santorum was pushing an ID amendment to a bill), and the Bush record on legal appointments and improper influencing of the justice department, the most likely stance would be to assume McVay/Scott were politically motivated until shown otherwise! You have not shown otherwise simply by saying such an allegation is “ad hominem.”
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Erasmus: Solon, if Sternberg was never employed by the SI and never paid by the SI, how was he an employee?
He held a valid appointment at the Smithsonian as a Research Associate. The OSC letter makes clear that his superiors first wanted to fire him, though it, also, found that he proceeded correctly in publishing the Meyer paper and decided to harass rather than fire him. Far from whining about the harassment, he properly appealed to the OSC, which, however preliminary, found clear evidence of Sternberg’s harassment, as clearly evidenced by the Smithsonian emails attached to the OSC letter.
As to the sloppy office bit, it is clear from the SI emails that most of Sternberg’s colleagues as a result of the Myer paper were involved in slandering him, just as the Lippard and other Darwinian fundamentalist blogs continue to do.
As to Expelled, we can be sure that the production company lawyers have vetted the information on Sternberg and the others involved in the Darwinian witch-hunt.
So far your arguments against Sternberg and Ben Stein boil down to the crude argumentum ad hominem variety.
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#122 To respond in kind – your arguments are nothing but crude ad hominem attacks on the Smithsonian.
To do this, you routinely supply one-sided and often wrong information which you never retract even when called on it (e.g., Meyer had a Ph.D. in “biology” from Cambridge – NOT).
As to Expelled, we can be sure that the production company lawyers have vetted the information on Sternberg and the others involved in the Darwinian witch-hunt.
Interesting use of the word “vetted” – In this context, I take it to mean “selectively sort information in a deliberately misleading but technically legal manner for propaganda purposes.”
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Spinoza, first you need to get clear that Sternberg has separate appointments from both NIH and the Smithsonian. Here is his curriculum vitae:
Staff Scientist
National Center for Biotechnology Information (GenBank)
National Institutes of Health
Building 45, Room 6An.18D-30
Bethesda, Maryland 20894
(301) 402-1502 (work)
Email: sternber@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Research Associate
Department of Invertebrate Zoology
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC
Email: sternberg.richard@nmnh.si.edu
Second, the Lippard blog doesn’t raise the substance of the Sternberg matter referred to in McVay’s OSC letter; it merely raises a bunch of basically ad hominem attacks against OSC. For example:
Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe.
James McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work.
Both you and Spinoza are kicking up a lot of dust about the alleged perfidy of Sternberg, mainly dredged from stridently Darwinian blogs without paying attention to the substance of the OSC report. This is rather typical of those involved in the Darwinian witch-hunt against those who questions its fundamentalist pieties. Ther is nothin like it in any other field of science.
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Solon, you can’t get fired from a job you don’t have. You can get harassed by the real employees of a real scientific institution for disrespecting real work and real specimens in such a museum. You say this doesn’t matter, it is just fodder for slander. I am asking you, if Sternberg is such a hotshot genius creationist anti evolutionist prophet of god, why couldn’t he just follow the rules like everyone else and maintain the space that he was granted as an employee of NIH?
He wanted special treatment. Affirmative action for science.
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Spinoza, The other point is that I haven’t remarked that Meyer has a PhD in biology. The fact is that he has a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge. He is quite qualified to write on the subject of Darwin’s ideas, unless one takes the exceedingly narrow view that only empirical biologists may write on the subject of Darwin in a scientific paper.
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The question you need to answer is “Why would the Smithsonian Institution care what papers Sternberg let slip through peer review“?
What would be their motive?
Witch hunting?
ORLY?
Lets flog the christian?
SRSLY?
Squash the anti-materialist?
You misunderstand that beliefs and actions are not equal. Regardless of Sternbergs religious views, including those masquerading as science (you tell me which is which, the liars at Expelled and the liars at the DI have two completely different stories), you don’t get to make big screw ups and then attempt to deny the blame by reference to those religious beliefs. Sternberg gets the same privileges as all other NIH employees with research appointments at the SI. Desk, space, loan privileges, building keys. He wanted access to keys that he did not have clearance for (since he is an NIH employee stationed at the SI per an agreement), he did not wish to be in the same building as the other research appointees (probably because people call him on creo bs).
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Erasmus …if Sternberg is such a hotshot genius creationist anti evolutionist prophet of god, why couldn’t he just follow the rules like everyone else and maintain the space that he was granted as an employee of NIH?
I assume that the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History had specimens and materials in which he is intereste, apart from his NIH work. Secondly, as a scientist, he was interested in Myers ideas about evolution; as the legitimate editor of a scientific journal he published the Myer paper with the requisite peer review. The Smithsonian officials tried desparately to find fault with his editorial process but was unable to do so.
Of course, we all know that underneath this controversy the Darwinian fundamentalists were appalled that Meyer had found a peer-reviewed scientific journal forum in which to lodge his ideas. The whole thing from this perspective is richly amusing including the huffing and puffing of you and Spinoza.
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The whole thing from this perspective is richly amusing including the huffing and puffing of you and Spinoza.
I’m sure it is. Madmen find hilarity in the bubbling of water in the gutter. Babies laugh at the wind. The point here is that your contortion of facts is consistent with your philosophy of science in general: the post modern constructivist idiocy that plagues the cultural elites you think you are attacking has come to roost in your own position. One narrative is better than the other, right?
As far as this goes the Darwinian fundamentalists were appalled that Meyer had found a peer-reviewed scientific journal forum in which to lodge his ideas, that is rich. These clowns have their own journals and they can’t even get enough interest to publish their own stuff.
Dembski’s rag, last published in 2005</b
ARN’s rag not published since 2001.
how is the big bad EAC working this out?
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One narrative is better than the other, right? Not really. The question we’re discussing is the truth, for example, of Dr, Von Sternberg’s assertions versus those of the Smithsonian.
Also, given the predominance of establishment Darwinism, it is salutary, as well as amusing, that Myer wedged in an article through Sternberg. It is, also, salutary that Ben Stein’s Expelled is calling attention to a few of the egregious examples of the Darwinian witch-hunt, particularly in that Ben Stein is a known comic, well able to puncture the pretensions of the rather grim Darwinian fundamentalists.
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[Meyer] is quite qualified to write on the subject of Darwin’s ideas
Not in a journal of biological research that focuses on systematics. You are simply ignorant here, Peter. Philosophy or History of science is a field far removed from modern professional science, itself! These groups don’t publish in each others journals. Besides, the paper is not merely on “Darwin’s ideas.” It’s on theoretical explanations (and hallucinations) for the Cambrian fossil record – this is an inappropriate topic for PBSW to begin with, and the salient experts, who were certainly not consulted to referee the work, are paleontologists. Meyer is also NOT a paleontologist and has published no original research on fossils in the Cambrian or any other period! The whole paper reads like a student report.
Ben Stein is a known comic, well able to puncture the pretensions of the rather grim Darwinian fundamentalists.
I guess you never got the memo – appeal to ridicule is a logical fallacy, especially when based on certifiable falsehood.
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Spinoza, Dr.Von Sternberg commented as follows on the appropriateness of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington’s publishing of Dr. Stephen Myers paper.
The Meyer paper underwent a standard peer review process by three qualified scientists, all of whom are evolutionary and molecular biologists teaching at well-known institutions. The reviewers provided substantial criticism and feedback to Dr. Meyer, who then made significant changes to the paper in response. Subsequently, after the controversy arose, Dr. Roy McDiarmid, President of the Council of the BSW, reviewed the peer-review file and concluded that all was in order. As Dr. McDiarmid informed me in an email message on August 25th, 2004, “Finally, I got the [peer] reviews and agree that they are in support of your decision [to publish the article].”
It’s hard to understand why Dr Myer’s paper is outside the bounds of the Washington Biological Journal, having been peer reviewed by three qualified biologists, other than than knowing that Dr. Myer takes a critical view of the assumpptions of Darwinism. I should think that biological scientists would welcome critical views in order to reflect on their field.
As to the appeal to ridicule, it is always beneficial when dealing with intellectual fundamentalists who resist criticism.
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Christians should be wary of their Faustian bargain with Ben Stein and the Discovery Institute:
“Nancey Murphy, a religious scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but “so stupid, I don’t want to give them my time.”
Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.
“His tactic has always been to fight dirty when anyone attacks his ideas,” she said. “For a long time afterward, I would tell reporters I don’t want to comment, and I don’t want you to say I don’t want to comment. I’m tired of being careful.”
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Peter- As to the appeal to ridicule, it is always beneficial when dealing with intellectual fundamentalists who resist criticism.
Since you cry ad hominimem at the drop of a hat, I take this comment to be the frank confession of a hypocrite.
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Peter – It’s hard to understand why Dr Myer’s paper is outside the bounds of the Washington Biological Journal,
Then maybe you should read the statement put out by BSW a few weeks after the article came out:
The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history…Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.
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Spinoza, Meyer was one of the three reviewers. This is not standard peer review practice. The paper is a dog anyway.
Solon I dare you to read that review of Meyer’s paper. You would do well to read Wes Elsberry’s critique of the pseudoscience, what little they have been able to put together, generated by the ID Creationism Public Relations Juggernaut.
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The BSW Council goes on to say:
Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process.
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Erasmus – Spinoza, Meyer was one of the three reviewers.
Really – is this right? Or do you mean Sternberg? I’d heard Sternberg was one of “four” reviewers. How can the author be a reviewer?
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spinoza yeah you got it i mistyped. i have enough trouble keeping paul meyers and stephen meyer names separate.
Sternberg was one of the reviewers. He won’t pony up who the others are, which I support, and they are too chicken to admit they reviewed it, which I find typical of the charlatans that populate this pseudoscience movement.
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note that sternberg says ‘reviewers with 4 phds’. he has to obfuscate. if he were honest then the goons at Howie Ahmansons Discovery Institute would leave him stranded like they did the Dover School Board in PA. What a gang of thugs.
And then they turn around with a straight face and claim censorship and darwin to hitler.
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Well, the Smithsonian Institution, President of the BSW, and the OSC, all concluded that the Myer paper was properly published with adequate peer review. The controversy came after it was published when the amour propre of the Darwinian fundamentalists was sullied.
Also, if Phillip Johnson tried to get the teacher at Fuller Seminary fired then bad on him, as it would be similar to the Sternberg imbroglio at the Smithsonian. Could you provide the source of this allegation?
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Solon so who is and is not part of the big bad darwinian fundamentalist conspiracy? it’s hard to keep the players straight.
why don’t you try some wiki research on Nancey Murphy.
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You can find some other examples here.
Truly Expelled
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Erasmus, Spinoza and all your side kicks
You are no match for Peter and Stubob on this subject. You frustrate yourselves, but you do keep many of us entertained, especially with your ‘blog’ plugs as proof.
Do you do kids Birthday parties?
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Hi Victoria. I do all sorts of things. I also know some clowns. Will you please post a review of Expelled when you go see it? I would truly love to hear what you think about it.
While we are at it, what do you think about Christian professors being censured from posts at Christian universities because they do not agree with some obscure Presbyterian orthodoxy?
What about so-called Christian lawyers harassing university trustees to fire theologians who speak out against Intelligent Design Creationism as being dishonest and deceptive, or point out about the fact that Intelligent Design Creationism does not affirm the inerrancy of the Bible?
I’d like to hear what you have to say about that sort of behavior Victoria. I guess it is possible that Ben Stein just didn’t know about these cases or maybe he would have put them in the movie.
Maybe he never heard of Howard Van Till who was put to the Inquisition of Calvin College to determine if he was Jesus enough to be on the faculty. Maybe he never heard of Paul Mirecki, a retired religion professor who was beaten on a backcountry road by two self professed vengeful fundamental christians.
Victoria will you tell me if any of these cases are in Exxxpelled? I am sure Ben Stein is fair and balanced and stuff, even though some are comparing him to Michael Moore.
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Erasmus
The film won’t be available to view until April 18th until that time, once I see it, I will comment. Until then keep up the facade, and entertainment, however thin your veneer has become.
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Darwinism is only a THEORY however, those that believe this ‘theory’ are overwhelmed with ideas, that aren’t facts but ‘guesses’- Have we not learned in science that guesses are just speculation, most of which is hypothetical?
Theory
Definition:
1. rules and techniques: the body of rules, ideas, principles, and techniques that applies to a subject, especially when seen as distinct from actual practice
economic theories
Many coaches have a good grasp of the theory of football but can’t motivate players.
2. speculation: abstract thought or contemplation
3. idea formed by speculation: an idea of or belief about something arrived at through speculation or conjecture
She believed in the theory that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
4. hypothetical circumstances: a set of circumstances or principles that is hypothetical
That’s the theory, but it may not work out in practice.
5. scientific principle to explain phenomena: a set of facts, propositions, or principles analyzed in their relation to one another and used, especially in science, to explain phenomena
[Late 16th century. Via late Latin< Greek theōria "contemplation, theory" < theōros "spectator"]
in theory under hypothetical or ideal circumstances but perhaps not in reality
Synonyms: hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, assumption, premise, presumption, supposition, guess
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Darwinism
Definition:
1. biology
Same as Darwinian theory
2. support for Darwin’s theory: belief in or advocacy of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
Darwinian theory
Definition:
theory of evolution: the theory, first developed by the 19th-century British naturalist Charles Darwin, that species of living things originate, evolve, and survive through natural selection in response to environmental forces
We are back to the definition of THEORY which is
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Solon so who is and is not part of the big bad darwinian fundamentalist conspiracy?
Well, Erasmus, all one has to do is use the Sternberg case and Expelled as a litmus test, i.e. Darwinists who are so insecure and defensive about their “science” take a fetal or at best juvenile position by either sucking their thumbs and bawling or going after legitimate scientists like Dr, Von Sternberg in witch-hunt mode.
I understand that there are some biologists out there who are willing to calmly consider critical views of Darwin’s theory and even have enough of a sense of humour to appreciate the sort of rollicking satire of Expelled, though these scientists know well enough to lie low given the hysteria of people like you and Spinoza. All of this is reminiscent of the moderate Muslims in relation to the Jihadis.
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Solon, so when these biologists consider these critical views and find them wanting of truth or lacking of factual support (did you even read Meyer’s Hopeless Monster?) they should keep their opinions silent? They should not point out the at bottom crap scholarship that is at the heart of the anti-evolution movement?
Meyer published a dog. He got called on it. That’s the way science works. You want affirmative action for poor science.
I’d wager there aren’t any biologists who enjoy being slandered by the pack of lies and misrepresentations that seem to be the substance of Expelled. You provide one. I think you are making things up, again.
You’ve never established that the SI has done anything wrong, you’ve only aped the DI talking points that came from the Souder letter. The OSC found no evidence of religious discrimination and admitted that they had no jurisdiction. that means their other points are moot.
Sternberg published a dog due to his personal involvement with the creationist author, and the two formulated the plan to sneak this paper into Sternberg’s last watch while they were at a Baraminology conference. For those who are not aware, Baraminology is a kooky branch of creation science that has actually formulated some testable hypotheses (something the ID crowd in general knows jack squat).
Kurt Wise, leader of the Baraminology crowd:”I am a young-age creationist because the Bible indicates the universe is young. Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young from scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant”
And the same goes for ‘Intelligent Design’.
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Erasmus, I’ve carefully read the Gishlick, Matzke, and Elsberry paper, Meyer’s Hopelsess Monster, and the Meyer paper, Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
Meyer’s paper in tone comes across as serious, the “Talk Reason” paper is distinctly an intemperate hatchet job. In a career in investment banking I needed to often read scientific papers along with criticism of those papers and was struck by the usual courtesy that scientists accord one another. There is nothing of this in the Myers Hopeless Monster paper.
Also, I never referred or, to use your crude term, “aped” the DI talking points that came from the Souder letter, nor did I say that the OSC found religious discrimination. Von Sternberg didn’t claim religious discrimination. He did claim that Smithsonian improperly investigated his religious and personal views. The OSC letter, backed up with actual Smithsonian emails, demonstrates a clear pattern of intimidation and harassment against von Sternberg.
The following are the rather credible claims of Dr. von Sternberg:
Efforts to remove me from the Museum. After Smithsonian officials determined that there was no wrong-doing in the publication process for the Meyer paper and that they therefore had no grounds to remove me from my position directly, they tried to create an intolerable working environment so that I would be forced to resign. As the OSC investigation concluded, “[i]t is… clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.” In addition, it was made clear to me that my current position at the Smithsonian will not be renewed despite my excellent record of research and publication.
Efforts to get NIH to fire me. Pressure was put on the NIH to fire me.
Perceived political and religous beliefs investigated. Smithsonian officials attempted to investigate my personal religious and political beliefs in gross violation of my privacy and my First Amendment rights.
Smeared with false allegations. My professional reputation, private life, and ethics were repeatedly impugned and publicly smeared with false allegations by government employees working in tandem with a non-governmental political advocacy group, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).
Pressured to reveal peer reviewers and to engage in improper peer review. I was repeatedly pressured to reveal the names of the peer-reviewers of the Meyer article, contrary to professional ethics. I was also told repeatedly that I should have found peer reviewers who would reject the article out-of-hand, in direct violation of professional ethics which require editors to find peer reviewers who are not prejudiced or hostile to a particular author or his/her ideas.
It is clear to me that a serious injustice was done to von Sternberg and that Ben Stein’s effort to call this to our attention with Expelled is laudable.
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The title of the thread is “Expelled generating buzz.”
This is post #152.
Just noticing.
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Victoria: As a technical term used in science, “theory” does NOT mean “guess.”
A scientific theory is a set of ideas about how something works that have been repeatedly supported by observation, experiment and accumulated evidence.
Gravity is a theory. Germs causing disease is a theory. But they are not mere guesses.
I do not expect you to understand or care about this, but I will say it just to put it on the record.
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It is clear to me that a serious injustice was done to von Sternberg and that Ben Stein’s effort to call this to our attention with Expelled is laudable.
What was done to him? nothing
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The following are the rather credible claims of Dr. von Sternberg:…
Why are these credible other than that you want to believe them? Nothing Sternberg says is credible on its face without serious fact checking. His publication of the Meyer paper was an act of deception from start to finish! The plot to publish the paper was hatched at an ID seminar which was for pro-IDers only. Sternberg attended, yet said later he believes ID is “fatally flawed.” (I’m guessing this is because he believes purely in OE Creationism). At one point, he demanded the Smithsonian give him $300,000 in research funds as compensation for “lost research time.” Clearly he thought his GOP cronies had more political clout than they did.
Of course Peter has his beloved McVay letter, the one that alleged religious discrimination even though ID was supposedly science, not religion.
And he does this
(1) while telling Sternberg that OSC doesn’t have jurisdiction,
(2) without any contrasting opinion from the accused parties, and
(3) without documenting any actual injury to Sternberg, who still had his unpaid research position, an office, keys, and access to the collections at the time.
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#153 – Moreover, to scientists, a “fact” is simply one object in a set of observations that may actually be wrong. So a “theory” is a much bigger deal than a mere “fact.”
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Solon, so your assessment of the scientific worth of the garbage paper by Meyer is based on the ‘tone’ and ‘degree of respect’ for Meyer’s views? That is amazing. One of the dumbest things I have ever heard, and I don’t say that often.
These are the points that you say are a ‘intemperate hatchet job’. Let me know which ones you concede on merit and which ones you object to due to ‘intemperate disrespectful tone’.
Cambrian Explosion
1. Taxa counting a useless metric for discussing macroevolutionary trends. Meyer guilty.
2. False easily refuted claim ‘no transitional fossils for cambrian explosion’. Ignorance of current literature on subject.
3. Quote mine and misrepresentation of other workers dealing with the soft body fossilization problem.
Information Theory
1. Misunderstanding of the creationist term ‘CSI’. Not necessarily Meyer’s fault, since Dembski has made many many contradictory statements about this quantity.
2. Specified Complexity and CSI have never ever ever been applied in a useful way to any meaningful question. Google “CSI peanut butter sandwich” for a fine example of the breathtaking inanity of those making this claim.
3. Meyer dishonestly argues from CSI when he does not even make an attempt to calculate this quantity. Funny, no one else ever does ever (see Elsberry and Shallit for a review of the absolute uselessness of this pseudo-variable)
4. Meyer again shows that he either does not understand or does not care that he misuses CSI in an attempt to describe macroevolutionary patterns in the Pre Cambrian.
Text and Peptides.
1. Rhetorical grandstanding about ‘many scientists questioning mutation-selection…’ without having any evidence for this limp assertion. shows that he is utterly ignorant of the relevant research in this field.
2. Meyer uses a flawed analogy of DNA ~ language, shows that he understands neither.
3. Cites an author who has changed his mind about his arguments and published on his previous errors. Guess what Meyer likes.
4. Meyer makes questionable claims about the specifications of proteins. Of course he is on the opposite side of the edifice of modern biology. Again. Pariah, that one, eh?
The origin of novel genes and proteins
1. MEyer claims too much CSI in genes to have evolved. He never showed that genes have CSI to begin with. What a liar. He shows that he is fundamentally ignorant of a library of research.
2. Meyer shows that he knows nothing about the work of Axe, whose literature he cites and has conclusions opposite of what Meyer claims.
3. Meyer shows that he knows nothing about the relevant literature considering protein folding.
4. Meyer shows that he is ignorant of known instances of gene duplication and results demonstrating selective advantage of alleles on genes involved in duplication events, hence co-option. Meyer is a fraud.
5. Meyer misreports the findings of Axe again. Also shows that he knows nothing about the existence of an entire library of papers that contradict his every claim. Huckster.
Morphological Novelty
Meyer shows that he has absolutely no understanding of any work in this field in the past 50 years. yet you think he is qualified to discuss this and everything else he knows nothing about.
The power of negative argumentation
1. Meyer misunderstands punctuated equilibria in the same old tired and trite manner that many other ignorant creationists have misunderstood it. of course for someone for who ‘Poof’ is a mechanism, this is understandable.
2. Meyer misunderstands genetic algorithms. Wow this is quite a list of things he doesn’t understand. How did this paper get published again? Oh yeah.
These are just some of the points made in the Gishlick Matzke Elsberry fisking of the Meyer dog. I am curious as to which points you say we should ignore because they sound mean. All of them? Maybe you can provide some special pleading for Meyer.
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Erasmus, I quite understand that the paper, Myers Hopeless Monster contains some valid criticisms of the Myer paper. In science criticizing other papers is necessary to get at the truth; however, on the Meyer paper one would have to read his remarks contra Gishlick, Matzke, and Elsberry before coming to any conclusion.
The point is that the very title of the Gishlick, Matzke, and Elsberry paper makes clear that it does not involve the sort of calm dispassionate reason that is usually accorded in scientific discussion.
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solon, so you are saying that Gishlick Mazek and Elsberry are correct, the Meyer paper is a dog that should never have been published, but they didn’t have to be so mean about it?
ROFLMAO.
wes and nick have dedicated their careers, in part, to fighting the particular brand of idiocy that is marketed by people like the Discovery Institute. When shameless liars continually misrepresent science and slander the profession with calumnious lies and paranoid conspiracy mongering, the time for calm dispassionate logical expiation is over.
What do you do when the fox keeps getting in your hen house and killing your chickens? Ask him very nicely with calm dispassionate reason to stop? Appeal to his sense of fairness?
Solon, why don’t you admit that the DI and the Expelled circus are shameless liars that don’t care one bit about the truth?
Did you read the link I provided in 110 or 143?
PS StuBob we only have 159 posts. The Grand Canyon thread was much bigger. This is because most creationists appear to be ashamed of the tactics and message of Exxxpelled and are not supporting this type of propaganda. Were we debating the age of the grand canyon or actually talking about science I am sure the thread would be longer. I am concerned mainly with getting you guys to realize that Ben STein is a charlatan, just like Behe Dembski Wells Meyer and Nelson.
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Eramus:Solon, why don’t you admit that the DI and the Expelled circus are shameless liars that don’t care one bit about the truth?
DI is an organization with serious scholars involved in getting at the truth of evolution. One may disagree with them as Francis Collins does in an intelligent and considerate manner, or one can try to savage the outfit in a juvenile way by calling its scholars liars and in Sternberg’s case harassing and trying to get him fired.
It is clear to me that the strident supporters of establishment Darwinism are involved in an ersatz religion in which Darwin’s ideas have been sacralized with the Discovery Institute having become become a sort of arch Satan. Scientific men, including Dembski, Behe, Meyer, and Sternberg, who support DI’S ideas are treated by the Darwinian fundamentalists as apostates. All of this would be merely amusing if it weren’t for the real damage and suffering done, as in the case of Dr. vonSternberg.
The Sternberg case is most revealing in that it catches out supposedly serious scientists at the Smithsonian unable to handle criticism of Darwinism to the point of carrying out a witch-hunt against Dr, vonSternberg.
As to Expelled I shall reserve final judgment until I see it later in
April when it becomes public and read some responsible and unbiased views of it. Your characterization of the film as a pack of lies is rather premature, though understandable given your fervid devoutness to the Darwinian ersatz religion.
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DI is an organization with serious scholars involved in getting at the truth of evolution.
No it isn’t. They are interested in using ‘truth of evolution’ as a straw man to further their scaremongering identity politics.
If ‘truth of evolution’ was a goal, why have the ID people not published any of this research in their own journals in three to eight years?
When the scholars have been shown to be liars en toto, they are liars. Funny you should point this out, today is the 4th anniversary of Paul Nelson being called out on one of his lies. He has yet to verify any of his claims. This is a fact, yet Nelson still runs around using his phony measure of ‘ontogenetic depth’ in DI propaganda sessions like the upcoming one in Brazil.
Solon says we should ignore creationists when we catch them lying, he wants Affirmative Action for Lying Jihadists Spreading Demonstrably Wrong Ideas.
Solon you are like the Arab apologists for the jihadists.
Dembski Behe Meyer Nelson STernberg Gonzalez Weikart Klinghoffer etc are apostates in the academic community. They have repeatedly ignored the corrections and rebuttals that discredit their conclusions and have chosen to continue hawking their stolen phony wares to rubes and the gullible pew warmer.
When you are wrong, you admit it. When you think you aren’t wrong, you argue your point. When you are shown to be wrong over and over again, at some point honest scholars give up and find a new way to think about their field. This is why none of the pseudo-scientists at the DI are honest scholars.
And you as a pew warmer with a jones on for anti-intellectual religious themed solipcist pedantry find this to be just your flavor of Teh Tard.
You wouldn’t know ‘responsible or unbiased views’ if you caught yourself holding one.
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Feeling better now, Erasmus, having delivered yourself of that rant?
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Peter – The Sternberg case is most revealing in that it catches out supposedly serious scientists at the Smithsonian unable to handle criticism of Darwinism to the point of carrying out a witch-hunt against Dr, vonSternberg.
There was lots of justified indignation but no repercussions; Sternberg was not burned or even fired!
The anger and hostility had nothing to do with willingness to face legitimate criticism of Darwin, it was outrage at the audacity of someone covertly publishing an inexcusably bad manuscript in a scientific journal, solely for the purpose of promoting religion. Understand that the journal itself faced enough possible damage to its reputation as to possibly end its existence as the result of Sternberg’s sneakin’ around. Any wonder they would be angry?
Sternberg says he just wanted to get ID “on the table,” and yet he refers to a scientific rebuttal by NCSE as if it was a form of persecution. “On the table” my eye! Design arguments were on the table 100-150 years ago and long ago discarded as a scientific argument, though many scientists still believe the universe was designed, and many of them believe Darwinian evolution is part of the design.
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Solon yes but I’m serious. As enjoyable as it is to disagree with you about so many things and I can only assume that you enjoy it as well, this is something that does not seem murky or ambiguous in the slightest. I am astounded at how anyone can approve of the DI or it’s tactics, no matter how much one might wish to verify their own religious beliefs.
#163 Aye and design arguments have been ‘on the table’ much longer than that.
it is not because the design argument is false (or true) that it is contested, it is because it is a particularly poor form of argumentation to begin with.
What the Dembski and the culture jihadists are attempting to is reduce the method of science to a competition between narratives selected for their appeal to non empirical quantities and qualities. The unification of the scientific community against this move is surprising and inspiring (since there are many religious in the scientific community, this gives the lie to slurs about atheist motivations).
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As a scientist who is very sympathetic to the theologico-philosophical idea that the universe was designed, I am especially angry at Johnson/Meyer/Dembski/Behe and the whole gang of evolution naysayers, because they have ruined the topic for legitimate intellectual discussion!
Evolution happened – get over it.
If you want to come up with a theology/philosophy of design or creationism, you must come to terms with evolution and understand that this process is part of what was designed (if designed). That’s where the real theological frontier currently is, and by denying evolution altogether, you are essentially saying that evolution cannot be explained in the context of a creator. If so, you are aiding and abetting atheism altogether, since the evidence overwhelmingly testifies that we evolved.
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Forgive me gentleman , having grown a bit weary of this discussion and getting ready for a meeting on the fifteenth of a company I chair and the Boston Marathon on the twenty-first, I shall desist from further enlightening you.
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right. prunes and all that. i imagine you’ll pop right up the next time so phony claims that darwin leads to abortion or transexuals or that Buffon was a homo.
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Good luck in the Boston Marathon, Peter. I have a friend running his 19th this year, and I always follow it online…
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Excuse me. The above ought to have been gentleman.
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ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler New York, NY, August 22, 2006 …
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy.”
After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy’s project, Dr. Collins said he is “absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy’s program utterly misguided and inflammatory,” he told ADL.
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement:”This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
“It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of ‘Christian Supremacists’ who seek to “reclaim America for Christ” and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law.”
The documentary is scheduled to air this weekend along with the publication of an accompanying book “Evolution’s Fatal Fruit: How Darwin’s Tree of Life Brought Death to Millions.”
A Coral Ridge Ministries press release promoting the documentary says the program “features 14 scholars, scientists, and authors who outline the grim consequences of Darwin’s theory of evolution and show how his theory fueled Hitler’s ovens.”
Just pointing out your fellow travelers, Peter. You could pick better friends? You can pick your nose, etc.
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Wow, a movie so dumb and pandering that even FOX NEWS doesn’t like it
After seeing a new non-fiction film starring Comedy Central’s Ben Stein, you may not only be able to win his money, but also his career.
Stein is that whiny little guy with the monotone voice that makes him seem funny and an unlikely “character” for TV appearances. But that career may be over come April 18, when a movie he co-wrote, narrates and appears in, called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is released.
Directed by one Nathan Frankowski, “Expelled” is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) “expose” of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But it does show that Stein, who’s carved out a career selling eye drops in commercials and amusing us on sitcoms, is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck.
To wit: Stein, Frankowski and pals say in “Expelled” that perfectly good scientists and educators are being stigmatized for wanting to teach their students creationism and “intelligent design” — in other words, junk science — in addition to or instead of conventionally accepted Darwinism. You see, Stein, like some other celebrities, finally has shown his true colors and they aren’t so pretty.
The gist of Stein’s involvement is: He’s outraged! He believes in God! God created the universe! How can we not avail our students of this theory? What do you mean we’re just molecules?
What the producers of this film would love, love, love is a controversy. That’s because it’s being marketed by the same people who brought us “The Passion of the Christ.” They’re hoping someone will latch onto an anti-Semitism theme here, since there’s a visit to a concentration camp and the raised idea — apparently typical of the intelligent design community — that somehow the theory of evolution is so evil that it caused the Holocaust. Alas, this is such a warped premise that no one’s biting.
The whole idea of Stein, a Jew, jumping on the intelligent design bandwagon of the theory of evolution begetting the Nazis is so distasteful you wonder what in — sorry — God’s name — he was thinking when he got into this. Who cares, really, if “Expelled” is anti-Semitic? It will come and go without much fanfare.
But Stein is another matter. Can he really be amusing selling eye drops or acting like a nebbish on game shows if we now have this new insight into his thinking?
You know Ben Stein from his voice. He used it to intone Ferris Bueller’s name iconically at the beginning of that 20-year-old Matthew Broderick movie. His laconic delivery and deadpan presence have given him a benign celebrity — until now.
But this is what he wrote last fall on the “Expelled” movie Web site:
“Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.
“Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.”
In a word: Urgggh. Suddenly Stein is not so amusing anymore. I want my eye drops from someone else.
PS: Following “The Passion” release pattern, “Expelled” will open wide on the 18th, but mostly in rural and poor neighborhoods. It’s got just one theater in all of New York City, in Times Square, none in places like Beverly Hills or wealthier, better-educated urban neighborhoods where more “evolved” people might live.
According to the film’s Web site, the producers are in a whopping 45 theaters in North Carolina, and a mere seven in Massachusetts, 35 in Georgia, 11 in New Jersey, four in Connecticut and one in Vermont. And so on. There are huge numbers of screens in Florida and Texas taking the film, particularly seven in San Antonio. If I lived in the Deep South, I’d boycott the filmmakers for thinking of me as this gullible and unsophisticated.
see here.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Hey Mickey, why aren’t you covering all the buzzzzzz</b dude? You are seriously missing out on polishing your sycophant journalism skills.
Scientific American says Expelled is a piece of crap.
Get with the program Olasky, you impostor.
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Miiiiiiiiiiickey, there is more buzzing going on. To the computer!!!!
Expelled plagiarized a video animation. The lawyers are now making this an issue.
Victoria, still think you will get a chance to see this dog? I betcha it never gets released because it is a pack of lies built on false premises and propped up with intellectual property stolen from its rightful owners.
ROFLMAO PWNAGE
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Great Links!! I suspect they truly will have to roll back the April 18 date to have time to take out the plagiarized material.
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spinoza what are the chances these guys created a movie that they knew would never be released so they can blame it on the E.A.C.?
there are music copyright issues with this movie. those should be the easiest to clear up.
they have seriously ticked off biologists by stealing the cell video. this has been public knowledge since Dempski [sic... look it up!!!] got caught using the video (with a voice over by someone else) in paid talks. that got yanked quickly. the new video supposedly in Excreted is essentially a decolorized crappier version of the very same video Dembski was ordered to quit using. It even plagiarized some errors. The incompetence is staggering.
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Hey Mickey!! Hey HEy, Hey Mickey!!!! You still buzzzzzzzing dude? Get yer #2 sharp son.
TIME magazine is buzzing about Expelled!!! but they don’t like too much. must be a bunch of darwinists up there huh. here is a quote.
It’s in the film’s final third that it runs entirely off the rails as Stein argues that there is a clear line from Darwinism to euthanasia, abortion, eugenics and–wait for it–Nazism.
Oooh. Solon ain’t gonna like that.
BUZZZZZZZZZ
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Yo, little scrawny reporter guy! Look at this!
Expelled is paying EXTRAS to attend their screenings. Shermer in the Scientific American review.
It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein’s antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.
Actually they didn’t. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein’s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, “the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus” but that “the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein’s lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.” And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.
Ouch!!! only two or three students and a auditorium full of people? hmmm.
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More “Buzz”
Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design, has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn’t follow the scientific method; it doesn’t allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.
Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.
Continued at:
Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism’s Manufactroversy
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The originator of the video plagiarized by Exxxxpelled has a few words to say to y’all out there that are still on the fence: Get Off Of It.
These guys are Liars For Jesus.
Wes takes Moonie and certified lunatic Jonathan Wells to task over his inconsistency and willingness to Lie For Jesus (What do you expect from Moonies? Are they even Christians? Who is more Christian: catholics, moonies or mormons?) Wells says complaining that the Pepperdine audience was full of extras and calling them students is not fraudulent. Yet he also claimed that using prepared photographs of melanic moths is!! I don’t get it, maybe Victoria can explain.
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Either Ben Stein or Mark Mathis (the producer) is lying.
Which Is It??
C’mon WORLD. Megan Basham, why aren’t you reporting like an honest journalist? Are you just taking marching orders from Marvin, or do you have any integrity?
We know Hope Hodge is devoid of this trait, as well as Harrison Scott Key and Mickey Mclean. Is the entire World staff a gang of clown college machievellan wannabes? When will you discuss the real story here?
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The Scopes trial was fought and won by evolutionists to receive access to teach Darwinism as an alternative to Creationism. It seems hypocritical that once they received access that they turned the tables and deny access to Creationism, yet see nothing wrong with doing so.
The teachers, professors and scientists that have been ousted from their careers for daring to speak a viable option to what we refer to as the “THEORY” of evolution, are men and woman of honor and intellect, as are many who truly believe in Darwanism. I do not hear anyone of them ask that Darwanism theory lose access to the classrooms, but since both Darwinism and Intellegent Design are built on data and a belief in the theories they should both be treated the same.
Those Christians that are opposed to any Darwanism theory being taught in the classroom show little faith in the truths they hold.
BUT in the same light those that believe the Darwin theory and deny access to ID too show a fear of any challenge to what they think is truth. This is hardly the “tolerant” society we hear so much about.
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Hi Gofish. have you read any of these threads at all?
there are no teachers professors or scientists that have been ousted from their careers for daring to speak against evolution. There is, however, a host of incompetent religious bigots who desire affirmative action to push their narrow fanciful anti-empirical wish fulfillment religious views into science education.
Just repeating something does not make it true.
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Darwin challenged, research censored
Christian university removes professor’s website, data from public view
October 04, 2007
By Bob Unruh
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Victoria you have picked the best case that the suppression crowd has to argue. It is still not an example of evolutionary critics being silenced, but it is an example of everyday academic backbiting and unprofessionalism shown by Dembski and a couple of folks in the administration at Baylor (Wing Nut Daily is a good place to find stories for this, right Victoria?
It may indeed be true (and I suspect that it is) that Baylor put the smack down on Marks. but not because his work ‘challenges the foundation of darwinian evolution’, but because he has chosen to associate with Bill Dembski after Dembski made many enemies at Baylor. While not an example of suppressing intelligent design (the Dembski – Marks papers have been recognized as containing fatal errors, see here), it is a good example of what happens to academics who refuse to learn professional behavior.
See here for more about Dembski-vs-Baylor. If you had a disagreement with say the Regents of your university, would you resolve it by posting their private unpublished home phone numbers on the internet and telling bloggers to call them in the middle of the night? I don’t know, you might approve of that sort of behavior but I think it is a poor idea.
If you think that Baylor is in the wrong here and Dembski in the right, you should look up Thomas English, a former employee of Marks. He has some contrasting viewpoints. you can find him at ATBC (turncoat) or at UncommonDescent (The Fork).
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Contemporary suppression of the theistic worldview
by Jerry Bergman
Summary
Introduction
Another quote:
Victoria implies “creationism” = “theistic world view”
NOT
Who is Jerry Bergman? Another lying creationist whiner!
————————————————————————————————–
Bergman was hired in the 1973-74 school year by Bowling Green State University. He was initially employed as an assistant professor but was reduced to the rank of instructor later for not receiving his Ph.D. as soon as he had expected. His employment was continued until 1976 when the university recommended that he receive a terminal contract for 1976-1977. Bergman’s contract for 1976-77 year was changed from terminal to temporary while studying for his Ph.D at Wayne State. In 1978 Bergman was denied tenure. Bergman believed this was due to his involvement in the creation movement and his religious beliefs and subsequently filed with both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission on the grounds that he had been discriminated against on the basis of religion, with both agencies ultimately ruling that he was not let go due to his religious beliefs, but because his peers voted to terminate him.
Bergman filed suit against Bowling Green State University in federal district court in 1980, alleging that his due process rights had been violated and that he had been denied tenure on the basis of his religious views. The due process claim arose from his allegation that he never received annual written evaluations as required by the University charter. The case was dismissed in 1985. Bergman appealed but the appeal was turned down in 1987. The court ruled that the reason he was let go was because of ethics, namely that he claimed to have credentials in psychology when, in fact, he “had no psychological credentials.”
Jerry Bergman was reared by an atheist father and a religiously indifferent mother who became a follower of Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was 8 years old. Some time later, he was disillusioned with all religion and followed his father into atheism. As an atheist he knew many of the leading atheists (including Gordon Stein; Garry De Young; and, Madalyn Murray O’Hair), and published scores of articles in their various journals. Years later, he also became disillusioned with atheism.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman
Education
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Spin
All of your so called info from none other than Wikipedia. Most Universities do NOT recognize this site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Bergman
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#188 Vick – Nice dodge! I know I can always count on you for Wikipedia ad hominem! And you took your information from where? Answers in Genesis? Bergman’s own web site? I can guarantee ya that “Most universities do NOT recognize [these] site(s)” either! Check out ane excerpt from the original court ruling then – (dutifully referenced on the ever-in-doubt Wikipedia and thankfully maintained online by Jehovah’s Witness enemies of Bergman – oh the irony!):
The district court found that one concern of the tenured faculty was plaintiff’s ethics. For instance, Dr. Davidson testified that plaintiff’s misrepresentation of himself was the reason for the denial of tenure. He stated that Dr. Bergman said he was a psychologist when he had no psychological credentials. Dr. Wiersma indicated difficulty in documenting the actual existence of plaintiff’s books. Plaintiff argues that any such allegations of misconduct can be disproved by him. Nevertheless, the evidence reveals that the tenured faculty members were genuinely concerned about plaintiff’s ethics and that their confusion over his actual qualifications was premised on the difficulty in verifying his vita.
From:
Gerald R. Bergman v. Bowling Green State University:
Gerald R. Bergman, Ph.D. Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bowling Green State University; Hollis Moore as President of Bowling Green State University; Michael Ferrari, Ph.D., individually and as Provost of Bowling Green State University, Defendant-Appellees No. 86-3031
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
820 F.2d 1224; 43 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) P37,167
June 16, 1987, Filed
———————————————————————
Maybe you’d like to verify Bergman’s vita for him! I’m sure Wikipedia would be happy to add what ever actual facts you uncover!
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Curiouser and Curiouser, Vick – I now find a letter in which Bergman claims he was not given tenure because he was white, i.e., that it was a case of reverse discrimination. So which is it?
See Appendix 1 in:
Jerry Bergman and Racism This letter of Bergman’s was published in David Duke’s National Association of White People newsletter! Nice association. I think you picked a real winner here!
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From a 1995 litany of creationist pseudo-martyrs: Does Science Discriminate against Creationists?
Another oft-cited “victim of scientific intolerance” is Jerry Bergman, who in 1984 was denied tenure and dismissed from his position at Bowling Green University, as he puts it, “solely because of my beliefs and publications in the area of creationism.” (Jim Lippard, “Creationism and Racism”, undated) However, Bergman himself pointed out a more significant reason for his dismissal (one which other creationists are understandably reluctant to talk about): In a signed letter published in the newsletter of former Klan head David Duke’s white supremacist National Association for the Advancement of White People, Bergman declared that “reverse discrimination was clearly part of the decision” (cited in Lippard, “Creationism and Racism”, undated). In other words, as Bergman himself admits, it was NOT his creationism that got him kicked out. Apparently Bergman’s sob story changes according to which particular audience he is sobbing to.
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David Duke can put whatever he wants on his website, that doesn’t mean a thing.
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#191 Artful dodgin’ again, eh?
Bergman says one place that the “sole” cause of his tenure denial was anti-creationism, and elsewhere he says it was “reverse discrimination.” He’s clearly lying in at least one of these statements, since they contradict each other.
But I’d put my money on him lying in both of them!
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p.s. David Duke can put whatever he wants on his website, that doesn’t mean a thing.
It means that the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan supported Jerry Bergman’s complaint against tenure denial. Kinda like you do! I think you should send him a nice thank you note!
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Super-scientist slams society’s spiritual sickness!
Dr Raymond Damadian, Pioneer of MRI
Dr Raymond V. Damadian would probably be too humble to accept the title ‘super-scientist’ but the many people whose lives have been saved by the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanning technology he developed might think otherwise.
Hailed as one of the greatest diagnostic breakthroughs ever, this technique, using advanced principles of physics and computing, lets doctors visualize many organs and their diseased parts without the risks of exploratory surgery or the radiation associated with traditional scanning methods.
Hall of fame
Dr Damadian’s invention has earned him several top awards, including the United States’ National Medal of Technology, the Lincoln-Edison Medal, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame alongside Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright brothers.
A Bible-believing Christian, this great inventor is convinced of the scientific truth of Genesis creation and its foundational importance to church and society.
Creation Ministries International
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More from the article above #194:
Wow Victoria you just gallop from one canard to another. And with astounding incompetence and dishonesty. do you have a blog?
Dumbski-Marks: Flunked, not expelled.
Jerry Bergman: Flunked, not expelled (boy you sure know how to pick them. OWN GOAL).
From T.O.…
The above paragraph has but one point: that Jerry Bergman is an advocate of the extreme viewpoint that evolution and racism are to be identified with each other, a view which we dispute. The footnote is an observation about Bergman’s reliability: that while he has insisted to creationist audiences that his 1979 denial of tenure and 1980 dismissal were because of his creationism, he has also found fit to write to a publication known for its racism a letter maintaining that reverse racial discrimination was also part of the decision.
Bergman characterizes the footnote as “an example” of charges which are “not only false, but also appallingly irresponsible.” He calls it “entirely misleading” because it “implies that I falsely claimed that the reason I was denied tenure was religion when the real reason was in whole or in part because I am a white supremist [sic] and racist.” He states that he did believe he was fired solely for his religious beliefs until litigation by the National Education Association on his behalf turned up evidence of reverse discrimination in 1984, and that the claim that he was fired “solely” because of his religious beliefs is from Luther Sunderland. However, the first quote in the footnote above is from Bergman himself, in the Bible Science Newsletter’s September/October 1986 “Contrast” insert section (vol. 5, no. 5, p. 1): “I was, in essence, fired quite openly in 1980 solely because of my beliefs and publications in the area of creationism.” This was a 1984 WBGSU radio interview with Bergman, published in 1986, which he has never offered any retraction for or correction to. In the September/October 1987 Contrast (vol. 6, no. 5) is another article on academic tolerance based on another WBGSU radio interview with Bergman, in which he repeatedly states that the cause of his denial of tenure and dismissal was his religious beliefs, with no mention of any other cause. This interview was edited by Bergman before publication. Further, the book in which the quote from Sunderland appears–The Criterion–was written and edited by Bergman.
Bergman also stated that the firing was solely due to his religious beliefs (and more specifically his creationism) at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism (ICC) in Pittsburgh, where he gave a talk entitled “Contemporary Religious Discrimination Against Creationists in Academia.” The ICC conference program paragraph about Bergman states that he “has most recently been involved in the news for having been illegally discharged from the faculty of Bowling Green State Univ. because of his creationist interests.”
Damadian hasn’t been expelled from anything. Get your stories straight, Liar for Jesus.
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apologies on the crappy linkage there. should be easy to get the mouse on it.
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LOL,
Do you know how to use a computer? You are having problems – lol
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ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement…
You’ve been citing many activists and journalists making utterly ignorant comments. It seems clear that many haven’t read a single history book on the topics that they are making assertions about. This is a good example.
”This is an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people.
That’s incorrect:
Science was not merely a means to an end, in the minds of many eugenicists and Nazis it was the definition and foundation of all truth. Therefore they said things like:
Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.
Apparently he is too ignorant to realize that biologists are once again involved in a Kulture Kampf in which an inherently mendacious form of scholarship is being fought for. A scholarship of this sort:
“It must be remembered that D. James Kennedy is a leader among the distinct group of ‘Christian Supremacists’ who seek to “reclaim America for Christ” and turn the U.S. into a Christian nation guided by their strange notions of biblical law.”
It must be remembered that despite activists who are utterly ignorant of history, Nazi leaders sought to destroy Christianity based on scientism. Indeed, many thought that “biblical law” promoted the degeneration of society because it doesn’t accord it Darwinian reasoning about the “unfit.”
That is part of the reason why an article of Nazi policy was to demand the “immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany.” cf. (The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
By William Shirer :237)
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yeah mynym and also they burned Origin of Species. Stop with the tard already.
ID has no science behind it, only public relations. Like this movie. Upon inspection, this movie has no science behind it either, just a plea for special consideration of some peoples religious beliefs that they wish to privilege as science, when convenient, and privilege as religion at otherwise.
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Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.”
In a word: Urgggh. Suddenly Stein is not so amusing anymore. I want my eye drops from someone else.
So now we are to limit ourselves to whatever truths some half-wit journalist finds amusing? As Karl Kraus noted they write although they have nothing to say and have something to say only because they write. What did this half-wit say, after all? Nothing. Why are you citing these half-wits? What Stein noted is generally accurate, no amount of ignorance or lack of amusement changes that.
Note some general patterns:
Given the weakness typical to Darwinian reasoning opposing views must be censored and so on.
E.g.
A similar sentiment:
As to the notion that religious parents be quarantined, isn’t that what State schools combined with the increasing oligarchic tendencies of the Judiciary do already? Such a notion is not idle talk or purely metaphoric. Typically the goal is not to win in the arena of ideas based on intelligence, instead the goal is political/biological because things like intelligence and sentience do not actually “exist” according to those who have lost their minds based on Darwinian reasoning:
Some biologists have similar fantasies to this day: “I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don’t care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.”
-–PZ Myers/Paul Myers
At some point those who believe in biologism have no sense of the symbols and signs typical to design and meaningful metaphors because they are too stupid and ignorant to realize their “existence.” Their attitude is that information does not exist and is not a reality. So in the end everything they say becomes more literal/biological and what they actually mean is that they must form a Herd, put their bodies on the line, etc. If you disagree with them the solution is not reasoning through things based on sentience, knowledge/scientia and the life of the mind, instead the final solution of such limited intellects is some form of biological liquidation.
The ironic thing about their pattern of thought is that they like to pretend to speak for “science” based on consensus and so on yet all they actually have knowledge of is pseudo-science.
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Erasmus – 200
YOU WRITE:….
“yeah mynym and also they burned Origin of Species. Stop with the tard already.”
Are you able to have a conversation without ‘name calling’ or is that your excuse for not knowing what YOU believe.
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yeah mynym and also they burned Origin of Species. Stop with the tard already.
Don’t believe everything by charlatans like PZ Myers or others at the Panda’s Thumb.
…just a plea for special consideration of some peoples religious beliefs that they wish to privilege as science, when convenient, and privilege as religion at otherwise.
I wouldn’t doubt that many people will shift from high epistemic standards (”science”) to low standards (”religion”) based on convenience. That is the way of the world, all need reformation. Currently the established orthodoxy which purports to define knowledge/science is Darwinism and it is clearly sorely in need of reformation, so what difference is it to me if there are rabble rousers? They are typically necessary, after all. Note that Darwinists already shift from high epistemic standards to low: “We know that the earth revolves around the sun now so it’s obvious that we will inevitably progress towards a similar form of knowledge about the origin of life forms.”
On the one hand a basic empirical fact is cited, then shifted seamlessly into a claim that may well be nonsense. What if sentience actually doesn’t reduce to the laws of physics as currently known?
“The theory of evolution is just like the theory of gravity.”
That’s just ignorant and only reveals the ignorance or charlatanism of anyone who makes such an argument.
“We have observed insecticide resistance, therefore we have a knowledge of the origin of all specification and form found in living organisms.”
Etc. Biologists are generally stupid enough to make such arguments, apparently. But what is to be expected of those who believe that intelligent selection based on sight and sentience is actually an illusion of blind, inanimate processes?
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#202 Victoria actually tard is not name calling but is a collective term for the recycled lame arguments that collectively make up what we call The Argument Regarding Design. Don’t get your choir robes in a bunch just yet sister I’m not a big meanie name caller.
mynym won’t let go of his blankie
So now we are to limit ourselves to whatever truths some half-wit journalist finds amusing? As Karl Kraus noted they write although they have nothing to say and have something to say only because they write. What did this half-wit say, after all? Nothing. Why are you citing these half-wits? What Stein noted is generally accurate, no amount of ignorance or lack of amusement changes that.
No, don’t limit your self to that. You can go much further I am sure. What Stein noted is nonsense. Whig world geopolitics and the leftover god residue stains from the Enlightenment are more correctly the driving forces behind imperialism and the justification rhetoric that every institution adopts. The conflation of politics, religion and science is what every fascist wants: mynym you are no different. Your limp postmodern frock is a poor disguise for your totalitarian desire to control the truth.
You know good and well what PZ was talking about, and I agree, but it is not what you claim it is. Surprise.
Fundie YEC idiocy should be stamped out whenever possible. We should stamp it out in biology classrooms just as it has been stamped out in the halls of science, after being utterly destroyed by the weight of it’s own predictions. YEC breeds bigotry, homophobia, schizophrenia (perhaps more accurately compartmentalization) and cognitive dissonance. Welcome to World On The Web where you may see all of these jewels in their full regalia.
At some point those who believe in biologism have no sense of the symbols and signs typical to design and meaningful metaphors because they are too stupid and ignorant to realize their “existence.” Their attitude is that information does not exist and is not a reality.
Judging attitudes, are we? O great empath, deep intuiter, seer, delphine oracle, please tell me more about these people who are too stupid to realize their ‘”existence”. Please also tell me how it is that you are not so stupid, and what differentiates you from those people like PZ, because unlike him I must confess I never hear you saying anything very relevant or marginally worth considering, it is all urges and merges and Herds and signs and symbols. One giant postmodern narrative account of the debate over model selection methods in science. You offer nothing.
As to the notion that religious parents be quarantined, isn’t that what State schools combined with the increasing oligarchic tendencies of the Judiciary do already?
Simple Answer: NO. But keep it up with your paranoid repressed fantasies of overcoming the schoolyard bully. It’s not getting you anywhere, but it’s just tragic enough to be entertaining.
Such a notion is not idle talk or purely metaphoric. Typically the goal is not to win in the arena of ideas based on intelligence
So the arena of ideas is dominated by the smartest warrior? Just what exactly are you on about here?
instead the goal is political/biological because things like intelligence and sentience do not actually “exist” according to those who have lost their minds based on Darwinian reasoning:
as I keep telling you, ‘poitical/biological’ is meaningless. why don’t you use ‘electron/purple’ or ‘mammoth/jesus’.
Who says intelligence and sentience do not actually “exist”? Anyone? Anyone? Straw man thy house is on fire.
Don’t believe everything by charlatans like PZ Myers or others at the Panda’s Thumb.
Why not? Do you have any evidence that this is a hoax?
Or is it more of your po-mo model selection jesus warrior spartacus envy? sounded good at the moment, right?
I wouldn’t doubt that many people will shift from high epistemic standards (”science”) to low standards (”religion”) based on convenience. That is the way of the world, all need reformation. Currently the established orthodoxy which purports to define knowledge/science is Darwinism and it is clearly sorely in need of reformation, so what difference is it to me if there are rabble rousers? They are typically necessary, after all. Note that Darwinists already shift from high epistemic standards to low: “We know that the earth revolves around the sun now so it’s obvious that we will inevitably progress towards a similar form of knowledge about the origin of life forms.”
Finally some substance. Let’s snip the fat…
Currently the established orthodoxy which purports to define knowledge/science is Darwinism
Well let me just first delight in this prime example of your continual conflation of things religious, scientific and politic. But you’re wrong: orthodoxies don’t purport. Darwinism doesn’t define knowledge/science, whatever that means. Arguments stand and fall on their predicates.
Note that Darwinists already shift from high epistemic standards to low: “We know that the earth revolves around the sun now so it’s obvious that we will inevitably progress towards a similar form of knowledge about the origin of life forms.”
I note instead that no one has ever use this argument except for you. congratulations, you could people a jury with the strawmen in this single post.
What if sentience actually doesn’t reduce to the laws of physics as currently known?
first thing worth reading. If you were honest, then you realize that the problem is not with an orthodoxy of urging merging murmuring priesthood nonsense, it is that no one has formulated a theory of ’sentience’ in any meaningfully testable and observable way. Just defining it for semantic purposes and arguing from consequences. Yawn.
What could be such an interesting question you reduce to a quivering mass of waste. Can you even scientifically communicate your ideas regarding sentience? The problem is not with the methods of science but your inability to wield the tools. So you resort to religious militation and might makes right politics.
“The theory of evolution is just like the theory of gravity.”
“We have observed insecticide resistance, therefore we have a knowledge of the origin of all specification and form found in living organisms.”
I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your wheat straw doublewide out of my yard.
mynym, when you provide a functional definition of ’sentience’ then this discussion will be a lot more interesting. I think there very well might be some scientific blind spots thanks to this problem, but none of them you have identified.
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#195 – What is the point of this? Was the physicist Damadian ever “expelled” for his ignorance of geology, biology, and related support of creationism? Quite the contrary!
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More Buzz: “Hiding ‘Expelled’ from critics a not-so-intelligent Move
Excerpt:
Every semi-knowledgeable moviegoer and reader of movie criticism knows what the words “not screened for critics” means: The movie is a dog.
“Not screened for critics” means a movie is so terrible that the studio will take its chances, deprive itself of free publicity, and go without release-date reviews. Considering the garbage the studios will show us critics ahead of time (such as the gruesomely lurid “Street Kings” or the laughably stupid “10,000 B.C.”), to keep a movie away from critics is usually a sign that things are really, really bad…. the 19th movie of 2008 to be released without critical appraisal is … a documentary, opening nationwide this Friday, with the title “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” It features Ben Stein – comic actor, former game-show host, conservative commentator and former Nixon speechwriter – on “his heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few,” as the film’s Web site describes it.
Who’s being persecuted? People who espouse the notion of “intelligent design,” a k a creationism. Who’s doing the persecuting? Everybody, according to Stein, who narrates and co-wrote the film – academics, the education system, the legal system and (blush) the media.
I contacted the public relations firm handling the movie, and was told there were no screenings for critics for “Expelled.” Critics in other cities were told the same thing.
There have been screenings around the country, but not for critics. The film’s producers arranged preview screenings for selected “grass-roots” audiences, mainly church groups, to stimulate good word-of-mouth.
In January, the Orlando Sentinel’s movie critic Roger Moore was invited to a screening at a Florida megachurch. He was also disinvited, but went anyway. Moore wrote a harsh review of the film, and was excoriated by the film’s producers.
Another “grass-roots” screening, this one at the Mall of America in Minnesota, may have created the strangest “disinvitation.” In line for the film was PZ Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota who was interviewed for the film (under false pretenses, Myers says on his blog, Pharyngula). But someone recognized Myers, and a security guard told him he’d have to leave the theater immediately or risk arrest.
Myers left quietly, though his wife and daughter stayed to see the movie. So did Myers’ guest: British biologist – and much-quoted atheist – Richard Dawkins (who’s also in the movie).
Accounts vary on what happened next. The “Expelled” producers say, on the movie’s Web site, that they made Dawkins cower in the post-screening Q-and-A. Dawkins and Myers, in a wry conversation on YouTube, say that no such thing happened.
Now, I have no idea whether “Expelled” is a good movie or a bad one. Like a good critic, I will reserve judgment until I actually see the thing. But I can’t help but be struck by the irony of Stein’s own words in the movie’s introduction (which is also on YouTube):
“In my experience, people who are confident in their ideas are not afraid of criticism. So that tells me the Darwinists are afraid. They’re hiding something.”
What, pray tell, are Stein and the “Expelled” producers hiding? And what are they afraid of?
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The new Expelled Exposed site is now up with detailed articles on each of the alleged cases of expulsion:
EXPELLED EXPOSED
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Okay Erasmus, lets not confuse you with the facts. Ignore the numerous documented incidences of ID believing teachers, professors and scientists being suppressed and pretend it never happened.
So tell me which public schools allow ID to be taught as an alternative to the Darwin THEORY? Is this the same the Darwinists experienced before the Scopes trial? I believe constitutionally that the Scopes decision was correct, but it cuts both ways.
Quit calling those that believe in a creator names and get serious about the real issue…equal access.
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So tell me which public schools allow ID to be taught as an alternative to the Darwin THEORY?
ID is religion and not science, so teaching it in public schools violates the establishment clause.
So say the courts:
Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District
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Quit calling those that believe in a creator names and get serious about the real issue…equal access.
This is nonsense –
1) A large fraction of scientists believe (40% believe in a personal God and afterlife according to a recent poll) and are well respected scientists.
2) IDers want more – they want their religious propositions inserted into the public scientific sphere without passing any of the key tests imposed on the rest of science. This is not “equal access.” It is a bullying effort to overthrow science altogether and replace it with religion.
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Victoria actually tard is not name calling but is a collective term for the recycled lame arguments that collectively make up what we call The Argument Regarding Design…
Your attempt to avoid dealing with your own ignorance has little to do with the historical links between Nazism and Darwinism/biologism. Holocaust deniers which I debate find small scraps of knowledge to myopically focus on so that they can avoid seeing the broad pattern of the final solution or shift attention away from it. I would hope that you wouldn’t try to do something similar in order to deny the role of Darwinian thought in Nazism. If you’re not going to make arguments along such lines then you ought to admit that the journalists you are citing against Stein are ignorant of history.
What Stein noted is nonsense.
Your ignorance isn’t necessarily my responsibility. What Stein said is correct and anyone who wants to seek knowledge on the topic need only read a few books about it. Apparently you haven’t read a single book on the topic but if you have, then cite the evidence which backs up your claims.
Whig world geopolitics and the leftover god residue stains from the Enlightenment are more correctly the driving forces behind imperialism and the justification rhetoric that every institution adopts.
Ironically given your general ignorance, lack of scholarship and “biological thinking” you seem to agree with Nazi philosophy on such topics. They argued they needed “living space” because of the driving forces behind imperialism while arguing that one of the driving forces was the monotheism of the Jews. They would conclude that the “god residue” is “the Jewish influence” which in Nazi thinking ultimately reduces to biology.
Note that pagans who root their views in Nature typically work with imagery so they seem to have a tendency to believe the imaginary forms of “science” and “evidence” that biologists have a history of promoting:
The conflation of politics, religion and science is what every fascist wants: mynym you are no different. Your limp postmodern frock is a poor disguise for your totalitarian desire to control the truth.
I’m not a postmodernist and given your ignorance of texts you’d be too ignorant to recognize if I were. It’s ironic that you set yourself up as a policeman of knowledge/science and believe in using politics and the State to work to censor debate among the youth based on proto-Nazi reasoning, yet then claim that someone else is being totalitarian. That makes as much sense as the Nazi claim that the Jews couldn’t be tolerated because supposedly the monotheism of the Jews was the cause of intolerance. You are the one failing to tolerate parents educating children as they see fit.
Fundie YEC idiocy should be stamped out whenever possible. We should stamp it out in biology classrooms just as it has been stamped out in the halls of science…
Destroy, stamp out and terms of this sort of thing are odd if the goal is really just a supposed “separation.” If history is any measure such language is revealing:
Given that the goal of proto-Nazi biologists is to “stamp out” the “Jewish influence” of monotheism or the YEC specified in Jewish texts and so on and not to educate in knowledge and seek the truth as such, youth educated by such teachers do not seem to learn much:
Although scientists are trained to be prejudiced on the issue, “creationism”/ID (They are those who conflate both for political ends.) has not been stamped out in the way that those who adhere to Nature based paganism have always preferred. In other words, pagans have not yet succeeded in their goal of destroying monotheism just as Nazi pagans did not succeed in liquidating the Jews.
Ironically some people are so prejudiced towards some form of Nature based paganism that they will imagine a larger “multiverse.” As far as science goes that is on a level more typical to biologists than physicists. If biologists must imagine past events which must be assumed to take place in order to salvage naturalism while physicists must imagine many universes in order to prop up some semblance of “naturalism” then perhaps naturalism is incorrect:
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You offer nothing.
Nothing but various corrections to your ignorant and stupid statements.
Who says intelligence and sentience do not actually “exist”? Anyone? Anyone? Straw man thy house is on fire.
Like most with the urge to merge back into the womb of Mommy Nature Dennett is arrogant enough to claim that he defines what scientia/knowledge is based on his own impersonal, unreflective, robotic and mindless little scraps of molecular machinery:
Those who lack basic forms of knowledge often claim to define science as we know it. It seems to me that before we get around to denying sentience based on what biologists tend to think about the “laws of physics” we’d best have a better knowledge of such laws. For anyone interested in the possible nature of knowledge I’d suggest: (The Quantum Brain: The Search for Freedom and the Next Generation of Man
by Jeffrey Satinover)
It’s more humbly advanced than books written by Darwinian charlatans who keep trying to define “science” to comport with their mentally incompetent way of thinking instead of dealing with knowledge as such.
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IDer Berlinski is certainly a virtual geyser of pretentious grandiloquent and non-sequiturial hot air. I can see why you love him so!
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Can you even scientifically communicate your ideas regarding sentience?
I’m more interested in the truth about knowledge than what seems “scientific” to someone such as yourself.
The problem is not with the methods of science but your inability to wield the tools.
The problem with your attempts to define “science” is the fact that biologists have long treated imagining things about the past as “science,” so it’s not as if high epistemic standards define such “science.”
So you resort to religious militation and might makes right politics.
Given the low epistemic standards typical to biologists (What many mean by “religion” or “faith” is low epistemic standards.) it is little wonder that you and PZ believe that being militant is the answer, “stomping,” “marching,” “destroying,” etc. This pattern seems to happen every time a person has a faith in something but will not admit it is faith.
“The theory of evolution is just like the theory of gravity.”
“We have observed insecticide resistance, therefore we have a knowledge of the origin of all specification and form found in living organisms.”
I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your wheat straw doublewide out of my yard.
Examples:
And so on. I’ll grant you that those who write editorials may be highschool teachers and the like but that seems to be about your level anyway.
I think there very well might be some scientific blind spots thanks to this problem, but none of them you have identified.
For some reason you’re laboring on the mistaken assumption that I care what those who engage in “biological thinking” think that they are thinking based on their ancestry of worm-like creatures and so on. That is truly a ridiculous way of thinking, so it should be ridiculed.
For anyone interested in actually thinking in a way that isn’t blind I suggest the book: (Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism
by Cornelius G. Hunter)
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IDer Berlinski is certainly a virtual geyser of pretentious grandiloquent and non-sequiturial hot air.
Prove it.
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Berlinksi must be correct, otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to shift attention away from what he said to who he is.
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Spinoza(#10): ID is religion and not science, so teaching it in public schools violates the establishment clause. Spinoza obviously does not understand the Constitution’s 1st Amendment. It states: Congress shall make no law……..
Now, how can you and a plethora of other folks misinterpret the establishment clause as saying that ID taught in school is tantamount to a violation of the 1st Amendment?
Good grief, man……get a grip on reality already!
A) ID is a misnomer. It’s Creationism. Call it what it really is, please.
B) It already has proven evolution to be a false replica of pseudo-science and a non-entity of reality. It is clearly scientific, if you’ll take off those blinders that has clouded your perception of reality.
C) While Creationism has certain religious values to it, it is clearly more science than faith.
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#218 – I wholeheartedly agree with “A” above!
Re: Establishment Clause – By “plethora of other folks” I take it you mean guys like the Supreme Court (i.e., Edwards v Aguilard 1987). Oh well – you’ll just have to live with the fact that, even if wrong, this will be the prevailing legal view in your lifetime!
B and C are truly mistaken, as pointed out in Arkansas v Epperson.
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#216 – I think you already have!
#217 – Nah; the real reason is that you/Berlinski are too longwinded in too many wrong ways to make it worth replying to your every knuckleheaded point! But then, that’s your strategy isn’t it! Bore us into not replying, and then claim victory?! Maybe if you stuck to a few “concise” points? Otherwise, I’ll have to go with Nancey Murphy of Fuller Theological Seminary: “ID is not only poor theology, it’s too stupid to give them my time.”
Berlinski is that special kind of crackpot dilettante who, despite much-trumpeted credentials, has never really produced any important professional work in his field – mathematics. Why pay any attention to him? He’s a water bug on the surface of life.
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Gofish, equal access? Earn it. Public Relations and cheap double dealing interview stunts do not a science make.
Justus you are on the horse but facing backwards. Please adjust accordingly dear Quixote.
mynym if you are going to insist upon murmuring and urging and merging then will you please do me the favor of explicitly stating what ‘biologic thinking’ is? Once and for all, pretty please?
what evidence do i need to show that Stein is wrong about Darwin–>Hitler? First, there is far more evidence linking Hitler to Christianity and in particular Luther’s anti-semitism to his motives than there is speciation by descent with modification mediated by natural selection. In fact, there is zero evidence linking Darwin to Hitler. There is quite a bit of documentation of the prevailing ‘might-is-right Whig predestination Candide all is right with the world for we are in it and we are god’s will’ philosophy behind the maneuvering of power structures both within germany and across the world at at the time.
The mindboggingly stupid reductionism (flagella are machines!!!) at the heart of ID creationism is at work here as well. it is clear from reviewing the rhetoric of Hitler that he viewed himself as an agent of a god. This manifestly contradicts the claims that darwinism=atheism AND darwinism=naziism.
That such a glaringly obvious stupid mistake should fail to be corrected is no surprise to students of theocracy movements, fascist propaganda, or your own commenting history, mynym. It pains you to recognize what you deny the most.
The idealist mechanist philosophies of pre-war Germany are nearly identical to the cells-as-machines-plus-mind-of-god argument from the Intelligent Design creationists. You’re simply dishonest about this.
Sounds like your Nazi doctor book (you ever heard the expression One Tin Horn?) suggests that this ‘biologic thinking’ ,whatever that is, is an apologetic for Hitler’s religious view borrowed from Luther that Jews should be punished for crucifying Da Jeesus. Epic Fail, mynym.
You’re not a postmodernist? roflmao. You might not know it. Your entire criterion for scientific model selection is as Po-Mo as is possible to be in print. You judge theories by the narrative that you can construct around them. Propositional logic is foreign to you, O murmurer.
On the contrary, there is nothing absolute to my objection to Intelligent Design or any of the other versions of Creationism in the classroom. After all, YEC and the dishonest claims of Behe Dembski Nelson Meyer Hunter Berlinski Cordova Luskin West etc are wrong whether they are taught in schools or published in runes and propelled into the next galaxy. Your criteria for true and false seems to be akin to a petition to start a greenbeard fraternity.
In sum, you think, apparently (correct me if I am wrong, won’t you), that a stupid populace is preferable to an enlightened one. Unfortunately for you, the Founding Fathers disagree with you. Fortunately for you, I couldn’t possibly care less about that. I will simply note that you are in support of parents having the right to teach their children things that we are fairly sure we have no evidence for.
On what grounds do you distinguish between teaching about “the earths surface is separated into plates, which have suprapositional relationships capable of independent motions, driven by deep heating events in the earth, and the resulting movements cause wrinkling and folding (among other things) in the outer layer which we experience as mountains”, and “suli, great father of all buzzards we see now, made the mountains by flying out of Galunlati over the fresh wet earth and grew tired and his wings dipped into the soft fresh formed earth, forming valleys and mountains, and the animals above saw this and called him back in fear that all the earth would be mountains”?
Aren’t those empirically equivalent narratives to you? Or is your model selection criteria Check Against Genesis? Or what is your null model? You have made it clear that empirical features can not provide you with the ontology that you desire. That’s why you judge motives and desires and urges.
We tire of hearing ‘materialism can’t explain X’ and never hearing why, or what exactly that is not ‘materialist’ does ‘explain X’. Pony it up.
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HAha spinoza you are correct. the argument that ‘Darwin->Hitler’ is fractally wrong and mandlebrottedly stupid. Those that care about facts see it as a dog, and those that do not care about facts will run around with it all over their chin anyway. say lah vee.
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spinoza smoke break over
#215
I’m more interested in the truth about knowledge than what seems “scientific” to someone such as yourself
Wow, it sure looks like you think there are other ways to gain knowledge. Why don’t you list them for me, since I am clearly ignorant of your sophisticated epistemologies. I am waiting.
“The problem with your attempts to define “science” is the fact that biologists have long treated imagining things about the past as “science,” so it’s not as if high epistemic standards define such “science.”
rolfmao. Again you have demonstrated your complete inability to grasp predicate logic. You might consider possible If Then statements, and then imagine where you might use those in your daily life (for instance, If you have to potty, Then you potty… I do understand that you prefer the version If you are descended from worms and feces Then you are descended from worms and feces as you have evinced in numerous anoxic postings).
yeah your tautological form doesn’t work so well. but good enough for you to murmur about it and digress to urges and merges. but science doesn’t use that anyway.
Heres a hint: when someone compares ‘evolution’ to ‘gravity’, they are not saying ‘the theories are equivalent’. They are not claiming that these theories refer to the same theoretical entities or have the same empirical domain. I think you know what this comparison entails, but you are so busy playing Can’t Do Right that you refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that we have no supported hypotheses that challenge the various theories collectively known as ‘the theory of evolution’. You’re Bluffing, Yosemite.
I note you ignored most of my comments. When you offer nothing it is difficult to argue that you deserve a place in the marketplace of ideas. It’s more like a tithe to you.
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More Buzz:
Scientist: Ben Stein’s ‘Expelled’ should really be ‘Flunked Out’
Comedian and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, will not open until this Friday, but it has already been widely blasted for its alleged dishonesty and looseness with the facts.
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More Buzz from the Guardian Unlimited:
Devoid of intelligence
By resorting to deceit to get their story, the makers of the latest piece of creationist propaganda have done themselves no favours
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/adam_rutherford/2008/04/devoid_of_intelligence.html
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More Buzz from Raw Story:
Scientist: Ben Stein’s ‘Expelled’ should really be ‘Flunked Out’
Comedian and former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, will not open until this Friday, but it has already been widely blasted for its alleged dishonesty and looseness with the facts.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Comedian_Ben_Stein_pushed_intelligent_design_0416.html
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Nah; the real reason is that you/Berlinski are too longwinded in too many wrong ways to make it worth replying to your every knuckleheaded point!
I just cited him describing the sentiments typical to charlatans such as yourself:
And then there you go, illustrating the point by claiming that someone is so wrong that you (once again) don’t need to provide any evidence. I suppose I should be thankful for natural selection operating on your ancestry of worm-like creatures for your stupidity. After all it is not as if your brain might be an interface for intelligent agency capable of imprinting concept on matter, is it?
Maybe if you stuck to a few “concise” points?
Maybe if your “intellect” had less to do with natural selection operating on the excretory organs of ancient ape-like creatures (given the imaginary terms typical to biologists) then I’d care what you wrote. Again, for some reason you’re writing as if I want to convince you of something.
Otherwise, I’ll have to go with Nancey Murphy of Fuller Theological Seminary: “ID is not only poor theology, it’s too stupid to give them my time.”
Apparently she would be too stupid to give Aristotle her time. I suspect that Aristotle would be too intelligent to give her his.
Berlinski is that special kind of crackpot dilettante who…
Whatever else he may be or not be, apparently he’s the kind of fellow who brings forth basic bits of logic and facts which you think are wrong yet cannot refute. Here is another who is willing to follow the evidence wherever it might lead making a similar point on the same topic:
Apparently, given that your intellect is limited by natural selection and so on, all you will be able say of what Flew writes is that Flew wrote it, so all must focus on who Flew is based on his past history and so on instead of what Flew wrote. People who engage in “biological thinking” typically shift from a focus on what is written to who the writer is.
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Wow, it sure looks like you think there are other ways to gain knowledge.
Other ways to gain knowledge than what seems “scientific” to biologists? We could begin with all the books on history that you apparently haven’t read, although you still make ignorant assertions about history. Or perhaps like many biologists you believe that all one need do to have a knowledge of history is imagine past events which seem natural to you while focusing on how natural imagining things supposedly is?
….please do me the favor of explicitly stating what ‘biologic thinking’ is? Once and for all, pretty please?
Dawkins is a good example of it. For example, recently he wondered why the topic of breeding better musicians could not be brought up again given how much time has past since Hitler. In his own way he was admitting what you’re still trying to lie about, the link between Darwinian reasoning and Nazism. As he put it: “…if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?”
Why not? Because there is no reason to assume that humans cannot think through their biology. If it is possible that humans have the ability to imprint mind on matter then mathematical and musical ability have little to do with the physical substrate which they inform. And so on, it isn’t necessarily my responsibility to inform you of the form of all the ignorance typical to biologists.
As someone opposed to Dawkin’s “biological thinking” in the past noted:
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My biggest discouragement from even bothering to reply to you, MYNYM, is that your writing is an incoherent web of strawmen, red herrings, and non sequiturs. What, exactly, is your point?
For example, what have multiverses to do with evolution, creationism, intelligent design, academic freedom, Hitler, Stein, or anything else we’ve been discussing? NOTHING!
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mynym,
Anthony Flew accepts Darwinian evolution, but doubts it can explain ultimate origins and original fine-tuning; hence his reference to the multiverse alternative. So no, Flew’s comments are not a similar point on the same topic. They’re off topic. You will find this by reading him and not just following the trajectory of his story and assuming it points in a direction you’d like.
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Well I will throw a wrench in the works here: I just finished reading Berlinski’s book and found it to be quite good. It’s well-argued, cogent and engagingly written.
Berlinski is not an IDer, by the way, he is an agnostic Jew. His thesis is not that science is wrong in any way. It is only that science has not disproved the existence of God. And he’s quite right about that.
This is the meaning of his subtitle, Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. Contrary to the confident assertions of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens, understanding of science does not mandate atheism.
They claim a warrant they have not earned, and Berlinski does quite a good job of showing it. Now it must be said, Berlinski in no way offers any comfort to Creationists or IDers, and citing him in this thread as an ally is too far a stretch for people in those camps.
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Heres a hint: when someone compares ‘evolution’ to ‘gravity’, they are not saying ‘the theories are equivalent’.
Talk.origins citing a highschool biology teacher:
Charlatans such as yourself are left with arguments of association because there is very little evidence to support your vast claims of knowledge. It’s little wonder that you want to maintain your control of what youth may or may know, control over impressionable minds is apparently the only way to get people to believe in imaginary forms of evidence. It is an interesting argument, the evidence is so “overwhelming” that none need be provided. To be “overwhelmed” is a term of indoctrination, not education. You wouldn’t need arguments of association if what you were saying was true on its own terms.
They are not claiming that these theories refer to the same theoretical entities or have the same empirical domain. I think you know what this comparison entails…
Apparently you’re not intelligent enough to come up with a red herring that’s actually interesting. That one could have been written by a highschooler: “I’d like to point out that the theory of gravity and the theory of evolution have different empirical domains. Ummm, just so you know or somethin’….”
At any rate, American parents should have the freedom to avoid funding the forms of charlatanism typical to biologists just as German parents should have had the option to avoid the pseudo-science of their day. It’s worth pointing out that some American parents fought back against the eugenics being taught to their children by biologists in their day. Despite false imagery like the play “Inherit the Wind” and journalistic accounts written by an anti-Semite they were right to do so.
…you are so busy playing Can’t Do Right…
It seems that there is much that you cannot do right.
…that you refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that we have no supported hypotheses that challenge the various theories collectively known as ‘the theory of evolution’.
The amalgamation of hypotheses which make up the “theory of evolution” often are not worth challenging, for example:
Such hypotheses are unfalsifiable, rely on imaginary evidence and are just plain stupid in general. Apparently you expect someone to bother to “challenge” unfalsifiable hypotheses (It is imagined that males became bipeds for one reason, females the exact opposite reason. What trajectory of adaptation was predicted based on the theory of natural selection?) which were never supported in the first place. Note that bipedality is a fundamental and important difference between humans and apes, yet this is the sort of “theory” which is said to dissolve the difference to the point that some can argue that humans are “nothing more” than hairless apes and so on.
The amalgamation of hypotheses which make up the theory of evolution is said to be the epistemic equivalent of the theory of gravity, yet biologists seem resistant to providing evidence that this is the case.
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So no, Flew’s comments are not a similar point on the same topic. They’re off topic.
They’re on the topic of imagining many universes in order to salvage atheism or philosophic naturalism. Philosophic naturalism is said to define science as we know it and many use it to justify censorship of ID, so it’s quite relevant to point out its failure.
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Well it’s not hard to assail a “proof” for atheism, but Berlinski likes to go a great deal further and, in any case, that’s not the issue here, though Ben Stein would like you to think so!
From Evolution blog:
————————————————–
Berlinski swears the he is not an ID proponent. Indeed, his article “Has Darwin Met His Match?” in the December 2002 issue of Commentarydoes a decent job of skewering the main claims of ID proponents. (It also contains a lot of inane criticisms of evolution, but we’ll come to that later).
Despite this, he is perfectly happy to sit on the ID side in debates, he contributes elaborate mathematical papers to their anthologies, he publicly praises the work of people like Michael Behe and William Dembski, he parrots ID talking points in op-ed pieces, and he is perfectly happy to associate himself with the Discovery Institute.
Berlinski has fashioned a little niche for himself as a scientific gadfly. He has the scientific and literary ability (he holds a PhD in mathematics from Princeton University) to spew high-level nonsense, and he has proven himself willing to sing the song his right-wing benefactors want to hear. Specifically, he feels no shame in telling people that scientists are all mixed up about everything, and that they need a lot of clear-thinking common folk to set them straight.
Commentary has pretty much adopted him as their science guy, and he has published a steady stream of flapdoodle in their pages over the last decade. He started with “The Deniable Darwin” in which he used his bloated and pretentious writing-style to obscure the fact that he was merely repeating some of the hoariest anti-evolution cliches ever offered. Next came “Was There a Big Bang?” in the February 1998 issue. Three guesses what that one was about. More recently there have been articles about evolutionary psychology, and a truly bizarre one in which Berlinski attacked an obscure technical paper on eye evolution.
I say bizarre because Berlinski’s argument would have been entirely meaningless to anyone who had not given a careful reading to the paper he was attacking, which is to say, to just about everyone who reads Commentary. It is safe to say that Commentary’s editors hadn’t the faintest idea whether there was any merit to Berlinski’s claims (there weren’t). So why did it get published? Because the editor’s understood in some vague way that it was anti-evolution, and they like that sort of thing.
Since Berlinski makes his living as a writer and not as a scientist, these attacks of his are very cheap. No one expects him to enter a laboratory and emerge with the solution to an actual problem. You never get the impression from his articles that he is trying to direct scientists towards more fruitful avenues of research. Mostly you get the impression that he is someone who writes primarily to show the world how well he writes.
You also get the impression that he is someone who wants to be part of the fray, but does not want to do the hard work of earning his place at the table. He knows his articles will attract a handful of indignant letters from scientists, and that, by answering the letters, he can create the illusion that he is an important person.
He knows that the critical letters will be carefully edited for length. He also knows the critical letters will be balanced by an equal number of friendly letters. And if that’s not enough of an advantage, he also knows that he will be given virtually unlimited space to respond. In such a forum, Berlinski can not lose.
All of this might be forgivable if Berlinski were actually making decent arguments in his articles. But he is not. To see that Berlinski doesn’t really know what he is talking about, consider this statement from the 1997 Firing Line debate on evolution and creationism:
It is always easy to persuade yourself that you’ve understood something when you haven’t understood a thing. The issue before us is not whether retroactively we can explain an adaptation, but whether we can draw that adaptation from general principles. That is what Darwinian theory cannot do. And this is the requirement of normal science.
That statement is so stupid it’s hard to believe Berlinski was serious. Of course the issue is whether we can retroactively explain an adaptation! My goodness, hasn’t the alleged inability of evolution to explain various complex structures been the main anti-evolution argument for the last 150 years? How did the blood clotting cascade evolve? The flagellum? Bird flight? The firing mechanism of the bombardier beetle? The human eye? The immune system? The immunity of the clown fish to the sea anemone? And on and on. Berlinski was sharing a debate platform that night with Michael Behe, who had just written a whole book criticizing evolutionists for not retroactively explaining various complex systems. Why didn’t he turn to Behe and calmly inform him that he had missed the whole point?
The simple fact is that one major goal of evolution is to unravel events that happened in the past. That means retroactively explaining adaptations.
And it is not Darwin’s fault that there is an inescapable element of chance in the evolution of a species over time. It is not a defect in evolutionary theory that it can not predict from general principles the specific adaptations that will arise in the course of evolution. Rather, it is a simple fact of nature that such predictions are not possible.
Berlinski also has some funny ideas about what constitutes normal science. He seems to think that it is large quantities of abstract mathematics that transforms a random discipline into a bona fide science. For example, in his November 2004 Commentary article “On the Origins of the Mind,” he excoriates evolutionary psychology for not making sufficient use of differential equations. And in the op-ed linked to above he writes:
The suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences — quantum electrodynamics, say — is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin’s theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.
Of course, quantum electrodynamics studies simple things, like electromagnetic fields, whereas evolution studies complex things, like the changes in the gene pool of a species over vast periods of time. Scientists simply use the tools that are appropriate for the problems they face. Mathematics is very useful for describing simple, repeatable phenomena. It is less useful for describing complex, unpredictable phenomena.
The business about “thirteen unyielding decimal places” is a delightfully technical line to put before scientifically ignorant readers, but he knows perfectly well that it is a silly standard for judging scientific merit.
For example, to me it seems highly significant that with tens of millions of fossils described and cataloged, not one is out of place from an evolutionary standpoint. I think it’s relevant that studies in comparative anatomy and genetics show just the patterns of similarities and differences that would be necessary for evolution to be a viable theory. I find it fascinating that every complex system studied in detail shows clear evidence not of being a pristine creation from nothing, but rather of having been cobbled together by natural selection.
Would Berlinski have us ignore all that becuase the predictions evolution makes are generally not couched in the language of mathematics?
In the end I mostly regard Berlinski with pity. He is a dishonest purveryor of ignorance, of course, and as such deserves all the scorn that he gets. But he is also someone who had the talent and werewithal to have a real career in mathematics, but instead chose to throw it all away in a series of cowardly hit-and-run attacks on his scientific betters. Somehow he reminds me of this scene from Rocky, in which Rocky (played by Sylvester Stallone) is arguing with his manager Mickey (played by Burgess Meredith):
STALLONE: …Ya know, I been comin’ here for six years, and for six years you been stickin’ it to me. I wanna know how come.
MEREDITH: You don’t wanna know!
STALLONE: Yeah, I wanna know how come!
MEREDITH: You wanna know?
STALLONE: I wanna know now!!
MEREDITH: Okay, I’m gonna tell ya! Cuz you had the talent to become a good fighter! And instead of that, you became a leg breaker for some cheap, second-rate loan shark!
STALLONE: …It’s a livin’.
MEREDITH: It’s a waste o’ life!
Let me give the final wrod to Ken Miller, who delivered my favorite smackdown of Berlinski in the aforementioned Firing Line Debate:
MILLER: However, recent studies of speciation–I am sorry to pick this specific species but it’s relevant to your question–recent studies of speciation in sunflowers have shown conclusively that a new species can be established in terms of a speciation isolation mechanism with as few as ten genetic changes.
BERLINSKI: Yes, I have read the same science papers you have, but those are very close. A dog-like mammal and a whale are very far.
MILLER: Ah, that’s right, and the other side of the room is very far away and it should not surprise you that I get there with one step at a time, and that’s what we are talking about.
(sorry for the length!)
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MYNYMN – They’re on the topic of imagining many universes in order to salvage atheism or philosophic naturalism. Philosophic naturalism is said to define science as we know it and many use it to justify censorship of ID, so it’s quite relevant to point out its failure.
This is wrong and a deliberate Johnson-esque obfuscation. “Philosophic naturalism” does NOT define science, no matter how many times ID proponents try to insist it does in order to whine about imagined persecution. It is apparently their and your fix idee strawman, cause you never seem to give it up, no matter how often you are told that it is methodological (not philosophical or metaphysical) naturalism that defines science. Methodological naturalism implies nothing about whether or not nature is all there is, but simply restricts scientific investigations to the search for natural causes. There are a HOST of good reasons for having a sphere of inquiry that does this! In this context, there is nothing wrong with scientists trying to find natural causes in cosmology. It doesn’t mean they have to be atheists or eschew philosophical belief in a creator. If they get too speculative it’s no big deal. “Multiverses” are NOT an established theory but a kind of theoretical conjecture of no relevance to evolution.
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What, exactly, is your point?
When someone is willfully ignorant enough to insist that Darwinism had nothing to do with Nazism, my point is to correct that based on historical facts.
I suppose you’ve given up on the argument that there is so much evidence that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong that you need not provide any? What, exactly, is your point?
For example, what have multiverses to do with evolution, creationism, intelligent design, academic freedom…
Plenty. Many universes are being imagined by many physicists in order to comport with the same type of philosophic naturalism which is used as a justification for censorship. Philosophic naturalism is also often used as a justification for attacks on theism, yet science itself may indicate that one infinite God is a more reasonable view than an infinite number of universes:
….Hitler, Stein, or anything else we’ve been discussing? NOTHING!
The notion of multiple universes has to do with philosophic naturalism and science, which has much to do with the topic.
Now what is your point and what would you take issue with? It seems that for all your talk of illogic (so much that you need not even demonstrate it) your first example fails.
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The notion of multiple universes has to do with philosophic naturalism and science, which has much to do with the topic.
Then why didn’t you just talk about philosophic naturalism?! That would have been clearer.
Mainstream scientists generally believe there is good reason for science to be restricted to the natural sphere, since you cannot otherwise practice its method of testing theories. I agree.
ID proves this point dramatically, for even as it clamors for inclusion of “supernatural” explanations, it necessarily provides no means of testing such an explanation. So how can it then be science? It can’t.
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The argument from design is as old as the hills and has produced nothing of value in science. Newton believed the arrangement of the planets to be so improbable (from an ensemble of random possibilities) as to imply design, so made no effort to account for planetary origins. But now we have a theory of planet formation from the collapse of a cloud core that is 1) observed to take place and 2) explains all the properties Newton thought we improbable. When this theory first began to be accepted, religious people had no trouble with the idea of creation by natural law. But DI IDers seem to think that natural explanations necessarily displace faith. If so, their God of the gaps is in a whole heap o’ trouble! This juxtaposition puts God in a very precarious place! In the end, it will do a lot of damage to faith. That’s why it is “poor theology.”
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It is apparently their and your fix idee strawman, cause you never seem to give it up, no matter how often you are told that it is methodological (not philosophical or metaphysical) naturalism that defines science.
That tortured argument is the equivalent of “panda’s thumb” theological arguments. You begin by arguing that theology can have nothing to do with science while making theological arguments. Forbid all answers because they are theological, then gradually people emerge from this sea of hypocrisy to argue that science and religion are at war, there is no God, etc. Similarly, you being by arguing that science is too limited and myopic to see important truths and must confine itself to answers which seem “natural” to you and then conclude that you’ve found the truth. Note that what is natural may include many universes in which anything is possible, although none of which God exists in because that is impossible.
In the end this is all that has happened: “We must confine ourselves to explanations that seem natural. We now have many explanations which seem natural. We have so many that they seem a bit overwhelming to me. Wow, there is no evidence for anything but naturalism! I will now teach my students the truth that I have found.”
Back to the highschool biology teacher:
It seems that the Darwinian creation myth may even be taught as an absolute truth, apparently it is the only one allowed.
Methodological naturalism implies nothing about whether or not nature is all there is…
If you change science from seeking the truth and following the evidence wherever it leads to a method of building explanations which seem “natural” to a majority of scientists then don’t simultaneously act like you’re finding the truth by following the evidence wherever it leads.
If you’re really limiting your knowledge in a myopic way then don’t claim knowledge of origins, of human nature, etc. You should be the first to correct charlatans (Dawkins, Dennett, etc.) who do claim such knowledge based on science rather than incessantly attacking their opponents.
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Any individual, scientist or otherwise, is perfectly free to believe that a particular scientific explanation is inadequate! If they want to prove this in the scientific sphere they will be asked to provide good evidence. If they can’t, they’re still free to believe it; appealing to the public sphere in areas beyond they’re expertise, solely to gain political influence over the processes of science is, however, sleazy and worthy of the most strenuous opposition – for the sake of academic freedom!.
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#237 Dawkins and Dennett are welcome to their beliefs – I don’t share them, and I don’t believe science can be marshaled in defense of their most extreme viewpoints. Most scientists think this. Why then, do they get so much play in the public sphere? Because goons like Ben Stein set them up as “examples” of all scientists everywhere in order to knock them down. The real problem here is not scientific censorship of Dawkins – he can say what he likes in the non-professional sphere – it’s that people like yourself insist on conflating Dawkins with all scientists everywhere, despite many highly publicized examples to the contrary!
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#237 For all this blustering about how supernatural explanations can be science, I have yet to see one satisfactory working example!!
Have you seen one? What is it?
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More Buzz from reason.com:
Flunk This Movie!
“Ben Stein’s new anti-science movie Expelled is all worldview and no evidence.”
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When someone is willfully ignorant enough to insist that Darwinism had nothing to do with Nazism, my point is to correct that based on historical facts.
Right. When someone is dishonest enough to argue such a relation and ignore the much more significant relationship between the rise of Hitler and the invention and modification of the internal combustion engine, your point is rather trivial. In fact, it is irrelevant. Why? Because it is not causal. It is just the same ideological rhetoric that in other forms we recognize as profanity. Or alternatively (and equally) Mommie I just made a poopie.
mynym when you squat and tinkle on what you presume to be the ‘wrong’ way to do science as in here it becomes very difficult to take you seriously when you say “I’m not a postmodernist”.
If you change science from seeking the truth and following the evidence wherever it leads to a method of building explanations which seem “natural” to a majority of scientists then don’t simultaneously act like you’re finding the truth by following the evidence wherever it leads.
Because you so are.
Oh, do tell “What is the truth?” How would we know? As I have pointed out many times before, and you seem to fail to understand, we have moved past such essentialist nonsense.
When a biologist tells you that there is no such thing as a theory-independent observational language, that all facts are theory soaked, absolute frames of reference are not necessary to explain complicated systems, etc- how can you then still use your narrative form of model selection and still feel like you are intellectually honest. You seem like you are intelligent enough, so we both know that you are playing ontological silly buggers here.
as someone else has said in a galaxy not so far away, “Eristic, yet otioise”. Praise be to him.
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The argument from design is as old as the hills and has produced nothing of value in science.
As many historians have pointed out arguments from design are linked to the rise of science as we know it:
In contrast, Nazism and the eugenics movement in general would seem to illustrate that when the basis of systematic scientia/knowledge is avoided and openly denied science quickly degenerates into pseudo-science.
Newton believed the arrangement of the planets to be so improbable (from an ensemble of random possibilities) as to imply design, so made no effort to account for planetary origins.
He may still be proven correct. It matters little, there is no reason to deny all design simply because occasionally people occasionally attribute design to “random” or “natural” processes. And as Aristotle would point out all natural causation ultimately rests on an unmoved Mover of one type or another.
When this theory first began to be accepted, religious people had no trouble with the idea of creation by natural law. But DI IDers seem to think that natural explanations necessarily displace faith.
No they don’t. Cite them.
If so, their God of the gaps is in a whole heap o’ trouble! This juxtaposition puts God in a very precarious place! In the end, it will do a lot of damage to faith. That’s why it is “poor theology.”
Most IDers only use a juxtaposition within a larger framework of ultimate Design. That is to say, the question is what does God leave to unfold according to natural laws that He created vs. what has Mind of God imprinted on matter directly in the form of information and so on. Some believe that God leaves more to natural laws, others less. This is a debate within Design which Darwin would agree with, according to what he wrote in the origins. Yet it is also a debate which is supposedly “unconstitutional” and one which you would censor from public schools and so on as Expelled apparently points out.
The God of the gaps argument generally makes sense to those who are atheists or people blinded by fear about their faith because the only way to support it is to assume that God is not sovereign over everything. As Berlinski points out:
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ID proves this point dramatically, for even as it clamors for inclusion of “supernatural” explanations, it necessarily provides no means of testing such an explanation. So how can it then be science? It can’t.
Not to worry, all one need do is imagine that there are many universes, naturally enough. There is no need to include the “supernatural.” One could even call one imaginary universe heaven, another hell and have physicists write some papers about how anything is possible and so on. Yet it would seem that we cannot imagine things in this way, not scientifically anyway, as the only rule that defines “science” these days is the methodological rejection and repudiation of Christian theology and we would have just imagined things rather too close to that!
The question seems to be, is there anything other than a rejection of Christian theology which defines the “rules” of science these days?
Supposedly naturalism defines science, although it seems a little unnatural given that it apparently allows for imagining many Natures in order to exclude Christian theology.
I’m just finishing reading Berlinski’s book so on this topic:
Ironically, if “supernaturalism” has nothing to do with science then naturalism also has nothing to do with science because one is the falsification of the other. You demand observation and testing with respect to supernaturalism, so what way do you suppose that naturalism is open to testing and falsification?
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Right. When someone is dishonest enough to argue such a relation and ignore the much more significant relationship between the rise of Hitler and the invention and modification of the internal combustion engine, your point is rather trivial.
Once again you illustrate the banal stupidity of failing to understand the link between intelligence and design. The relationship between Darwinian reasoning and Nazism is significant because signs of design are the imprint of intention, intelligent agency and reason itself. The reasoning of Nazism was its motivation, that is why it is significant to point out the relationship between Nazi reasoning and Darwinian reasoning.
Like many biologists you have apparently become blinded by the physical substrate of existence. Ironically that’s why you seem to have nothing of “substance” to say. As far as your puerile meanderings go, excrement is just another element of the physical substrate. As the gardening God pointed out it is not what comes out of a man that makes him unclean, it is his thoughts which do that.
In fact, it is irrelevant. Why? Because it is not causal.
Reasoning is causal in the human mind, it is quite significant to point that out. But if you would like to believe that your reasoning is an artifact of natural selection operating on the excretory organs of ancient ape-like creatures then go ahead. Biologists have long been stupid enough to do just that and we are all human, all too human and almost just humus, after all.
It is just the same ideological rhetoric that in other forms we recognize as profanity. Or alternatively (and equally) Mommie I just made a poopie.
You have always failed to deal with the fact that in seeking to dissolve signs of intelligent agency in biology you’ve also dissolved your own significance as a biological being.
Oh, do tell “What is the truth?” How would we know? As I have pointed out many times before, and you seem to fail to understand, we have moved past such essentialist nonsense.
You can move past whatever you like based on imagining things about the past or imagining myths about Progress. I will remain were I am in order to point out some of your existentialist and proto-Nazi tendencies and I would note along with Karl Kraus that “Progress” will make purses out of human skin. The truth is that many truths are timeless and essential.
When a biologist tells you that there is no such thing as a theory-independent observational language… how can you then still use your narrative form of model selection and still feel like you are intellectually honest.
I don’t use a narrative form of model selection, that seems to be a projection of the tendency of evolutionary biologists to imagine mythological narratives of naturalism. And as far as intellectual honesty goes, when a biologist tells me and impressionable school children that they have a level of theory for the origin of life forms that is epistemically similar to the theory of gravity then I know that they are intellectually dishonest or stupid.
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Rotten Tomatoes has a nice collection of recent reviews today:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Out of 13 reviews, 12 are “rotten” and 1 is “fresh”
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#247
mynym oozes
The relationship between Darwinian reasoning and Nazism is significant because signs of design are the imprint of intention, intelligent agency and reason itself. The reasoning of Nazism was its motivation, that is why it is significant to point out the relationship between Nazi reasoning and Darwinian reasoning.
No, troll. You use words like ‘darwinian reasoning’ as if they meant something. They don’t. But don’t let me interrupt your long soliloquy from consequences. Getting rid of the Jews was Christian reasoning in the same convoluted and lazy way that you use Darwinian. How many times do we need to provide those quotes that you love to ignore (I’m sure you wish evilutionists would use your quotation method but instead they demand predicate logic, and postmodern gollums like yourself avoid that like the light of day).
Nazi reasoning=Christian reasoning=Darwinian reasoning=Crappy historical scholarship method. Go back to square one.
ooh, then he rolls over and squeezes this one out
But if you would like to believe that your reasoning is an artifact of natural selection operating on the excretory organs of ancient ape-like creatures then go ahead.
who ever said that? (hint, liar: no one).
this one is hot and stinky
signs of intelligent agency in biology
Really? Where are they? What natural thing could point at the supernatural? Confused are you.
It is worthy of note that under all the huster and bluster of ID creationism, even their own examples are lies. Their methods to detect design fail (anyone want to calculate CSI with me? use the EF? c’mon!). That doesn’t stop dishonest cowards from ignoring those results and persisting in claims about ‘design’ in biology. When asked to show the evidence, liars claim ‘religious persecution’ and ’stifling dissent’ and ‘no academic freedom’. It is truly detestable.
ooh heres a good one
The truth is that many truths are timeless and essential.
Yeah. and it is also the truth that you claim this as an axiom and you fail to show it. More of the same dishonest drum beating I pointed out in the previous point. Cart before the horse classic crap scholarship.
Just like a cherry on top of a cow pie
I don’t use a narrative form of model selection,
ROFLMAO. ORLY? when you resort to comparing ‘naturalism’ (whatever that is) to ‘mythology’ you certainly are.
these exchanges would be much more enjoyable if you would go ahead and disrobe as the solipcist po-mo relativizer for JEsus that you really are down deep. Question your assumptions, you do not.
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#248 – Okay, it’s now 20 rotten and 1 fresh; the “fresh” review comes from “ComminSoon.net” – predictable, no?
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A funny zinger from the New York Post Review under “Creative Writhing”
In a long, greasy detour, Stein shows that the Nazis were Darwinists. So what? They also liked skiing.
“Zing”
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Ooh – another “fresh” review on RT – this time from “Christianity Today”.
Could there be a better thermometer of the culture war in this country?
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Epistemology – the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity.
There is no length to which reprobate scholars will go to deny God. American academia has denied their own limitations and conferred upon themselves absolute moral authority on the Truth of past events. They deny that there is a philosophical foundation behind every scientific premise.
Not long ago, such nonsense would be ridiculed; now it’s a prerequisite for tenure. They go to any length to downplay, deny or ignore their most human trait, which is their fallibility, finitude and religiosity. They will scorn the most important sense of the meaning of religion, which is “a cause, principle, or belief held to with faith and ardor.” They don’t realize how ontologically challenged they really are.
Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
The assurance and hope of the reprobate scholar is seeing not God. If only “Expelled” expounded this Truth.
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“They [American Academia] deny that there is a philosophical foundation behind every scientific premise.”
No they don’t. Did you make that up yourself or hear it from somebody else who made it up?
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A little of the ID science-or-religion dilemma played out at an Expelled post-screeing question session as follows (from a New Scientist Blog):
“I shot my hand up to ask a question. “The intelligent design movement has gone to great lengths to argue that intelligent design is not religion, that it’s science. And you made a whole film arguing that it is religious. How do they react to that?”
“Well,” Mathis said, “I guess it makes them a little uncomfortable.”
Some arguing ensued concerning the scientific merits of ID, and someone asked, “Where’s the evidence? Where are the peer reviewed papers?” to which Mathis proudly proclaimed, “Actually, there are ten peer reviewed papers.”
A guy in the front row scoffed. “Ten papers?” he asked sarcastically.
Mathis told the guy not to interrupt, and then mockingly called him “Mr Darwinist.” Zing!
He began calling on others in the crowd, who asked friendlier questions. But Maggie and I quickly realised that we’d seen some of these people before – earlier that evening, in fact, working at the movie’s registration table. These friendly audience members worked for the film? Had Mathis planted questioners?
People asked what they could do to help the film succeed, and a young woman in the front row inquired: “How can I pray for you and for the movie?” Mathis grew excited. “We need to start a grass roots movement!” he said, encouraging people to tell their “networks” about the movie and to get as many people as they could to go on opening weekend.
Another man in the front row wondered about the film’s premise that supporters of ID are being silenced. He pointed out that a recent trial about the teaching of intelligent design held in Dover, Pennsylvania, gave supporters of intelligent design all the time in the world to make their case, but most of the ‘leading lights’ of ID didn’t even show up.
When Mathis was responding, the guy asked another question, and the producer shot back, “How about you let me finish talking?” Then, a security guard for the film approached the calmly seated man and told him, “I may have to ask you to leave.”
“Does anyone else see how ironic this is?” the guy asked.
“Shut up!” someone shouted from the back.
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Spinoza nice.
Expelled looks like a dog so far. I know WOW has a dedicated fawning thread and I don’t go see any movies in the theater so I will add some reviews here.
THeMissingLink says
I took a field trip today and gave those lying snakes my $7.50. I figured that since I’ve been following the saga for the last year or two I should actually see the film.
I live about 2 miles from Stephan Meyer’s office in Redmond, WA and I saw the film in the theater just down the street from there.
There were perhaps 80 to 100 people at the 2:50pm matinee. It looked to me like most were in their 40s or older. There were two teenage girls a few rows in front of me, and I was really wondering if Bueller-Ben was that big of a draw for them. They left before Ben’s 3 minute opening speech, though, so I guess the answer was no.
Based on the location of the laughs and the post-film conversations I overheard, I’d say that one half or more of the audience was neutral or positive about the movie’s message.
I was a little surprised that the movie was even more bat***t than I expected; so in that sense I’m glad I saw it. And I’m sad to say that I can see where it would be compelling to someone who knows little about the history of evolution science.
It was great to see, though, that the top IDiots all lined up on camera to convincingly assosciate ID with “God.” The ID movement would have trouble winning any first amendment case on the back of anyone in that film now, I think.
For the full effect, I even went to “Victors Coffee” (the coffee shop where Stephan Meyer was interviewed) on the way home. I’d never been in there and it turns out they have pretty good coffee and cheesecake! So, thanks Ben, for educating me. There is an 8×10 Expelled flyer hanging next to the register with a note that reads “Go see this movie – Victor’s is in it!”.
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I’ll post some more reviews of Expelled here as I get them.
For now, there is a contest by NCSE to correct Stein’s errors.
In promoting the creationist propaganda film Expelled, Ben Stein managed to stick his foot in his mouth over and over again, issuing what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of ignorant, offensive, and just plain daffy claims. Here’s your chance to set Ben straight.
Help out.
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“Help out”
I would, but I’d have to see the thing. It’s actually not playing in my town (!), so that makes it even easier to pass up.
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A post in the democratic underground;
Proof that Ben Stein is a conspiracy!
The creationists win. I now understand completely their message. Yes the natural world does not exist outside of my beliefs. My mere thought of mind can change the world to what I believe should happen rather than what does. From this I concluded Ben Stein does not exist. Sure he may appear on TV, in movies, and write bad stock advice in the editorial section of the newspaper, but I believe these false images of Ben Stein have been planted by God to test me (and apparently stock traders). And since they’re my beliefs, the fact that they are directly contradicted by fact makes them almost certainly to be fact instead of a belief. You can point to a printed article from Ben Stein and then a few weeks later another articles and say see Ben Stein must exist and continue to exist because he keeps writing. But I can not be fooled! Where you see evidence of existence I see gaps in between written evidence where no evidence of Ben Stein’s existence exists. So for every one piece of Ben Stein existence evidence you produce I see two new gaps of non-existence and two is bigger than one. So Ben Stein does not exist. You may present baby photo’s, high school year books and Nixon speeches as evidence of Ben Stein’s existence, but I tell you there is no place on Earth where all of the Ben Stein historical record can be witnessed and thus you can discount it all! That baby photo could just be a water mark left by Noah’s great flood. Ben Stein does not appear once in my bible! I would think if God wanted me to believe in Ben Stein he would have left a margin note somewhere in there (hopefully real close to the front because once you hit Leviticus it’s Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz time). I conclude Ben Stein is just a conspiracy by “Big Science” design to get me to waste my precious time on Earth on the entertainment industry when I could be at home contemplating reading the bible while I do something more productive.
Ben Stein does not exist QED
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“Ben Stein does not exist QED”
If only I had more faith …
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MSNBC review:
Intelligent design film far worse than stupid
Ben Stein’s so-called documentary ‘Expelled’ isn’t just bad, it’s immoral
“Rarely has a movie subtitle so capably assessed a movie’s content as does “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” There is not a shred of intelligence on display in this just released “documentary” purporting to be a careful examination of the fight over teaching creationism and evolution in America.”
I guess they didn’t like it ….
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seems to be a trend, huh.
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it must be that librul bias to the media, whaddyasay? surely these secular sources have been indoctrinated by the evilutionist darwinian evil atheist conspiracy.
libruls hate freedom and Expelled is all about Teh Freedom.
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SPINOZA: World has editorialized emphatically in the past that intelligent design is science, not religion, because the “designer” is not necessarily “God”. “Expelled” says the opposite . . . how are we to interpret this World Flip Flop?!
Good question! I searched in vain for Mickey’s answer, so I’ll have to speak on his behalf!
Heresy is worse than looking dumb! Telling your kids that an intelligent agent not God made their DNA is heresy. Reversion to paganism, in fact. At some point, someone turned on the light and the intelligent agent who was not God became inoperative.
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There are lots of amusing Expelled interviews, but for delightfully droll British wit, the award has to go to TimesOnline for Ben Stein releases anti-evolutionary documentary: An aggressive American documentary lays into Richard Dawkins and rubbishes Darwinism – and all from a man who was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Besides making the usual points about Stein, some fun is poked at Dawkins as well.
Some of my fave paragraphs:
Okay, so Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, an anti-evolution documentary released in America this weekend, timed as an ironic salute to Charles Darwin’s birthday, casts Dawkins as a hate-monger, an academic boot boy – and the most dangerous Briton since George III. Yet such controversy should help sell a few more copies of The God Delusion, surely? Dawkins, provoked, still cannot bring himself to name Expelled’s writer, Ben Stein. “That man,” he sizzles quietly, “That man is… well, it’s just nonsense.”
Minutes later, when Dawkins addresses 3,000 fans cheering him to the rafters of Arizona State University, on the first night of his rock’n’roll-style God Delusion University Tour 2008, he waxes more poetic: “Were there ever a dog that praised his fleas?” he asks elliptically, quoting WB Yeats.
Ben Stein is one big flea, however, and, to tangle the metaphors further, a man with a bee in his bonnet. Indeed, a bee with a mission – to prove that American academics are being expelled from universities for daring to suggest that creationism should be taught in science classes.
…
Stein does not attempt to detail the logic of creationism, instead focusing on half a dozen academics who claim their beliefs disrupted their professional upward mobility. Looking at them, though, you can think of other reasons why maybe they crashed and burnt.
Re: the “expulsion” of Myers at a screening
A producer of the film, however, spotted the American biology prof [Myers] in the queue and got security guards to escort him from the cinema because he was “not welcome”.
Dawkins, meanwhile, strolled in and, when the “shoddy and boring” film ended, stirred up the absurdity of the expulsion at Expelled’s question-and-answer session with the producers.
It was, said one blogger, as if Beelzebub himself had arisen in a puff of smoke in the temple. People left the film crossing themselves. “And that was a lot more fun than the film itself.”
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Well it’s official:
Yoko sues “Expelled” filmmakers over Imagine”
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Well the first “evolution challenge” bill passed in florida on the heels of “Expelled” – how long until it goes to court?
Fla. Senate Passes Evolution Challenge Bill
On the other hand, ICR was just rejected in its bid to award “creation science” degrees.
Texas higher education board rejects ‘creation science’ degree proposal
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I guess Fla. is not quite a done deal – A Senate and House version have been passed, but they don’t yet agree with one another…
Evolution bill in jeopardy?
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OK – this one’s funny!
Entertainment Weekly: I saw it, so you don’t have to: Ben Stein’s ‘Expelled’
In retrospect, I really shoulda known better. I’d clicked through the bottom-of-the-barrel Rotten Tomatoes rating, the various erudite bloggers slamming it, and, of course, my esteemed cubicle-neighbor Adam Markovitz’s scathing D-grade review. But still, it had Ben Stein! He was funny in Ferris Bueller! And me, I have a slight glutton-for-punishment streak. So I succumbed to the relentless TV ad campaign earlier this week and went to see a matinee showing of the anti-evolution documentary Expelled. Worst decision ever.
Aside from its loony-fringe politics and sheer stupidity — think, for a moment, about how dumb you’d have to be to subtitle your deadly serious pseudo-science film “No Intelligence Allowed” — this movie is just excruciatingly bad from an aesthetic perspective. Imagine if the grating schoolteacher Stein played in Bueller got a whole movie to himself, and it was a holier-than-thou culture-war diatribe instead of a fizzy teen comedy, and also Stein’s character was revealed to be an ignorant creep with a penchant for wildly inappropriate Holocaust references. Now I understand why Ferris wanted that day off so desperately!
Anyone else sit through this monstrous excuse for a movie? I stuck around for the whole thing, and never have 90 minutes felt longer. I actually started groaning and muttering at the screen when Stein shamelessly exploited the memory of the millions whom Hitler murdered — which, apparently, was Charles Darwin’s fault somehow?! (Seriously, what was Stein thinking with that?) I’d apologize to the audience members who were irritated by my involuntary heckling, but there were only like four of them, and they were people who had paid money to see Expelled, so I don’t really feel too bad. Anyway, take it from me: Do not see this movie under any circumstances. Not ironically, not so you can mock it in the footnotes of your Ph.D dissertation on molecular biology, not even because you think it might make a funny “I saw it, so you don’t have to” blog item. And if you already made the mistake I did and subjected yourself to this stinker, go ahead and vent your feelings below — and please accept my condolences…”
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