Posted on 04/26/2008 7:48:11 PM PDT by Retain Mike
Mocked and belittled Interview: Ben Stein’s new documentary may give macro-evolutionary theory a deserved hard time, and he plans to have fun with it along the way | Megan Basham
Bebeto Matthews/AP Though audiences probably know Ben Stein best as the economics teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the actor had a distinguished career preceding the classic '80s movie—just not in the entertainment industry.
Long before ad-libbing the world's most famously boring free-market lecture, Stein was a Yale-trained trial lawyer, a professor at Pepperdine University, an economist, and a speechwriter for presidents Nixon and Ford. Even today, along with his acting, voice-over, and game-show-hosting work, he writes regular business columns for The New York Times and Yahoo! Finance Online, as well as numerous books and articles on various political topics. Of all of Hollywood's politically outspoken celebrities, Stein's impressive resumé makes him the likeliest candidate for most credible.
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One example is String Theory, or the “theory of everything”; everything for atomic, micro-processes. Elegant mathematical models utilize eleven dimensions to unify gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear strong and weak forces. Here is computation without experiment, measurement, or observation. Niels Bohr would say, “Yes, yes you have the mathematics. But does it make sense?” Notable critics say scientists utilize mathematics, but inadvertently venture into philosophy or religion. Rigorous debate continues.
At the other extreme is Darwinism, where all is observation. Rigorous measurements and experiments require 1,000 to 10,000 times recorded history. Scientists contemplate observed phenomenon, and decide evolution explains everything. Yet evolution does fail computational testing with Thermodynamics covering macro-processes. Natural processes, required by natural selection, create increased disorder, release energy, and increase entropy. Even huge energy inputs result in Katrina, and not the Brooklyn Bridge absent intentionality. All debate prohibited.
One standard for good science is usefulness. Even if Darwinism stumbles in explaining physical phenomenon, it has already contributed vital social and political apologetics. Darwin’s life on PBS explained his important contributions to predatory nationalism, capitalism and socialism as seen through lives of Adolf Hitler, John D. Rockefeller, and Vladimir Lenin. Darwinism’s utility remains esteemed for convincing masses to relinquish control to elites. That is an important inference from Ben Stein’s movie Expelled.
One standard for good science is usefulness. Even if Darwinism stumbles in explaining physical phenomenon, it has already contributed vital social and political apologetics. Darwin’s life on PBS explained his important contributions to predatory nationalism, capitalism and socialism as seen through lives of Adolf Hitler, John D. Rockefeller, and Vladimir Lenin. Darwinism’s utility remains esteemed for convincing masses to relinquish control to elites. That is an important inference from Ben Stein’s movie Expelled.
Nice hit pieces (your post and Stein's movie).
They may go over well with those who don't know any better, and who are willing to accept propaganda without investigating its accuracy.
Explain to me please how Darwinism conforms to the scientific method any more than creationism or intelligent design.
The predators Chuckie D wrote about knew nothing of political boundaries.
It derives from, and answers to, scientific theory and observation.
Creationism and Intelligent Design derive from pious belief, and answer to nothing.
The theory of evolution has evidence and theory.
Creationism and intelligent design have neither. They are religious beliefs relying on revealed knowledge.
Durn, I’m channeling dr_lew tonight!
Political predators have had no problem finding people to make the philosophical linkages you pretend do not exist, but were explained on the PBS series..
If it is propaganda, you will have to problem posting the derivation of Evolution using Termodynamic equations.
I am not pretending anything doesn't exist. If you can produce a work of Darwin's in which Darwin favors predatory nationalism, whatever that is, I would be happy to read it.
I'm a bones type, sorry. I don't do equations.
But we did have a poster here a year or two ago that told us evolution was impossible because of the Law of Thermal Documents.
And many more who claimed it is impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Is this what you are referring to?
Just the Second? There was a claim that evolution was disproved by Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics.
... Third, Cleaver voted for the curriculum change despite the teachers' objections, based upon assurances from Bonsell. (32:23-25 (Cleaver)). Cleaver admittedly knew nothing about ID, including the words comprising the phrase, as she consistently referred to ID as "intelligence design" throughout her testimony.
Tyrants require philosophical justification to convince masses to surrender freedom to them and do their bidding. Lenin combined Marx and Darwin to prove the working class would rise to dominate the society, so his revolution was a natural, inevitable event. Hitler combined Nietzsche, Darwin and others to prove the Nordic race superior to all others, especially the Jews and Slavic peoples from whom Germans would take land. John D. Rockefeller and other robber barons looked to Darwin for the justification any use of their wealth and power was entirely proper, because possession alone was a natural condition and damage to other humans was a natural outcome. About any religion or philosophy can be backwards engineered into reasons for a tyrants reign. Those doing political apologetics have kidnapped the science in Darwinism for their objectives.
Amazing. The human body with all of its myriad astonishing parts was not designed, hum? The universe, so perfectly ordered, was not designed. The fact that our earth is the appropriate distance from the sun was not designed.
It takes much more faith and religion to belive in Darwin’s theory than I can possibly muster. And yes, Darwinism is a religion. It’s proponents cling to it against all odds without any evidence.
I agree.
Is it falsifiable?
Very astute. However, have you considered that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle reciprocates the application of thermodynamics in this domain?
False. The theory of evolution is a science. And there is an immense amount of evidence supporting that theory.
I studied that evidence for six years in grad school, so I have seen it. I would guess that you are getting your information concerning the theory of evolution from religious believers and creationist websites. You should be very careful with those sources, as they tend to lie about the theory of evolution.
Of course it’s falsifiable, and has passed many tests. There is the discovery of numerous hominids in the fossil record, which went beyond the hopes of finding
a “missing link” by revealing an entire homind family.
I think the most spectacular passed test is that DNA comparisons confirm the grand scheme of the evolutionary tree inferred from anatomical comparisons. The existence of a universal genetic code was itself an important test. None of this had to be true, a priori, remembering that the mechanism of genetics was entirely unknown in Darwin’s day.
Of course, every passed test is one less chance for falsification, so it becomes less and less falsifiable as time goes on, like the sphericity of the earth. There will always remain the chance of digging up something that will throw us for a loop - on the moon, for example.
I have because his principle really becomes important at above .3 times the speed of light. That is where “tunneling” begin to occur and order defies probabilities associated with macro processes.
I realized this morning I did not complete my thought. My note about John D. Rockefeller should have included Adam Smith. Darwinism has such a pernicious utility, because it can be appended to any philosophy or religion. As a catalyst the tyrant’s priest, or lawyer can backwards engineer the amalgam into a logic justifying the superiority of he and his elite.
Creationism and intelligent design have neither. They are religious beliefs relying on revealed knowledge.
ID takes the view that life is too complex and too smart to have spontaneously sprung to life and looks for ways to prove it.
Darwinism takes the view that life came from a pool of ooze or other such nonsense and looks for ways to prove it.
Both are theories, both can be approached scientifically. Darwinism is no less a religious belief than ID, and relies no less on revealed knowledge.
If we landed on Mars and found no life but found skyscrapers, would we not look to scientifically show evidence of intelligent design of the skyscrapers? The only difference here is that life is so much more complex and amazing than a skyscraper.
Expelled: No Intelligence Offered - part 1 (Win Ben Stein's Monkey Trial!)
Expelled: No Intelligence Offered - part 2 (Ben in the Dock)
Darwinism takes the view that life came from a pool of ooze or other such nonsense and looks for ways to prove it.
Both are theories, both can be approached scientifically. Darwinism is no less a religious belief than ID, and relies no less on revealed knowledge.
What you write is incorrect in many respects.
1. There is no such thing as "Darwinism." That is a scare word dreamed up by creationists to make the theory of evolution easier to mock. See the review I cite in post #26, above. Using the term "Darwinism" is as accurate as using the term "Newtonism" to describe physics and "Newtonists" to describe physicists.
2. The theory of evolution does not deal with origins. Claiming that it does is a falsehood largely promoted by creationists either in an effort to discredit evolution among those who don't know any better, or out of ignorance.
3. Evolution and ID are not "both theories" nor can both be approached scientifically. The theory of evolution can, but ID cannot. Again, see the review I linked to in post #26. It says it better than I can.
4. The theory of evolution is not a religious belief. That it is a religion is another falsehood apparently being promoted by creationists. Making this claim ignores facts and reality (another trait of creationists). The fact is that a great many scientists who study evolutionary subjects have a personal religion. It just may not be the same exact flavor of religion that you prefer.
5. The theory of evolution does not rely on revealed knowledge. That is the absolute antithesis of science, and plays no part in any science. It exhibits either dishonesty or ignorance of scientific methods to claim that revelation is a part of science.
6. The field of abiogenesis deals with origins, and there are several competing hypotheses being studied. None has yet risen to the level of a scientific theory. It is possible that none will. But the theory of evolution is a different and unrelated field of study.
7. The modern version of ID traces its origins directly to religion, not science. Read the Wedge Strategy. The whole sordid plot is laid out there -- too bad the document leaked and gave it all away. The evidence for this was all laid out in the Dover trial.
8. ID's supposition that life is too complex to have occurred naturally is a religious belief, not a scientific theory. It is saying, we can't explain this detail, or that gap, so something invisible and undetectable that I happen to believe in did it! Thunder and lightning, and disease, were once the province of the gods, but science figured them out in time. If you are willing to reconcile your deity to those gaps in current scientific knowledge, be prepared to see them shrink one by one as science figures things out.
That's all for now.
In the Physics department Thermodynamics is called Statistical Mechanics, which highlights the fact this discipline includes mathematics formulas allowing computation of probabilities for macro phenomenon outcome. Arriving at a double helix from primordial soup carries a vanishingly small probability. Multiply by that the probability of simultaneous evolving of a double helix with a non-gibberish sequence of bases, times the probability of several proteins that will read and assist in reading the non-gibberish code that would contain in it, times the probability for the proper code to generate more proteins to read, and then times the probability of transcribing the code into living creatures that do a lot more than just read and transcribe protein.
For example, for vision to occur at least twenty-seven things are necessary in the DNA molecule. If any one thing is missing, no vision occurs and there is no evolutionary selective advantage for any of these items. The same applies to markers needed for tissue, bones, hair, lungs, gills, scales, ears, and etc., etc. Evolution fails the computational test because of the principle of irreducible complexity. Here the probabilities to go from the primordial soup to the first mammal would be at least 1 over 100,000 to the 1,000,000th power. Since science is a four-fold set of tests, then the popular conclusions from observation alone are questionable.
Origins of the Species scientists seem to be especially hesitant that examination of their work would inevitably lead to a religious outcome, when compared for example to theoretical physicists. However, any good theologian of the desert religions would say that a god hedged in by observation, measurement, experiment, and computation ends up as equivalent to the Golden Calf the Israelites constructed in the Wilderness. Any pronouncement of religious proof should be treated with contempt by science and religion alike.
The mathematics are only correct if they are correctly modeling the system.
Mathematicians are not experts in biology, and they really should keep their opinions to themselves until they understand what it is they are modeling.
Remember the tale of the mathematician who "proved" that a bumblebee can't fly? It never happened, but the story does illustrate the point.
Please, you are unthinkingly passing along unscientific, pro-evolution propaganda.
Evolutionist's claims that single-cell organisms evolved into humans over the course of billions of years, for example, have never been substantiated by the consistent results of repeatable, scientific-method based experiments. This is for the simple reason that such experiments would likewise take billions of years to conduct; an impossibility. And then there is the "minor" problem of repeating such time-consuming experiments to verify outcome.
Also, when experiments that are said to simulate great periods of time have been conducted in order to try to observe so-called evolution processes at work, the harmful mutations that resulted forced a different conclusion about evolution than what evolution "scientists" were seeking.
Finally, this post (<-click), while addressing a 10 Commandments issue, gives an idea how never-ending creationism versus evolution arguments are a consequence of the USSC's perversions of our constitutional religious freedoms.
I guess that proves it. The statistical probability that I exist is vanishingly small. To hell with, “I think therefor I am.” Thinking has made me not.
The PAK gene is responsible for the forming of the DNA that creates vision. This PAK gene performs the same function in humans and fruit flies. If you replace some high level DNA gene in a fruit fly embryo with a human PAK gene, the fruit fly will develop eyes in place what is supposed to be there. For example, eyes in the place of legs. (The human PAK gene in a fruit fly embryo will create fruit fly eyes rather than human eyes).
Look into evolutionary embryology. It comes at the question of evolution from a very different point of view. This topic will fascinate you even if you do not accept statistical probability that I exist.
What would constitute a failure? And if a theory of Creation predicts that a single Creator would use similar methods for creating different forms of life (i.e. DNA, etc.), how is DNA evidence for one theory over the other? And if your answer is that the "theory" of Creation is religious, not scientific, you're begging the question, I think.
I still don't see how evolutionary theory - Darwinism - conforms to the scientific method any more than Creationism or ID.
What you write is incorrect in many respects.
1. There is no such thing as creationists. That is a word dreamed up by Darwinists. Hey look, my spell check even recognized the made up word “Darwinists”!
2. Following the theory of evolution backwards leads to the origin of life. Just because you say black is white doesn’t make it so.
3. ID is a theory, it has not yet been proven scientifically but is being approached scientifically. Again, as my example if we were to find skyscrapers on an alien world we would theorize they were created by aliens - even if none existsed. The science that would form up to figure out how they were created would start with the theory that aliens created it. Just because you throw a something/someone into the theory does not make it less of a theory. BTW, the big bang “theory” also has a something/someone starting it into motion.
4. Correct. The theory of evolution is not in and of itself a religion. However, many defend it as such. They think ID threatens their belief system, which it does, but it does not threaten their science.
5. Either both ID and evolution rely on revealed knowledge (dealing specifically with how the first life started) or they do not. Take your pick, but they BOTH do it in the same matter.
6. Evolution does deal with origins and has implications that directly deal with origins. Just because the theory itself is bigger than that does not exclude it. Again, just because you state something over and over again does not make it so.
7. I care not where a theory originated. Theories should be let stand to scientific scrutiny. ID is not being allowed this opportunity primarily because Darwinists and specifically Darwinian atheists are threatened by it.
8. Baloney. ID is not a religious belief. It does has religious implications, as does evolution. I have no fear of science, honestly, let the evolutionists keep doing their stuff. It amazes me more and more when new discoveries about life are made. I only ask that you give the ID scientists the same courtesy, which you are not.
It could have failed the Cytochrome C tests. There's no reason that the same protein ( Cytochrome C ) can't be coded for with the same base sequence in all organisms. The comparison of the genetic codes provide a "molecular distance" that matches the evolutionary distance across the entire phylogenetic tree, and if this were not so, it would invalidate the theory that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor.
And if a theory of Creation predicts that a single Creator would use similar methods for creating different forms of life (i.e. DNA, etc.), how is DNA evidence for one theory over the other?
The "theory of Creation" is bound by nothing and makes no predictions.
And if your answer is that the "theory" of Creation is religious, not scientific, you're begging the question, I think.
It's not that it's religious, it's that its utterly arbitrary, allowing a creator to cause anything whatsoever to happen by fiat. That makes it untestable.
The Genesis account provides a more specific scenario, but it fails to account for the fossil record as we find it, with its several great ages dominated by different life forms. Insofar as it is falsifiable, it has been falsified. Cuvier et al. around 1812, suggested that there could have been multiple creation events, accounting for the different ages of life, and we may say that this was a form of scientific Creationism, as it allowed modification in the face of evidence ... but we went through all this 200 years ago!
By doing so you are attempting to portray the two "theories" as being equivalent.
Sorry, but that is false. Religious apologists or lawyers may be able to make a duplicitous argument of this type, but such is foreign to science. And absolutely incorrect.
Unless you are willing to learn and acknowledge what science means by the term "theory" any additional discussion with you is useless.
Reminds me sooooo much of the goreacle’s hot air cult crowd.
“There IS no debate, because I say so and that’s that, you’re wrong I’m right now go away.”
Yup...mad with God, or at the very least you’re threatened by something.
Wrong. There are plenty of scientists that believe there is a creator.
Scinece itslf is all too often a belief system or simply a concensus.
For instance, one scientist (or group of them) may believe, based on observable data and tesing that a drug is benefecial, while another scientist (or group of them), based on observable and testable data finds that it is not.
Just like global warming...some scientists believe it’s more man made than it perhaps is and vice versa.
That seems awfully close to the case with evolution too.
It's not that it's religious, it's that its utterly arbitrary, allowing a creator to cause anything whatsoever to happen by fiat. That makes it untestable.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing; it just seems to me that evolution falls into much the same trap. You can experiment to determine whether reality matches up with some of the predictions of a particular strain of evolutionary theory, but you can do the same with specific Creationist frameworks to a degree. In neither case can you put the overarching paradigm to a test using the scientific method as I understand it.
I don’t know how much Ben Stein spent on this movie but I doubt he makes his money back. Total gross is only about $5.8 million.
Stein’s best role remains as Kramer’s estate planning attorney in Seinfeld.
“There IS no debate, because I say so and that’s that, you’re wrong I’m right now go away.”
Yup...mad with God, or at the very least you’re threatened by something.
Not so. I am objecting to the misuse of scientific terms.
It is dishonest to claim that ID is a scientific theory because it simply is not -- it does not meet the criteria for a theory. (See my FR home page for definitions.)
I see the attempt being made to equate the theory of evolution with the "theory" of ID so that the two can be taught side by side in schools.
But this is a lie. ID does not meet the criteria for a scientific theory. Behe, in the Dover trial, had to admit under cross examination that, using his extremely loose definition of "theory," even astrology qualifies. And he had to have such a loose definition so that ID would qualify.
Sorry, twisting definitions around like that is not honest, nor is it science.
If you want to make ID into a scientific theory do it the old-fashioned way -- bring evidence and work your way up from idea to hypothesis to theory through the peer-reviewed journals.
Affirmative action does not apply in science.
This criticism extends to geology and astronomy. How do we know what the center of the sun or the center of the earth is really like? We can not directly measure conditions there. We can barely see distant stars, and make inferences based on their spectra. Our observations of the distant galaxies are very theory laden. We see "interacting galaxies" but only at an instant in time, on the time scale of the interaction.
Of course, to young earth creationists these are real objections, and galactic dynamics are part of Evolution, and present a puzzle to be explained away, at most.
So what about you? Do you believe the earth has a several billion year history? Did you know the average depth over the continents of silica sand ( mostly as sandstone, of course ) is thousands of feet? Was it specially created? Or did it form from quartz crystals weathered out of granite, then sorted and sifted by wind and water, and did it thus accumulate over many millions of years?
If we believe in astronomy and geology, then what about life on earth? What about the billion plus years when blue green algae was the dominant life form on earth? Is this consistent with a special creation?
--http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-projector18apr18,1,4982009.story
__________________________
According to boxofficemojo.com, the opening take was $1,208,748. Their latest total estimate is just under $5.3 m.
--http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=expelled.htm
I'd say they have a way to go.
I’m waiting for that experiment too. That would pretty much settle the existence of evolution for me.
Interesting; that's all true enough.
So what about you? Do you believe the earth has a several billion year history?
Good question. I've always been a young-earth Creationist, though it's been awhile since I've read much on the topic. I'm less dogmatic about it than I used to be. I still think the "first cause" argument for origins is a strong one, and I'm completely convinced that God put us - and the universe - here. But I'm more open than I used to be about what that means when things get specific.
I also think evolutionary theory has some real problems, irreducable complexity and Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics among them. I think the discussion would be better off without the smug condescension of many evolutionists and the defensive self-righteousness of some Creationists.
I tend to be little-moved by the chants of "that's not science" from the evolution crowd. Even given your point about geology and astronomy, I don't see a lot of categorical difference between evolutionism and creationism. And when it comes down to it, there's only one reality, whether your methods of discovering that reality qualify as "science" or not.
The argument from evolutionists that creationism isn't science because it allows for supernatural intervention during creation seems a bit hollow and circular to me. Hollow because it categorically prevents a whole area of inquiry; circular because it assumes the very naturalism on which it's based and imposes that assumption on competing ideas.
I'm not a scientist. And I don't limit my thought or inquiry to areas or methods "approved" by evolutionary scientists - I just want to know how we got here. Physical science offers a variety of tools to learn some things that help answer that question, but those tools have limits. So do history, theology, and philosophy. But like I said, there's only one reality, only one true history.
No...I get my information from reading the evidence, not from second hand sources. You should, perhaps, try the same tact.
The living, dead and fossil creatures observed owe existence to molecules only examined in the last century. Darwin and his contemporaries never imagined these molecules. Information developed derives from Chemistry and Physics. These sciences owe their progress to extraordinary advances in measurement and mathematical application. Even if each step had a significant probability of 1 in 10 and only 1,000 steps resided between the primordial soup and the first mammal, the probability would be 1 times 10 to the minus 1,000. Biology and origin of the species needs mathematics, but intrusion is prohibited.
Clausius formulated the Second Law and the concept of entropy after 1850, over 150 years after the publication of the Principia.
As a student of these ideas, I can assure you that there is nothing in them that prevents a natural origin of life.
The persistent belief that they do reminds of a joke that Freud relates in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious: The Rabbi of Cracow clairvoyantly declared to his students that the Rabbi of Lemberg had suddenly died, much to their amazement. When it turned out that his pronouncement was false, one of the students was confroted by a skeptic who asked, "What do you say now?" "No matter," replied the student, "to see from Cracow to Lemberg is wonderful anyhow."
I don't see a lot of categorical difference between evolutionism and creationism.
This is an interesting point. The judge in the Dover decision exposits naturalism as an accepted requirement in scientific ideas, based on several references, and however accurate this observation might be, it doesn't establish a categorical requirement.
It does seem to go back to Newton, though. He states four "Rules of Reasoning" in philosophy, the first of which is that "Nature does nothing in vain ... for Nature is pleased with simplicity ..." Essentially, Occams razor. This rule is invoked whenever any sort of ad hoc cause is presented to explain a phenomenon, and this certainly pertains to the introduction of ID to explain the origin of life.
Note that in the same work, Newton has a brief discourse on the nature of God, which we are told he inserted after being accused of usurping God with his pronouncements on Absolute Time and Absolute Space. He does say, "We know him by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes". It is noteworthy, though, that this sentiment is entirely confined to this short declaration, and for example, when he presents Proposition X. Theorem X, "That the motions of the planets in the heavens may subsist an exceedingly long time." he refrains from any comment whatsoever on the implications for the origin or the fate of this System of the World.
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