Creation or Evolustionists theory

[Kramer!]

Which do you believe in the age of the Earth?


System Notice: This thread has been automatically renewed after reaching a post limit. Most of its content has been moved to this thread (http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=798800) for reference purposes.

[Squeezy]

I don't know that I believe fully in either. But I sure as shit don't think creationism should be taught in a public school science class. I have absolutely no problem with them discussing it in religous studies.

[superdan54]

neither creation or evolution can be proven. both require faith to a varying degree

Every time I see this thread necromanced, I get the sinking feeling that I'm actually in the movie "Groundhog's Day"

[darkfrog]

I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, and I do not believe in the level of redaction you're ascribing to the text. Sure, some people changed a few words here or there, changed place names which no longer meant anything, stuff like that. But there is good evidence that the Pentateuch as a whole is as ancient as Moses himself.
If it is inerrant, then words and names and such would not be changed, you are contradicting yourself. Why would one section call it the staff of Aaron and other places Mose's staff.? Did Moses receive the Torah on Sinai or Herob? Of course that is only one of hundreds of contradictory doublets which give me strong evidence that this book was man-made, not divine. It all has to do with the various political and geographical separation of the various peoples and their own versions of the stories. In order to believe in the biblical inerrancy, your faith must supersede common sense. I'm sorry, I really don't want that to sound mean-spirited, I respect people's beliefs, but there is too much evidence against biblical inerrancy even among some very religious people.

[bonkman]

Every time I see this thread necromanced, I get the sinking feeling that I'm actually in the movie "Groundhog's Day"
:lol:

If nothing else, it's nice to see the old crew again. How's life Superdan?

[superdan54]

Most of the OT was most likely put together by Ezra (Documentary Theorists call him R, the redactor). He took the various oral and written stories that had been passed down through generations. However, due to the separation of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah, as well as the Babylonian exile, then the re-assimilation of the various tribes which also introduced political turmoil as the different groups claimed divine right, which is why we see Moses predominant but the Aaronid priests weren't willing to give up power so easily. Much of the details of the stories were changed over time by the various sub-groups which is why we see so many doublets in the OT.
Ezra tried his best to reconcile these differences and attempt to make a flowing narrative, but the problems remain until this day.

Even if Ezra were a redactor, I think that the written material he theoretically would have compiled from is far more vast and intricate than what you seem to be assuming. And I doubt that the edits were that severe, if there were any at all. For example, take Judges 1:21:

Judges 1:21
But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.

Now later on in Samuel we find that David drove out the Jebusites from Jerusalem and established it as his capital. Ezra, living some 500 years later would have surely updated portions of scripture such as these to match the current state of affairs if he were really trying to smooth out the manuscripts into one flowing text.

I guess I just don't see what is so damning about the redactor theory. Someone had to compile all this stuff together.

[superdan54]

:lol:

If nothing else, it's nice to see the old crew again. How's life Superdan?

Life is amazing! Currently the Mrs. and I are expecting our first child (due in April). I've put the whole C vs. E debate on hiatus as all the proof I'll ever need of Creation is currently growing inside my wife's belly! :D

[talgot]

Life is amazing! Currently the Mrs. and I are expecting our first child (due in April). I've put the whole C vs. E debate on hiatus as all the proof I'll ever need of Creation is currently growing inside my wife's belly! :D

Sweet! Congrats!. I know how you feel. My baby girl, my first one also, was born just last week. Life is good when you see their little faces :D:hug:

[bonkman]

Life is amazing! Currently the Mrs. and I are expecting our first child (due in April). I've put the whole C vs. E debate on hiatus as all the proof I'll ever need of Creation is currently growing inside my wife's belly! :D
congrats and best of luck! between you and talgot, this thread's a virtual maternity ward!

Sweet! Congrats!. I know how you feel. My baby girl, my first one also, was born just last week. Life is good when you see their little faces :D:hug:
congrats talgot! :cheers:

[talgot]

congrats and best of luck! between you and talgot, this thread's a virtual maternity ward!


congrats talgot! :cheers:

Thank you thank you! :D

[mammothwoolly]

If it is inerrant, then words and names and such would not be changed, you are contradicting yourself. Why would one section call it the staff of Aaron and other places Mose's staff.? Did Moses receive the Torah on Sinai or Herob? Of course that is only one of hundreds of contradictory doublets which give me strong evidence that this book was man-made, not divine. It all has to do with the various political and geographical separation of the various peoples and their own versions of the stories. In order to believe in the biblical inerrancy, your faith must supersede common sense. I'm sorry, I really don't want that to sound mean-spirited, I respect people's beliefs, but there is too much evidence against biblical inerrancy even among some very religious people.

I think a definition of terms is the problem then. The holy scriptures were written by people under inspiration of God, and they inerrantly communicated God's message to a particular people at a particular place in time. Our job reading them is to take from them the timeless truths that appear, and apply them to our lives. The scripture is inerrant in that it allows man a valid picture of God as applied in the answer to the question: "how shall I live?".

[superdan54]

congrats and best of luck! between you and talgot, this thread's a virtual maternity ward!

thanks!

I guess that's what happens when one is pro-Creation. :D

(Ok that's a terrible pun but I couldn't resist)

P.S Congrats talgot! :highfive: I'm assuming we'll be seeing some 3:00AM posts on here in the next few weeks ;).

[talgot]

thanks!

I guess that's what happens when one is pro-Creation. :D

(Ok that's a terrible pun but I couldn't resist)

P.S Congrats talgot! :highfive: I'm assuming we'll be seeing some 3:00AM posts on here in the next few weeks ;).

LOL! well only prob is I have to get the mrs permission .

[bonkman]

thanks!

I guess that's what happens when one is pro-Creation. :D

(Ok that's a terrible pun but I couldn't resist)

P.S Congrats talgot! :highfive: I'm assuming we'll be seeing some 3:00AM posts on here in the next few weeks ;).
I giggled :)

LOL! well only prob is I have to get the mrs permission .
:whip:

[darkfrog]

I think a definition of terms is the problem then. The holy scriptures were written by people under inspiration of God, and they inerrantly communicated God's message to a particular people at a particular place in time. Our job reading them is to take from them the timeless truths that appear, and apply them to our lives. The scripture is inerrant in that it allows man a valid picture of God as applied in the answer to the question: "how shall I live?".
I believe you are correct and it is a matter of definition. Biblical inerrancy is typically defined as totally without error, and free from all contradiction; "referring to the complete accuracy of Scripture, including the historical and scientific parts"
I think you may be referring to Biblical infallibility (or limited inerrancy), which holds that the Bible is inerrant on issues of faith and practice but not history or science.
There is also Biblical literalism, the adherence to the explicit and literal sense of the Bible. In its purest form such a belief would deny the existence of allegory, parable and metaphor in the Bible. Biblical literalism is not synonymous with biblical inerrancy. Whereas inerrancy doctrine deals with the truthfulness of the author's intended message, biblical literalism deals with the interpretation of certain passages being literal.

Even if Ezra were a redactor, I think that the written material he theoretically would have compiled from is far more vast and intricate than what you seem to be assuming. And I doubt that the edits were that severe, if there were any at all.
Superdan, I don't believe that I was claiming that Ezra added much, merely that he weaved together the various versions of oral and written histories that were around during his time. Approximately 450 BC - as the Redactor emerges on the scene. He sees the need for religious revival and renewal, for strengthening and centralization. Remember, The southern kingdom of Judah is conquered by Babylon in 587 BC. The people are exiled for 50 years, then return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple and restore their religion. There is no longer a king of the line of David, but a high priest.
Ezra was an Aaronid priest empowered by the Persian emperor to arbitrate and assert the state religion. Ezra was instructed to uphold the religious text that he carried back with him from the Babylonian exile. According to the Biblical Book of Nehemiah, when Ezra read it out to the assembled people returning from exile, many thought that certain things were new and had not been read before. In particular, a law, usually ascribed to R, concerning the Festival of Booths, is reported as never having been carried out before.
The process is not easy. Other exiled peoples were assimilated by their conquerors and disappeared; the Israelites remained faithful to their homeland and their God. But the religion had been weakened by the exile, and needed to be strengthened and consolidated. So he combines the three documents (JE, P, and D) into one smooth flowing narrative--the five books of Moses.

The Redactor did lots of cutting and pasting. Genealogies that probably started all together in a P-text were interspersed throughout JE, acting as bridging material or section dividers. Materials that told the same story from pro-Aaron and anti-Aaron viewpoints (for example) were neatly woven together.

The Redactor was respectful of his sources and kept them largely intact. These were all sacred and ancient texts/traditions, so the Redactor presumably didn't drop material--duplication was preferable to omission. Sometimes he combined the different texts; sometimes he left the two stories side by side.

The single document became the center of the Israelite religion, under the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah. Authorship was ascribed to Moses. This wasn't deception. The Redactor in all likelihood knew nothing of the prior 500 year history of authorship and honestly believed the material he was editing had all been handed down from Moses.

From 450 BC on the document was fixed--no more changes. The oldest existing parchments, the Dead Sea scrolls, date from around 100 BC. They're almost word-for-word identical to the versions we have today (although there are occasional transcription errors, most so small they would be noticed only by an experienced scholar).

Much of this is based on the work of Richard Elliot Friedman and comes closest to representing the consensus among Documentary scholars. If you want a good read, his book, Who Wrote the Bible is very intriguing whether you believe any of it or not.

[paperboy05]

Life is amazing! Currently the Mrs. and I are expecting our first child (due in April). I've put the whole C vs. E debate on hiatus as all the proof I'll ever need of Creation is currently growing inside my wife's belly! :D

Sweet! Congrats!. I know how you feel. My baby girl, my first one also, was born just last week. Life is good when you see their little faces :D:hug:

Congrats you two! :woot:

[Jhaan]

Holy Crap! I ignore this thread for a bit and BAM! Babies!

Congrats SupaDan and Talgot. I shall smoke a cigar in your honor. :thumbup:

[Jhaan]

Just to add to the debate...

I love stories like this.

THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.

Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.

His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins, 56.

“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.
Related Links

* Chimp genome helps reveal secrets of man

* Playing the God game

“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”

Collins joins a line of scientists whose research deepened their belief in God. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

Although Einstein revolutionised our thinking about time, gravity and the conversion of matter to energy, he believed the universe had a creator. “I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details,” he said. However Galileo was famously questioned by the inquisition and put on trial in 1633 for the “heresy” of claiming that the earth moved around the sun.

Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.

“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.

“Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get.”

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”

He decided to visit a Methodist minister and was given a copy of C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which argues that God is a rational possibility. The book transformed his life. “It was an argument I was not prepared to hear,” he said. “I was very happy with the idea that God didn’t exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away.”

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.

(source (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece))

[bonkman]

lol, thanks for the post. Might have to check that out.

He's right about science and religion not being at war, except in the mind of some people in each.

[XXnarg]

He's right about science and religion not being at war, except in the mind of some people in each....or in the minds of some people who are outside of both science and religion. :nod:

[bonkman]

...or in the minds of some people who are outside of both science and religion. :nod:
sounds right, too :)

[darkfrog]

However Galileo was famously questioned by the inquisition and put on trial in 1633 for the “heresy” of claiming that the earth moved around the sun.
I know this is a bit OT but it is something that has been bothering me for some time. Generally, it is proper to use someone's last name when referring to them, journalists are taught to use the full name once, e.g. Albert Einstein, then continue with only their last name for the rest of the story. We always say Einstein, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Hawking, etc. but in Galileo's case we use his first name. Why don't we refer to him as Galilei? except for Madonna and other one named people, I can't think of any other instance where this is the case.

[holyschmoley]

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.

This guy never heard of the placebo affect?

There's very little doubt in the medical community regarding the power of the mind in regards to the affects on the body. If believing God helps one to heal, great - but it does not in any way even begin to prove the existence of any God.

[darkfrog]

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.

This guy never heard of the placebo affect?

There's very little doubt in the medical community regarding the power of the mind in regards to the affects on the body. If believing God helps one to heal, great - but it does not in any way even begin to prove the existence of any God.
I don't think that is what he was puzzled and unsettled about. I believe what he was saying that as a non-believer, he didn't understand the comfort faith gave them when faced with a terminal illness or other terrible ordeal. He would have thought that people would be angry with a god that allowed them to suffer. At least that's how I interpreted it.

[bonkman]

I know this is a bit OT but it is something that has been bothering me for some time. Generally, it is proper to use someone's last name when referring to them, journalists are taught to use the full name once, e.g. Albert Einstein, then continue with only their last name for the rest of the story. We always say Einstein, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Hawking, etc. but in Galileo's case we use his first name. Why don't we refer to him as Galilei? except for Madonna and other one named people, I can't think of any other instance where this is the case.
Bohemian Rhapsody.

[darkfrog]

Bohemian Rhapsody.
Bonk, sometimes I'm not sure whether to take you seriously, please use the emoticons. :-p

[Jhaan]

Bonk, sometimes I'm not sure whether to take you seriously,

Oh that's easy. You are never supposed to take Bonk seriously. :)

Kidding, Bonk! :cool:

[superdan54]

Hey all,

I can't remember where I came across this (maybe it was here), but there is an EXCELLENT debate between Dr. Collins and Richard Dawkins on the subject of God & Science. It was published in TIME magazine a few years back. I can't post the whole thing here as it's 9 pages long, but I'll give a few of Collins' quotes from the debate I thought were especially good.


"Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation. So such discussions between scientists and believers happen quite readily. But neither scientists nor believers always embody the principles precisely. Scientists can have their judgment clouded by their professional aspirations. And the pure truth of faith, which you can think of as this clear spiritual water, is poured into rusty vessels called human beings, and so sometimes the benevolent principles of faith can get distorted as positions are hardened."

"Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned. But I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as "Why am I here?", "What happens after we die?", "Is there a God?" If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion."

"I just would like to say that over more than a quarter-century as a scientist and a believer, I find absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard in practically all of his conclusions about the natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers that science isn't able to provide about the natural world--the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I'm interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist."


If your interested in the whole thing, check out the following link. The actual debate begins on page 4.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-1,00.html

[superdan54]

I know this is a bit OT but it is something that has been bothering me for some time. Generally, it is proper to use someone's last name when referring to them, journalists are taught to use the full name once, e.g. Albert Einstein, then continue with only their last name for the rest of the story. We always say Einstein, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Hawking, etc. but in Galileo's case we use his first name. Why don't we refer to him as Galilei? except for Madonna and other one named people, I can't think of any other instance where this is the case.

It's probably b/c his first name is very unique. Albert, Nicholas & Isaac aren't names you associate with one person, however Napoleon, Michelangelo, Saddam, Galileo and Moon Unit (Zappa) are. ;)

[darkfrog]

It's probably b/c his first name is very unique. Albert, Nicholas & Isaac aren't names you associate with one person, however Napoleon, Michelangelo, Saddam, Galileo and Moon Unit (Zappa) are. ;)
That was my first inclination but it does go against standard convention. Zappa or Saddam are not good examples because we have to use their first names in order to distinguish them from the other Zappas and Husseins. But you brought up two I hadn't thought of with Napoleon and Michelangelo, however with artists we tend to use the name they sign their work with, such is the case with Michelangelo. If he signed his work Buonarroti, then that is probably how history would know him.
Thanks for answering that, you are probably right on track.

[riptide_slick]

Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie)
A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust

Editor's note: This story is part of a series "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Scientific American's Take. (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled)"

OP Note: Another story here (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-michael-shermer).

In the new science-bashing movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein and the rest of the filmmakers sincerely and seriously argue that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution paved the way for the Holocaust. By "seriously," I mean that Ben Stein acts grief-stricken and the director juxtaposes quotes from evolutionary biologists with archival newsreel clips from Hitler's Reich. Prepare for an intellectual night at the cinema.

No one could have been more surprised than I when the producers called, unbidden, offering Scientific American's editors a private screening. Given that our magazine's positions on evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism reflect those of the scientific mainstream (that is, evolution: good science; ID: not science), you have to wonder why they would bother. It's not as though anything in Expelled would have been likely to change our views. And they can't have been looking for a critique of the science in the movie, because there isn't much to speak of.

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, "You can't handle the truth!") Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film's attacks—all recycled from previous pro-ID works—would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

Expelled wears its ambitions to be a creationist Fahrenheit 911 openly, in that it apes many of Michael Moore's comic tricks: emphasizing the narrator's hapless everyman qualities by showing him meandering his way to interviews; riposting interviewees' words with ironic old footage and so on. Director Nathan Frankowski is reasonably adept at the techniques, although he is not half the filmmaker Michael Moore is (and yes, I do mean in both senses of the phrase).

The film begins with the triumphant entry of financial columnist, media figure and former Nixon White House speechwriter Ben Stein to a filled college lecture hall. (If this review were styled after the movie, I'd be intercutting clips of Nixon flashing a victory sign with Stein's scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and his eyedrop commercials, but you get the idea.) Stein explains that he is speaking out because he has "lately noticed a dire trend" that threatens the state of our nation: the ascendance of godless, materialist, evolutionary science and an unwillingness among academics to consider more theistic alternatives. A montage of short clips then shows Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other scientists scorning religion or ID without context. "Freedom is the essence of America!" Stein insists, and he frets that scientists who like their empiricism with a dash of deus ex machina are oppressed. He and Expelled charge that scientists, in their rejection of religious explanations, have become as intolerant as Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists—the film clips were ambiguous on that point.

(The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn't he? And that they replaced it with their own ideologically driven, disastrous theory of Lysenkoism? Does Stein think that moviegoers won't know this?)

I should note that Stein and Expelled rarely refer to "scientists" as I did—they call them Darwinists. Similarly, this review may have already used the word "evolution" about as often as the whole of Expelled does; in the movie, it is always Darwinism. The term is a curious throwback, because in modern biology almost no one relies solely on Darwin's original ideas—most researchers would call themselves neo-Darwinian if they bothered to make the historical connection at all because evolutionary science now encompasses concepts as diverse as symbiosis, kin selection and developmental genetics. Yet the choice of terminology isn't random: Ben Stein wants you to stop thinking of evolution as an actual science supported by verifiable facts and logical arguments and to start thinking of it as a dogmatic, atheistic ideology akin to Marxism.

Expelled then trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted by the Darwinist establishment. First among them is Robert Sternberg, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and his original office. Looking a bit smug in his self-martyrdom, Sternberg also reports that a colleague compared him with an "intellectual terrorist."

What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn't even hint at it—is that Sternberg's case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg's choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn't lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn't lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer. (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-michael-shermer)]

And so on. These confounding facts are documented in the appendix to the unofficial Congressional report from Rep. Mark Souder's office that the film cites in support of its story. At the very least, the Sternberg affair is considerably more complicated and questionable than Expelled lets on. The movie's one-sided version is either the result of shoddy investigation or deliberate propagandizing—neither of which reflects well on the other information in the film.

So it is with the rest of Expelled's parade of victims. Caroline Crocker, a biology teacher, was allegedly dismissed from her position at George Mason University after merely mentioning ID; the film somehow never reports exactly what she said or why anyone objected to it. Reporter Pamela Winnick was supposedly pilloried and fired after she wrote objectively about evolution and ID; we don't know exactly what she wrote but later we do hear her asserting with disgust that "Darwinism devalues human life." The film forgot to mention that Winnick is the author of the book A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion—a title that suggests her objectivity on the subject might be a bit tarnished.

The movie's unreliable reporting is even more obvious during the scene in which Stein interviews Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute, the institutional heart of ID advocacy. Stein asks whether the Discovery Institute has supported the teaching of ID in science classes so avidly because it is trying to sneak religion back into public schools. Chapman says no and the film blithely takes him at his word. No mention is made of the notorious "Wedge" document, a leaked Discovery Institute manifesto that outlined a strategy of opposing evolution and turning the public against scientific materialism as the first step toward making society more politically conservative and theistic. Maybe Ben Stein didn't think it was relevant, but wouldn't an honest film have trusted its audience to judge for itself?

The most conspicuous absence from the movie, however—and you would think it was impossible in a movie about evolution and ID—is any real science. Anyone looking for scientific reasons or even detailed arguments for why scientists maintained either position would go away unsatisfied. A half hour or so passes before anyone in the film offers even simplistic definitions for evolution and ID. Nor is there any discussion of evolution's accomplishments in illuminating the history of life and problems in fields as diverse as medicine and astrophysics, and its applications to technology such as combinatorial chemistry.

Instead, various Discovery Institute fellows intone that evolution is a "slippery," hard-to-pin-down theory. No such criticism is made of ID, a notion which firmly states that at one or more unspecified times in the past, an unidentified designer who might or might not be God somehow created whole organisms, or maybe just cells, or maybe just certain parts of cells—they're still deciding and will get back to you on that.

Expelled would rather dwell on what it considers to be the failures of evolution, most notably the lack of a detailed explanation for the origin of life. Never mind that nearly all of evolutionary biology concerns other problems. Indeed, even if life somehow did have a supernatural origin, evolution still offers the most coherent scientific explanation for what is seen in nature and the fossil record about the development of life since then.

Moreover, modern biologists do have tentative ideas about how life might first have evolved. One snippet of the film shows philosopher Michael Ruse gamely trying to explain how crystals might have offered a substrate on which the components of protolife could have organized themselves into early replicating units, but that idea is met with Stein's stony-faced derision and a mocking clip of a swami with a crystal ball.

It speaks to their anti-intellectualism and fundamental misunderstanding of science that for the makers of Expelled (and ID advocates more generally) the answer "we don't know yet" is a badge of shame. "We don't know yet" is what defines the fruitful frontier for science; it is what directs scientists' curiosity and motivates them to spend years on research. Research starts where knowledge and certainty drop off. It's one of the many ironies of Expelled that Ben Stein says he wants this movie to free people to ask questions about science, but the ID theories he defends would close off inquiry with nonanswers.

Like the decision to call evolution Darwinism, the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice. In fact, it was crucial to the film's strategy. Because they know Americans revere freedom of speech and fairness, the producers cast the conflict between evolution and ID as purely a struggle between worldviews—a difference of opinions, a battle of ideologies—in which one side is censoring the other. They know that the public will instinctively want to defend the underdog, especially when that opinion aligns with the religious beliefs many of them already share.

It is a terrific strategy, but with one caveat: that airy skirmish of opinions must never, ever touch the ground of solid evidence. Because if it does, if viewers are ever allowed to notice that evolution is supported by mountains of tangible, peer-reviewed evidence gathered by generations of scientists, whereas ID has little more than a smattering of vanity-press pamphlets from a handful of cranks... the bubble pops.

Expelled is all about how science should not reject people with ID "theories." The filmmakers must therefore stop you from ever asking, Why?—because even children understand that in science, two ideas are not equally good if one of them is wrong. Some of the ideas fluffing up ID are demonstrably wrong; the rest are often described as "not even wrong" because they are so untestable or irreconcilable with the rest of science.

Ben Stein doesn't want you to recognize evolution versus ID as a conflict between valid scientific ideas and invalid ones, because then it suddenly begins to look much more just when, say, universities don't reward faculty who fritter away their careers on ill-conceived theories. He doesn't even want you to think about why scientists regard ID as illegitimate.

And so in Expelled you will hear many scientists express their scorn for ID, but you will never hear why. You will never hear anyone note that scientists have identified serious flaws in ID principles such as "irreducible complexity." You will never hear anyone explain why invoking a mysterious designer with unknown (and possibly divine) powers to fill in the gaps in our knowledge is not scientifically satisfying.

You certainly won't hear anyone question why Expelled and the rest of the ID crowd pick on evolutionary biology for its materialism when every other field of modern science is equally so. Albert Einstein failed to devise a unified field theory despite decades of work, and hordes of physicists since have done no better—why doesn't someone slap an ID explanation on that so we can call it a day?

You will hear Dawkins, Dennett, William Provine and other scientists in the film remark that their understanding of evolution helped lead them to atheism, and that is something Ben Stein very much does want you to hear—even if he does not want you to hear details about why or how. (Maybe you would get ideas!) Nevertheless, there are subtle distinctions in what they are saying between what is science, what is philosophy and what is personal conviction, even if the speakers do not always make them.

You certainly would never guess from the film that there are also biologists like Francisco Ayala of the University of California in Irvine and Ken Miller of Brown University, both devout Catholics, and religious persons such as the Rev. Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution, who find a comfortable middle ground for their beliefs and their science.

However cinematically proficient Expelled may be as entertainment or propaganda, it is largely a rehash of the same arguments that ID proponents have been making for the past couple of decades: it isn't fair to ignore it; evolution is incomplete; the establishment is out to get us; blah blah blah. I'm not sure the Discovery Institute will welcome the film with open arms. After all, it has spent the past 15 years insisting that ID is not closeted religious creationism; now Expelled trashes that position by ridiculing every alternative to the unidentified designer being God.

But in one respect, Expelled does go farther than any other popular ID offensive to date: in how relentlessly, tastelessly and repulsively it links Darwin's theory of evolution to the Holocaust. Here the filmmakers take their previously displayed knack for lying through selective reporting and misdirection and show that they are up to the challenge of shifting blame for the Nazis' genocide, however slightly, away from Hitler. Bravo, Ben Stein. Bravo.

The film lets philosopher David Berlinski begin the assault. After dutifully insisting that of course no one is saying the Holocaust is Darwin's doing, he maintains that Darwinism was a "necessary though not sufficient" cause for it. (This is a flimsy basis for the subsequent argument: if true, shouldn't one focus blame on the sufficient causes rather than the necessary ones—that is, the Nazis themselves?) The film then makes every connection it can between the theory of evolution, eugenics and the Nazi's ugly dreams of eliminating the untermenschen (subhumans), including a guided tour of all the signs of the "Darwinist" influence at a Nazi crematorium and a concentration camp. Stein then reiterates that of course Darwin didn't cause the Holocaust before further pressing the message that evolution bears a heavy responsibility for it anyway.

Hitler's thinking did opportunistically incorporate social Darwinism and eugenics, which are distorted offshoots of true evolutionary concepts. Many prominent scientists of the time agreed with them, too, to their shame, and it's entirely possible that the scientific veneer of authority on those ideas made them more persuasive. Yet this guilt-by-association ploy says nothing about evolution itself: the theory of evolution remains scientifically valid, even if fools misinterpret it.

And make no mistake; social Darwinism and eugenics are distortions of evolutionary theory. Social Darwinism was no more than a thin rationalization for the rigid class stratifications in Victorian society. Eugenics has less to do with evolution than it does the much older ideas of animal breeders. (Think about it: if certain classes of people were genuinely inferior in evolutionary terms, Hitler wouldn't have needed to eliminate them—nature would eventually do that itself.)

The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a "great chain of being." The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word "pogrom." Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, "We are at fault in not slaying them." I don't think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but whose ideas were most Lutheran Germans of the 1930s more familiar with: Darwin's or Luther's?

The weakness of the logic of Expelled is beside the point, however. No one who accepts evolution as fact is likely to leave the theater shaken. Some people with looser understandings of the science or the legal issues might buy into its arguments about "fairness" and protecting religion against science. Expelled is nonetheless mostly a film for ID creationism's religious base. That audience has seen one setback after the next in recent years, with science rejecting ID as useless and the courts rebuffing it as for a constitutional violation in public education. For them, Expelled is a rallying point to revive their morale.

Consequently, Expelled wants to end on an inspiring note. It shows Stein railing against the scope of the oppression he has courageously discovered. "It wasn't just science being expelled!" he exclaims. "It was freedom itself!" And then the incongruous hero marches offstage to a thundering ovation while his voiceover narration wryly tweaks "Anyone? Anyone?" to carry on the fight he has started.

But when I think about Expelled, that closing image isn't what comes to mind. When I think about Ben Stein—an intelligent, well-educated man who I imagine might have lost relatives in the Holocaust but is now appropriating it for an intellectually dishonest purpose—my mind goes to the scene in Seattle, when Stein and his film crew wander the streets asking for directions to the Discovery Institute. "We're really, really lost," Stein laughs. And he really, really is.

[nobush]

Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie)
A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust

...


Like the decision to call evolution Darwinism, the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice. In fact, it was crucial to the film's strategy. Because they know Americans revere freedom of speech and fairness, the producers cast the conflict between evolution and ID as purely a struggle between worldviews—a difference of opinions, a battle of ideologies—in which one side is censoring the other. They know that the public will instinctively want to defend the underdog, especially when that opinion aligns with the religious beliefs many of them already share.

It is a terrific strategy, but with one caveat: that airy skirmish of opinions must never, ever touch the ground of solid evidence. Because if it does, if viewers are ever allowed to notice that evolution is supported by mountains of tangible, peer-reviewed evidence gathered by generations of scientists, whereas ID has little more than a smattering of vanity-press pamphlets from a handful of cranks... the bubble pops.

Expelled is all about how science should not reject people with ID "theories." The filmmakers must therefore stop you from ever asking, Why?—because even children understand that in science, two ideas are not equally good if one of them is wrong. Some of the ideas fluffing up ID are demonstrably wrong; the rest are often described as "not even wrong" because they are so untestable or irreconcilable with the rest of science.

Ben Stein doesn't want you to recognize evolution versus ID as a conflict between valid scientific ideas and invalid ones, because then it suddenly begins to look much more just when, say, universities don't reward faculty who fritter away their careers on ill-conceived theories. He doesn't even want you to think about why scientists regard ID as illegitimate.

And so in Expelled you will hear many scientists express their scorn for ID, but you will never hear why. You will never hear anyone note that scientists have identified serious flaws in ID principles such as "irreducible complexity." You will never hear anyone explain why invoking a mysterious designer with unknown (and possibly divine) powers to fill in the gaps in our knowledge is not scientifically satisfying.

You certainly won't hear anyone question why Expelled and the rest of the ID crowd pick on evolutionary biology for its materialism when every other field of modern science is equally so. Albert Einstein failed to devise a unified field theory despite decades of work, and hordes of physicists since have done no better—why doesn't someone slap an ID explanation on that so we can call it a day?

[..]

However cinematically proficient Expelled may be as entertainment or propaganda, it is largely a rehash of the same arguments that ID proponents have been making for the past couple of decades: it isn't fair to ignore it; evolution is incomplete; the establishment is out to get us; blah blah blah. I'm not sure the Discovery Institute will welcome the film with open arms. After all, it has spent the past 15 years insisting that ID is not closeted religious creationism; now Expelled trashes that position by ridiculing every alternative to the unidentified designer being God.





Excellent article. Hard to believe Ben Stein, a conservative Republican but a well-educated man, can take his political ideology so far as to go against evolutionary theory this way. I find the title of this thread hard enough to take...the notion that evolution and creationism are merely two choices one can make. But I wouldn't have imagined Ben Stein, Hollywood Republican that he is, as a creationist.

More sickening, is the attempt to connect evolution to the Nazi Holocaust:

... in one respect, Expelled does go farther than any other popular ID offensive to date: in how relentlessly, tastelessly and repulsively it links Darwin's theory of evolution to the Holocaust. Here the filmmakers take their previously displayed knack for lying through selective reporting and misdirection and show that they are up to the challenge of shifting blame for the Nazis' genocide, however slightly, away from Hitler. Bravo, Ben Stein. Bravo.

The film lets philosopher David Berlinski begin the assault. After dutifully insisting that of course no one is saying the Holocaust is Darwin's doing, he maintains that Darwinism was a "necessary though not sufficient" cause for it. (This is a flimsy basis for the subsequent argument: if true, shouldn't one focus blame on the sufficient causes rather than the necessary ones—that is, the Nazis themselves?) The film then makes every connection it can between the theory of evolution, eugenics and the Nazi's ugly dreams of eliminating the untermenschen (subhumans), including a guided tour of all the signs of the "Darwinist" influence at a Nazi crematorium and a concentration camp. Stein then reiterates that of course Darwin didn't cause the Holocaust before further pressing the message that evolution bears a heavy responsibility for it anyway.

Hitler's thinking did opportunistically incorporate social Darwinism and eugenics, which are distorted offshoots of true evolutionary concepts. Many prominent scientists of the time agreed with them, too, to their shame, and it's entirely possible that the scientific veneer of authority on those ideas made them more persuasive. Yet this guilt-by-association ploy says nothing about evolution itself: the theory of evolution remains scientifically valid, even if fools misinterpret it.

And make no mistake; social Darwinism and eugenics are distortions of evolutionary theory. Social Darwinism was no more than a thin rationalization for the rigid class stratifications in Victorian society. Eugenics has less to do with evolution than it does the much older ideas of animal breeders. (Think about it: if certain classes of people were genuinely inferior in evolutionary terms, Hitler wouldn't have needed to eliminate them—nature would eventually do that itself.)

The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a "great chain of being." The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word "pogrom." Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, "We are at fault in not slaying them." I don't think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but whose ideas were most Lutheran Germans of the 1930s more familiar with: Darwin's or Luther's?

[...]

.

:eek:

Astonishing that Mr Stein, a Jew, will stoop to using the Holocaust to discredit a scientific theory (fact, rather]) simply because it clashes with his conservative agenda.

Is this what happens when those Clear Eye drops get into your head?

[mammothwoolly]

I am pleased that Stein put this together. I believe in diversity, dialogue, freedom of expression, and informed criticism. Perhaps others are too narrow minded to consider alternative viewpoints, but I am pleased that Stein is taking this message to the people. People complaining about this film and it's ties to Nazi Germany are really saying that can find no fault in the logic behind his film. And it's no wonder, because it hasn't been released yet. Yet you feel the need to criticize it's contents.


I recommend being more open minded; maybe you'll learn something from the film?

[darkfrog]

I am pleased that Stein put this together. I believe in diversity, dialogue, freedom of expression, and informed criticism. Perhaps others are too narrow minded to consider alternative viewpoints, but I am pleased that Stein is taking this message to the people. People complaining about this film and it's ties to Nazi Germany are really saying that can find no fault in the logic behind his film. And it's no wonder, because it hasn't been released yet. Yet you feel the need to criticize it's contents.


I recommend being more open minded; maybe you'll learn something from the film?

Maybe you didn't read the article but there were a lot of faults with the film that had nothing to do with the Holocaust issue. The fact is that this film is an idealogical propaganda film on par with Michael Moore films, no scientific content. half-truths and misrepresentations.
Some of us thought that Stein would have more integrity than to stoop to that level. Penn and Teller's Bullshit episode did a better job honestly explaining the Creationist viewpoint than this film did of explaining EITHER side.

[mammothwoolly]

Have you seen it?

[getarealjob]

. People complaining about this film and it's ties to Nazi Germany are really saying that can find no fault in the logic behind his film.

If the film is promoting creationism, then there can't be much logic involved in it in the first place as creationism isn't based on logic, but instead only the faith of it's followers.

[bonkman]

People complaining about this film and it's ties to Nazi Germany are really saying that can find no fault in the logic behind his film.

It's hilarious how illogical this statement is.

[Imerson]

People complaining about this film and it's ties to Nazi Germany are really saying that can find no fault in the logic behind his film.

Can you make a logical connection between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust? I'd like to hear it :eek:

[paperboy05]

Can you make a logical connection between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust? I'd like to hear it :eek:

IIRC, the main argument is that with evolution you have "survival of the fittest" and Hitler wanted to get rid of a race he thought was inferior. Or something along the lines of that. Loosely I can see a connection, but I don't think one can take that as causation when there is just a minor correlation between the two.

[bonkman]

IIRC, the main argument is that with evolution you have "survival of the fittest" and Hitler wanted to get rid of a race he thought was inferior. Or something along the lines of that. Loosely I can see a connection, but I don't think one can take that as causation when there is just a minor correlation between the two.
that's confusing darwinism and social darwinism.

[paperboy05]

that's confusing darwinism and social darwinism.

True, but don't you think that's what most are doing?

[darkfrog]

that's confusing darwinism and social darwinism.
Social Darwinism is also a misnomer. Selective breeding had been around for centuries prior to Darwin. Natural Selection is, well, natural, not purposely selected for. When and if people used Darwin to forward their own agenda had to purposely distort it to suit their ends. So in a way, there is some logic there but in a very twisted way. Someone like Ben Stein who really is very intelligent should know and understand this. So either he either purposely ignores it to support his agenda or is not as smart as I thought he was.

[riptide_slick]

Social Darwinism is also a misnomer. Selective breeding had been around for centuries prior to Darwin. Natural Selection is, well, natural, not purposely selected for. When and if people used Darwin to forward their own agenda had to purposely distort it to suit their ends. So in a way, there is some logic there but in a very twisted way. Someone like Ben Stein who really is very intelligent should know and understand this. So either he either purposely ignores it to support his agenda or is not as smart as I thought he was.I believe it's the former.

[darkfrog]

I believe it's the former.

Hence my conclusion that he stooped to the level of Micheal Moore in making an untruthful propaganda film, to which Mammothwooly seems to think I have to have seen the film to make that assessment. Mammoth will have to come to the same conclusion, either he is purposefully distorting the facts or is himself not too bright, either way it is a condemnation of the film.

[Doctor_Wu]

He and Expelled charge that scientists, in their rejection of religious explanations, have become as intolerant as Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists—the film clips were ambiguous on that point.

(The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn't he? And that they replaced it with their own ideologically driven, disastrous theory of Lysenkoism? Does Stein think that moviegoers won't know this?)


If he represents Stien's position properly in the sentence above... then the intolerance of the Stalinists for other views is the point and not what the particular views were.


The movie's unreliable reporting is even more obvious during the scene in which Stein interviews Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute, the institutional heart of ID advocacy. Stein asks whether the Discovery Institute has supported the teaching of ID in science classes so avidly because it is trying to sneak religion back into public schools. Chapman says no and the film blithely takes him at his word. No mention is made of the notorious "Wedge" document, a leaked Discovery Institute manifesto that outlined a strategy of opposing evolution and turning the public against scientific materialism as the first step toward making society more politically conservative and theistic. Maybe Ben Stein didn't think it was relevant, but wouldn't an honest film have trusted its audience to judge for itself?


Much of what is said in this debate broadly hinges on the notion that belief in a creator = religion. As though you can't believe in a creator, or even that an intelligent designer w/o religion. Or that the notion that there may be a creator is one that equals religion.

The whole problem with the ID effort is that we don't have philosophy classes in schools. Now one of the larger issues with the idea of having philosophy classes in schools is that philosophers are in extremely short supply. So we are left with the alternative of having public schools teach what amounts to materialism ... vs ID in science classes.

In my view the materialist perspective has a very strong foothold in our society, and no amount of ID classes in schools will serve to dislodge it. Tocqueville believed that democracy cut man off from higher things in general, including religion, philosophy, and even the possibility of transcendent truth (whether it be discovered by philosophy or revelation). He believed that democracy encouraged both materialism and pantheism.

All that said, I can't fault them for trying. I don't think we'll be well served by the domination of Materialism. Perhaps no view should become so dominant. And when certain viewpoints threaten us with domination we are inclined to resist, as we should.

--

The attempt to connect Nazism to Darwin is bold and shocking... and i'm sure that was the intent. One of our less developed habits of mind is our tendency to search for the single cause. We do this with many things, including history... and of course this is a scientific habit of mind. There is some irony here. Our scientific habit of mind informs the views of people who are viewed as religious zealots.

But we should note that Darwinism and Materialism bring man down off of his existential pedestal. These views cultivate the notion that man is no longer a being invested by god with an inherent worth. Eugenics is something that might have taken what it needed from Darwin to advance its cause... but Darwin is not the only cause of Eugenics... nor is Darwin the only cause of the Holocaust.

I've not seen this movie of course, but I suspect this idea is a watered down version of the thought of people like Strauss and Voegelin. They viewed the Holocaust and Nazism as part of the crisis of modernity. The modern world was brought to witness the fullest application of a number of modern presuppositions... including the idea that, civilization, society and man as a biological organism could be perfected via scientific planning. At the same time value neutral social science was not prepared to call things like Nazism or Stalinism evil. B/c evil was a "value" and social science was held prisoner by its fidelity to the "fact - value distinction".

These realities along with a few others brought about a philosophical re-ordering of sorts. Modernity's project came to be seen as something that was not w/o its flaws. The enlightenment's effort to install a skylight in Plato's cave was a failure for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the shadows on the wall remain, even though the authors of the shadows have changed.

We are in need of pre-modern rationalism to provide skepticism of modernity, especially our positivistic tendencies.


Back to the ethically problematic Holocaust and Nazi eugenics effort. There are other ethically questionable practices that continue today, and you don't have to be religious or even believe in a creator to see them as such... abortion and embryonic research come to mind, along with the prospect of pre-natal genetic manipulation. Positivists and materialists (often one in the same) tend to dismiss ethical questions when dealing with these issues. They are known to do some things 'in the name of science'... these are sometimes ethically questionable things.

I view the ID effort as bringing a diluted pre-modern rationalism into the classroom in an attempt to combat the materialism that is so dominant in our society. Though I don't think philosophy or religion seem to be strong enough to slow our march towards something like Huxley's Brave New World.

[mammothwoolly]

Hence my conclusion that he stooped to the level of Micheal Moore in making an untruthful propaganda film, to which Mammothwooly seems to think I have to have seen the film to make that assessment. Mammoth will have to come to the same conclusion, either he is purposefully distorting the facts or is himself not too bright, either way it is a condemnation of the film.

It's funny, your argument makes what I guess Stein's point will be; science is seen to be the only means to truth. Since I don't agree with evolution, I am anti-scientific (your "distorting the facts") and anti-intellectual (your "not too bright").

Is science the only means to truth? Is there any kind of truth which can never be determined by science?

[mammothwoolly]

The attempt to connect Nazism to Darwin is bold and shocking... and i'm sure that was the intent. One of our less developed habits of mind is our tendency to search for the single cause. We do this with many things, including history... and of course this is a scientific habit of mind. There is some irony here. Our scientific habit of mind informs the views of people who are viewed as religious zealots. At this point I find that everyone compares everything to Nazism, so when I see it anywhere, I just ignore it, or translate it to "very bad," as in darkfrog's mom is a Nazi => darkfrog's mom is very bad. Which is probably insulting to Jews, but such is language. Black Panthers are referred to as Nazis, just as the KKK, and traffic cops, and people who complain about others not tipping at restaurants adequately may be called "tipping Nazis" or some such thing.

[darkfrog]

It's funny, your argument makes what I guess Stein's point will be; science is seen to be the only means to truth. Since I don't agree with evolution, I am anti-scientific (your "distorting the facts") and anti-intellectual (your "not too bright").

Is science the only means to truth? Is there any kind of truth which can never be determined by science?Sorry, when I said "he" I was still talking about Stein. I haven't seen you distort the facts AFAIK. I believe you have faith in biblical inerrancy which makes it hard to accept the science of evolution (although many people of faith do accept evolution). I don't believe Stein was honest in his movie if the SA writers are correct about the inaccuracies and distortions that were mentioned in the article.

[mammothwoolly]

You need to reiterate the pronominal referent if you want to point to a far subject! :)

[darkfrog]

You need to reiterate the pronominal referent if you want to point to a far subject! :)
:lmao: thanks! After your post I re-read it and saw the problem immediately. Here, I will fix it. Hence my conclusion that he stooped to the level of Micheal Moore in making an untruthful propaganda film, to which Mammothwooly seems to think I have to have seen the film to make that assessment. Mammoth will have to come to the same conclusion, either Stein is purposefully distorting the facts or is himself not too bright, either way it is a condemnation of the film.

[superdan54]

If the film is promoting creationism, then there can't be much logic involved in it in the first place as creationism isn't based on logic, but instead only the faith of it's followers.

Actually I think the film promotes ID, which really is based on logic more than faith, even if it's True Science© may be lacking.

I'm sure, like most things, the reality lies somewhere in between. I'm sure that something like the Holocaust probably would have happened even without Evolutionary Theory. On the other hand, I have noticed a general trend that looks down upon faith in lieu of pure objective reason, as if the two are mutual exclusives. I don't think that's the case. As I quoted from Dr. Collins a few posts back: "Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation."

[talgot]

An article that ductails with the good Doctor Wu and the main OP's assertion. As like SuperDan, I too think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I do think the influence of Darwinism had a measurable impact on Hitler's views and actions. Its definately not the only reason for the holocust.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2172

By: Richard Weikart
The Human Life Review
March 1, 2004

[Note: This article first appeared in The Human Life Review 30, 2 (Spring 2004): 29-37.]

A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn't evil? How could they believe this? How could they justify such a view?

They did it by appealing to Darwinism. Their pronouncement on Hitler occurred while we were discussing James Rachels' book, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford University Press, 1990). Darwinism, these students informed us, undermined all morality. This was not the first time I had heard such a view. In fact, at that time I was in the beginning phases of a research project on the history of evolutionary ethics, and I had already reviewed the work of some scientists and social scientists who believed that Darwinism undermined human rights and equality.

Before reading Rachels' book, however, I hadn't thought much about whether or not Darwinism devalued human life itself. Rachels, a philosopher at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, best known for his contributions to the euthanasia debate, argues that Darwinism undermines the Judeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of human life. The title of his book comes from an observation Darwin makes in his 1838 notebooks, "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and, I believe, true to consider him created from animals." Rachels assumes the truth of Darwinism and uses it as a springboard to justify euthanasia, infanticide (for disabled babies), abortion, and animal rights. Stimulated by his book, I continued my research on evolutionary ethics, but now with two new questions in mind: Does Darwinism undermine the Judeo-Christian understanding of the sanctity of human life? Does it weaken traditional proscriptions against killing the sick and the weak?

As I read more about the development of evolutionary ethics, I discovered that many scientists, social thinkers, and especially physicians in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany did indeed use Darwinian arguments to devalue human life. In the second edition of his popular book, The Natural History of Creation (1870), Ernst Haeckel, the leading Darwinist in Germany, became the first German scholar to seriously propose that disabled infants be killed at birth. Darwinists were in the forefront of the eugenics movement, which often taught that disabled people and non-Europeans were inferior to healthy Europeans. They argued that Darwinism implied human inequality, since biological variation has to occur to drive the process of evolution. Haeckel even suggested that Darwinism was an "aristocratic" process, favoring an aristocracy of talent (not the traditional landed aristocracy, for which Haeckel had no sympathy). Since Darwinism provided a naturalistic explanation for the origin of ethics, many of its adherents dismissed human rights as a chimera.

Darwin expressed incredulity when critics assailed him for undermining morality. In his Autobiography, however, Darwin rejected the idea of objective moral standards, stating that one "can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones." (1) Friedrich Hellwald, an influential ethnologist, promoted a Darwinian view of social evolution in his major work, The History of Culture (1875). Hellwald was quite radical in exalting the Darwinian process of the struggle for existence above all moral considerations. "The right of the stronger," he insisted, "is a natural law." (2) He clarified this idea further:


In nature only One Right rules, which is no right, the right of the stronger, or violence. But violence is also in fact the highest source of right, in that without it no legislation is thinkable. I will in the course of my portrayal easily prove that even in human history the right of the stronger has fundamentally retained its validity at all times. (3)

This Darwinian undermining of human rights would be fateful for the Judeo-Christian vision of the sanctity of human life.

Besides stressing human inequality, Haeckel and many of his fellow Darwinists devalued human life by criticizing Judeo-Christian conceptions of humanity as "anthropocentric." Rather than being created in the image of God, they argued, humans were descended from simian ancestors. They blurred the distinctions between humans and animals, alleging that characteristics that had been traditionally considered uniquely human--rationality, morality, religion, etc.--were also present in animals to some degree. In Darwin's own words, the difference between humans and animals is quantitative, not qualitative.

Darwin's explanation that all human characteristics that previously had been associated with the human soul were not qualitatively distinct from animals also undermined the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of body-soul dualism, which endued humans with greater moral and spiritual significance than other organisms. (4) Many Darwinists understood the implications of this, including Haeckel, who founded the Monist League in 1906 specifically to combat all dualistic religions and philosophies, especially Christianity (but also Kantianism). One prominent member of the Monist League, August Forel, a world famous psychiatrist at the University of Zurich, described his initial encounter with Darwinism as a kind of conversion experience. He explained that Darwinism had convinced him that body-soul dualism was no longer tenable and that humans have no free will. Based on his view that heredity accounts for almost all character traits (and most mental illness), Forel became one of the most influential figures in the German eugenics movement, preaching the need to eliminate "inferior" races and handicapped infants, and recruiting Alfred Ploetz, who founded the world's first eugenics organization and journal.

Another element of Darwinism that contributed to the devaluing of human life was its stress on the struggle for existence. Based on the Malthusian population principle, Darwin pointed out that offspring are produced at much higher levels than can survive. Therefore multitudes necessarily perish in the struggle for existence. While Malthus saw this tendency toward overpopulation as the cause of misery and poverty, Darwin explained that it was really beneficial. In the conclusion of The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows." (5) For Darwin death--even mass death--was not only inevitable, necessary. As Adrian Desmond explained in his biography of T. H. Huxley (the foremost Darwinian biologist in late nineteenth-century Britain, who earned the nickname, "Darwin's bulldog"), "only from death on a genocidal scale could the few progress." (6) Hellwald expressed the same idea in The History of Culture, claiming that evolutionary progress would occur as the "fitter" humans "stride across the corpses of the vanquished; that is natural law." (7)

Indeed, many leading Darwinists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries claimed that in order to foster evolutionary progress, the less valuable elements of humanity, generally defined as the disabled and those of non-European races, had to be eliminated. They feared that Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethics, together with the advances of modern civilization--especially medicine and hygiene--would produce biological degeneration, since the weak and sick would be allowed to reproduce. Though many focused on methods to restrict reproduction, a surprising number of leading Darwinists--and not only Haeckel and Forel--actually promoted killing the "unfit" as a means to bring biological progress. Racial extermination and infanticide were integral components of their Darwinian program for biological rejuvenation.

In retrospect, the connection between these Darwinian ideas and Hitler's ideology are obvious. Interestingly, however, when I began my research on evolutionary ethics, Hitler was not even on my radar screen. I was wary of connecting Darwin and Hitler because of Daniel Gasman's failed attempt to draw a direct line from Haeckel to Hitler in The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, a book with which most historians rightly find fault. However, the title of my book--From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)--indicates that I made the connection nonetheless, though in quite a different manner from Gasman. Indeed, the more I studied books and articles on evolutionary ethics by German scientists, physicians, and social thinkers, the more I discovered that I could not avoid the parallels between German Darwinist discourse and Hitler's ideology. This should not come as a complete surprise, however, since just about all of Hitler's biographers have noted the strong social Darwinist elements in his ideology, as Ian Kershaw does recently in his magisterial two-volume biography.

Hitler was strongly influenced by the Darwinian ideology of the eugenics movement, and his writings and speeches clearly reflect it. In Mein Kampf Hitler asserted that his philosophy


by no means believes in the equality of races, but recognizes along with their differences their higher or lower value, and through this knowledge feels obliged, according to the eternal will that rules this universe, to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to demand the submission of the worse and weaker. It embraces thereby in principle the aristocratic law of nature and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual being. It recognizes not only the different value of races, but also the different value of individuals. . . . But by no means can it approve of the right of an ethical idea existing, if this idea is a danger for the racial life of the bearer of a higher ethic. (8)

Thus Hitler justified his racial views by appealing to Darwinian science. Because Hitler's racial views were so obviously flawed, some scholars call Hitler's views pseudo-scientific or a "vulgar" form of Darwinism. However, this is to judge Hitler by later standards of scientific thought. Many leading scientists and physicians embraced eugenics and scientific racism in Hitler's day, and indeed Fritz Lenz, the first professor of eugenics at a German university, crowed in 1933 that he had formulated the essentials of Nazi ideology even before Hitler began his political career.

Hitler's genocidal program was not the only adverse consequence of Darwinism's devaluing of human life, and Germany was not the only country impacted. Much work on the history of the eugenics movement in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere suggests that scientific and medical elites in many parts of the world imbibed the Darwinian devaluing of human life. Though it did not lead to genocide in these countries, it did lead to other injustices, such as the compulsory sterilization of thousands of people classified as "less fit," based on their hereditary condition (sometimes based on very tenuous evidence, leading to many cases of misdiagnosis). Social Darwinist and eugenics ideology also played an important role in the budding movement to legalize abortion in the early twentieth century.

Further, recent confirmation of my findings about the Darwinian devaluing of human life have come from Ian Dowbiggin's and Nick Kemp's important new studies on the history of the euthanasia movements in the United States and Britain, respectively. Both emphasize the role of Darwinism in paving the way ideologically for euthanasia. According to Dowbiggin, "The most pivotal turning point in the early history of the euthanasia movement was the coming of Darwinism to America." (9) This held true in Britain, as well, for Kemp informs us: "While we should be wary of depicting Darwin as the man responsible for ushering in a secular age we should be similarly cautious of underestimating the importance of evolutionary thought in relation to the questioning of the sanctity of human life." (10) The worldview of most early euthanasia advocates was saturated with Darwinian ideology, and they forthrightly used Darwinian ideas to combat the Judeo-Christian concept of the sanctity of human life.

Thus, historical evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries overwhelmingly supports the thesis that Darwinism devalued human life. Whatever one thinks philosophically about this issue--and, of course, some Darwinists are embarrassed by the link and try to deny it--historically Darwinism has contributed to a devaluing of human life, thereby providing impetus for euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion.

The question now emerges: Is this all just of historical interest? Haven't we learned a lesson from Nazism not to use social Darwinism to devalue humans? Haven't we abandoned biological racism and rabid anti-Semitism, integral components of Nazi ideology?

Yes, indeed, we have learned much from the Nazi past, and I don't think it is fair to compare our present situation with Nazi Germany, as though they are completely the same. We don't live in a murderous dictatorship, and racism is on the defensive, at least in academic circles. For this we can be thankful. Still, in some respects, I wonder if we have learned enough, especially when I see big-name Darwinists, evolutionary psychologists, and bioethicists using Darwinism today to undermine the sanctity of human life. Whether Darwinism does actually devalue human life or not, there are certainly many people who think it does, and they are not intellectual featherweights.

First of all, the position that Rachels stakes out on issues of life and death are strikingly similar to that of the Australian bioethicist, Peter Singer, whose appointment a few years ago to a chair in bioethics at Princeton University stirred up vigorous controversy. Singer is renowned--or notorious, depending on one's point of view--for promoting the legitimacy of infanticide for handicapped babies and voluntary euthanasia, as well as for defending animal rights. Darwinism plays a key role in Singer's philosophy, underpinning his views on life and death. Singer claims that Darwin "undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of thinking on the place of our species in the universe." It stripped humanity of the special status that Judeo-Christian thought had conferred upon it. Singer complains that even though Darwin "gave what ought to have been its final blow" to the "human-centred view of the universe," the view that humans are special and sacred has not yet vanished. Singer is now laboring to give the sanctity-of-life ethic its deathblow. (11)

Singer and Rachels are not the only prominent philosophers arguing that Darwinism undermines the sanctity of human life. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea the materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that Darwinism functions like a "universal acid," destroying traditional forms of religion and morality. In confronting the issue of biomedical ethics, Dennett asks, "At what 'point' does a human life begin or end? The Darwinian perspective lets us see with unmistakable clarity why there is no hope at all of discovering a telltale mark, a saltation in life's processes, that 'counts.'" Because of this, Dennett argues, there are "gradations of value in the ending of human lives," implying that some human lives have more value than others. After using his Darwinian acid to dissolve the sanctity-of-life ethic, Dennett wonders, "Which is worse, taking 'heroic' measures to keep alive a severely deformed infant, or taking the equally 'heroic' (if unsung) step of seeing to it that such an infant dies as quickly and painlessly as possible?" Darwin's Dangerous Idea is apparently especially toxic to disabled infants. (12)

The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, also draws connections between Darwinism and infanticide. After some high-profile cases of infanticide occurred in 1997, Pinker wrote an article purporting to explain its evolutionary origins. Since Pinker believes "that nurturing an offspring that carries our genes is the whole point of our existence," of course he tries to explain infanticide as a behavior that somehow confers reproductive advantage. He argues that a "new mother will first coolly assess the infant and her current situation and only in the next few days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual." (This is outrageously speculative; no new mother I have ever met has "coolly assessed" her infant, and it seems to me that those who commit infanticide are not "coolly assessing" the survival prospects for their infant, either--more likely they are desperate). According to Pinker, the mother's love for her infant will grow in relation to the "increasing biological value of a child (the chance that it will live to produce grandchildren)." Pinker specifically denies that infants have a "right to life," so, even though he doesn't completely condone infanticide, he thinks we should not be too harsh on mothers killing their children. (13) Pinker's view of infanticide is by no means unusual among evolutionary psychologists. In a leading textbook on evolutionary psychology, Evolution and Human Behavior: Darwinian Perspectives on Human Nature (2000), John Cartwright provides basically the same Darwinian explanation for infanticide as Pinker's.

What do Darwinian biologists have to say about all this? Some think Singer and company are on the right track. In 2001 Richard Dawkins, probably the most famous Darwinian biologist in the world today, made an impassioned plea for using genetic engineering to create an Australopithecine (whose fossil remains are allegedly an ancestor to the human species). Producing such a "missing link" would, according to Dawkins, provide "positive ethical benefits," since it would demolish the "double standard" of those guilty of "speciesism." Dawkins specifically claims that producing such an organism would demonstrate the poverty of the pro-life position, because it would show that humans are not different from animals. In the midst of this acerbic attack on the sanctity of human life, Dawkins expresses the hope that he will be euthanized if he is ever "past it," whatever that means (some people already think that Dawkins is "past it," but fortunately for Dawkins, I suspect that most of them still uphold the sanctity-of-life ethic that Dawkins rejects). (14)

Edward O. Wilson, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning pioneer of sociobiology and Harvard professor whose entire view of human nature revolves around Darwinism, also exemplifies this devaluing of human life, though he is more subtle about it. In his book Consilience (1998) he argues that his empiricist world view "has destroyed the giddying theory that we are special beings placed by a deity in the center of the universe in order to serve as the summit of Creation for the glory of the gods." In one passage in his autobiography he compares humans to ants, informing us that we humans are too numerous on the globe, while ants are in a proper population balance. "If we were to vanish today," Wilson explains, "the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion." But if ants were to disappear, thousands of species would perish as a result. The implication seems to be: ants are more valuable than humans, and biodiversity takes precedence over human life.

Many biologists, of course, disagree with Singer and Dawkins. From the late nineteenth century to today they have assured us that Darwinism has no implications for morality. They allege that those trying to apply Darwinism to morality are committing the "naturalistic fallacy" by deriving "ought" from "is." Darwin's friend and defender, Thomas Henry Huxley, vigorously opposed the attempts of his contemporaries to seek ethical guidance in natural evolutionary processes. More recently, Steven Jay Gould often butted heads with evolutionary psychologists, arguing that morality was a separate realm from biology. In his view Darwinism has nothing to say about how humans should act.

Gould, However, did not really divorce science and morality as much as he claimed. While vociferously arguing that Darwinian science on the one hand and religion and morality on the other are "non-overlapping magisteria," separated as far as the east is from the west, he persisted in drawing conclusions from his Darwinian science that are suspiciously laden with religious and moral implications. In Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1989), the whole point of his book is to use the Burgess Shale--a fossil-laden outcropping of rock in Canada teeming with many extinct, ancient forms of life--as an example of the contingency of history, to demonstrate that there is no real purpose to human existence. "Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay." His view of the contingency of human creation in the evolutionary process clearly affects the way he views the nature and status of humanity, for he informs us that "biology shifted our status from a simulacrum of God to a naked, upright ape." The closing words of this book are remarkable for someone who claims to keep science and religion in non-overlapping compartments:


And so, if you wish to ask the question of the ages-why do humans exist?-a major part of the answer, touching those aspects of the issue that science can treat at all, must be: because Pikaia [a Burgess shale chordate] survived the Burgess decimation. This response does not cite a single law of nature; it embodies no statement about predictable evolutionary pathways, no calculation of probabilities based on general rules of anatomy or ecology. The survival of Pikaia was a contingency of 'just history.' I do not think that any 'higher' answer can be given, and I cannot imagine that any resolution could be more fascinating. We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes-one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way. (15)

Does Gould really think this conclusion has no religious or moral implications? Does he really believe that his claim that biology demotes humans from the image of God to a naked ape is a purely scientific statement that has no bearing on moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia?

In light of all this, does Darwinism really devalue human life? I think I have shown conclusively that historically Darwinism has indeed devalued human life, leading to ideologies that promote the destruction of human lives deemed inferior to others. Those on the forefront in promoting abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and racial extermination often overtly based their views on Darwinism. Also, as I have shown in this essay, those favoring a Darwinian dismantling of the sanctity-of-life ethic have a good deal of intellectual firepower, and the idea is becoming rather widespread in academic circles today. There are, of course, various religious and philosophical moves that one can make to evade these conclusions, and some Darwinists have in the past and will continue in the future vigorously to oppose such developments (for this we can be thankful), construing them as faulty extrapolations by overzealous Darwinian materialists. However, it seems to me that there is an inherent logic in the move by Darwinists to undermine the sanctity-of-life ethic, which makes it so alluring that I doubt it will ever disappear as long as Darwinism is ascendant. In any case, it is certainly safe to say that in modern society Darwinism has contributed mightily to the erosion of the sanctity-of-life ethic. Darwinism really is a matter of life and death.

Richard Weikart is a Fellow at Discovery Institute and professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus.

[paperboy05]

Study: Tyrannosaurus Rex Basically a Big Chicken (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352510,00.html)

Tyrannosaurus rex just got a firm grip on the animal kingdom's family tree, right next to chickens and ostriches.

New analyses of soft tissue from a T.rex leg bone re-confirm that birds are dinosaurs' closest living relatives.

"We determined that T. rex, in fact, grouped with birds — ostrich and chicken — better than any other organism that we studied," said researcher John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. "We also show that it groups better with birds than [with] modern reptiles, such as alligators and green anole lizards."

Scientists long suspected non-avian dinosaurs were most closely related to modern-day birds. This idea initially rested largely on similarities between the outward appearances of bird and dinosaur skeletons.

Later, further evidence on the close evolutionary relationships among birds and non-avian dinosaurs accumulated.

A leg bone full of key gunk

The latest evidence comes from an ancient femur bone unearthed in 2003 by Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies in the Hell Creek Formation, a fossil-packed area that spans Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota.

It seems some 68 million years ago, a teenage T. rex died and left behind a drumstick-shaped femur bone that today still contains intact soft tissue and the oldest preserved proteins discovered to date.

Though no genetic material was preserved, researchers were able to extract the proteins from the collagen tissues.

"The proteins are what carry out the function inside the cells and organs. So the protein does a lot of the work. That [protein] sequence was derived from DNA," Asara told LiveScience.

In the case of T. rex's collagen, "it was responsible for making hard bone so that the dinosaur could stand."

By comparing the dino's protein sequences with those of 21 living organisms, a team of researchers say they have locked in the dinosaur-bird link.

Mastodons and K-T boundary addressed

The study, detailed in the April 25 issue of the journal Science, also shored up the evolutionary link between the extinct mastodon and the modern-day elephant.

A slew of advanced techniques — such as the protein sequencing — are shedding more light on the lives and deaths of now-extinct animals such as mastodons and dinosaurs.

For instance, another study published this week in Science pinned down more accurately the point in geologic time when dinosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and many plant and invertebrate animal species went extinct (as a result of what is called the K-T extinction event).

The new figure for that event is 65.95 million years ago, a few hundred thousand years later than previous estimates, says lead author Klaudia Kuiper of Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

The massive extinction event was likely the result of a meteor impact and/or volcanic activity on Earth that reduced sunlight and made photosynthesis very difficult for plants.

Reptiles, alligators, ostrich added

The current family-tree research builds on protein analyses of the T. rex bone by Asara and his colleagues, published last year in the journal Science.

"Now it's gone a lot further," Asara said. "We had no reptiles represented last year. We now have alligator and ostrich represented."

The researchers also refined the family relationships using more sophisticated algorithms.

This current study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Paul F. Glenn Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Copyright © 2008 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[bonkman]

interesting article paperboy. That's gotta be the first time somebody's BLASTed a dino sequence. :lol:

[Jhaan]

wow, what happened to this thread? Down to 50 posts?

[bonkman]

talgot -- an interesting read, but completely wrong. The misinterpretation of the few, regardless of how scholarly people think those people are (or thought they were, as most of those people dicussed in the article were from 100+ years ago), doesn't mean that Darwinism has any implications on how humans "should" behave. Obviously, we don't need Darwin to discuss how people should behave, as we were "behaving" before Darwin was around. Nor does Darwin undermine values. In fact, values go hand in hand with Darwin. Values make our species stronger, actually. There are the typical creationist assumptions put into this article, such as that "purposelessness" must undercut values. This isn't right at all. Even if overall life is purposeless (ie no heaven/hell), values benefit life while on earth. Game theory shows this.

[paperboy05]

wow, what happened to this thread? Down to 50 posts?

I think most of it was moved to the archive. Check the first post.

[Jhaan]

I think most of it was moved to the archive. Check the first post.

:doh: Thanks!

[darkfrog]

The massive extinction event was likely the result of a meteor impact and/or volcanic activity on Earth that reduced sunlight and made photosynthesis very difficult for plants.

I was under the impression that volcanic activity had been ruled out unless associated with/activated by the impact. I also thought that the Chicxulub impact has been accepted as the event causing the K-T boundary due to multiple findings including the date of the impact as well as he finding of large amounts of iridium throughout the sediment all over the world.

[bonkman]

I was under the impression that volcanic activity had been ruled out unless associated with/activated by the impact. I also thought that the Chicxulub impact has been accepted as the event causing the K-T boundary due to multiple findings including the date of the impact as well as he finding of large amounts of iridium throughout the sediment all over the world.
I thought so to. Could just be a foxnews sort of thing.

[darkfrog]

By: Richard Weikart
The Human Life Review
March 1, 2004

[Note: This article first appeared in The Human Life Review 30, 2 (Spring 2004): 29-37.]

A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn't evil? How could they believe this? How could they justify such a view?

They did it by appealing to Darwinism. Their pronouncement on Hitler occurred while we were discussing James Rachels' book, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford University Press, 1990). Darwinism, these students informed us, undermined all morality. This was not the first time I had heard such a view. In fact, at that time I was in the beginning phases of a research project on the history of evolutionary ethics, and I had already reviewed the work of some scientists and social scientists who believed that Darwinism undermined human rights and equality.


Blah blah blah
blah blahblah

In light of all this, does Darwinism really devalue human life? I think I have shown conclusively that historically Darwinism has indeed devalued human life, leading to ideologies that promote the destruction of human lives deemed inferior to others. Those on the forefront in promoting abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and racial extermination often overtly based their views on Darwinism. Also, as I have shown in this essay, those favoring a Darwinian dismantling of the sanctity-of-life ethic have a good deal of intellectual firepower, and the idea is becoming rather widespread in academic circles today. There are, of course, various religious and philosophical moves that one can make to evade these conclusions, and some Darwinists have in the past and will continue in the future vigorously to oppose such developments (for this we can be thankful), construing them as faulty extrapolations by overzealous Darwinian materialists. However, it seems to me that there is an inherent logic in the move by Darwinists to undermine the sanctity-of-life ethic, which makes it so alluring that I doubt it will ever disappear as long as Darwinism is ascendant. In any case, it is certainly safe to say that in modern society Darwinism has contributed mightily to the erosion of the sanctity-of-life ethic. Darwinism really is a matter of life and death.

Richard Weikart is a Fellow at Discovery Institute and professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus.
WOW! I guess some people just don't quite 'get' Darwin. Natural selection would by definition eliminate the things like infanticide and extermination of the sick and infirm since those are conscious, not natural decisions made by the individual species itself.
Did any of these people ever think that the human capacity to help the weak and disabled may be a trait of evolution to begin with? IOW, we evolved above the instinctive primitive brain allowing us to better defend from other species as well as realize a need for preservation of human life, even in the earliest days by forming tribes.
If we allowed social Darwinism of the Hitler variety, we would never have had people like Einstein and Stephen Hawking among many others. Devaluing human life and attempting to choose who is worthy to reproduce is anti-Darwinism since it removes the 'natural' from Natural Selection. This author demonstrated nothing 'conclusively', far from it.

[paperboy05]

I thought so to. Could just be a foxnews sort of thing.

That is weird. It's a LiveScience article and I thought they were usually on with their facts. :dontknow:

[redmaxx]

WOW! I guess some people just don't quite 'get' Darwin. Natural selection would by definition eliminate the things like infanticide and extermination of the sick and infirm since those are conscious, not natural decisions made by the individual species itself.
Did any of these people ever think that the human capacity to help the weak and disabled may be a trait of evolution to begin with? IOW, we evolved above the instinctive primitive brain allowing us to better defend from other species as well as realize a need for preservation of human life, even in the earliest days by forming tribes.
If we allowed social Darwinism of the Hitler variety, we would never have had people like Einstein and Stephen Hawking among many others. Devaluing human life and attempting to choose who is worthy to reproduce is anti-Darwinism since it removes the 'natural' from Natural Selection. This author demonstrated nothing 'conclusively', far from it.

Devil's Advocate:

I think when people think of applying Darwinism to Hitler, they think of the principle of Survival of the Fittest, which isn't necessarily a "natural decision" made by the species itself. It could be of the social nature, killing those members which are not the fittest, thus allowing only the most fit members to continue on propagating the race, no?

[Copperblade]

Natural selection wasn't applied to the current human condition AFAIK. Natural selection has always been described as an outside force acting upon creatures, having nothing to do with what the creatures might want. I would when creatures select themselves it's engineering, although I guess both would be evolution.

[bonkman]

Devil's Advocate:

I think when people think of applying Darwinism to Hitler, they think of the principle of Survival of the Fittest, which isn't necessarily a "natural decision" made by the species itself. It could be of the social nature, killing those members which are not the fittest, thus allowing only the most fit members to continue on propagating the race, no?
except "survival of the fittest" is really a bastardized version of darwinism. "Fitness" is determined by viability in the current environment. When people commit genocide/mass murder, they're essentially playing the role of nature. However, their "fitness" criteria is something arbitrary, like skin color, which has no impact on survivability. Which means that the executed are no less fit than the executers. Which means there's no evolutionary benefit.

[darkfrog]

Devil's Advocate:

I think when people think of applying Darwinism to Hitler, they think of the principle of Survival of the Fittest, which isn't necessarily a "natural decision" made by the species itself. It could be of the social nature, killing those members which are not the fittest, thus allowing only the most fit members to continue on propagating the race, no?
I understand the definition and idea behind social darwinism but my comment is that someone with half a brain can see the faults and would not be so easily swayed by any tenuous connection made by his own students. I also found it amusing how 'shocked' he was by the mere suggestion (as if a history professor heard about this for the first time by his own students:rolleyes: ) even more more after reading about the James Rachel book he assigned to his class to read. I guess either the author or Weikart himself believes that any readers will put their own brain on hold when reading that crap.

However, after looking into this more, I find that the Discovery Institute partly funded his research which answers a lot of questions.

[redmaxx]

except "survival of the fittest" is really a bastardized version of darwinism. "Fitness" is determined by viability in the current environment. When people commit genocide/mass murder, they're essentially playing the role of nature. However, their "fitness" criteria is something arbitrary, like skin color, which has no impact on survivability. Which means that the executed are no less fit than the executers. Which means there's no evolutionary benefit.

Hey, it wasn't my idea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Fittest) Again playing devil's advocate: Who's to say that the natural version is the best way to do it?

[bonkman]

Hey, it wasn't my idea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_Fittest) Again playing devil's advocate: Who's to say that the natural version is the best way to do it?
its not a matter of "best way to do it." it's how it's done :) we could engineer any situation we wanted -- but depending on what that was, we might destroy everything.

[redmaxx]

its not a matter of "best way to do it." it's how it's done :) we could engineer any situation we wanted -- but depending on what that was, we might destroy everything.

More devil's advocate: Natural selection seeks to produce the best creature with the best characteristics at any given time, right? So why not apply it at a higher level? If not, why? Why shouldn't we live by own laws and rules that produced us and apply it to our social structures? Sure we might destroy everything, but nature might do that for us, so what have we got to lose? Maybe if we don't have social darwinism, we will be destroyed by nature?

[Captal]

Hi guys! I'm a bit disappointed to see this thread shrunken :D

I have nothing to add. I still believe science and faith are not mutually exclusive, and that there is no reason evolution cannot be God's tool of creation.

Sorry I'm never on anymore guys, too much to do in Australia, including learning Japanese, which sucks all my time away!

:heart: Cap

[Copperblade]

More devil's advocate: Natural selection seeks to produce the best creature with the best characteristics at any given time, right? So why not apply it at a higher level? If not, why? Why shouldn't we live by own laws and rules that produced us and apply it to our social structures? Sure we might destroy everything, but nature might do that for us, so what have we got to lose? Maybe if we don't have social darwinism, we will be destroyed by nature?

I really have no idea what you're trying to say. The things that survive are the things that survive. It's not really so much that they are selected, but rather that the things that die before producing offspring are deselected. So I don't know what you mean by living by the laws and rules that produced us. We do live by those laws, we can do nothing else.

[bonkman]

More devil's advocate: Natural selection seeks to produce the best creature with the best characteristics at any given time, right? So why not apply it at a higher level? If not, why? Why shouldn't we live by own laws and rules that produced us and apply it to our social structures? Sure we might destroy everything, but nature might do that for us, so what have we got to lose? Maybe if we don't have social darwinism, we will be destroyed by nature?
wrong. You're pretending there is a selector. It's all a matter of the probability of a certain creature to reproducing. The creatures that exist at a given time are not necessarily the "best" they could be for the particular environment. They're just good enough.

[Bayern]

Another example when Lucifer put bones into the ground in order to confuse us and tried to make us question evolution.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25179317/

[bonkman]

Another example when Lucifer put bones into the ground in order to confuse us and tried to make us question evolution.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25179317/
cool post, with some interesting other links in it. Thanks.

And damn that beazelbub.

[redmaxx]

The creatures that exist at a given time are not necessarily the "best" they could be for the particular environment.

That's what I said, just re-worded.

I still don't see any good logical arguments against social darwinism, just that... we don't want to... :confused:

[bonkman]

That's what I said, just re-worded.

I still don't see any good logical arguments against social darwinism, just that... we don't want to... :confused:
:lol: that's so old that i cant figure out what line of thought a response should take.

what do you mean a logical argument against social darwinism?

[redmaxx]

:lol: that's so old that i cant figure out what line of thought a response should take.

:dontknow:

what do you mean a logical argument against social darwinism?

Playing devils advocate again, I have yet to see a logically based argument for why we shouldn't have social darwinism. All the reasons amount to emotional, moral or personal opinions.

[superdan54]

Another example when Lucifer put bones into the ground in order to confuse us and tried to make us question evolution.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25179317/

I'm not sure how this find, although very cool, further's proof of evolution. It's not like any organic material remains that can be dated.

[paperboy05]

Another example when Lucifer put bones into the ground in order to confuse us and tried to make us question evolution.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25179317/

I get to go see that :whee:

[darkfrog]

I'm not sure how this find, although very cool, further's proof of evolution. It's not like any organic material remains that can be dated.
Are you saying it can't be dated without organic material?
I still find it amazing that YEC will accept the science that gives them microprocessors and synthesized chemicals but will reject the same science when it is used to date anything over 6000 years.

[talgot]

Are you saying it can't be dated without organic material?
I still find it amazing that YEC will accept the science that gives them