Oh, were to begin. I've actually put this off for months, but the time has come I guess. Now I haven't seen this movie, but I've read sooooo many reviews that go over this thing point by point it's ingrained in my head. But I'm only going to hit on the things I know are definately in the movie, because I did read the Answers in Genesis review....ugh so they confirmed these points.
So, in the next few weeks the movie EXPELLED will start appearing, in limited release around the country. Mostly in the southern states what one would call the bible belt. This is a movie that's supposed to be about Intelligent Design, but from everything I've read they only seem to bash evolution and offer no science to back up their claims. Intelligent Design is the belief that everything was created but not like the bible creation story, it's sort of like taking the history of earth and every time something new pops up that was specifically created, as is, complete and perfect. For awhile they wouldn't say who this creator was but lately they've finally caved and said it is the Judeo/Christian God. There is also this thing called irreducible complexity. Basically saying things are so complicated that they couldn't have evolved. They have this great analogy that if you take a piece of a watch out it will no longer work and since the watch was designed so are we. Well, If you remove my arm I will live, well it depends I guess, I might bleed to death but if a doctor did it I would most likely survive. I can also live without one of my lungs or a kidney, my gal bladder or apendix. I'm sure I'll get some comment about eyes or cell tails so I give you this. It a great web page refuting and giving source for all this ID garbage:
http://www.answers.com/topic/irreducible-complexity?cat=technology
http://www.answers.com/topic/intelligent-design?cat=technology
They make claims that evolution lead to the Nazis, and that Hilter was an Atheist, he was not, he was born a Roman Catholic and while he stopped going to church later in life was still a believer in Jesus. He even says this in his book, so if you don't believe me check it out for yourselves. Go here for info:
http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/AdolfHitlerQuotesGodReligion.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/religionofhitler.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Religious_beliefs
They make claims that 'scientists' were refused tenure and kicked out of science for their beliefs (thus the name Expelled.) Which isn't really true, these guys were lousy scientists and didn't bring in any funding, which is how you actually pay for research that you publish, since the colleges don't fund that stuff. And if you don't do any real published science work and someone else does, who do you think should get the better job? No one who is actually a scientist agrees with this 'theory.' But I digress.
They obtained interviews under false pretense saying that this was for a movie called Crossroads and it was a documentory about the clash of science and religion. They got interviews from PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott telling them the name of the movie was Crossroads (there is a paper or email trial with all this info just check out http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ You may have to look some but I'm tired of finding everything, look for yoursleves;)) but in reality they had already paid for the website address of expelled.com. I don't really know why they would lie about this, but that's apparently what they do. They asked Dawkins about how ID could work. Off the cuff Dawkins says the only way it could work is that aliens, who themselves had to have evolved, seeded the earth with life. It was just a quick idea but they now claim Dawkins believes in ID.... Ugh. If someone asks me to speculate on something, I'll do it. It doesn't mean I agree with them. They cut away from the actual scientists with shots of Nazis to drive home their point. Evolution is evil and it leads to Nazis. Nice guys.
So basically this movie is made for a specific group of people and the uneducated creationist masses, who apparently love this thing. Unfortunately the educated people (like you guys...RIGHT?!) can see through this, not even fox news gave it a good review:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/not_even_fox_news.php
They've been showing advanced previews at theaters around the country. Jess would not let me go, for fear that I would get arrested. But if you went online and filled out a form they would put your name on a list to see these advanced screenings. A bunch of people have done this and it is well documented. Well, one of the interviewies put his name on the list and received a confirmation email. While in line for the movie they tossed him out, or expelled him as he put it, go here for the full story:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php
The whole point of this movie is to create a controversy that there is a rift in science and that evolution should be taken out of schools. Or at the very least the 'controversy' should be taught in science class. Which, according to the Dover Trial in PA, is illegal since ID is actually just creationism in disguise. But there isn't a controversy is science it's just the same old evolution vs. religion thing again only the religion is trying to call itself science. It's not. How can this be science when they look at something and say God did it, when actual scientist have already SHOWN how it works and it wasn't god it was evolution (you could argue God made evolution which I don't really have a problem with but since macroevolution is impossible to these guys I using the special creation theme song.)
Some other reviews are here, these are from Scientific American and another interviewie:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-michael-shermer
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled
And another review here:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2385,n,n
And now they are being sued for copyright violation:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/peter_irons_drafts_a_letter.php#more
I'm sure they will claim that 'Big Science' is out to get them. And they would be right. There is no room for the lies they peddle. They are simply trying to get God back in schools through the back door.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/03/are-id-proponents-being-silenced.html
Well that's it,
Brett
16 comments:
I don't like it when people create a religion, based on incomplete facts and/or inconclusive evidence, then bash another person's belief with it.
I'll use the Intelligent Design theory to make my point:
It's like someone is building an incomplete weapon and firing it at someone else! Major Backfire!
They're saying: Evolution is non-existant.
Their backup: Everything is so complex, evolution couldn't exist. However, they just said afterward that evolution led to the Nazi regime. One minute they're saying it's there, the next it isn't.
I can see why this issue bugs you. There's more proof that Evolution exists rather than some Intelligent Design theory instead.
If somebody bashes another person's idea, then I'll bash theirs. Evolution is IN. ID is EXPELLED.
-Raid
Damn it, as if there isn't enough of this crap around now they have to make a MOVIE about it? Who let's these people live?
Jess was wise...as I probably would have pissed off SO many people had I seen a screening of this thing.
It's just so stupid that there's a controversy about apples and oranges. Evolution isn't a religion, therefore cannot be treated or referenced as such.
There are WAY too many people out there trying to be martyrs for their religion, but not actually willing to learn anything for themselves.
Brainwashed masses that live a life for others rather than themselves, with no knowledgeable thought to the affect they have on other people that are for and against them.
Bah...I shouldn't get started. I can see how it'd piss you off though. I hadn't heard of it until your post, and I'm already livid.
Bah. :)
-E
The fact that they are lying and have no evidence is what's so frustrating. I've given up trying to get people to see and use reason, we are so like our animal brotheren sometimes. But things like this that make all these claims about this big conspirecy in science without any scientific proof of either this vast conspirecy or this 'creator'.
Ugh,
Best,
Brett
Hey, I've been off the grid for a week or so, bought a house and had a business trip to Chicago (went by the Field Museum, but did not have time to stop...argh!)
I haven't seen this movie yet, but the gist of it is that when a scientific theory like Evloution has major holes it should not be taught as fact, instead just teach it in a scientific way-yes Darwin had a good idea, no it does not support all of the fossil records, geological info, biological sciences, our current understanding of the cell, DNA, RNA, or provide any concievable abiogenesis path. So evolution does have it strengths- it explains how descent with modification allows for variations within a species, but it never makes the crucial jump to providing a whole new species. Expelled is a movie about teaching the plus and minus columns for evolution and also allowing for differing opinions to be discussed. Intelligent Design also has it strenghts and weaknesses. Thankfully this movie will also help show how proffitable tenured scientists with record of published articles in scientific journals as well as securers of grant money (not deadbeat losers like some seem to think) were wrongfully let go for not towing the party line. Will it change anyone's mind? I don't know, but at least it should silence some of the foolish attackers of ID who refuse to at least learn the basics of the theory and just parrot Dawkins or some other pro-evolution mouthpiece. Remember Dawkins is the guy caught in a bold face lie about computer models of the evolution of the eye. Real trustworthy chap. Hitler? Remember he was raised Catholic and rejected the faith to follow a survival of the fittest worldview. Christianity was rejected because the weak and needy were affirmed. Survival of the fittest does that sound like Evolution or Catholicism? Just a few quotes from scholars on the Hitler/Darwin connection.
In Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock writes: “The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism.” What Hitler found objectionable about Christianity was its rejection of the conclusions that followed from Darwin’s theory: “Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.”
Joachim C. Fest, in Hitler, describes how the Nazi tyrant “extract[ed] the elements of his world view” from various influences including “popular treatments of Darwinism.” Hitler, like lots of other Europeans and Americans of his day, saw Darwinism as offering a total picture of social reality. In his biography, Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris, Ian Kershaw explains that “crude social-Darwinism” gave Hitler “his entire political ‘world-view.’”
John Toland’s Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, finally, says this of Hitler’s “Second Book” (1928), never published in his lifetime: “An essential of Hitler’s conclusions in this book was the conviction drawn from Darwin that might makes right.”
Believe what you want, it's your life, but at least listen to both sides. I don't solely base my views on Evolution off what the IDers say and I don't base my views on ID off what the Evolutionists say. They all have agendas.
-Steve
Okay, the Discovery Institute is claiming the Exposed website is actually run and funded by the NCSE:
http://www.discovery.org/blogs/discoveryblog/2008/04/expelled_exposedexposed_1.php
Does anyone know if this is true? It would totally destroy the credibility of anything the Exposed website posts as their ignore science in favor of attacking religous tactics are well known. I hope this isn't the case because a lot of bloggers are linking to the Exposed website without knowing about their pro atheist agenda.
'I haven't seen this movie yet, but the gist of it is that when a scientific theory like Evloution has major holes it should not be taught as fact, instead just teach it in a scientific way-yes Darwin had a good idea, no it does not support all of the fossil records, geological info, biological sciences, our current understanding of the cell, DNA, RNA, or provide any concievable abiogenesis path. So evolution does have it strengths- it explains how descent with modification allows for variations within a species, but it never makes the crucial jump to providing a whole new species.'
Yes it does, you just refuse to see it. The evidence is there in fossils and in DNA, RNA and cell structure. When trying to get a new theory or idea excepted by science you need to provide data and facts. Your ID has done NONE of that. Scientists have REPEATEDLY asked and still gotten nothing. In fact they make fun of one of your ID guys who keeps saying he has a revolutionary idea that proves ID but for some reason he never seems to publish it it's been going on 4 years. Saying god did it shouldn't take that long. How do you explain all the different dog breeds? While they are all similar they are different DNA wise. You can now do DNA tests on a mutt to see what dogs it's actually derived from.We are a different species from chimps right? We have intermediate species between us, lots of them. And how do you know that all these new animals we are finding are not new species? New species take time to form, they just don't pop up over night.
Expelled is a movie about teaching the plus and minus columns for evolution and also allowing for differing opinions to be discussed. Intelligent Design also has it strenghts and weaknesses. Thankfully this movie will also help show how proffitable tenured scientists with record of published articles in scientific journals as well as securers of grant money (not deadbeat losers like some seem to think) were wrongfully let go for not towing the party line. Will it change anyone's mind? I don't know, but at least it should silence some of the foolish attackers of ID who refuse to at least learn the basics of the theory and just parrot Dawkins or some other pro-evolution mouthpiece.
Steve, they DON'T tell you anything new. They don't explain what ID is. They just simply bash Evolution. I've learned the basics of your theory it's just crap. They aren't doing science they are just dressing up creationism. Irriducible Complexity isn't real in fact it's been proven false over and over again.... in the 1970's. This just a propaganda film.
'Remember Dawkins is the guy caught in a bold face lie about computer models of the evolution of the eye. Real trustworthy chap. Hitler? Remember he was raised Catholic and rejected the faith to follow a survival of the fittest worldview. Christianity was rejected because the weak and needy were affirmed. Survival of the fittest does that sound like Evolution or Catholicism? Just a few quotes from scholars on the Hitler/Darwin connection.'
Who cares what Dawkins may or may not have said (there is a ton of evidence about the eye, how about looking it up!) He is not evolution. Why do you attack instead of answer? This is just so typical of ID/Creationists. If you would actually read what others have said. Evolution is not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the luckiest. I've said this to you before but you refuse to listen. You've made up your mind and REFUSE to listen to anything else. In fact Dawkins said that in human society social darwinism should NOT be practiced. The Rich should help feed the poor. Just because something is true in Nature doesn't mean it should be practiced in society. Here are a few statistics for you. 75% of inmates are CHRISTIANS while only .02% are Atheists. Hmmmm.... sound like your lovely religion is doing a bang up job but that's off the point.
"In Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock writes: “The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism.” What Hitler found objectionable about Christianity was its rejection of the conclusions that followed from Darwin’s theory: “Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.”
This is crap, but it still means nothing. Do you blame Newton for the challenger crash or when people fall to their deaths? Even if Hitler was influenced by Darwin, and the evidence says no the hatred for the Jews goes back a thousand years, should Darwin's idea be blamed for what others have done? No, your passing the buck, trying to excuse Hitler for his atrocities. By this thinking we should stop thinking and not learn anything new as it MIGHT cause a problem later on. That's kind of funny, sounds like something that happened recently here in Texas.
"Believe what you want, it's your life, but at least listen to both sides. I don't solely base my views on Evolution off what the IDers say and I don't base my views on ID off what the Evolutionists say. They all have agendas."
Yes Steve, you do. You are TOTALLY buying what they are selling. And yes the NCSE does have an agenda to teach people what science is. Not what you want it to be. Facts are facts, belief is something different.
Brett
Yes Expelled Exposed is run by the NCSE. I wouldn't believe anything by the discovery institute they are behind Expelled.
Criticism is not an attack.
Brett
Brett,
You forget that ID and Evolution bascically use all the same facts and data. It isn't like IDists have to provide new data since most of what evolutionists accept as proof for evolution equally proves or is more supportive of ID. It is a different way of ordering the facts. Evolution is more so a way to organize and inerpet facts than an actual observable process.
Please give me one specific fact about evolution which has been, observed, repeated, and falsified that can not also support an ID hypothesis. There may be one, just off the top of my head I can't quickly recall one.
Actually they are quite different, since in science things can be falsified, need data to support them and can be tested. And in ID god it, so they don't bother to look further. Yhey don't test, they look and if they can't figure it out it was created. I guess they never thought to ask someone else if they figured it out (which they usually have so I guess they are just not very smart.)
How about the aids virus. Or those lizards I just pointed out. If the Aids virus didn't evolve then the old drugs should still work. This isn't true, so new drugs have to be created to keep it at bay. How about legs on whales? They don't need them if they were created as whales why would they form a leg? That's just crazy! Or teeth on Chickens? Birds are birds why would they grow teeth?
Brett
Aids virus is not a species, not an animal and they remain viruses and don't mutate based on chance or luck. Again you need to provide an example of Evolution which is observable, falsifiable, and repeatable. Also it must only provide proof for evolution and in no way can provide proof for ID. Your lizards are a much stronger case for ID than Evolution. They are not lucky, they are not random mutations-they are environmental specific adaptations without DNA changes-this is part of the hypothesis of ID-it definately is not an example of Darwinian evolution. But even if it was, how would you falsify it? There is no proof of Whales developing legs. None. Zero. Now you can say that there is a whale like animal with a femur like bone-which is a pretty big stretch of the facts, but still, how do you repeat this? how do you obseve it? How do you falsify it? Fossils don't show ancestory so there is no scientific reason to view it as a relative of a whale- Check out either Talk Origins or True Origins- no one knows how to properly fit that animal into a species tree. It doesn't fit anywhere. While it is a decent example of what you would expect if evolution was true-scientifically if your honest it can't be used as anything more than a hypothetical link without the ability to be falsified.
I would have to research chicken teeth, that is a new one on me. Give me a link.
-Steve
This is what is frustrating. I was surprised to read that Fox news gave the movie a bad review after the glowing endorsement by Bill O'Reilly. But then you look into the actual review on Fox and see it is by ultra left wing, to-extreme-for-most-extremists Roger Friedman. Friedman may work for Fox, but few people would take seriously the opinion of a guy that liked Fahrenheit 9/11 and criticized Passion of the Christ. Fox’s entertainment sections are, ironically, one of the only places that isn’t doggedly conservative and right-wing. But anyone who would mention Fox's review and not the actual reviewer would be spinning the facts a tad. This is how it always is with anti-IDist propaganda. They present a half truth, the masses believe it, but by the time you do a little research and find out the whole truth the damage is done and the half truth is being repeated ad nauseum down the wire. Let's just stick to the points and forget the spin.
Steve:
Actually I'm tired of wasting my time with this. You can look it up we have lots of transitional whale fossils and we do have whales with vestigial legs:
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/whale-leg.html
It's not my fault you don't understand or believe it. Basilisaurus is a whale with legs, look it up.
As for chickens with teeth, well you should have seen that dinosaurs return to life show on discovery:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mutant-chicken-grows-alli
The lizard does not prove anything about ID. In fact if left alone they will become a new species. DNA is usually the last thing to change. Humans decide what species are, nature could care less. ID says small changes can happen but large ones can not. These sound like the beginnings of large changes to me. Dogs are very different from each other but can still interbreed their DNA is different, we can tell the breeds apart from just their DNA but they can still be breed with both wolves and coyotes. And wolves and coyotes are different species.
A virus can be a species. It's just not an animal, plants have species and they aren't animals either. Viruses, feed and reproduce.
There are lots of examples of speciation from fruit flies to worms, I'm not going to bother looking them up because you will just ignore them. As you usually do. You want visual recorded proof of speciation that takes generations even millinium. Here is info:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article//evo_45
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/stories/speciation.html
And you can try and find these:
molestus speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).
Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929)
Rhagoletis pomonella from Crataegus spp to Malus pumila(Filchak et al. 2000)
Anopheles gambiae(Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003)
Ensatina to the subs klauberi and eschscholtzi (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997)
All examples of speciation.
Brett
Anonymous please sign your comments so I know who I'm talking to. The whole fox news thing is just for the fun. I don't really care what they said and yes their reviewers are more liberal, so? Fox news still put it out.
The facts are these people lied. They repeatedly lied and it's documented. If you refuse to believe this I don't care. It's been put up for all to see.
Science keeps asking for papers or evidence for ID and recieve nothing. It's a joke. The fact creationists cling to it and refuse to actually learn the science involved is....disappointing.
Brett
Steve,
And then of course there is this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Enjoy,
Brett
Brett,
Hey don't think I ignore the info you give. I disagree with it, but I at least check it out.
Heck I don't ignore what you say, I usually try to go deeper and see what both sides of the debate are.
Like Basilosaurus couldn't be related to modern whales as evolutionist Barbara Stahl, a vertebrate paleontologist, points out:
The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar shape of the cheek teeth make it plain that these archaeocetes [like Basilosaurus] could not possibly have been the ancestor of modern whales.
Its "legs" were most likely claspers for mating similar to what modern sharks have.
Also here is Dawkins peer reviewed article "Where d'you get those peepers"
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1995-06-16peepers.shtml
problem is Nilsson and Pelger never did any of the computer models Dawkins claims they did. Dawkins simply made it all up. But wait Talkorigins repeats the misinformation (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part8.html) so could Dawkins and Talkorigins be capable of producing misinformation? To be fair Nilsson and Pelger did create a mathematical simulation of eye evolution on paper, but even evolutionists generally don't put much weight in a string of 2000 intelligently guided mathematical equations as being proof of random mutation.
-Steve
Steve,
"Also here is Dawkins peer reviewed article "Where d'you get those peepers"
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1995-06-16peepers.shtml"
But Were does it say these models were never actually made? I actually looked up this article and the only decentors I found were, surprise, creationists. So if this stands up to per review then it's accepted as fact until proven wrong. Well who or what proved this wrong?
And your basilosaurus info is wrong:
He engages in straw man arguments. Example: He quotes Barbara Stahl as saying, "The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar shape of the cheek teeth make it plain that these archaeocetes [like Basilosaurus] could not possibly have been the ancestor of modern whales."
Here Sarfati tries to give the impression that most paleontologists are claiming that Basilosaurus was a direct ancestor of modern whales. They are not. Basilosaurus is understood to have been a species that evolved from a common ancestor to the whales, but on a separate pathway.. The relationship between Basilosaurus and modern whales is like that between the Neandertals and modern humans. Although both evolved from a common ancestor species, the evidence now indicates that modern humans are not descended from the Neandertals.
Gotten from here: http://home.nctv.com/jackjan/item28.htm
That's the big problem with creationists, quote mining and then not really understanding what they read. No basilosaurus is NOT the ancestor to modern whales but it is still a whale, just an extinct branch. And yes the hind legs were thought to be used as claspers but the fact it it is a whale with hind legs. And a partial true is a lie. These are supposed to be upright moral people. Come on.
You might also want to check out manatees, they have to nails on their front legs, why would a creature created to be aquatic have toe nails? That because they share a common ancestor with elephants.
It took me less than a minutes to refute these claims. Just try looking at the actual scientific stuff as opposed to Answers in Genesis and the like.
Brett
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