The longest thread evolves

The trope may be old - but it is nevertheless apt: You can lead a horse to water.....You of course know the rest. Frankly - I find arguing facts with Creationists (and all the other 'ists' and 'ers') to be naught but an intellectual exercise on the arguer’s part. Fun, even stimulating - but essentially useless. You aren't going to change minds. There aren't any minds to change. A little harsh, perhaps – but Creationists and Birthers deal in aphoristic twaddle (IMO). There are no great conservative debaters the likes of which I grew up with. I'm talking William Buckley here. Intellectual fencing used to be a contact sport. I still remember a confrontation I saw when I was in High School: Gore Vidal took on Norman Mailer, the inimitable Dick Cavett as moderator. Not strictly liberal vs. conservative – but intellectually thrilling. Ali and Frazer going at it in their prime.

That’s what drew me to you and Gene Siskel, you know. That great intellectual give and take. It was never more interesting than when you disagreed. And I trusted you both to tell me the truth. Poor college students don’t have dollars to waste on bad entertainment. Honestly - had you both discussed the events of the day – I’d have stayed to listen to that too. Truth, honesty, intelligence – thoroughness. I don’t think the ‘ists’ and the 'ers’ do much research – do you? It’s easier to parrot aphorisms concocted by somebody else. Well that’s my take, anyway. I appreciate reading your opinions on the matter (on any matter, actually). I just wish you had an opponent of equal caliber (can you guess I’m not a Ben Stein fan?).

I wasn't apart of the original thread so this may have been brought up, but Stein's film seems to end on shaky rhetoric much the same way Bill Maher's Religulous does. I remember watching that film (Relgiulous) thinking Maher was making an ok documentary about how much he hated religion, but I felt completely out raged at the idea that organized religion would guarantee the total destruction of the human race. I haven't seen Stein's film but it certainly seems to be another case of a person who plays an intellectual on TV failing to actually develop an intelligent well thought out argument. The two films came out around the same time and I'm sure they we're two of the most widely seen documentaries of the last several years, in that regard it's disheartening to think about how little attraction a film that takes a nuanced approach to such a complicated topic would have in terms of wide release. Consumers tend to crave polarized opinions in this country, so on one side we get Maher saying religion will result millions of deaths and Stein saying evolution already has.

I think I had asked this question before in that thread, not sure. It seems to me that the US is the only country where this debate is being held. I haven't heard of any discussions or arguments on intelligent design versus evolution, other than in the US. And I teach (part time) at a university. I guess I would've heard...

Ebert: I believe you're correct. I've never heard of an I.D. scientist who isn't American. Most of them are Christian fundamentalists. Christians in general are okay with evolution. Even the Pope. All other religions have no problem with it.

Can't we leave Darwin in peace? He's in heaven now, having a beer with Asimov and Vonnegut.

I have read this blog since its inception, but the Darwin thread is the masterpiece, and it shows. It is hard to believe it has run this long, but it is also easy to see why: people take this stuff very seriously! For my part, I can only take one side of argument seriously.

Also, the thread titled "How I believe in God" was a great piece of work that has a long following. Anyone who hasn't read it should do so.

Keep up the good work, Roger. This blog is required reading for myself and many of my friends.

One last comment about the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate itself. I am so glad you astutely illustrated the way ID supporters often post soundbytes crafted by the leaders of the right. Like in any political debate, the right routinely comes up with factoids that are easy to initially digest, but fold under examination. "Fallacies" you call them, and the term is true. I prefer the synonym with the more negative connotation, "lies". ID would be much better served with facts - regardless of how tenuous they may be to the cause - than outright lies.

But I think the idea is not to win the debate, per se, but to create the debate in the first place. So long as the Theory of Evolution must defend itself, even against ID hogwash, it loses credibility. And that is what they want, which explains why their own "theory" is so vague, loose, untested, and decidedly non-theoretical, but hypothetical. They don't really have a theory, but they don't like the idea that they "came from monkeys".

Ebert: Try them on this: Humans, monkeys and all other living beings share the same single-celled ancestor.

"Of course--if you want to continue the discussion about evolution, this entry does start a whole new comment thread. Smile."

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I wrote recently on a different Ebert blog thread about the evolution of the sun. I have a legitimate question, I think. How did the sun evolve, and how did the sun know that we needed its light, and how did it know how to give just the right amount of light and then to move on to a different part of the earth in order to let us sleep by the light of the silvery moon? What does the sun care whether we live in its glory or burn to a crisp in its flames? Why does the moon care enough to provide us with a nightlight? Evolutionists claim that one can believe in God and evolution. I know that some religions allow for it, at least to an extent. But just as those religions may make room for certain ideas of evolution, it always seems to me that evolutionists make very little room for God or kind of bounce God around with charmbracelet terminology. I see too much love in this world, despite everything that blackens that love, to not see that love in just about everything that exists. It's why I want to spend my time in my life considering that love, rather than considering the formation and changes of things here on earth. If love didn't create all of this, then what did and why do we care so much about it? The Beatles sang, "All You Need is Love." If love created all of this, then where did that love come from? I just don't understand where the study of evolution gets us, in the end. People believe in God because they want to know where they came from, and have faith in where they believe they are going. But believing in evolution, even if it were to tell us where we came from, well we're not on this earth long enough to see it have any further effects- unless you believe in reincarnation, and think you'll get to come back millions of years from now and see an advanced life on this same earth.

This message is delivered by a guy who despises pollution, cigarettes... and tries to buy everything organic and non-toxic for the environment and each other, if that means anything.

Ebert: We are here long enough to see it happening, in cell colonies or (the classic example) on the Galapagos islands. Or in moths.

I'm not a creationist, but I do believe in God. How's that possible? Because my maker granted me the virtue of common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is not so common. If I were a creationist, I would put forth the theory of Devolution to disprove Evolution. Devolution, as defined by me, is Mankind's intelligence slowly changing into stupidity. That would certainly contradict Darwin's theory of Evolution. How would ignorance help any organism survive?

The element that I think is most reassuring about Darwin's Theory of Evolution is that he freely admits it is a theory, and like all rational thought, is open to adjustment view based on factual evidence. I am an atheist, and believe that evolution can be seen throughout pretty much every system in the universe, from my own body to the social system that surrounds me. I think currently we are in the midst of a psychological evolution, and that the obsession with celebrity and reality tv is literally a subconscious social experiment where people are observing personality types to see which are embraced by others and which traits would render a person less embraced by society.

Then again, I do tend to spend most of my days daydreaming about such theoretical tangents. It could also just be that we really are that venal and cynical and enjoy reveling in the suffering of others. I don't know if we're looking at these people under a magnifying glass to see how they tick or to see if we can set them on fire.

Ebert:
'Posters on this blog, I don't need to tell you, tend to be wordy. I've received comments longer than the entries that inspired them.'

Darwin has yet to be sullied by these heaps of protests here and elsewhere on the web.

I began to realize that almost any position, no matter how absurd, can find support and spurious "facts" somewhere on the web.

You write this as if you might believe that this is a big part of the problem, but it's not. Creationism has long had its own shadow world of pseudo-scholarship which supplies an apparently never-ending stream of bad arguments and bad data. The web has made cut-and-pasting such stuff easy, but there have been mountains of books and pamphlets serving this cultural purpose for decades.

I think it's probably important to be realistic about this and understand that creationism has become culturally invulnerable to scientific argument by virtue of the continual accumulation of this sort of propaganda and misinformation. Support for it will only recede as a result of cultural change, not education or reasoned discourse.

Acceptance of evolution is high in Europe, but this is arguably a consequence of the exceptional European secularism and little else. The root of the denial of evolution is the assertion of human exceptionalism—evolution places humanity firmly within the natural world and this contradicts the fundamental beliefs of the Abrahamic traditions, and arguably to a lesser degree the other great religions, as well. There is something fundamentally hostile in evolution to how people like to see themselves, even today.

Creationism/Evolution has become a cultural line in the sand in the US because of the peculiarities of its religious cultural history. A particular Protestant biblical literalism is embedded deeply within American culture and thus evolution crashes against the rock of this edifice. In doing so, it becomes a sort of hallowed ground of the religious/culture wars—the discomfort pretty much everyone around the world feels with regard to scientific, technological secularism condenses in the US to (among others) a particular anger at the idea of man "coming from monkeys". This is not going away any time soon.

Is it alarming that so many believe something that is so contrary to modern science? After all, young Earth creationism doesn't just contradict biology, it also contradicts huge swaths of other sciences—geology, astronomy, anthropology, paleontology...just to name a few. But then, the majority of people alive today believe so many things which are contrary to science and simple fact. They believe in ESP, UFOs, astrology, chiropracty, homeopathy, ghosts, the Gambler's Fallacy, that nature abhors a vacuum, that glass flows in old windows, the healing power of crystals, that vaccines cause autism...the list is endless. Critical thinking is a very rarely developed skill, availability of information uneven, indoctrination ubiquitous. We shouldn't teach creationism in the schools any more than we should teach astrology; but, otherwise, why focus so much concern on one particular example of human ignorance and confusion? Those who attack creationism are as much drawn to the fight as those who are drawn to support it. They are convinced that this particular battle, at this particular time, will be crucial in some respect. But the truth is that it will not. Until human beings change far from what they are today, there will always be something that will draw both sides to this kind of argument.

“In the beginning,” God always started His stories out that way, it was like His version of Once upon a time...

“I was pretty sure of myself.” God continued. “I knew what I was doing when I created Heaven and Earth. I like to think that my design for life was well-thought-out.”

“Many here call it ‘intelligent,’” Greg pointed out.

“Yes, that’s a good word for it,” God admitted. “And as intelligent as my design was, my creation itself lacked intelligence. You see, I started off with the dinosaurs. They were a lot of fun, but a brain the size of a walnut in a seven-ton carnivore gets rather – well, mindless after a while. So I wiped them out with an asteroid – you should have seen that explosion! Then I watched life evolve into something smarter.”

“Wait…You believe in evolution?” Greg was astounded.

“Of course I do. Look, I’m a busy God. I had to make creation management more efficient. You think I want to sit and tinker with genes every day? So I built a self-correcting protocol into life. It takes time, though, like a slow cooker. Never microwave a roast.”

Greg nodded. He liked a good roast.

“Anyways,” God continued, “I finally created Man, and then Woman. I decided to make them both smart. Bad move on my part. Really bad. I gave them intelligence, but I forgot to include reason. They were the classic example of people that were book-smart, but had no common sense.”

Click here to read more of EARTH'S END.

Roger, I'm afraid you've only scratched the surface of the titanic mass of nutbaggery and willful ignorance that occupies so much of the Internet. You could waste the rest of your life plunging into that. (The Toronto Film Festival sounds like a better alternative.)

The teachers I had at Joliet Catholic High School (now Joliet Catholic Academy), including some clergy, stressed that evolution and creation don't have to be mutually exclusive, that it was possible for God to create a universe in which organisms evolve.

To this day, I don't understand why some people insist on a fallacious "either-or" approach to the matter.

Roger you are a sly dog ("Smile", indeed!), but please - no more!

The argument for me is moot (I am a Darwinian). Part of me just couldn't resist posting. (not wordy at all!)

Believing in intelligent design is like believing in the afterlife. You believe in it because you want it to be true. You have no real evidence to suggest it, so instead you look for potential evidence, those things that seem to suggest that its possible that you are right. Instead, of treating that 'evidence' for what it is, you start to change it, manipulate it, and then put it on your pedestal and then from that pedestal shout to the world that you are right, and that they are heathens, and are responsible for all atrocities.

One thing I'm not clear on, is why the I.D'ites of the world, don't just say, 'Yes evolution occurs, because that's how God wanted it.'

I think that I posted on the Stein discussion (certainly in the first 300 posts.) As a PhD student working on a cultural history of the psychiatry in 19th century American, I think that it is harder perhaps to disentangle the social from the scientific when in comes to the reception of Darwin's theories in the late 19th and early 20th century. This doesn't mean that the theory of the survival of the fittest caused the holocaust. But, as a historian, I don't find it very credible to talk about scientific theories like they fell out of the sky or like they live their out lives in the ether untouched and not touching the world. I recall that in the Stein thread I tried to haltingly say something like this and you wrote some condescending comment about how I don't understand what science *is* that Darwin's theory doesn't necessarily say anything about human morality or religion. But, I think that at times you write about science in this blog in a way that makes this historian of science cringe. Darwin had an extraordinary number of predecessors and conversations partners who were trying to develop a cogent theory of evolution. It was his genius to argue that the engine that fired the process of evolution was "the survival of the fittest." There was already a political conversation about the efficacy and even morality of helping the poor. In the 19th century where there certainly weren't such clearly defined boundaries between science and morality or between academic disciplines like biology and anthropology, ethics, and political science, Darwin's theory certainly seemed to be proof that would buttress one side of these debates. In the early 19th century, most people writing in the field I study--asylum medicine--believed that social progress and social evolution occurred through human special capacity for benevolence, cooperation and fellow feeling (sympathy.) By, the end of the 19th century, their was a general trend toward arguing that social progress required social practices that were not dysgenic, or that didn't give inferiors too easy of a time so that they could thrive and reproduce at too alarming of a rate.

Your best retort to what I just wrote is that Darwin was just being descriptive and not prescriptive, and that might be the case. I don't know. I am not capable of figuring out what my intentions are for what I do... much less the intentions of others, long dead. I liked Darwin when I read his autobiography. I thought that he was serious and struggling. I am looking forward to seeing Creation at the TIFF next week. (I still have dreams that I might run into you!) I think now that we can understand his theories a descriptive and can even boldly claim that human beings are not part of the survival of the fittest. But, I do think you need to give those 19th century folks that argued against Darwin's theory some slack. Many of them did so because they were firmly committed to altruism being the highest human virtue.

I'm the first post I hope (and was one of the 5 or 6 on that entry that were still debating, if anyone else is reading this). It was becoming trivial. Oh, deja vu.

There are some questions, the answers to which are simply beyond the human mind's ability to comprehend. True wisdom recognises the futility of even trying to answer these questions and that any attempt to do so is merely entertainment/diversion.

Amazing. Your post, the responses, the cluelessness, the sincerity while clueless, the lack of reason. It's hard to win a fight by using logic of reason against the logic of religion. Faith, after all, takes the space where there is no knowledge and some of the ID people - even some of the sincere ones - seem to be short on knowledge.

I will smile, but not comment. Have fun in Toronto; I look forward to your canadian posts.

Yes, I think it probably is time to put it to bed. However, I thought of this thread and its topic a week or so ago when I saw a story, Canadian wins $700,000 prize for exploring science history. The part that struck me was this:

"In spite of this diversity there is one regulative idea that pervades all his work: Science is a human enterprise," the University of Bergen committee said. "It is always created in a historical situation, and to understand why present science is as it is, it is not sufficient to know that it is 'true,' or confirmed. We have to know the historical context of its emergence."

This struck me because it touched on something that has bothered me in the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate (not necessarily here) and that is, as the debate goes on and positions get more entrenched, statements pro-evolution sometimes start to sound dogmatic and unscientific.

Personally, I have little interest in the ID side of things but I am very interested in science. I wonder if it's time to discuss just what it is, what 'true' is in science, and other heady things. It seems to me that, outside of mathematics, everything we know is conditional, based on observed evidence. And it's conditioned by where we are in history. And by the reality that we, as humans, have limitations.

So ... what is science? What do we know and how do we know it and what, if anything, conditions it?

I am a resident of Massachusetts where we had the unfortunate luck to have Mitt Romney as our governor a while back. I can say with some certainty the reason he doesn't subscribe to Darwinism is that he is trying to win "the Republican base."

The real longest thread on the net?

Which computer is better: a Mac or Pc?

that's the sad part. even in what seems like a healthy debate, one side is polluted with misinformation and republican strategy. it's like winning a hard-fought game, only to learn the opposition had been cheating the whole time.

Hmm, Darwin, something new to say about Darwin. Not sure I can think of anything. Its such a powerful and pervasive theory. One that also has been modified over the years to include new data. Now, I'm no evolutionary biologist (astronomer me), but I know how a theory works. And that new data is always re-evaluated according to existing theory, and re-incorporated into it as necessary. Its sort of like the ego and id, they are not necessarily equal parts of the psyche or indeed the physics of the brain. So, with wonderful and colorful synechdoche we position the ego with Darwin and the loser is yet again id.

Homily over,

Miles Blanton, PhD

Ebert: Some of the posters on the earlier blog failed to see how evolution could apply to astronomy.

I have thought that same thing about Randy, that maybe he is just agreeing to disagree. He is so smart and persistant that I would just assume somebody that well-rounded and knowledgable would automatically believe in Evolution. I mean, let's face it, 99.999% of deniers of evolution are heavily religious. I go to a private high school, and some kids' parents make them sit outside while we are studying archeology because we're saying dinosaurs lived longer than thousands of years ago. But anyway, congratualations about that blog. I'm suprised that your blog about the "Quantum Theory of Reincarnation" didn't start any huge discussions. Oh well, that's the way survival of the fittest goes.

Sincerely,
Jackson

PS: Why have many of my recent comments not been posted? Specifically, the "Light in the Tunnel" one and the "Quantum Theory of Reincarnation."

Ebert: I post all comments except for the obvious reasons.

I'm afraid I have nothing to add to the debate at hand, I will leave that to others more passionate and erudite than me. However, I would like to thank you for the delightful Tree of Evolution image above Roger. As a New Zealander living in Australia, it warms the heart to see so many New Zealand native creatures and plants collected in one place. It's funny the odd places one can find encounter home-sickness!

I just want to weigh in and throw my support behind that Donald Duck family tree. It drives home the dangers of children being raised in a broken home. Maybe if Huey, Dewey, and Louey knew who their dad was, they wouldn't be mischeviously destroying their Uncle Donald's snow fort all the time.

Ebert: Donald and Daisy: Married? Nesting in sin?

About the longest thread record:

http://www.worldslongestwebsite.com/

Ebert: Also certainly the world's most boring website. :)

I confess to having not read the original thread so Cosmic Ancestry may very well have been beaten to death by now but that's where my money is.
Cheers

Ebert: Cosmic ancestry still requires that life evolved somewhere.

You're right about how any point-of-view can find support and spurious "facts" on the Internet. I've been following conspiracy theories for a little while now, and it's really disturbing how otherwise reasonable people are easily swayed by what amounts to a rhetorical argument, and then how little it takes for them to jump to a really radical set of beliefs. A lot of modern politics seems to be based on "facts" talked into existence.

I've been listening to a conspiracy theory podcast, which works to debunk ideas like Intelligent Design. One guest argued that the ultimate goal of the IDers after establishing Intelligent Design as accepted fact, was to go after all of the sciences, especially astronomy and geology, to establish the Earth and the Universe is only a few thousand years old, as interpreted by some in the Bible.

Let's look at this whole Darwin vs. Creationism debate into a different diretion. Mr. Ebert, who created cinema, and who evolved it to what it is today? My thoughts would be Edison created the first film, but it took "Birth of a Nation" for there to be a new evolution.

It's funny to me that the last thing you wrote was essentially an emoticon without using an emoticon.

Ebert: Back in the old days, "smile" is how :) used to be spelled.

Ultimately, any argument that Darwin's theory inspired Hitler is completely void. If it even is true, which I doubt, it disregards the fact that Christianity has inspired heinous crimes itself. However, inspired is different than being the cause of. Anything can cause a mentally unstable person to take horrific action, especially if that person has found justification for their desires in it. Hell, in the right hands, Crest Toothpaste could probably serve as a justification for white supremacy, but that doesn't mean Crest really condones white supremacy just because some nut decided it did.

Since even the Guiness is out of reach, no point in stretching it for ever, though it could.

As you rightly maintain, there is no incompatability between faith and science.

The important question seems to be, what is the right way to live? This question is all the more crucial in these nuclear-toothed(and a lot else)times. Simplistic answers are of no avail as the Decalogue series sets so artistically argues.

Whether God or god exists or not, Man surely does, and I thing that's what matters most.

Though it is absurd to blame Darwin for Hitler, it is true that our beliefs influence our behaviour.

Can we debate what is the most useful and/or important theory in science instead of debating evolution? For I would argue that the Theory of Relativity, with mind-boggling concepts about the nature of space and time, or Quantum Theory, which makes relativity seem tame in its assertions about the nature of reality, are more a touch more important that evolution.

Ebert: Hmmm. Much depends on how useful is defined. How about the guy who theorized that a wheel might work?

When faced with a high count of comments for one of your posts I generally hit the "end" key to get to the most recent post and move backward from there looking for interplay.

Never really checked out the Darwin one, used to live in Cincinnati metro area much too close to the Creation Museum. Large home schooling population too with children who enter college without mainstream biology.

I am happy to live in a different part of Kentucky now, the more traditional Bluegrass region.

I completely agree. I have been following the 'debate' for over 15 years, since a Jehovah's Witness friend gave me a copy of their book on the subject. (It was "How Did We Get Here: By Evolution or Creation") I have been a semi-regular on the Talk.Origins newsgroup
for over a decade, and believe me, the claims from ID/Creationist are often beyond belief.

Thank you for your efforts for science, Roger.

Darwin = Hitler, eh? Well, Darwin does tip his hat to Malthus, the checks-on-population-growth guy, and Malthus was appropriated by the Social Darwinists--and worse, the Eugenics gang--a big deal at the turn of the last century--Teddy Roosevelt felt white Americans needed to have more children (4 per couple) to avoid "race suicide"--and one which continued throughout the 20th century, with both "innocent" (the Zero Population Growth movement) and "insidious" (see the film Rabbit-Proof Fence) manifestations.

Of course, the dots that connect Darwin to Hitler are fuzzy at best; but it doesn't take much squinting at something to give it the shape one desires.

Darwin Quote of the Day: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Stay loose, gooses!

The idea that Darwin is responsible for Hitler rests on a fundamental misconception about the way influence works in the world -- which is not a big surprise, given the people making the argument.

The Darwin-to-Hitler argument follows a primitive and strictly linear progression that goes like this: Darwin comes up with natural selection and survival of the fittest. Herbert Spencer (among others) attempts to apply Darwin to human civilizations and ethnic groups. This pseudo-scientific theory known as Social Darwinism is used to justify eugenics in the United States: sterilization of the mentally handicapped, experiments done without the patients' consent or without the consent of their families, and so on. Later, the Nazis latch on to Spencer as justification for their "master race" idea, and specifically cite the eugenics programs in the U.S. as evidence that they were on the right track. Thus, you can draw a connection between Darwin and Hitler -- but it is not a *causal* connection.

Darwin is not responsible for Spencer's errors. Spencer willfully ignored the fact that Darwinian evolution is a natural process that takes hundreds or even thousands of generations to be noticeable. This absurd change of scale then went unnoticed by large numbers of privileged people who wished to find a scientific rationalization for their own economic privilege: "I'm rich and that Irishman/Slav/African-American etc. is poor because nature [which quickly got conflated with God for some people] has made my people superior." Despite the absurdity of completely ignoring political and economic and even cultural factors to make such a claim, you still find these attitudes today.

Of course, one problem with holding Darwin responsible for Hitler is that you can make other, similar arguments for other people's culpability. Romanticism -- the Big R kind, the radical Heine-Goethe-Schiller-Rousseau-Wordsworth-Byron-Shelley-Emerson-Thoreau kind -- has also been blamed for Hitler. The argument goes that Romanticism exalted the idea of the superior artist living in opposition to an unjust society, communing directly with a universal and pantheistic nature spirit, and advocating the overthrow of (unjust) legal institutions and churches. We can easily trace a line from that figure to Nietzsche, the Nazis' favorite 19th century syphilitic philosopher. But then how also to explain that that same line leads to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.? Maybe I shouldn't ask that question. Given the recent claims I've seen that Hitler was really a liberal (black is white, up is down, the big lie is most likely to be believed), I'm sure someone out there has claimed or will soon claim that Gandhi and King were really Nazis.

How about music? Romanticism gave us Beethoven, who eventually led to Wagner, whose music, as Mark Twain pointed out, is better than it sounds, but whose visions of Teutonic knights and broad-breasted blonde Brunhildes enraptured so many Nazis. By this argument, the "Ode to Joy" in Beethoven's 9th masks the martial rhythm of Wehrmacht boots goose-stepping in unison.

I can't prove it, but I think this kind of simplistic and linear thinking comes naturally to those who believe in a a single anthropomorphic creator for the universe. (Let alone that this creator is male, and often capable of anger and jealousy. How can something omnipotent and omniscient be jealous? And what excuse can an all-knowing creator who is eternal and exists in all moments at once have for being angry with creations that he endowed with the capacity to make decisions to perform actions that displease him? My head hurts.)

The absurdity of these arguments should be obvious. No one is responsible for everyone who claims you as an inspiration. Beethoven is not responsible for Wagner. Darwin was not responsible for Spencer. Byron and Shelley and Goethe were not responsible for Nietzsche. Hell, even Nietzsche cannot be held responsible for Hitler. Millions of people have read Byron and Nietzsche and listened to Beethoven without becoming Hitler, so some other factors had to be involved.

Being responsible for our own actions and their effects on people in our own time is enough of a burden for any individual. By the same logic that Ben Stein uses to blame Darwin for Hitler, he should be cursing Christ for being responsible for Torquemada. Indeed, Stein's logic almost certainly turns Christ -- the lamb of peace -- into the greatest criminal in history, given the number of slaughters done in his name since the time of Constantine. Just in the past millennium we have Albigensians, the Waldenses, the Crusades, the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Magdeburg, the Huguenots, innumerable pogroms, and on and on. And on. And these are only the slaughters explicitly connected with theological disagreements. I'm leaving out the bishops blessing the artillery on both sides during World War I. Monty Python's Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch is so slight an exaggeration it barely qualifies as satire. (Damn funny, though.)

Hitchcock tried to deal with this subject in "Rope," which I think is an under-rated film. The Leopold-and-Loeb-like Shaw and Morgan (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) use the theories of their former professor Rupert Cadell (play by Jimmy Stewart) to justify their murder of an "inferior classmate." The film ends, more or less, with an impassioned speech by Stewart to the effect that they had no right to do so, that they took words he had used as rhetorical effect and made them literal, that most importantly they misunderstood his idea of what superiority meant. Cadell had been talking about superiority in terms of natural talents and innate qualities (and allowed his disgust with the way most people act to come out as extremely black humor), while Shaw and Morgan had assumed their own superiority because of class and manners (and perhaps wit, which is not the same as intelligence or even humor). Cadell is horrified, but more importantly he -- after some real and clearly painful soul-searching -- refuses to accept responsibility for his students' actions. One can read this as analogous to Darwin rejecting responsibility for Spencer and eugenics.

Ironically, some people read "Rope" as indicting Cadell after all. But I think that reflects a common desire to cast as wide a net when assigning blame as possible. It lessens the individual burden. And once again we come back to Christianity, which claims that everyone is a sinner who needs forgiveness (and the corollary that inevitably follows, "I'm a sinner, but I'm forgiven because of what I believe," as if they have sold themselves an indulgence at a bargain price). While doubtless true on some level, almost all the significance lies in the degree.

one of my Christian friends, a guy from Australia, told me that many of his Christian friends from Down Under, simply cannot understand and comprehend the hateful, bigoted, anti-science, anti-evolution, right wing, fanatical Christian movement in the United States. American Christians, as he says, are a sham and bring a bad name to Christianity. I couldn't agree more with him.

Religions aren't necessarily bad-- it's just the idiots who ruin religion for the rest of us.

ATTENTION, CHRISTIANS: Keep your religious ideas out of my life, my school, and my government, thanks.

Imagine what would happen if every single politician simultaneously admitted that religion is not a political issue. People would be forced to vote on--gasp--political issues. The horror!

Quote from opening paragraph in Wired article:

"Intricate cellular components are often cited as evidence of intelligent design. They couldn’t have evolved, I.D. proponents say, because they can’t be broken down into smaller, simpler functional parts. They are irreducibly complex, so they must have been intentionally designed, as is, by an intelligent entity."

You can read the rest of the article at:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/reduciblecomplexity/#more-9804

Essentially, the piece reports on recent research showing strong evidence that complex biological sub-systems can combine to work together in complementary fashion.

Darwin's brilliant insight jump-started our understanding of evolution. Now, the 30-some-year-old science of Complexity has taken many of the next steps.

Drawing from many different disciplines, Complexity science examines evolutionary principles at work in all complex adaptive systems like ecologies, biologies, economies, societies, etc. The result of this work has proposed new nuanced principles such as punctuated equilibrium, emergence, and self-organization, principles that begin to provide plausible explanations for the uneven evolutionary progress that a theory of linear adaptation misses.

Fifteen years ago I remember seeing first-hand the artificial ecology software, Tierra, written by Tom Ray. This program had a few simple rules of interaction and was then allowed to run thousands of generations every second. I saw the principles mentioned above both mimic the evolutionary dynamics of a biological system and astonishingly produce parasites, viruses, and other complex features that we routinely see in real life. These elements were not programed to occur. They emerged from the soup in this simple eco-system.

While Ray's program and others like it have had its critics, it begins to concretely demonstrate how evolution might work.

I'm a Christian and, I suppose, an Evolutionist. I say "suppose" because I've never thought of, or referred to myself as an Evolutionist, although I do support and believe in Evolution and Natural Selection. To clarify, I "support and believe" it the way that I support 2+2=4. It makes sense. I have spoken at great length with fellow Christians who do not support Evolution, and I've always encouraged them to stop applying boundaries to God. The Bible informs us of many things, primarily how to live a positive life, be a good person, and how to get into Heaven (which is a good goal for anyone to have). The Bible does not, however, give us many specifics concerning how He went about the creation. And that's okay with me. It also doesn't include my Mom's recipe for Dolly Madison bars, but that doesn't mean God isn't in control or that Jesus Christ isn't my personal Savior. Because He is. Evolution being a fact doesn't change this.

Was that Mel Gibson's production company on the "Creation" trailer? Wow that guy is complicated!

Hi Mr. Ebert,

I have a hypothetical question for you. I have not seen Ben Stein's movie (gratefully) but I am intrigued by the ending as you recounted it above. I think Mr. Stein is twisting a potentially accurate fact for the purposes of his argument - which is a trait of many arguers. It's possibly true that Hitler latched onto the theory of natural selection to found his ludicrous, horrible rampage. Which would then make it true that Darwin indeed wrote his books on the subject prior to Hitler's informative years so that he could read them. My theory on all of this is that it's simply a terrible coincidence. Darwin's theories would certainly have been discovered by SOMEONE, if not he, but they happened to be in existence during a period when they hit a kind of negative, German zeitgeist. Those people or movements that achieve that level of success (I'm defining success on his terms, not mine) must occur during the period when all of the conditions are in perfect harmony.

So my hypothetical question (we come back 'round to it at last) is this: would it be worth it for the fully speculated theory of evolution and natural selection to have its discovery delayed for some 150 years if it would mean that Hitler may not have been as well versed in its foundations? Even though it would set us back as a human, scientifically-oriented race back on our own mental development?

Here's to another unofficial record-breaker.
Blake

If you're looking for long threads, try the Slashdot Hall of Fame. While it would require some work to do a direct comparison, just looking at the raw data shows about 10 MB for the "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush" thread there, vs. 6 MB for Darwin, My Hero. You're probably going to have to beef up your server's capacity if you want to challenge for the undisputed title.

joel,

maybe that's because the US is the only country that has an "official" religion but pretends it doesn't. other countries either openly have one or are just - open.

There is Adnan Oktar (Wikipedia entry), islamic, Turkish creationist, but he is also critical of I.D., which he called ""a product of a Masonic conspiracy for promoting atheism and Deism."

I've grown weary the factoids, fallacies and hyperbole. I avoid television, as they seem to be prevelant there. They clutter my inbox, too. Got to the point where I have pointed people to Snopes and the actual "purported" author of some of these "facts" -- who say they didn't espouse them -- in hopes that these people loving factoids, fallacies and hyperbole will STOP sending them to me. No such luck. In return, I get a huge .wav file of Alan Keyes sent to my inbox with the following comment: "I guess we don't know the reality unless it is actually heard on live video like Alan Keyes statements." And I sit there, just speechless...

Never seen the Ben Stein film, but I mean the guy just got fired and I assume that he can't be too great at making films either. All that aside, creationism works in religion, not in science. Thus it should stay in religion, not in our nation's education system.

I can remember even being puzzled in middle school, wondering why the teacher was presenting both creation and evolution. I think even a young mind can see when curriculum doesn't belong.

But anyway...I have no interest in seeing the Stein film. Or really debating on a public forum about creationism vs. evolution. It seems rather pointless. Kind of like making a movie about it.

I'm a Darwinist. I'm also a Christian. I see no conflict between the two, as I believe that evolution is the mechanism by which God created human beings. I believe that evolution should be taught in schools, and the doctine of God-as-Creator in the churches.

Follow the cause and effect chain back to the beginning, and eventually you must confront the uncaused cause. I believe this to be God, specifically the God as written about in the Bible. Many, perhaps most people don't, and that's fine with me; that's what free will is all about, isn't it?

It kills me that there is so much conflict between atheists/agnostics and Christians over this issue. Evolution is a beautiful thing. When I contemplate the mechanics by which inanimate matter was transformed into human beings, I'm filled with awe and wonder. When I meditate on a God who created human beings capable of free will, I'm filled with love and gratitude (for does goodness really exist in the absence of choice?)

Peace be with you, Roger.

I've always known Ben Stein as a comedian., so I'm always expecting him to reveal "Expelled" as one of his greatest jokes: "I made this ridiculous movie about an absurd concept, and everyone - on both sides - thought I was serious! It was hilarious!"

Roger,
I could be wrong, but I like to think I had something to do with this, in this discussion that took place before the Ben Stein thread:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_third_most_important_story.html
(Scroll to the bottom under my name and someone named "Tyler.")

Did the conversation spark the Ben Stein blog?

Randy,
Ebert rightly praised you for your defense of ID. Most conversations I have with IDers speak of Michael Moore, liberalism and abortion.

I've no desire to further the debate, as I get paid by the state to do so with middle-schoolers. However,
I'm finishing my PhD this year, measuring any correlation between familial cosmological (creationist) beliefs and science achievement. I'm interested in your thoughts and possible participation. If you're willing, please click on my name and follow the link to the band's website. It connects to my Email.
Dave van Dyke

Ebert: Yes, such posts spurred me to view the DVD. Thanks, I guess.

The Darwin film "Creation" is produced by Mel Gibson's Icon company. What am I missing?

Ebert: A Catholic, even a "fundmentalist Catholic" like Gibson, should have no problem with evolution.

Even if we were told the truth about our existence, it's very unlikely we'd ever be able to comprehend it. We're more advanced than a cockroach. Ever tried to explain yourself to one?

I don't think the evolution vs. creationism (or ID) debate can end. That's the nature of true discussion and of science in general. Things have to be open to challenge on both sides. And we shouldn't be afraid of that.

Paul J. Marasa wrote

Darwin Quote of the Day: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Stay loose, gooses!

Funny you should mention this. 'Twas just yesterday (Sept. 3rd 2009) that Nick Matzke announced this very quote is apocryphal, and really is due to author Leon Megginson, not to Charles Darwin.

See Survival of the Pithiest for the fascinating details!

Heh,

I know this might sound strange, but I wonder if the people who are both anti-"socialized" health care and anti-Darwin on it's relation to eugenics realize they're advocating something they're opposed to?

As far as I understand, originally, and I think even still, some of the major arguments against national health care was that it was supporting people who didn't deserve it. Either because they were stupid, or lazy, or some-such. But, this is derived from the original eugenics arguments that no social money should be spent on the lower classes because supporting their survival would weaken humanity as a whole.

So, isn't the argument against a national healthcare plan at its base one of eugenics?

I've seen people try to draw comparison between Hitler having a national plan and wanting to have one here. However, Hitler wanted one because it would lead to the furtherance of the genetic code he believed would be superior. Whereas, with health care here, the basis could be said to be in the idea that "all men are created equal." And, while economic station is different, there is nothing that should divide people as having more of a right to live than another.

There are other arguments I could go into about the progress of a country and its positive correlation to the health and nutrition of it's populace. But that's far far too long, and I don't want to make another impossibly long thread for you!

to quote Dr. Francis Collins from an appearance on Charlie Rose, "faith is in fact the most rational of all choices, when you consider, look at the spectrum between atheism and belief, let me tell you why- imagine this table represents all of the knowledge that ever has existed or will exist in the universe. and then ask any individual where in that table is your own personal knowledge right now and even the most confident of us will draw a tiny little circle. now suppose the knowledge of the existence of God is outside your circle. how then could anybody, who is not a wacko, say, 'I know there is no God.' is that not the most irrational position, does that not require the greatest faith of all?. I would argue that already in our little circle there is evidence of the existence of some supernatural being. the big bang for instance, did the universe create itself? I don't see how that could happen. something outside of nature, presumably, had to preside over the creation of something out of nothing. and when you look at the way the universe is tuned, where all of these constants are precisely having the value that's necessary for matter to coalesce and for life to be possible it's almost impossible that such a thing would have happened, the probabilities are infinitesimal. sorta makes you wonder. even Stephen Hawking, who did not come at this exactly as a believer, writes in his book A Brief History of Time, 'this has religious significance.' and it does. so you can look at the logical evidence and bring yourself right up to the cliff's edge of saying 'it makes sense that there is a God.'"

I think you hit on the key of the thread that made me keep reading, which was that for the most part, the exchanges were honest. The Darwinians were admitting they some holes in our understanding and the IDers were admitting that those holes didn't "prove" anything, they just suggested alternatives.

As for the fundamentalists, I'm still perplexed/dismayed at the tendency of some (present company excluded) to insert that into the debate, i.e. Darwin proves Christ didn't die for our sins, or Christ's death proves we didn't evolve.

I'm still reading through Dawkins and trying to make sense of it, I have to admit it's slow going, in part for the reason the IDers say, it takes a while to check the underlying assumptions and see how they were derived. When a structure self-supports logically, that makes it a good logical structure, but if you want to live in it, it still benefits from having solid ground underneath.

Maybe it really is all turtles all the way down.

The premiere of "Creation", both the gala and the regular viewing on opening night TIFF, are already sold out. Along with Antichrist, Up in the Air, the Men Staring at Goats, a Serious Man, etc.

I love TIFF unabashfully. And I love that it's getting bigger and bigger. The only drawback is how much more difficult getting tickets has become...I used to be able to wake up, browse the schedule for the day, pick the one I want to see, walk to the theater, line up in the rush line, and be in time to see the film (most times). Sigh.

Still, 6 days!

Ebert: I have to see certain films for my work. If you're certain a film will open commercially, you might experiment with something in a sidebar program. Few films get into the festival without a reason. The programmers are gifted, and work hard.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

I see a commenter above has written in about the "Islamic creationist" Oktar - under his pen name, Harun Yahya, he has become an extremely popular writer both in the Middle East and among some Americans who are just happy that somebody else agrees with them. He's an "Old-Earth creationist," so he doesn't buy the 6000 years stuff. For what it's worth, Yahya opposes terrorism because he believes that terrorism was caused by Darwin.

Ebert: Darwin also caused swine flu and rabies.

hey mr ebert,

i hate to upset you but every comment you've ever received on this blog is from the same one person who does nothing but comment on your blog in different names. that person is me. i know this must be terribly tragic for you.

i will continue commenting on your blog.

i like evolution too. its neat.

Ebert: Hmmm. Much depends on how useful is defined. How about the guy who theorized that a wheel might work?

Surely not Roger! I cannot imagine a more useless invention.

Now the invention of the SECOND wheel, that I will give you...

Ebert: Just testing you.

Roger, I agree completely with your views on this matter, unlike some of the other things you've posted about. Yes, it is possible to know people who disagree with you on only CERTAIN points and not EVERY point as if dictated by a partisan arena. In other words, in my world, free thinking is alive and well!

However, I do have something to say about the comparisons made between evolution and Hitler (oh, how the world loves a comparison to Hitler!)

From a purely logical point of view (and when dealing with science, what better approach is there?), a comparison to Hitler, or suggestion that a line of thought led to the Holocaust, is the logical fallacy of implying guilt by association, a form of ad hominem attack. "How can anything he say possibly be true? Why, he was a Nazi during WWII!" See how it works? How do you defend against that?

The truth is, evolution could have been discovered by Hitler himself (where it would alarmingly be called "Hitlerism" or "Hitlerian Evolution"). BUT, however unsavory the discoverer or user of any new discovery, it is completely irrelevant to the truth of the discovery. If the theory tests true in repeated experimentation and observation then we must conclude it is true. If a serial rapist invents a light bulb that is twice as cheap and twice as efficient as all current ones, does that therefore mean the bulb somehow ISN'T because he is so BAD? Or that we shouldn't use a bulb invented by such a man? Put in these terms, we see how silly anyone is who suggests a link between evolution and Hitler, regardless of how true the link is.

But even Dawkins dislikes saying "Darwinian Evolution" because it suggests there is another kind. Do we say "Newtonian Gravity" or "Gravity: ONLY a theory" or "Gravity: or the evil plan of science to make heavy objects fall upon one's head" or, just "gravity"?

What do you think?

Not to besmirch the noble debate with my petty off-topic derailments, but it thrills me to see Don Rosa's McDuck family tree linked in your blog, Mr. Ebert. It would be an even greater thrill to know if you've read Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck"; if you have not, consider it highly recommended.

Ebert: Do you know the great man himself posted a comment the first time I used that?

These opponents to Darwin's 'Evolution' with his theory of 'Natural Selection' may eventually win; at least in how Evolution is presented in schools all over the USA.
Already, Christian schools across America teach that other 'theory' of 'intelligent design'; and, in this culture of multicultural compromise, hard truths cannot be sustained; at least in the popular culture any longer.
People need their illusions, fantasies, and religions. The human animal has found it's instinctive limits. Its collective 'will' now in history is to turn its back on that which once had promise.
Potentials for destruction against the human species doesn't have to be consciously understood; our species has a collective unconscious component as with any life form on the planet, like a slime mold.
The trend is to down size, restructure and 'hope' it's not too late.
'Evolution' is just one of many blue prints for the process of engendering characteristics for our species future. Evolution may well may wind up, discarded, upon the cutting room floor: because, if Darwin is correct there is no intelligent design to say otherwise.
I think we've crossed that line of no return, some time ago -- no return to that primal forest or 'frolic in the flower'; but the animal we are will fight for it's expectation to remain blissfully ignorant.
Two things are in a running battle here: on one side are the forces of reason and the educated, and the other side are those who've experienced spiritual certainty or believe they've experienced it. Realities which the 'reasonable' and the educated have not. The latter are far and away the larger group; but represent a variety of opposing systems.
The fact is, a person can have all the science in the world, and yet 'know' he has experienced things about his 'soul' or 'god' that an expert on Evolution or scientific method hasn't; and it's that lack of respect from the intellectual community to those persons that threatens such good theory's as Darwin's.
The the very 'community' that would have good science is also the community that engenders it's demise; and here's how:
The conservatives understand what they will do with in the various factions they occupy; Christians, Muslims , Jews , Hindus -- yes the conservatives amongst them; but, the 'agnostics' and liberals don't; they don’t know what they will do when presented with history making choices -- and that is crucial to how things will go.
There are things that one can experience; things that would give one pause to accept a theory that effectively says he's nothing more than an accidental array of molecules and proteins.
It's not a matter of accepting that assumption from Darwin's ideas that we are a collection of randomly selected molecules and proteins, it's more about embracing the 'best' of what is in the other list of traits -- that is, in the way of religions, law codes and philosophies, for they will make all the difference; and, they are not all equivalent.
Darwin pointed out the best way to improve a race horse is not to remove the slowest horse in a population but promote the traits of the fastest.
If all is equivalent in our cultural concerns then we are not promoting the 'fastest' of traits'.

Darwin has become a god himself. Ironic.

It's actually not all THAT far-fetched to connect Darwinism and Naziism. The eugenics movement was something of an application OF Darwinism to sociology, and was a well-respected theory in its day. And the eugenics movement did in fact influence some of the policies of the Third Reich.

What the people who read that fail to grasp, however, is that at the time Hitler was drawing inspiration from the eugenics movement, everyone else in the world had already given themselves a good shake and realized, "wait a second -- that's INSANE," and had already abandoned that theory.

What is Reality, anyway? You see something out of the corner of your eye, and until you take direct notice, it registers to you as a teddy bear or a heap of dress. When you look, "reality" changes.

The "reality" of stars in the heavens (atavistic language, eh?) and us down below (!!!) requires either intense and frequent conscious reorientation, or a trip in a spacecraft, to adjust toward the Truth. (I'm guessing.) Folks in Milwaukee looking at God, and folks in Canberra looking at God, look in roughly opposite directions. Another part of their brain may "know" that "God is all around" but body-knowledge overrules.

Many "Catholics" and "Jews" and "Hindus" and "Muslims" who don't buy that the scriptures their religions are based on were The Truth still practice their "faiths" and not even they know exactly why; it's some mix of Ya Never Know and This Is My Community and It Brings Me Comfort and Other. Heavy on Other.

The point: we may ridicule the beauty-contest youngster who butchered "reality" with her answer about American ignorance of geography, but how much closer to Reality is the smartest physicist faced with the Double-Slit Experiment results, or the smartest microbiologist called upon to describe the immediate step BEFORE the creation of DNA?

Is this post obscure and hard to parse? I hope so, because I'm going for a closer approximation to Reality. You need a lot of quote marks for that.

@ Peter Fawthrop: People believe in God because they want to know where they came from, and have faith in where they believe they are going.

Then you should be able to understand why so many of us are able to accept Darwinism and still believe in God. Science gives us a chance to explore this incredible universe we live in and understand how it all works rather than just saying, "God put us here" and leaving it at that. Alright, so God put you here - but what is more awe-inspiring? That God woke up one morning and said, "Humans!" and so we all came to be? Or that God created an entire universe that through a series of infinitesimal changes over billions of years crafted man?

Science tells us, for instance, that all the blue eyed people in this world share one common ancestor - imagine that. One little quirk in somebody's DNA between 6000 and 10000 years ago, a freak mutation that probably caused much frenzy in some ancient village when that baby was born, and thousands of years later, we get Paul Newman. If that's not God's work, what is? :-)

It has often seemed to me that the big problem that proponents of creationism and ID have with evolution is that it argues that God must love everybody and everything in the universe equally, that Man is not the ultimate creation, just the latest development. It's a denial of mortality - you or I might die but Man cannot possibly die out because this world was made expressly for him.

@ Roger & Joel Meza - I actually once had a Hindu Indian science tutor who told me he didn't believe in evolution. He also thought mushrooms were a western conspiracy to make people eat fungus. Don't ask.

I have read about half the comments on the first post, and just finished reading all the comments on the second post. I noticed a couple people making an argument something like this: I can't imagine how simple bacteria could evolve into complex, multi-celled organisms, so I can't believe the theory of evolution.

Well, that's a honest statement, but my response is, have you done any studying and research into evolution that qualifies your lack of comprehension as any kind of serious argument?

Let me give an example. Fermat's Last Theorem states that, although an integer which is a square can also be the sum of two squares (e.g., 25 = 9 +16), it is impossible for an integer which is a cube to be the sum of two cubes, or in general, any integer to a higher power than two to be the sum of two other integers to that same power.

Can you conceive of why that is true? Why, of all the integers out to infinity, no cube is ever the sum of two cubes, no 4th power is ever the sum of two other 4th powers, and so on? Does that make intuitive sense to you? If not, then you don't believe in Fermat's Last Theorem in exactly the same sense in which you don't believe in the ToE. Nevertheless, Fermat's Last Theorem happens to be true.

It is of utmost importance to keep having this debate as often as possible, anywhere possible. Because science has truth and reality on its side, and every time the matter is debated -- regardless of the thoughtfulness or intellect of the ID persons involved -- ID is demonstrated to be the non-science mythology it really is. ID not only exists, it flourishes and dominates too much thought and opinion in our nation, it creeps into our schools and we elect political leaders who believe in magic and reject reality.

The reason the ID crowd and religious fundamentalists have been so successful in their goal to push their beliefs into law and force society to conform to their superstitious belief system is simply that those of us who reject this mythology and attack on science and reason have not been as aggressive and vocal in defense of reality and truth. Fundamentalists are not a majority here, they are just the loudest, most aggressive and shrill voices -- and the squeaky grease gets the wheel.

Truth and reason require our nurturing and defense, we must always be vigilant in protecting and promoting them, because there will always be someone or some group determined to attack and stamp down truth and reason. They succeed when we remain silent, and they fail when we stand up and challenge them. So we must challenge them, everywhere and anywhere we can. It doesn't matter if you change their minds or not -- and don't be too certain you won't, because my best friend was once a hardcore fundamentalist and aspired to be a preacher, and is now a brilliant scientific mind and atheist who heads an organization dedicated to reason and promotion of science as well as confronting and ending reliance on religion and superstition. The very debate itself is important, on principle and in the very real sense of demonstrating a strong public voice counter to the widespread and loud voice of IDers and fundamentalists.

The attempts to claim Hitler and Nazism arise directly from Darwinism is obscene. Were we to note that the 9-11 attacks originated from religious fundamentalism directly rooted in Judeo-Christian belief systems, could we say that Christianity was the cause of the 9-11 attacks? Could we point to the fundamentalist denouncements of homosexuality as the direct cause of the murder of gay and lesbian people? Could we point to the religious approval of slavery -- under the concept that black Africans were not people with souls -- to say that Christianity caused the slave-trade? Could we visit Ground Zero in New York, or the slave quarters in New Orleans, and shake our heads solemnly that Christianity did this? Can I stand over the grave of my sister and curse these Christians who caused her death with their hateful teachings against who she loved? I suspect Ben Stein and his ilk would raise their shrill voices against any such pronouncements.

No matter what IDers claim, the fact is that there is not once single shred of evidence suggesting an intelligent creator. We know for a fact -- yes, a fact -- that evolution happens, that it happened in the past, and that it will continue happening in the future. We know that there is an explanation for the existence of the world, the universe, life, and complex organisms that is based on science and natural occurrences and which doesn't at all require the existence of a magical all-powerful supernatural man. Such a being does not inherently arise as a logical option when examining the world around it, it arises first as superstition and is then the starting-point from which ID seeks to find and warp information to fit a predetermined preferred outcome.

If I assert right now that the entire universe and life on Earth were created by an invisible all-powerful unicorn who lives in my kitchen, and that he made everything appear instantly out of nothingness, and his rival -- an evil invisible ferret who resides in my basement -- simply created fossils out of his fur in order to trick us all, and who also wrote the Bible and planted it a few thousand years ago to trick us into this evil religion of Judeo-Christian beliefs, then my claim has every bit as much legitimacy as the IDers. Can I demand that it be taught in schools? Can I call anyone who rejects it "closed-minded"? If I follow the logic of the IDers, I certainly can.

And the ID theory has one major flaw that rarely gets pointed out -- if the world is so complex that it must have an intelligent designer, by definition that implies that the designer (God) must be even MORE complex than the world he created. Which, according to ID's "logic", means God must have an intelligent designer even MORE complex than God. Which means this new and bigger God must have an intelligent designer. And so on.

The only way out of this loop is if we simply state that the intelligent designer is not bound by this notion of complexity that gives rise to inherent claims of intelligent design, because he exists in a magical world where logic and consistency and design and intelligence don't apply. Which, of course, means there's no reason to assume that the concept of intelligent design applies in our own world either, since under that sort of guideline for when the concept doesn't apply (to God, in the likely ID answer) would likewise suggest an endless number of OTHER options for how the complexity of our world came about WITHOUT an intelligent designer. If as IDers posit there is a potential other "dimension" or reality where the rules of intelligent design don't apply, it is a rather simple thing to posit an initial stage of natural creation arising from the eruption (for lack of a better word) out of the singularity birthing the Big Bang, where no natural laws about intelligence or design or physics etc even existed or applied either. In that initial "dimension" that had the same rules that apply to the supposed God, reality and the universe and life could all arise with complexity and "design" that lacks any intelligent designer.

This theory, however, has an immediate advantage over the ID concept, since it is one step simpler (lacking a magic man) and still contains the basic facts of the universe and the Big Bang and evolution and other scientific theories. That makes it more plausible, it contains the basics of science and evolution within the basic structure created by IDers to explain why God must exist but why the exact same reasoning doesn't apply to why a creator of God must exist.

Of course, it's every bit as unsupported by facts as the ID claims about this supposed magical dimensional aspect that allows God to avoid the basis of ID's own assertions (complexity demands a creator). And it lets IDers off the hook regarding the fact that if God himself is above the "logic" dictating the need for an intelligent designer of complexity, why would his actions not be above such inherent dictates? How can God not fall prey to the requirement for a creator of himself, yet his creations and actions are bound by that dictate?

If he possesses the quality allowing him to escape the application of the need for a designer of complexity, that quality should be inherent in his actions and thus in his creations. Which would mean that the universe and world and life should likewise escape the claim of need for a designer of its complexity, however likewise bound up they are by the fact that they escape this dictate by nature of adhering to it (since an intelligent creator DID design them). The huge logical flaw here, contradictions, and loop should be rather apparent.

Someone needs to tell IDers and religious fundamentalists that if they are going to embrace the concept of a supernatural magic man who lives in the sky and will make them live forever after they die, they may as well stop trying to find "scientific" ways to validate their mythology. It's just silly to attempt to craft a rational, real-world solution to make magic and the supernatural and the intangible sound "scientific" or realistic. They believe in magic, in the supernatural, in things they cannot see or feel or touch or know, and trying to pretend -- to us, or to themselves and each other -- that it's anything else is irrational. If they need to try and find evidence and demonstrate some measure of "proof", then they've moved away from the most fundamental aspects of faith, meaning they are abandoning the foundations of their belief system and its single most important aspect. Why they can't see this, I have no idea.

Oh no...not again...

Hey Mr. Ebert, do you ever feel even the merest hint of shame over providing a haven, an outlet even, for the kind of pedantic dorks that would ordinarily be laughed out of any other forum on the internet?

Ebert: Many a forum would be greatly improved by the addition of some pedantic dorks.

I think the word theory confuses some opponents of evolution. Because its not really a theory. It is observable fact that organisms pass on DNA and that DNA carries specific traits. If a certain trait is unsuitable to survival, the organism will die before it can pass it on and the trait will die out. This much is observable scientific law. The only thing that makes it a theory is that there is no way observe that this is how creatures have always evolved, but it is ridiculous to the point of absurdity to suggest that creatures evolved differently before scientists were around to observe it. I therefore implore everybody to start calling it the law of evolution, even if its not the technically correct term. Theory implies that it has not been proven. It has.

Ebert: Strictly speaking, theory, as it is used in science, is the correct term:

theory. a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained : Darwin's theory of evolution.

I'm interested in the "Most useful" bit. Really? I'd say brilliant, revelatory, invaluable. And granted, quite useful. But most useful?

I once got into a discussion about the inerrancy of the Bible with a 20-something fellow who I met working together on a community project. I decided to nip it right in the bud and asked him: "Do you believe that there were literally a breeding pair of EVERY SINGLE SPECIES ON EARTH within a single boat of a certain size, and they survived together for 40 days without the carnivores eating their prey -- and btw, how did the species from South America get to the Middle East to board the boat?" My friend was unfazed by that question and said that because it was the word of God, that it must have happened. It was true. I had a followup: "There is literally not enough water on this planet to raise the water level to cover up the tallest mountains, so that there is literally no dry land left, do you agree?" No, he didn't. He said that the standard of measurement back then was different, and because you were measuring in cubits, the tallest mountains back then WERE ONLY SIX HUNDRED FEET TALL. At that point I told him that we'd have to switch to some other topic of conversation. As Barney Frank memorably said in a town hall meeting a week ago: "Arguing with you, Ma'am, is like arguing wtih a kitchen table."

The guy who wrote this article is intellectually bankrupt as are most of his followers who have posted comments. Just think about life and all its values etc and your own mind will tell you there is more than just materialistic aspects.

If you apply TRUE SCIENCE, then the theory of evolution falls flat on its face. The theory of evolution defies mathematics. It defies the laws of thermodynamics. However, you guys have heard these arguments and have some how mentally blocked them out. There are zillions of more arguments which you can find all over if you wish to but since you have your heads stuck in the Darwinian sands, you will never see them or fail to understand.

The connection between Darwin and Hitler was not one that Ben Stein came up with. It was Hitler himself. Hitler was directly inspired by Darwin. And to be logical.... why would he not be? Since, if you are just a "chemical machine" evolving... what does it matter if you get eliminated ... as long as I can plug on... "Survival of the fittest".. means that I have to be on the guard from everyone since everyone is out there to be fitter than me.

The theory of evolution takes away from us an identity... I guess most of you will not understand that. I believe in God and I believe there is the Devil out there also, who has fooled the bunch of you with his "theory of evolution". And in fact in most discussions, I see that it is the evolutionists who use foul language, call their opponents names that are demeaning, try to trash the opponent as opposed to having any credible and logical dialog. It is your champion... Richard Dawkins who used the "F" word in his conversations.

If any mind has "devolved" it is yours.

As for me... I see God in Creation. I see Gods amazing intelligence in creation. Recently, Intelligent Design proponents have done some major scientific research and come up with extremely compelling arguments that now confirm God concretely. However, I guess for the evolutionist, it seems to be posing a threat and they cannot refute the arguments so they do like what Richard Dawkins does.... refuse to even answer and start demeaning and name calling and use foul language. But to each his own. I know several of you "intelligent" creatures will start using foul language against my post and post your wierd unscientific pseudo beliefs on here claiming "majority of scientists believe it". I am not interested in the majority of people's beliefs. I am interested in logical, thought out based arguments and they all point to an intelligence far beyong my understanding.

When I come across a beautiful piece of artwork, I do not need to have seen the artist or to have seen the artist creating that artwrok... I can infer from looking at the artwork that someome who was intelligent has created that piece of artwork... It did not come about by chance... The came applies to what I observe in the universe and to think otherwise, would be done by intellectually bankrupt people.

Peace to you all.

Ebert: The theory of evolution does not defy mathematics or the laws of thermodynamics, as has been pointed out over and over again.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html

Before the Big Bang it is theorized that all of the matter that would become our universe was compressed into a sigularity. Something caused that sigularty to burst forth and "create" our universe. I think that something was God. "let there be light" BANG!!!!!!!!

Ebert: What you think is interesting from an autobiographical point of view.

A scientist would say, "I cannot explain it, but I am working on it."

EBERT: "The problem with the debate on the Longest Thread was that the I.D. side was polluted by factoids, fallacies and hyperbole, drowning out those, like Masters, who attempted to engage in rational argument."

One reason to cherish this sentence is that it uses the much-abused word "factoid" correctly. Generally mis-used to mean "a piece of trivia," a factoid is actually a statement that is not really a fact, though it is believed to be one by many. "Obama was born in Kenya" is one factoid; "The moon landing was faked" is another; "JFK's assassination was the result of a conspiracy" is the champion factoid of our time. The word derives from "android," a being that resembles a human but isn't one.

Just going to throw my two cents in, mainly in the hope that people realize that not all Christians are the same... I'm a Christian but I believe in evolution/intelligent design. I think that God made the world but that He made life so that it could evolve. I don't understand why it has to be one or the other. I also think that evolution should be taught in schools. It is a fascinating and essential scientific theory. I learned that God made the world in sunday school and I learned about evolution in school.

Hi Roger. Thank you for mentioning me. I'm flattered. And thank you for, in effect, resetting the Ben Stein thread to continue here.

It was a privilege to participate in that thread, which remained remarkably civil given the topic - which causes flame wars elsewhere. I'll repeat that the reason it didn't was due to your leadership as the host. You remain very civil even in the face of some hostile shots from some commenters, and that set the tone.

I made some good online friends in that thread, and hope to still engage them here on this one. I'll say a couple of things first:

1. I never commented just to provoke discussion. Let me put that to bed. While a couple of my comments were tongue-in-cheek - like responding to the charge that I don't have enough imagination to understand evolution by conceding that it must take a very large amount of imagination to believe in evolution :) - my comments were sincere throughout. There was some playfulness there, in good sport, which is what made the thread fun as well as ineresting.

I'm a lifelong learner. Right now I'm still learning the new discipline of Intelligent Design, which in this form is less than 20 years old. My comment stream is me expressing what I believe about what I'm learning. I'm even learning from the ToE advocates.

2. ID is not Creationism. It's just not. You can't read Dembski's "The Design Revolution" and get creationism out of it. Move past that argument, already!

3. There was a lot of good science argued on that thread, and I encourage anyone with time and interest to go back and read through it. Try my 4-part defense of Irreducible Complexity in July and the responses to it, or Karl's 4-parter on morality. That thread would make a good book in itself, IMHO.

4. "Expelled" is not Ben Stein's film. I contacted the screenwriter, who confirmed for me that the he and the producers contacted Stein, not the other way around. I've watched "Expelled" 4 times now, and it is deeper than given credit for. There are many credentialed scientists in the film, and they are not all evangelicals or Americans. You can put that argument to rest, too!

5. I am re-energized for the debate now, because I'm currently reading Stephen C. Meyer's excellent book "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design". Meyer is a imminently qualified scientist, and he presents his argument entirely from science. Not only does he present a fascinating history of and explanation of DNA, he challenges the emergence of first life by chance, necessity, or a combination. Let's engage on this!

I'm hoping that Dale, Karl, Keith, Rob, Brad, Miguel, and even Bill Hays and everyone else I'm leaving out will keep tolerating and engaging me here on this thread.

Dale: I'm no where near ready to change teams yet! But, keep trying. :)

Randy

Hi Roger. Thank you for mentioning me. I'm flattered. And thank you for, in effect, resetting the Ben Stein thread to continue here.

It was a privilege to participate in that thread, which remained remarkably civil given the topic - which causes flame wars elsewhere. I'll repeat that the reason it didn't was due to your leadership as the host. You remain very civil even in the face of some hostile shots from some commenters, and that set the tone.

I made some good online friends in that thread, and hope to still engage them here on this one. I'll say a couple of things first:

1. I never commented just to provoke discussion. Let me put that to bed. While a couple of my comments were tongue-in-cheek - like responding to the charge that I don't have enough imagination to understand evolution by conceding that it must take a very large amount of imagination to believe in evolution :) - my comments were sincere throughout. There was some playfulness there, in good sport, which is what made the thread fun as well as ineresting.

I'm a lifelong learner. Right now I'm still learning the new discipline of Intelligent Design, which in this form is less than 20 years old. My comment stream is me expressing what I believe about what I'm learning. I'm even learning from the ToE advocates.

2. ID is not Creationism. It's just not. You can't read Dembski's "The Design Revolution" and get creationism out of it. Move past that argument, already!

3. There was a lot of good science argued on that thread, and I encourage anyone with time and interest to go back and read through it. Try my 4-part defense of Irreducible Complexity in July and the responses to it, or Karl's 4-parter on morality. That thread would make a good book in itself, IMHO.

4. "Expelled" is not Ben Stein's film. I contacted the screenwriter, who confirmed for me that the he and the producers contacted Stein, not the other way around. I've watched "Expelled" 4 times now, and it is deeper than given credit for. There are many credentialed scientists in the film, and they are not all evangelicals or Americans. You can put that argument to rest, too!

5. I am re-energized for the debate now, because I'm currently reading Stephen C. Meyer's excellent book "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design". Meyer is a imminently qualified scientist, and he presents his argument entirely from science. Not only does he present a fascinating history of and explanation of DNA, he challenges the emergence of first life by chance, necessity, or a combination. Let's engage on this!

I'm hoping that Dale, Karl, Keith, Rob, Brad, Miguel, and even Bill Hays and everyone else I'm leaving out will keep tolerating and engaging me here on this thread.

Dale: I'm no where near ready to change teams yet! But, keep trying. :)

Randy

Ebert: Donald and Daisy: Married? Nesting in sin?

Thanks, Roger. I obviously thought of the same possibility. Now that you have said it aloud, though, I cannot get this Chinatown-inspired scene out of my head of Uncle Scrooge slapping Donald around while Donald haplessly blurts, "Nephews...sons...nephews..sons..."

Or would Scrooge be the Noah Cross character...

Oh, Don Rosa, you deviant, you.

As a Christian I certainly believe in God and that God created the vast universe including Earth. However I also believe that after each "day" which probably meant millions of years after God "got the ball rolling" everything evolved during that time period.

Is it really heroic if someone simply repeats nonsense ad nauseum, ignoring that it's nonsense? Has heroism really sunk that far?

In no way does Evolution deny the possibility of a higher being. I just don't understand what all the fuss is about. How will the post-apocalyptic landscape of "The Road" benefit from Darwin or say God? Have you seen it?

Roger, it's a shame the Guiness folks wouldn't grant you a record, but I'd be happy to mail you a shiny new dime in honor of the thread...

I saw an interesting article in USA Today that discusses lactose tolerance in humans. The Darwinian hook is that via metastudies of dairy farming and lactase persistance they have identified where and when the mutation that allows adult humans to digest lactose first appeared (around 7500 years ago - surprisingly recent).

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-30-lactose-intolerance_N.htm?csp=YahooModule_News

Of course it proves nothing since it's based on science and can't possibly compete with "faith".

Blaming Darwin for Hitler is like blaming the Beatles for Manson (Helter Skelter). Let’s say Hitler did use Darwin as his justification for his actions that is not Darwin’s fault. Sorry but no where in Darwin's notes/books did I ever see anything about killing minorities.
One final point, there should be some kind of law preventing any creationists from getting medical treatment that benefited from Darwin's theories. Same goes for stem cell research. Once they find cures that stem cell research can solve how about the folks who were against it can't befit from the treatment?

While I agree with evolution (the fact that I even have to say that is a little sad to me....I agree with gravity too), I do have to ask you one question.

Was the Stein movie really any "worse" in terms of its fairness to the object of its hatred than....I forget the name, but that anti-religion film done by the comic Bill Maher. You gave that one a good review...What was going to be the star rating for the Stein film before you got sidetracked and it became a blog entry?

I read part of this book recently, it may interest you:

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145

It begins with the story of how the author visited a Creationist museum in Kentucky....The museum featured a dinosaur, with a saddle. To make matters worse, it was an English Saddle, which means that this was a show dinosaur. And also means that not only did humanity and dinosaurs exist side-by-side, but that we had domesticated them and had invented English Saddles.

-Nighthawk

SFB writes:

"Believing in intelligent design is like believing in the afterlife. You believe in it because you want it to be true. You have no real evidence to suggest it"

This is not exactly true, or at least not true in the way SFB intends it. Debates over what occurs after biological life ends are certainly not analogous to the evolution versus intelligent design debate. In the case of evolution versus intelligent design, all the scientific evidence supports evolution. Belief in intelligent design in its most primitive form ignores material fact, and even in its most sophisticated form -- that is, "evolution occurs but there is a guiding intelligence behind it" -- requires at least the assumption of facts not in evidence. But debates about whether an afterlife exists, which really come down to debates over whether human beings (and possibly other creatures) are simply material beings or have some other component that transcends materiality (conventionally called a "soul," though that word obviously often comes freighted with all sorts of assumptions), are a different matter because no scientific evidence can exist either way. Those who insist upon an afterlife, especially when they (as they almost always do) are convinced they can define exactly what it's like, don't have an evidentiary leg to stand on. But those who deny even the possibility of any kind of afterlife ignore that basic logical tenet that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Scientists know this. Much of science consists of looking for evidence for things (sub-atomic particles, missing links) that we have only imagined.

I don't know what will happen when I die, and while I'm certainly willing to wait to find out, I'm pretty sure that what I feel is more curiosity than fear. I've had a few experiences that fall into the category of what Wordsworth called "Intimations of Immortality," and others that qualify as "things that science at its current level of understanding of the universe is unable to explain." I've known and trusted people -- sober, rational, even scientific people -- who have reported similar experiences. Those first-hand and second-hand experiences still have not led me to accept any conventional view of the afterlife. What most people describe as heaven sounds like a nice suburb with no crime, or a cocktail party filled with only the people you would want to hang out with, or something similarly mundane. Meanwhile, theologically-based visions of the afterlife, such as the promise the Catholic Church offers of sexless spirits spending eternity praising God (see Dante's "Paradiso," the only part of the Divine Comedy that can rightly be called boring), hold hardly any more attraction for me than the threat of a place of eternal torment for temporal sins. Both, in fact, seem transparent carrots and sticks for controlling the masses. More fundamentally, the idea of any kind of eternity is hard to fathom. I like myself well enough, and might want to be me for 50,000 years, or even more, but the idea of a personal identity that lasts forever, in which a trillion, trillion years is just one grain of sand in an hourglass that will never run out, is a bit disturbing.

Yet any claim of certainty that nothing exists beyond death, that the self is entirely physical, strikes me as just as arbitrary and arrogant as the claim not only that heaven exists, but that one particular belief system is the only way to open its doors. Experience has taught me that it's a mistake to underestimate the wonders the universe holds. I'm talking real, physical wonders, not the religious kind, and yet the paradox is that the slightest apprehension of the universe's beauty and complexity (and yet its simplicity too) fully justifies a feeling of religious awe. I don't think the universe was designed, but if it had been, the architect's first goal must have been to make a fool of anyone with the audacity to believe he or she understands it completely. As many have pointed out, quantum physics states as fact paradoxes that Zen Buddhism presents as koans. Matter is energy. Time is a subjective illusion. Change is permanence. The problem with radical materialists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens is not that they attack the answers religion provides, but that they treat any willingness to ask the questions as signs of mental deficiency.

In any case, when my biological functions cease, shortly after the feeling of transcendent well-being that nearly everyone who has "died on the table" and then been brought back has reported (and which could, after all, be a euphoric illusion experienced by the brain in having been momentarily freed of its responsibilities towards the rest of the body), I'll find out. Either my consciousness and identity will be snuffed out entirely, or something else will happen. I'm okay with the former, or at least as okay as one can be with the thought of oblivion. As Hamlet says at one point, if it happened to Caesar and Alexander, we should just shut up and follow humbly. However, who can deny that the latter possibility -- the something else -- is more intriguing, and if the universe's track record is any guide, therefore at least as likely?

To end where I began, by mixing up the afterlife debate with the evolution vs. creation debate SFB demeans evolution. Only enemies of Darwin imagine his goal was to destroy faith rather than to understand the world. That Darwin's discoveries ultimately put the final nail of many in the coffin of Genesis is true, but it wasn't his motivation. Those who try to claim that evolution requires "belief" and that evolutionary theory is a "secular religion" don't understand the difference between science and metaphysics, but those who insist that no afterlife could possibly exist make the same error.

I hope the trailer for CREATION is an intentional joke. I fear it is not intentional. Fortunately, Darwin's reputation will survive both Ben Stein and Paul Bettany.

Does anyone have a link to a study showing an observed beneficial genetic mutation?

Could not ID and evolution go together? Could someone design life to evolve? Isn't this one of the ways they are trying to tackle AI?

Does Evolution include spontaneous generation/abiogenesis?

Did I just make a post of all questions?

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

-Terry Pratchett / The Last Continent

When are these blogs going to be compiled into a book? Some of us are just as interested in your blogs as we are in your movie reviews. I want a "Roger Ebert's Journal" book to go along with my Roger Ebert books on film. Though, I haven't had time to read all of the comments of the Ben Stein entry, it seems the Ben Stein entry alone, with the comment thread included could compose one long book on the debate between evolution and creationism. In any case, give us a book of these blogs! Or at least a Roger Ebert commentary book about this debate which seems to be a recurring theme on this blog.

Ebert: Try them on this: Humans, monkeys and all other living beings share the same single-celled ancestor.

Oh boy. You and I both know that that won't fly. It makes too much sense. It is too "scientific" or even "intellectual" for this debate. It requires a bit of thought, which is quite annoying, especially when one can just cut and paste the ideas in their heads from right wing web sites.

It's not like I haven't tried that either, it's just that is has yet to actually work.

Apologies if this has been covered in the previous thread, but since Randy Masters cites Behe approvingly and "distances himself" from the YECs, has it been established if he agrees with Behe that humans share common ancestors with other species?

Also, regarding Ben Stein, I'd appreciate if anyone here can update me (fellow "evolutionists" on other boards are strangely disinterested). Several months after "Set Ben Straight" appeared at the "Expelled Exposed" site I was surprised that he had not answered any of the challenges, either to agree or disagree. I sent him 2 emails but they were not answered. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he's too busy to sift through the undeserved hate mail to find some friendly help. But surely he has had time to digest "Set Ben Straight." Is he still "expelling" himself?

Ebert: As far as I know, Stein has not responded to any criticisms of the film. FYI, he didn't write the screenplay or narration himself.

Hey Roger, did you hear about the agnostic, dyslexic insomniac? She lie in bed all night, wondering if there really was a dog. I guess that about sums it up!

Dear Roger,

at the risk of fueling the controversy some more, I'd like to share my own theory of the creation of life, which I wrote back in 2006 when I was an active Orkut member. One of the communities I used to frequent and post on is called Random Argument Generator. The community's title should already tell you something about what I'm about to share.

---

New York Times
Nov. 25, 2006

Orange County, CA - A revolutionary new theory of the origin of life has been proposed by Dr. R. Wagner, professor dementius in the Department of Revolutionary Science at the University of California, Way-to-the-side. The following is our exclusive online interview with Dr. Wagner.

NYT: Dr. Wagner, thank you for taking time off your busy schedule to chat with us. Could you please summarize in one sentence what your theory of the origin of life is?

Dr. Wagner: It's always a pleasure to waste my time online, especially with the New York Times. In one sentence, my theory of the origin of life is that we all descend from dogs.

NYT: How interesting. What is your theory called?

Dr. Wagner: I like to call it the Theory Of Revolution.

NYT: Can you please elaborate?

Dr. Wagner: If you want me to elaborate, why did you ask me to summarize it first? My Dog, man, make up your mind! Anyway, it's very simple, really. We all revolve, we revolve around our problems, the Earth revolves around the Sun, and so on. That's why I call it the Theory of Revolution.

NYT: I see. And why is it that we all descend from dogs?

Dr. Wagner: Because dogs are the quintessential revolvers. Did you know that dogs spend a third of their lives revolving around, trying to catch their tails? Moreover, as is well known, men are dogs and women are bitches, so that's why in the Theory of Revolution, we all descend from dogs. There has been some objection to my theory on the basis that men are actually pigs, but there is not clear empirical evidence of that being the case.

NYT: I see. How about the religious implications of your theory? Are there any?

Dr. Wagner: Yes, there are. See, when Dog dictated the bible, the people who wrote it down got it wrong and wrote God rather than Dog. I guess they didn't wash their ears back then, so they misunderstood what Dog said. But you can see the connections all over the place. For instance, why do you think that religious belief is said to be dogmatic?

NYT: Well, how does your theory affect those who think that cats are superior to dogs?

Dr. Wagner: It drives them crazy.

NYT: Yes, I'd suppose so, but wouldn't you say that they have the right to believe in whatever they want?

Dr. Wagner: Certainly, but the fact remains that we all descend from dogs, including cats. The series of letter transmutations that convert the word dog into cat are mathematically encoded in the DNA of dogs.

NYT: I see, so your theory makes use of DNA as well. How does it compare to Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Intelligent Design?

Dr. Wagner: Yes, but my theory is based on a different kind of DNA. The DNA we use in the Theory of Revolution is an acronym for Doubts Not Answered. As for comparing the TOR with competing theories, this is what I have to say. Darwin's TOE is ugly and needs a lot of cleaning up. And it says that we descend from primitive apes, which is in direct contradiction with the fact that we descend from dogs. As for the TID, it's only a theory, just a bunch of tidbits and twisted arguments. In fact, I think it should be called the TIT - Theory of Imbecillic Twists. That would explain better why so many religious people suck up to it.

NYT: Still, is there any empirical evidence in favor of your theory?

Dr. Wagner: Of course there is! Take the fossil record. It's a lot of buried bones. What animal do you know of likes to bury bones? Dogs, of course. Besides, everyone knows that dinosaurs are just big dogs. Have you never watched The Flintstones? My Dog, man, didn't you have a childhood?

NYT: Well, on behalf of our readers, I'd like to thank you for chatting with us, Dr. Wagner.

Dr. Wagner: You're welcome. Can I get a free subscription to the Times now?

---

New theory of life banned in China
From the New York Times correspondent staff for scientific affairs:

Chinese officials ban new theory of the origin of life
Nov 25, 2006

Beijing, China - Merely hours after Dr. Rengaw Wagner, professor dementius in the Department of Revolutionary Science at the University of California, Way-to-the-side, has announced his revolutionary theory of the origin of life, dubbed "Theory Of Revolution", chinese officials convened an emergency meeting to discuss a strategy to ban the teaching of Dr. Wagner's theory in Chinese schools.

According to a high-ranking official, the decision to ban the new theory, which advances the idea that humans actually descend from dogs, came about shortly after he realized that this theory would suggest that Chinese people have anthropophagi tendencies, since it's well known that dogs are considered a delicacy among many Asian citizens.

A final decision has not yet been announced.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wagner's theory has taken the scientific community by storm. Moreover, political analysts have indicated that, should this theory be corroborated, a shift in the balance of power in the world is likely to occur. The Bush administration has yet to make a public announcement regarding Dr. Wagner's results.

---

Ancient artifact proves new theory of life
From the New York Times correspondent staff for scientific affairs:

Ancient artifact claimed to prove new theory of life
Nov 25, 2006

Cairo, Egypt - In the wake of the controversy generated by yet another theory of the origin of life on Earth - the so-called "Theory of Revolution", which puts forward the idea that all life on Earth descends from dogs - the recent discovery of an ancient artifact in the form of a tablet fragment, inscribed with what appear to be hieroglyphs, is now being considered the tipping factor in favor of the new theory.

Speaking at a scientific meeting taking place in Cairo, where the discovery was made, Dr. R. Wagner, professor dementius in the Department of Revolutionary Science at the University of California, Way-to-the-side, discoverer of the new theory, explained the significance of the tablet found.

"We had plenty of evidence already, before this discovery, in the form of the fossil record. After all, fossils are nothing but lots of buried bones and, as we all know, dogs like to bury bones. However, the discovery of a tablet where the translated hyeroglyphs read "Thou shall throw me a bone" clearly indicates that the universe was created by Dog and that this one commandment predates the more familiar ten. The evidence is incontrovertible."

The meeting had to be adjourned, however, when Dr. Wagner and Dr. Herman T. Przeworski, a fierce opponent of his new theory, engaged in what can only be politely described as less-than-scientific banter. Dr. Przeworski has argued that mouse traps are a clear and simple example of irreducible complexity, which he claims cannot be explained by the Theory Of Revolution.

Dr. Wagner, visibly upset, challenged Dr. Przeworski to come to the podium from where Dr. Wagner was speaking and explain "how in the name of Dog can a mouse trap be considered a biological entity."

Dr. Przeworski accepted the challenge and rose to the podium, only to be interrupted by Dr. Wagner, who then attempted to resume his presentation regarding the ancient tablet. Scientific courtesy quickly gave way to personal attacks, and the meeting was canceled.

---

Cat lovers rally against "Dog Theory"

BBC News
Nov. 26, 2006

Oxford, UK - Following the recent flurry of activity surrounding the so-called "Theory Of Revolution", particularly after the discovery of an ancient artifact in Egypt claimed to be the ultimate proof that Dog created the universe, cat lovers and other dognostics around the world were quick to announce their own news conferences to address the issue.

In Oxford, UK, famous professor of Zoology Dr. Richard Doggins, considered by many as the most influential and outspoken dognostic alive today, angrily spoke to a crowd of cat lovers at a university luncheon:

"It is simply preposterous that the universe was created by a dog and that we, created in its image, should descend from dogs. Dr. Wagner's claims are anything but scientific and his theory, anything but revolutionary."

"Consider, for example, his claim that his theory agrees with the creation of the world according to the Bible because dog years are longer than human years. Even if that is the case, and the evidence is not in its favor, the numbers simply do not add up. The Earth, not to mention the universe, is much older than 6 dog days."

"It is about time people realized that it is a dog-eat-dog world out there and that pseudo-scientists such as Dr. Wagner should be sent back to the dog house he crawled out from."

Other influential figures in the mostly-dognostic academic world, such as Dr. Meow Tails, Doctor Emeritus in Evolutionary Studies and Feline Psychology at Her Majesty's University at Puringhamton, Next-to-the-Shire, have also voiced their disapproval of Dr. Wagner's theory, which she dismisses as a "prank."

Meanwhile, radical Islamic and Christian groups have begun a series of public threats towards one another over the issue of the true nature of the Dog of Abraham, Christians claiming it was a Labrador, Islam experts claiming it was a Chihuahua.

Political analysts worldwide have began to follow closely any developments in the controversy and fear an increase in tension in the Middle East, especially since the Bush administration has not yet made any official announcements addressing the controversy.

Economic analysts and day traders, on the other hand, are expecting to benefit from the controversy with an unusually high profit margin when the major stock markets open on Monday, for it's expected that the stocks of pet-food companies will experience a rise.

---

Missing creator of revolutionary theory rescued by aliens

Reuters
Nov 28, 2006

Dr. R. Wagner, creator of the controversial Theory Of Revolution, who had been missing for five days, has been found.

Weak, but in otherwise good health, 43-year-old Wagner mysteriously appeared yesterday in the town of Roswell, New Mexico, and was recognized when he walked into a diner, completely naked.

Today, after having slept with the waitress who recognized him, and rested for a day, the famous academic and author of best-selling books Memoirs Of An Amnesiac and You Can't See Me: A Photographic Exploration Of The Life Of An Invisible Man (see reviews in our book section) addressed the world media in a press conference.

Dr. Wagner confirmed that he was taken to the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but declined to elaborate on the kind of treatment he received there, asking to let bygones be bygones.

When asked how he escaped and came to find himself naked in Roswell, Wagner explained that he was rescued by Raliens, a group of aliens who, according to him, are not to be confused with their cult-like cousins, the Raellians. Dr. Wagner went on to explain that Raliens are more advanced than Raellians and, in fact, beat the latter 10 to 2 in the last Intergalactic Freesbee Competition. Moreover, he continued, Raliens confirmed that all life and the universe itself have been created by Dog and that human life and alien life both descend from the common domestic dog.

Taking the opportunity to divert the press conference to the issue of addressing his opponents' criticisms against his Theory Of Revolution, Dr. Wagner presented the latest empirical evidence which, along with the fossil record and the recently found Egyptian tablet containing the commandment "Thou Shall Throw Me A Bone," he said, unequivocally proves his theory.

This newest piece of evidence, he claims, clearly shows that Dog intended humans to come out of dogs' asses, for he sent his own son down to Earth through the ass of a dog (photograph available here).

In other, but related, news, some anxiety and curiosity have been forming worldwide surrounding the mystery of why the White House has not yet made a public announcement addressing both the impact of Wagner's theory and his arrest. It has been speculated that the delay has been caused by President Bush's difficulty in understanding the difference between the pronounciation of the words 'evolution' and 'revolution.' Anoynymous sources in the White House have told this reporter that the President thinks that the 's' should be pronounced with a stronger accent in one case than in the other.

Meanwhile, earlier today, in Haifa, Israel, a suicide bomber destroyed a pet store which specialized in the selling of Labrador dogs. Surviving witnesses confirmed that the man repeatedly yelled the word "Chihuahua" before taking his life and destroying the store.

Randy. If ID is not creationism, perhaps you are unaware of the wonderful transitional known as "cdesign proponentsists". Or you haven't heard of the "Wedge Document". Or perhaps Dembski's own quote: "ID is the Logos of St John restated in the idiom of Information Theory".

Perhaps you are also not aware that "Irreducible Complexity" is NOT in any way shape or form "evidence" for ID. Assuming there was any evidence for it (which there isn't, since Behe nor anyone else I'm aware of are actually doing any research in that area) it is an anti-evolution argument. "If evolution couldn't have done it then Goddidit!" Which is argument from incredulity. ID needs to stand on it's own merits.

If ID is a "SCIENTIFIC theory", then I'd like to know who or what the "designer" is, how it was determined, what useful scientific predictions it makes, what mechanism it used, when it did whatever it is you think it did, how it is tested, and (quite important) how it can be falsified. And perhaps also why an all-knowing, all-powerful universe-creating "creator" is apparently incapable of using evolution if it so desired.

Also, if ID is indeed a "scientific theory" and nothing at all to do with religion as the IDers themselves (used to) claim, then perhaps one can explain what can be found here?

http://www.designinference.com/teaching/teaching.htm

Part of their ID "course":

"This is the D.Min. course. You have four things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 30% of your grade); (2) write a 1,500- to 2,000-word critical review of Francis Collins’s THE LANGUAGE OF GOD -- for instructions, see below (20% of your grade); (3) write a 3,000-word essay on the THEOLOGICAL significance of intelligent design (worth 30% of your grade); (4) develop a Sunday-school lesson plan based on the book Understanding Intelligent Design (worth 20% of your grade)."

(emphasis mine)

I must say, the trolling of evolution websites to help get their grades is rather amusing. I wonder how these courses help people become "ID scientists" exactly?

Looks like I have a lot of catchup reading to do to participate. So for now I only have a preface.

Lawrence, only two kinds of creature get fun in the desert: Bedouins and gods, and you're neither. Take it from me, for ordinary men, it's a burning, fiery furnace.

Capt. Karl: you stole that joke from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

IF (as in big if), here's what i envision, as is the theory which is mine:

consider the universe like a top. not the top of something but the kind that a kid used to play with, wind the string, pull the string, it spins until the bully up the street named billy o took it from you. so, god is sitting on the sidewalk with his new top called "the universe." he takes it out of the package, reads the directions that he wrote, readies the string, gives a great godly pull causing it to explode into a great godly spin. then he sits back and watches it go 'round for about 6 billion years. he doesn't touch or influence it, but he got it started and said, "let's see what this baby can do."

so, back to the big IF, if there is a god and/or supreme being, i believe that he/she/it/they set up the universe and got it going, but i don't believe he/she/it/they have reached down to influence man, woman, animal, burger, or anything else that has developed. the changes over the millenia are too great and too subtle. if god were going to make changes and create creatures that didn't exist "yesterday," it wouldn't be a gradual thing such as the evidence shows in creatures that have made such tiny but huge changes little by little over tens of thousands of years. god would have pointed a finger with a "zzzzap!" and then the apelike creature would instantly walk upright and gain the power of speech.

if you accept dinosaurs, you accept evolution.
if you accept prehistoric man, you accept evolution.
if you accept tony danza, you accept evolution.

however, you now have to decide if evolution was started by an intelligent designer.

this is the theory which is mine.

Tom wrote: "Oh boy. You and I both know that that won't fly."

Yeah, but it's fun to remind those who rave about Behe, but seem to prefer YEC, OEC or "don't ask, don't tell," that Behe indeed does admit that humans share common ancestors with other species in a continuum of life going back billions of years.

Given the choice between claiming a common ancestor with creationists and claiming that I evolved from monkeys, I choose the monkeys.

Sir- First-
You said:
"Ebert: Strictly speaking, theory, as it is used in science, is the correct term:

theory. a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained : Darwin's theory of evolution."

Darwin violates this definition. Why? Darwin doesn't talk about man in the Origin of Species- he writes on man in the Descent of Man. There he says man "descends from some lower form". But what needs explaining is the higher form, man. Darwin knows this and assumes the lower form by knowing the higher form. Darwin's theory of evolution is not without its theoretical difficulties. In other way- how could 'mind' evolve from 'nonmind'?
Also, would you not agree that there is a difference between Darwin and what is called Darwinism? Perhaps these intelligent designers are voicing a concern over the ism of Darwin.

My simple argument to creationists:

You believe that the Biblical story is not only correct, but complete. But let me ask you: If your very young son or daughter comes to you and asks "Where did I come from?" your mind races to tell him/her the truth, yet in a way that they can understand. Can they understand what led to your attraction to your wife, the rush of that first kiss, the complexity of the relationship up to the decision to marry, your attempt to provide the means to create a home for your family, the intertwined life of the two of you which led to that exact sexual act which resulted in fertilization, the ups and downs of pregnancy, and the overwhelming emotions associated with birth and on and on....?

You can't explain that simply, so you tell the "truth" in a way they *can* understand: "Mommy and Daddy fell in love, got married, and you grew inside Mommy and were born."

Now let me ask: If you consider how large the gap is between the mind/experiences of a small child and the mind/experiences of an adult, think how much vaster the gap between the mind of man and the "mind" of God must be. To say that the Biblical story of creation is literal and complete, with no additional complexity, is to denigrate God.

Creationism is blasphemy.

Wow. I am a regular reader of Mr. Ebert's reviews, but I've never seen either blog post until today. I have skimmed some of the comments and found many to have actual things to say and some that were full of drivel. If I may add my two cents, as another anonymous commenter:

I am an Orthodox Jew educated in science. I believe in God. I believe He created a universe which exists and persists based on scientific principles. He created the Laws of Nature that scientists "merely" describe. He also set up the "initial conditions" for the "equations" that are Life, the Universe, and Everything. Sure, evolution seems to have occurred as Darwin described it. Why should it not? It makes sense.

Has evolution been "proven"? Does the theory of evolution hold the same amount of authority as Newton's Laws of Motion? For sure not. Of course, to completely test evolution, one needs a test tube large enough to hold an ecosystem and a grant supporting you for several million years. TIME is the missing element, and it is because there not enough time has passed since people started watching, there is NO empiric evidence for evolution. There is a planetload of circumstantial evidence, of course, and that is more than any other theory possesses, but I don't think that evolution is a fact. I personally feel that it is correct, with the caveat that God was always there behind the scenes.

It is because of compromising statements like the one I just made that I do not understand the points of view of either extreme. How can you completely disprove the existence of God. Here we have a hypothetical omnipotent being who doesn't want to be found. It's the same with proving He does exist. One commenter said that personal experience is the best proof of God's existence. I say that while I have had experiences like he describes, I think that this is a poor argument. (The best argument for God's existence, IMHO is the persistent existence of the Jews.)

The argument against "faith" being the thing that God wants (and therefore has not revealed Himself in a more obvious manner) holds water only because the people on the faith side have themselves missed a step. Worshippers of God are to have faith, indeed, but it is actions that bring greater good that God wants, and He wants us to come to be better people based on our own personal development, not because holy-cow-how-could-we-not. Whether there is eternal reward thrown into it is secondary. [Now, one can argue with this argument too, but not on logical grounds. Only on the grounds of "wow, that's a little silly." We can say such things, but it is because we do not know the mind of God, and do not know what is important to Him. That insulates my argument from anything because it hides behind "well, we cannot know" but it I think avoids "we don't know so it must be."]

It pains me that religious people who use microwaves and antibiotics feel that ID needs to be taught as a scientific theory. It isn't. Not at all.

It pains me that secular ideologues feel that being religious makes one uneducated and lacking in intelligence. (Perhaps some of them are influenced by the loud fundamentalists who say and do silly or murderous things in the name of religion. But do not lump Muslim suicide bombers who die "in the name of Allah" with religious scholars who believe that there is some Divine Providence in the world.)

It confuses me when people do not see obvious connections. I always thought it was pretty clear that racism has a basis (or at least a support) in Darwinism. Of course Hitler or some of his people believed in Darwinism on a variety of levels. (Social Darwinism had been introduced a decade or two prior to Hitler's rise to power.) Does this make Darwin evil? A supporter of genocide? No, of course not - any more than the Wright Brothers are to blame for Hiroshima. Scientific discovery - or even theorizing - is what we as humans and thinkers do, and it is our responsibility to control the results of our thoughts and discoveries.

In short, then: it is possible to understand God working within the natural universe, but ID is not a scientific theory. Believing that developments have unintended consequences is normal, and not to be scoffed at. And most of all, do not insult the intelligence of the other side.

I am no scientist or scholar but I do believe my own eyes. I see how traits get passed on from grandparent to parent to child. The idea that the things that make use are passed on through genetics... it supports the idea of evolution.

I think about the fact that in the past, genetics determined survival. Before we had good medicine, if a child had a weak immune system, they didn't survive long enough to procreate. Which means there was some level of being fit to survive that determined who passed on their genes. To deny this reality is infantile at best, and reckless at worst.

I do not expressly believe in Abraham's God. But I believe there is something out there which may be our god. I cannot explain it... but I have faith it exists. I am no christian, no muslim, no mormon, no athiest.

I don't believe that the theory of evolution is in conflict with intelligent design. To me it's like saying gravity is in conflict with e=mc^2. I feel they are very much entwined and one is just the byproduct of the other.

The argument almost feels silly. I have one far more interesting, what came first: the chicken or the egg?

Here my question: if we were to allow ID to be taught in schools, what would it consist of? I've read Pandas and People, and there's nothing in it that lays out a lesson of what ID is or its history. It's all apologetics. Furthermore, if ID is what it claims to be, a non-denominational theory of a "designer", then wouldn't any discussion of it amount to New Age study? That's the only thing religious fundamentalists hate worse than atheism.

Sorry Roger ... I don't know where else to put this ... answerman is not appropriate.

Just read your review for "World's Greatest Dad" and your last sentence is intriguing. I've always wondered why you - someone I admire so much as being able to get satire and topical dark comedy - missed "Heathers" as an all-time classic teen black comedy/satire of exactly the themes you think "World's Greatest Dad" just missed out on.

You've given Heathers 2 1/2 stars, and I think it deserves another look. It did everything "River's Edge" did, and everything this movie tried to do ... but funnier, and thus more biting.

Well, sigh. I thought I'd already straightened everybody out about this. Or at least, got some of the Darwinist Rednecks to admit they didn't even understand what they're reading -- by quite a reputable third party, that is. Or that some of these precocious loudmouths have even ever read ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

So, this debate has the same quality of millions of people vehemently preaching for a political bill they haven't even read -- and biting the fingers off those who probably have, if the LA Times report was true, the other day.

Darwin died knowing there was no empirical proof for the random occurrence of biological characteristics, supposedly accidentally improving the ability of any species to survive by accidentally improved adaptation to the environment and in domination over any other species. He wrote so. I never see anybody quoting this letter, written to his brother Thomas.

"Natural selection" is only a euphemism for "random selection," as I ably pointed out. Some of you Darwinist Rednecks are sorely literal-minded. That's how wiping out whole villages of innocent people gets called "Ethnic Cleansing" by the perps.

Whatever twists and turns this theory has taken over a century and a half, there still remains the problem of the idea of "random." That's still at the core of it. The Spencerian notion, that we should now control this "random" evolution socially, which amounts to culling herds and gathering biological knowledge by torturing even human beings for "scientific reasons," did indeed supply the rationale for the Nazi experiments, as well as the Japanese, which were far worse -- and sold to the U.S., making some of those incredible abusers wealthy. Hirohito was an avid Darwinist. Hitler was a politician without any scientific background whatsoever.

If you "don't agree" with this point of view, it can only be that you don't want to. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to look up some historical information.

You without testubes gizmoes and grants can only use evolutionary theory in a philosophical way. The philosophy behind this theory states that All Existence, with a capital "E," is random.

Philosophical implications have been ignored here, particularly by the Darwinist Rednecks, probably because it's considered impractical. As Jay Leno once quipped, what did he plan to do with his degree in philosophy? Open up a little philosophy shop?

One lives by the philosophy he accepts, period, whether it's Redneck or high-falutin' egghead. Usually it's instilled by parents, schools, etc. One usually has his nose too far into his philosophy to recognize the restrictive bars through which that nose is eagerly thrusting. Just trust me on this.

So, you True Believers (Eric Hoffer's worthy term) in Redneck Evolution float along to the tuneless philosophy that your own origins are random. There's nothing fair in life but by accident, that what you can grab is a dog-eat-dog proposition and your feelings about it all are ultimately meaningless. Therefore, what happens to you? If you pay attention to the details of your own life, you'll see your philosophy in operation. Few do that.

I'm telling you Christians that you haven't thought it through either. You're stuck with a God that lets "shit happen" to you.

In that other post, I also asked for anyone to volunteer what good evolutionary theory has done them. Personally: not a fine sweeping gesture of hands about the glories of science you've read about plus all the pictures. And not because you got a hack job in a lab, or the like either. Directly. Right now: what good is evolutionary theory doing you?

Nobody responded. I tried a few times, if I recall. Nobody. Not a word. Dead silence.

Trying again: who here has a personal story about how evolutionary theory has improved their lives personally?

To help everyone understand my starting point, I'm a deeply committed Christian who believes that evolution is one mechanism through which God works in his creation. But I usually distance myself from people who self-identify as proponents of "Intelligent Design" or "Creationism" because they seem to believe not that God did not set up the universe in an explicable way, but in an way that doesn't make any sense unless we use the "it's a miracle!" formula in every equation.

My background is in physics and mathematics and most of what the ID proponents seem to want in the field of biology seems to me analogous to insisting that when we throw a basketball into the air, God swats it back down. It seems like an unnecessary interjection of God into a natural system that, in my view, He set up to work intelligibly. It's something of an insult to imply that He set up a system so flawed He has to constantly work miraculous interference to keep things humming.

With that being said, I think it should be noted that a good number of evolutionary proponents (usually non-scientist types) vastly overstate their case in the particulars of evolution. We may see an article that claims that human behavior works in some way or another because it was encoded by evolution into ancient humans. They then claim that the behavior improved survival because that behavior would lead to such-and-such an action.

But, when you dig into scientific studies of many behavioral phenomena, you realize that their "explanation" was little more than a creative writing exercise, imagining humans as they used to be and projecting how the behavior might have improved survival or procreation. Ultimately, the proper answer to "Why do we act this way?" is often "We have no idea, but it's a good bet that the reason was based in some evolutionary mechanism."

This answer is unsatisfying to many and easily mocked by IDers and creationists, but it is a much more honest answer than making the reasons up.

i'm not sure if this is my place to promote something else on this site, but i feel people following this thread and others you have written dealing with the question of god and religion might be interested in hearing some smart work done in national public radio. A show called radiolab frequently investigates issues such as evolution, the afterlife, and my personal favorite theories of the evolution of morality. I highly recommend the show which releases a podcast to anyone interested in a smart, mostly impartial view of these topics.

Randy Masters,

Ever jousted a jaded knight? I got some armor, a sword and a horse over here. I'm in my held-by-a-few-threads undergarments that are about to disintegrate and be blown out into the wind, which means if we're going to do this I'll need someone to put my armor on for me, carry me onto the horse, super glue my javelin sword into my palm and slap the horses ass.

I am a sophomore university student studying mechanical engineering. One of the reasons I choose this field is because I believe that science, in the form of math, physics, biology, psychology, or any other, has led people to where we are today. When humans started sharpening sticks, that was science, you could say engineering :)

I have some conservative beliefs, but I find the indifference, and even anger toward science, by elements on the right, to be dangerous to this country. Rejecting science is rejecting reason, and those who reject it and want to run this country have ideas in their head about how to govern that aren't governed by real reason either. They call it reason, but it seems to me to be some sort of emotional stubbornness stemming from anger issues. That is to say, some conservatives are the type of people who get angry when you disagree with them, and assume they are better than you because you think differently than they do. This sort of thinking leads to an even more stubborn mind the second time around, and I view it as a sort of destructive cycle.

If Glenn Beck ever realizes he has a problem, he'd be a candidate for a psychiatrist, I think. Some people just think they're right, and some little thing like science, or reality, won't change their mind. Good people try to improve themselves. Talking heads on the right assume their ideas don't need improving.

Matt,

I have also developed two "threads" of knowledge concerning this second of your major threads (there was also a third one back there too I believe? or fourth? about evolution or about being about evolution?) concerning evolution. I consider myself, I suppose, "undecided".

Thread One: I find that there is still validity to think of this issue in terms of certain philosophical questions of epistemology. Not necessarily in the "what can we REALLY know?" kind of modern physics/postmodernism way. More in terms of differing trends in a concept i'll refer to as "Essential Knowledge". Though I wish to not mis-use this term, it is true that many universities, foreign and domestic, were founded to a certain degree with Theology as a "queen of the sciences". Now i'm not trying to push this too far. Perhaps many of these theologians, even of former times, themselves subscribed to Darwin's theory while maintaining a degree of theological robustness. Meaning, theology still as taking a primary role in the whole of curriculum. Now this in itself is perhaps of debate. But, I would like to present the case that this picture portrayed provides a situation where an "Essential Knowledge" of a pre-modern society involved to a certain degree theology as making up a central item of knowledge. Now the desirability of this, even for a Christian, is up for debate, involving a discussion of the church in a Post-Constantinian world. And I do admit we are speaking here primarily of "the West", Europe, America. Now, the effects of the Enlightenment, Kant (who paved the way for...), of course Darwin himself, provided a shift in what has been largely characterized as "modern-ism", a society of reason, science and of course "liberalism". (Though I would love to point out at this point that most of what we understand in terms of a fiercely competitive "free market" economy, as opposed to cooperative efforts, guild culture, etc is typically associated with this liberal, "social Darwinism") In these changes there has been a decided shift in terms of epistemology. Logic, science, calculated and "neutral" truth has become the "Essential Knowledge" of a 19th/20th century Western culture. Perhaps this doesn't "do" anything to provide an argument one way or the other. I simply illustrate this to show how, in many ways, Evolution is a sort of assumed and widely accepted position held by people who don't understand it. I myself do not understand it. I myself am ignorant to the biological and genetic sciences it takes to wrap my mind around the ideas. I remain a fairly "undecided" observer because I feel that to take a position would be to accept the testimony of Scientists as the chief source of knowledge in the same way as the church knew in the past. Many people would be offended at the sensibilities of the pre-modern world in accepting blindly the dictates of the church when they didn't necessarily always check into the truth for themselves (which is a fascinating question for "theologians" like myself to attempt to wrestle with). Some of those who had the same problem were called Protestants. Though I also mean it in a wider sense... buuuuut

Thread Two: At the same time, though I believe these are some valid points and observations, I allow that acknowledging the inter-workings of modern epistemology is not an excuse for ignorance. Though I maintain that in terms of priority, there is a dictating of the reign of science to put this issue in the forefront, that reservation could be held too far and create one to become a psychologically unstable hermit. Therefore, I plan on making myself more knowledgeable. I have enjoyed reading many of the "great minds" of the past few centuries (Kant, Nietzsche, Freud) even for gaining a basic knowledge in understanding some of the most influential ideas of modern philosophy. I plan on taking up "The Origin of the Species" and seeing what I think of it. The main item I acknowledge towards those on the side of the theory of evolution is the lack of a great response that truly makes the impact that Darwin himself did on the topic. Though I suppose in some ways we could say St. Augustine if we're willing to take science from its pinnacle of epistemology (i.e. "well it doesn't matter what Augustine thought on the topic of creation, he's not a SCIENTIST"). Though I admit that finding what Augustine thought concerning the age of creation could take a dissertation in itself.

Roger
Why do you make claims that are unequivocally false such as "I've never heard of an I.D. scientist who isn't American. Most of them are Christian fundamentalists. Christians in general are okay with evolution."

Over 100 surveys have been done on this question and they are fairly consistent. About 90 percent of Americans support some form of ID or creationism and the number is not too different in many countries, especially Muslim nations. And to deny the connection between Nazism and Darwinism is about equal to denying the holocaust. The evidence is very clear. Read Mein Kampf in German.

Ebert: youread Main Kampf in German. Life is short.

This Gallup Poll says the percentage of Americans believing in evolution is over 50%:

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20060606/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-in-creationism/index.html

Quotes from the article:

Analysts also found a strong correlation between the level of education and the response. About three-quarters of those with a post-graduate degree said humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, compared to just 22 percent choosing the “created in present form” option.

According to Gallup, the poll shows that Americans’ view on the origin of life has remained constant for decades. Since 1982, when the poll first began, between 44 and 47 percent of Americans have consistently agreed with the option that God created humans in their present form, and between 9 and 13 percent believed man evolved without guidance from God. This was the seventh time the poll was conducted.

Meanwhile, 36 percent of Americans agreed with a third option, that man evolved with the guidance of God through millions of years.

Just bought my TIFF tix this morning downtown in beautiful T.O., where many enthusiastic and friendly film lovers lined up in the dark of 4 am, to buy tickets at 7. I had mine by about 8 or so and left downtown around 11 - when the line was longer than ever, people still trying to get into... anything. It was amazing to see so many people interested in film in one place at one time.
Sometimes, in an everyday smaller town life, seeing cinephiles only as names on blogs like this, you forget these people do exist out there, somewhere...

Anyway, the real story: Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" sold out before tickets were available to the general public. (There's a random draw people enter to try to get advance tickets, and of the 80 or so of those who did get advance tickets, guess what everybody wanted to see...) Standing in line, it seems to be *the* movie that people wanna see (with a few exceptions of people who, based on what they had heard from internet buzz/ word of mouth, weren't sure they could handle "Antichrist" if they were to see it...)

Shockingly, there were tickets remaining for the Lynch-produced/ Herzog-directed "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?"

A USA Today/Gallup Poll from June, 2007 found that 53% of respondents agreed the following was definitely or probably true:

"Evolution -- that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life"

The same poll found that 66% of respondents believed the following was definitely or probably true:

"Creationism -- that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years"

So, at least 19% of those surveyed agreed with both statements simultaneously.

Ebert: Do you know the great man himself posted a comment the first time I used that?

I did not! That is truly awesome.

I'm looking forward to eventually seeing "Creation" for being a fan of Paul Bettany and Toby Jones, not to mention interested in the subject but from an artistic point of view - case in point, look how beautifully they've designed the website for the film:

http://creationthemovie.com

The cursor is a magnifying glass, allowing you to pass it over a delightful collection of fascinating things as set upon a sheet of handmade paper. From butterflies and beetles, to sea shells and a sundial clock, they wait patiently for your inspection as a charming ladybug navigates a path around it all. Meanwhile, children can be heard playing as birds chirp and sing; the notes of a piano trickling softly in the distance. There's even the occasional burst of sunlight from the top, right-hand corner of the screen.

I confess, I've absolutely no interest in the debate which has never worn out its welcome on Roger's blog; wry smile. Once I've expressed myself as well I can on a subject, I'm content to move on and let others beat it to death. I don't need to be last man standing. And that what's happened to this topic, imo. And why it's depressing to see it again for it reminds why we have wars.

So many have been so focused on arguing their points and for months that for me, to spend any time on it now, is to risk the death of nature's wonder and awe, of the beauty of beetles and bugs and dragon fly wings - for so rarely does anyone ever stop to notice what they're arguing about.

I'm going outside now to enjoy the sunshine and explore a garden.

I don't recall Christ saying anything about evolution. In fact, there's a lot of "christian" beliefs that he never said one word about (like the issue homosexuality, abortion, just to name a few). So how is it that being a Christian automatically discounts one for believing in evolution, or at least the possibility in it?

BTW, no one asked, but I happen to be a gay man who doesn’t really like abortion. As a gay man, having kids requires much elaboration and planning. I can’t imagine giving up on the opportunity to have a child so easily.

Then again, is that really my decision to make? Probably not. I'm not a woman.

Now I feel guilty that I never seized the chance to create a post on the "single longest thread on the web", Guinness record or not!

Our only hope is to make this thread even longer. Can it be done?

Whiole I agree with you on almost all counts, I do take issue with the line "the most influential scientist of all time" when talking about Darwin. He certainly was impressive, and I have no doubt correct, but he comes nowhere close to people like Newton, Euler, Einstein, or Gauss when it comes to influencing the development of the world. And that says nothing of the ancient greats like Archimedes or Euclid.
So while Darwin was one of the greats, let's not go too far in the opposite direction from people like Stien. Darwin put into words what many people knew, Newton made the world we live in possible.

"By Don Zomberg on September 4, 2009 10:06 AM
The Darwin film "Creation" is produced by Mel Gibson's Icon company. What am I missing?"

IMDB's plot summary: Charles Darwin struggles to find a balance between his revolutionary theories on evolution and the relationship with his religious wife, whose faith contradicts his work.

"By Amrita on September 4, 2009 11:20 AM

Alright, so God put you here - but what is more awe-inspiring? That God woke up one morning and said, "Humans!" and so we all came to be? Or that God created an entire universe that through a series of infinitesimal changes over billions of years crafted man?"

The Bible teaches that God created the universe in 7 days. Previously I argued that a day for God may not be a day as we see it. Roger calculated billions of years into 7 days and said that he'd accept a "God's Day" that's equal to 'so and so' billions of years. This forum has me terrified of outing myself as a creationist, but I guess I already have, and that is what I am, and I don't see anything more bizarre about being a creationist than being an evolutionist. They both will ultimately delve into territory that we have no proof of- the first speck of existence. One road to the origin of that speck is based on faith and the other is based on science. I am not going to argue the age of the earth, because I just don't know. I don't argue adaptation- living organisms changing colors, forming characteristics according to their environment- but that does not lead me to believe that it is by pure luck that my ancestors were the ones who diverged into the more intelligent lineage- the ones who rent condos in Miami and type on internet forums discussing how we got to be here. That we share 95-99% of our DNA in common with chimpanzees does not prove anything to me. An artist may use the same basic paints to create two wholly different images with two very different purposes.

When you ask what is more awe-inspiring as to how it all started... as a Christian, it doesn't matter what I find more awe inspiring; it matters what God chose to do. I'm supposed to be ashamed for believing in 7 human days creation? I may not believe that, but even if I did, what is so much more absurd about that than anything else? The absurdity is all around us- this existence- we usually take it for granted. Is God in awe of his own wonders? Does he over-awe and under-awe and comparatively awe himself? Maybe he established exactly what he wanted to, and what was necessary to him and to us, and has been working ever since on Heaven, which will out-awe it all.

Science tells us, for instance, that all the blue eyed people in this world share one common ancestor - imagine that. One little quirk in somebody's DNA between 6000 and 10000 years ago, a freak mutation that probably caused much frenzy in some ancient village when that baby was born, and thousands of years later, we get Paul Newman. If that's not God's work, what is? :-)

It has often seemed to me that the big problem that proponents of creationism and ID have with evolution is that it argues that God must love everybody and everything in the universe equally, that Man is not the ultimate creation, just the latest development. It's a denial of mortality - you or I might die but Man cannot possibly die out because this world was made expressly for him.

The deal with evolution as a theory is that you actually know neither the beginning nor the end, but cobble up a theory based on some observations taken re: an infinitesimal slice of the middle. This is like dropping into a couple minutes of Citizen Kane and concluding it's about bad opera or political chicanery.

More substantively, there are many criticisms to make. For example, if a thing changes (evolves), what is the relationship between the changed thing and the original? Because it is not the same, but different, they actually have no relationship at all! Given that they have no relationship, it is the height of haphazard illogic to construct a theory based on the notion that they do.

The vigorously functional entity known as Roger Ebert once seen arguing with a similar entity known as Gene Siskel, is not the same entity as the one known as Roger Ebert today, and it is mere convention to regard them as such. There is no real relationship between the two Eberts, the former existing only as a memory and the present existing as presumably real, but almost equally incapable of being quantifiably or qualitatively comprehended. DNA will not suffice.

Science, a devolution in its own right, is almost hopelessly confused on these matters, the import of which should actually move toward an understanding of the true nature of reality, and not merely reinforce the unexamined and ignorant presumptions of even the modern mind's conceptions of it.

Ebert: This Ebert has a pretty good idea of how he evolved from that Ebert.

I don't recall Christ saying anything about evolution. In fact, there's a lot of "christian" beliefs that he never said one word about (like the issue homosexuality, abortion, just to name a few). So how is it that being a Christian automatically discounts one for believing in evolution, or at least the possibility in it?

BTW, no one asked, but I happen to be a gay man who doesn’t really like abortion. As a gay man, having kids requires much elaboration and planning. I can’t imagine giving up on the opportunity to have a child so easily.

Then again, is that really my decision to make? Probably not. I'm not a woman.

I haven't read My Country in German, but I do know that regardless of whether the crackpot Hitler invokes or adheres to Darwins theories he's still a crackpot. There is no slight against Darwin for Hitler's actions, just as there is no slight against the song 'Helter Skelter' due to Manson and his family's actions.

Miles Blanton

And God looked upon the Trevi Fountain and God said "Let there be Anita Ekberg." And there was Anita Ekberg wading in the fountain, in that long strapless black dress. And God rested, after muttering to Godself, "Hmmm. Not bad."

Ebert: And Adam looked upon Anita Ekberg, and suddenly an idea popped into his pants.

I'm an academic evolutionary scientist with a blog concerning film interpretation from a Darwinian perspective: http://darwingoestothemovies.blogspot.com/

I hope someone might find it useful/interesting with respect to why film has the psychological effects that it does and how major themes reflecting evolved human nature are expressed in the movies.

Ebert: Bookmarked it, started reading your essay on "Carnal Knowledge" from the POV of Sexual Strategies Theory in evolutionary psychology, and I'm hooked.

"About three-quarters of those with a post-graduate degree said humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, compared to just 22 percent choosing the “created in present form” option."

Faith is a belief. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It is not any fairer to insinuate that creationists are mindless than to assume that three-quarters of educated people are faithless.

Insects such as cockroaches are much more resistant to radioactivity than human beings. This couldn't have evolved, since there haven't been enough atomic explosions in the past for natural selection to weed out the less resistant ones. I therefore conclude:

1) They must have been made that way by an Intelligent Designer.
2) The I.D. is more interested in preserving insects than humans.
3) So let the insects worship the I.D. I refuse to.

Ebert: Cockroaches can evolve immunity from insect killers in perceivable generations.

Am I to be the only one weighing in on the intelligent design side?

I absolutely refuse to repost the arguments gone on before.

With that in mind, just two quick things, just as a jumping-off point as to why I believe as I do:

First: I believe in the soul. No evidence to back up that claim, yet I hold it to be true, just as I hold that there is a difference between mind and brain. It's not quantifiable, and therefore not reproducible, so the pure science crowd disdains the notion. And once you allow a soul...the argument makes itself.

Second: This worship of logic above all else is worthless. Logic describes the world as it is, or as it was, and gives us a basis to predict the future--but the rub is in that inference. You must infer if you do not have empirical evidence. There is no empirical evidence that's definitive. Therefore both ID and Darwinism become leaps of faith (one more than the other right at the moment, I'll give you that), and I don't find the strict evolutionary side to be of much use, frankly.

Why should we not adopt the Greek ideals when we debate this question? What would be the harmonious answer, the beautiful answer to the question of origin? Roger, where is the ecstatic truth in this? Must we be saddled with the accountant's truth at the expense of something meaningful?

Ebert: When I read The Ancestor's Tale, by Dawkins, I feel filled with awe and wonder. Evolution is such an elegant theory.

I, for one, believe everyone descended from dragons.

Ebert: Even damsels in distress?

Well, I have started my due diligence back blog reading to join in, and have gotten thru some fraction of it. I figure that I will let me thoughts evolve here and dive in.

First, I'm kind of wondering what the idea here is: is it an attempt at a serious discussion of science, is it political, is it practice for going to law school - what is it? I will read more. What is the basis: the philosophy and history of science, scientific study itself, a belief in religion, an attempt to mediate some perceived differences between science and religion, or something else altogether? I will think more.

Meanwhile, I have read the 'pile of rocks argument' above, viz 'I know the difference between a pile of rocks and a fireplace, and we are fireplaces, and fireplaces obviously was designed'.

Anyone who has ever done computer programming knows the precision and exactitude needed to get a computer program to function at all, much less do anything useful or comprehensible. Yet the field of computer science (around in varying degrees for decades) called 'evolutionary computing', and a subfield called 'genetic programming' has achieved extraordinary results in producing software which can produce software offspring that evolves, software generation by generation, into new forms that are more complex, ordered, and useful than their distant software ancestors. Let me add that this field was not inspired by some inane desire to prove biological evolution, or disprove creationism or intelligent design, but as a scientific discovery process.

This ought to give pause to those who use their intuition about what is obviously true or false to draw conclusions about what actually is true or false. The idea of intuition as ground truth in science has not proven useful in the past. For example, see "Science and Human Values" by Jacob Bronowski, especially regarding Hegel's intuitive metaphysical proof of the number of planets in the solar system.

I've spent my time budget for right now but will check in later in the weekend. Bon appetit!

Going back to the Hitler thing, I don't think it's fair from either side to justify their opinion with what Hitler did. Yes, Hitler invoked evolutionary ideology into his despicable actions. Yes, he invoked Christian ideology into his despicable actions. When are we going to realize that Hitler was a true nutjob, and that he is never a good example to argue and say "well, Hitler believed...?" Directly connecting the Holocause with Darwinism is pretty idiotic, as is using Hitler as a "prime" example of Christianity. In both cases, he clearly got something wrong.

I don't think it's rational to deny evolution; it's been proven. But the way so many evolutionists or Darwinists or what-have-you completely rule out that a higher power had a hand in that evolution kind of frustrates me. The odds were so weighted against human beings or life of any kind ever coming into existence in the first place, that you'd think the fact that it has would be reason enough to consider something bigger than us at work. I don't understand how people can accept how unlikely their very existence is with just a shrug, but find the notion that God or a higher power exists completely preposterous.

And yes, I'm aware of the argument that no matter how many times you flip a coin, the odds are still 50/50 that you'll get tails. The universe isn't aware of how unlikely it is that we exist. But aren't we aware? The fact that so many tiny circumstances, so many minute details, were all EXACTLY right has to at least give one pause.

If Intelligent Design equals "creationism," then explain why intellectual atheists and agnostics such as David Berlinski and Bradley Monton support ID as valid science? Many if not most ID critics have not thought through the issue enough to consider the difference between a theory's sufficient elements and and its possible implications. Theological implications, biblical or otherwise, are not necessary to understand design qua design. The signs of intelligence in specified-complex systems are real and inexplicable through any proven macro-evolutionary mechanism. Let some of us think this through, before stifling free thought with un-thoughtful name-calling and red herrings.

Ebert: Here's what I find about Berlinski:

An outspoken critic of evolution, Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think-tank that is hub of the intelligent design movement. Berlinski shares the movement's disbelief in the evidence for evolution, but does not openly avow intelligent design and describes his relationship with the idea as: "warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives." Berlinski is a scathing critic of "Darwinism", yet, "Unlike his colleagues at the Discovery Institute, [he] refuses to theorize about the origin of life."

I can't explain Monton.

We have become a society of right and wrong, left and right, pro and con. We have reached the point where, often times the debate about issues--important issues--climaxs to where if I don't agree with you then I am against you, and evolution is a perfect example. There is no reason why intelligent design should be taught in schools, because if you believe in a creator than it should be obvious. If there is a God, then clearly science is just the way God works, the laws of the universe and God's laws are one and the same.

Sadly, most people will not listne to reason or try and understand one another. They, instead, will grab a hold of the views so tight they can barely gasp for air, let alone grow and, yes, evolve. Instead, the will defend their belief, no matter how wrong, ignorant, hateful, uneducated or disproven in has become. There are still people claiming Obama was born in Kenya for Christ's sake.

I am reminded of the woman who confronted Barney Frank at a town hall and compared Obama and Frank to Nazis. Frank, a gay jew, eventually responded "Having a conversation with you would be like having a conversation with a dining room table, I have no interest in either." More and more, people are feeling that is the case with the other side--on both sides.

Why do people get so angry over everything? Is it the fact that our news networks are closing in on Howard Beale? Are we as mad as hell, and are we going to take it anymore?

Being a Christian, I fall somewhere in the middle of the argument. Large portions (but not all portions) of Creationism are based on faith. That is the point. If you do not have faith, Creationism will never make sense. Now, I'm not saying it's not scientific, but it isn't in the modern, traditional sense. Evolution, at least to me, is similar. We will never know everything about it, for both are, in their own ways, beautiful mysteries. But, evolution does have huge gaps that many scientists have pointed out, enough that they cannot continue to believe in the theory. I think that many people who subscribe to the religion of Evolution are too blind to notice its innaccuracies, just as many Christians are too dogmatic to notice that Evolution does contain some truth in the middle of its silliness. I really hate arguing and the fact that no middle ground can be found, but I'm just glad I'm not a science major, and don't have to touch upon this too much. Regardless of whether Evolution occurs or not, Christ is still Lord of my life, and that's ultimately all that matters to me. But, if you still need "proof" that evolution has many fallacies, listen to or read works by Lee Strobel or Kent Hovind, men that prove that one can be a legitimate scientist and still question evolution while not blindly following Creationism.

I am sorry. I must have poorly cut and paste. The last two paragraphs of my message (starting with "Science tells us") were by Amrita, and I didn't mean to include them.

I both love and hate when someone I admire comes out against this I.D. nonsense. I love it because it needs to be said (it shouldn't need to be, but apparently it does).

I hate it because it's always a pointless argument. You can't argue against "it's magic". "It's magic" trumps all of science and history (and it's only two words!). You can point out that the science that gave us the very computers we're reading this on is the same science that tells us that the world is more than 2,000 years old. You could even reproduce every single experiment that led us to our current scientific understanding. It won't matter, though. "It's magic" trumps all.

The only thing you can do is not engage with these people.

"This Ebert has a pretty good idea of how he evolved from that Ebert."

However, this is not a scientific response, it is a response of the type that unconsciously supports the unexamined presumptions of our conventional conceptions. These cannot be reconciled. Ideation itself is only a portion of the total observable phenomena. That portion arrogates to itself the position of overseer and arbiter and false totality. All subsequent acts in which it indulges, then, only serve to fortify its own sense of importance and dominance. Since this is untrue, it leads to chaos (the present condition of society), therefore ideation is not a truly evolutionary event. Paradoxically, an authentic evolution transcends the realm of ideation and ultimately obviates it, and only then can we say, "We shall speak of this no more."

Ebert: I see.

Hi Roger,

I would be interested to hear how you reconcile the belief that theer is no intelligence behind the natural order with the willingness to use the words of Jesus as though they hold some kind of authority. You even included the part about him separating the sheep from the goats at some point. Since you don't believe there is any intelligence behind the universe, the obvious conclusion is that you quoted Jesus for purely political purposes.

Anyway, your two views are wildly contradictory (there is no intelligence, but Jesus is an authority on morality) and I would be interested to hear how you reconcile them.

It seems that if he's not who he claimed to be, he has no more authority on moral issues than anyone else (and it would mean he was a bit loony). In fact, if there is no intelligence behind the natural order, there is no authority on moral issues, period. Which ones again, makes your entire moral appeal a few posts back a bit absurd.

Would love to hear how you reconcile the two contradictory views.

Ebert: Morality is a human attribute, independent of the supernatural.

Dear Roger,

The basis of the Nazi doctrine was a myth (Aryans were an ancient Nordic race? Say what?), and to say that Nazism was based on Darwinism is like saying that the Holocaust never happened.

I believe in God and maybe Afterlife (in which my soul will be projected into the Universe, that's the 'Heaven' part). But people do things to people and not science or God to people. I came to that conclusion when I was ten, and the bully who stole my lunch money was enjoying an ice-cream in front of me.

Hello Roger and all,

Oh good, an extension to THE THREAD!
Now I can add a recommendation to the SF novel "Calculating God" by Robert J. Sawyer, in which the author explores the idea that ID is real and a scientific truth. ID vindicated! The aliens have the proof! God did intervene in the cell, and exterminate the dinosaurs. Sawyer tries to show what level of godhood would be required to create life, organize the universe just right and what could be this god's goal.
Of course, as a hard science SF novel, it's not the all powerful all seeing God, but a much more limited version.
As a novel, it's got some good and some just OK bits, but as an exploration of the ideas proposed in THE THREAD, it is perfectly on topic and quite a fun reversal of the typical scientific dogma.(Which I believe in,just in case someone wondered).

Regards,

Michel Lamontagne
Quebec Canada

And the author is from Toronto! Almost the whole novel is set in the Toronto science museum.

Thank you very kindly, sir...I'll try to keep them coming. I think Straw Dogs and The Accused are next. I suspect you can guess the topic...

Ebert: The function of rape in evolution?

On a side note, Jesus seems to become more and more caucasian with each passing year. If He *does* ever come back, nobody will recognize Him.

Ebert: In the Middle East of that time, he would have been short and dark.

Why, Roger. Damsels are the progenitors of modern dragonflies. Elegant and graceful, yet still fire-breathing terrors of a summer-time deck.

Hi Adam Zanzie.

Our only hope is to make this thread even longer. Can it be done?

I'm game! I think there is a lot more energy and fresh ideas to expend on this topic. I'm newly energized to go at the issue.

Here's a topic: Why couldn't the excellent conversation that we had on the Ben Stein thread be repeated in a high school or college biology classroom? It was civil. It rehashed the design vs. unguided evolution debate that's been going on since Plato? Why can't students have the excellent debate that we had on the thread over 2600 comments?

Randy

Reply to: First: I believe in the soul. No evidence to back up that claim, yet I hold it to be true, just as I hold that there is a difference between mind and brain. It's not quantifiable, and therefore not reproducible, so the pure science crowd disdains the notion. And once you allow a soul...the argument makes itself.

Again, if you start with the right questions, you won't come to an Impossible Conclusion, as you have.

Let's look at our Ancestors. Our grandparents, and their great-grandparents, going back thirty or forty million years.

If you compare our DNA with a chimp's, you get a figure of about

5 million years ago ( also written 5 mya)

for our Last Common Ancestor.

(Our DNA is 98.5% identical. Human DNA is also closer to African Apes than Asian apes.)

Ebert: Try them on this: Humans, monkeys and all other living beings share the same single-celled ancestor.

Exactly.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Is-This-the-Common-Ancestor-of-Humans-Chimps-Gorillas-70715.shtml

ARTICLE: Is This the Common Ancestor of Humans/Chimps/Gorillas?Nakalipithecus confirms that we evolved strictly in Africa

Nakalipithecus nakayamai, found in Nakali, Kenya, in 2005, was located less than 30 km (19 mi) from the Samburu area where another ape, Samburupithecus kiptalami lived 9.6 million years ago....a new 10-million-year old jaw bone and 11 teeth found in the eastern edge of the Kenyan Rift Valley of Kenya simplifies this entangled theory (end)

The problem with "humans have a soul" is obvious.

Do humans have a soul and chimps don't? Even though we both start from the union of sperm and egg and grow into human beings through exactly the same process?

How about Great Apes? Do they have souls?

How about rodents and marsupials?

There's no scientific theory that would account for a human being developing a soul... except that some religious nonsense has FOOLED you into that conclusion.

Are you saying that a "soul" suddenly appeared AFTER the split from chimps, or BEFORE?

No matter what point in History that you say one of our ancestors had a soul and the previous generation (the parents) did not... you instantly PROVE that the idea of a soul is FALSE.

And that's why you don't have any evidence to back up your False Belief.

There's no "little person" inside the brain that survives death. When our brains die, we die.

Rather than repeat previous posts, I'm going to suggest a book.

"The Book of Life" by Stephen Jay Gould.

Let's try to use that as a reference. (Or, any other book on the list.) It has lots of drawings representing the fossils found recently in China and in Canada in the Burgess Shale, and it explains the Cambrian Explosion in understandable terms.

The term "evolution" implies that humans improve at a steady rate, or according to some timetable. Which is also false. Between 520 and 530 mya, there was a remarkable explosion of new types. Since then, our evolutionary history has been, pretty much, getting bigger. If you want to understand evolution, you have to look at what happened 530 mya.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/

In my eyes it's somewhat irresponsible not to emphasize that, although the advocates of "Intelligent Design" may come off as more civil, rational, and reasonable than the "Creationists" who defend positions that are obviously ridiculous, ID is still just Creationism in a cheap tuxedo, and the ultimate political aims of the two groups are one and the same.

What IDers propose is still what the creationists propose: that the curricula of public school science classes should be restricted due to objections that are entirely unscientific, effectively giving groups that are outside of the scientific community full veto power as to what constitutes legitimate science based on objections that are completely unscientific.

Don't mistake the ID crowd's use of scientific-sounding language for genuine interest in participating in the scientific process. If they truly believed that what they were proposing were science, they would be funding research labs, not PR firms, with their money, and would be working to publish peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals with the hopes of persuading the scientific community of the validity of their argument, rather than publishing books aimed at the laypersons that provide them with their political currency.

Describing anyone that champions a cause whose aim is to, in effect, destroy science, as "heroic" is lamentable.

Firstly, I see that there are a few Karl’s floating around Roger’s blog now, so I’m changing my nom de plume to Karl-Heinz.

Hi Randy, you ended the last thread with eugenics and I see that some people are defending the whole Hitler/Darwin argument here. I'm sure you know that I have some thoughts on that. I wasn't able to post a long reply in the other thread, but you can expect one here. Perhaps later tonight, or tomorrow. I have to rewrite it first, the last one went into the ether. But first, I see a new poster....

Quote...Mark; Am I to be the only one weighing in on the intelligent design side?

No no, Mark meet Randy and Much Aloha Bill. Randy and Much Aloha Bill meet Mark.

Quote...Mark; First: I believe in the soul. No evidence to back up that claim, yet I hold it to be true, just as I hold that there is a difference between mind and brain. It's not quantifiable, and therefore not reproducible, so the pure science crowd disdains the notion. And once you allow a soul...the argument makes itself.

The science crowd doesn't deny or disdain the notion of soul. I'm in the science crowd. I definitely have a soul. I also believe that you have a soul, and Randy has a soul, and Roger has a soul, and turtles have souls, etc. etc.. The difference is, I do not believe my own personal soul is immortal. That is a Christian concept, but Christians do not own the patent on soul and more than atheists own the patent on science.

Many atheists explore the concept of souls, it's not at all a uniquely religious POV. Here is prominent atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett on the topic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lfTPTFN94o#t=2m20s

Quote...Mark; Second: This worship of logic above all else is worthless. Logic describes the world as it is, or as it was, and gives us a basis to predict the future--but the rub is in that inference. You must infer if you do not have empirical evidence. There is no empirical evidence that's definitive. Therefore both ID and Darwinism become leaps of faith (one more than the other right at the moment, I'll give you that), and I don't find the strict evolutionary side to be of much use, frankly.

'Worship of logic' is not very accurate when it comes to science. Many scientific and even mathematical conclusions seem illogical, never the less scientists believe them to be true. Take for example the number of dimensions in space. Current thinking, there are at least 10. Yet we are only "logically" aware of four of them. You can point to the first three (X,Y,Z) and measure the fourth (time).

There are indeed many cases in science where conclusions went against common logic. For example, it's 'logical' to believe the sun revolves around the earth and that the earth is flat. This is the observed everyday conclusion one could make. Yet science, which does not rely solely on the observed, everyday conclusion found a different answer. And it did indeed predict the future. Long before we could fly into space to confirm it, science told us that the earth was round. It even told us it's actual circumference to a remarkable degree of accuracy. Eratosthenes calculated it about 2200 years ago. There are myriad example. The movement of the continents (they move at the rate your fingernails grow), the continued raising of the Himalayas (10mm a year). The mutability of all living things into progenitors. All can be measured, tested and explained scientifically, not through a leap of faith based on logical reasoning.

By contrast, it is religion that relies heavily on a worship of logic. Early Jesuits even tried to deduce the composition of the Sun through pure logic. Science waited for evidence. Religion is still doing it today. The entire ID movement is not one of scientific evidence. It's presented purely as a logic argument. Whether it be Behe's mousetrap, or Paley's watch on the beach, or Ray Comfort's banana argument. They all have something in common. They are presented as purely logical reasoning arguments, science doesn't do that.

Now as far as you not finding the 'strict evolutionary side' to be of much use. Luckily, scientists do not agree with you. They are finding it very useful, so that they may do things on your behalf. One of the most recognisable images from Darwin's book is the Tree of Life. We are all aware of what they look like, but rarely recognize the fact that these life trees (called phylogeny trees in science) were basically his invention. Of what use are they? For one, they are critical in the understanding and control of the viruses that sweep across our planet.

Wiki...

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309095042&page=79 -here is the phylogenetic tree of the influenza virus.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309095042&page=123 -here is the tree showing the evolution by reassortment of H5N1 from 1999 to 2004 that created the Z genotype in 2002

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no10/05-0644-G1.htm -here is the tree showing evolution by antigenic drift since 2002 that created dozens of highly pathogenic varieties of the Z genotype of avian flu virus H5N1, some of which are increasingly adapted to mammals

So Darwin's important idea is being used today to fight bird flu, swine flu, and every other virus. Fight it by understanding it. It was the same principles of Darwin's theory of evolution that allowed us to discover the origins of the Aids virus in West Africa. The very same scientific techniques that classified humans among the apes, namely common morphologies, biological properties and genetics, is what was used to phylogenically map all these viruses. This is just one of the battles that Darwin is fighting on our behalf, there are many many others. By comparison, what are Dembski, Behe, Wells and Johnson doing? Sitting around trying to construct bullet proof logic arguments, that's what.

If it rains in the USA, it drops in Europe. I thought of Intelligent Design as something American that had luckily not reached our shores.

But a few months ago I read that the minister of education from our neighbour country the Netherlands wanted to teach Intelligent Design at school. That caused quite a bit of uproar over there and over here in Belgium. A reaction from our Belgium director of Catholic Education mentioned that catholics have accepted evolution a long time ago. ID is apparantly more represented in protestant countries. Noone has seriously proposed to teach ID over here. If someone would, the public reaction would be entertaining.

Tom Dark, your posts seem consistently contrived to simply be the written equivalent of walking into a room and suddenly urinating in the face of everyone around you. It appears you mistakenly think this makes you superior to everyone else, instead of just being full of more p*** and less couth. Why not just change your display name to "troll"?

Seriously, "Darwinist Rednecks"? This from a guy who was losing his mind over supposed "ad hominem" attacks against Armond White? I get it now, I think everyone gets it now. Yes, you're a big contrarian, you fly in the face of whatever, you so on and so forth.

And yeah, I can name "what good" the theory of evolution has done for me and continues to do for me. It's helped me to better understand my nature, my origins , the "how" and "why" of life. Some of us find value in such truths about our origins, Tom, whether you personally value it or not. And it's not up to YOU to tell me or anyone else whether our lives were truly honestly improved by the theory of evolution -- it's up to me, and others, to make that determination for ourselves.

The fact that you obviously don't feel your own life improved by knowledge and understanding of your origins -- if you did, you wouldn't ask such an absurd question -- is rather sad. If I wanted to apply your own tendency toward condescension and dismissal of the mental capacities of anyone you disagree with (which is apparently a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who happens to be near you), I might say it represents a stunning display of lack of intellectual curiosity on your part.

However, I'll give you a real-world, here-and-now way that the theory of evolution has been an enormous help to every single one of us. The fact that we aren't all going to die from bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Since we understand point mutations, we understand this danger, how and why it happens, and can deal with it. We understand resistance to medical treatment via point mutations, and can anticipate it, do our best to prevent overuse etc that could lead to increased possibility of resistant strains -- and in the event of a point mutation giving rise to such resistant strains, we can develop new treatments.

So my answers, then, are "truth and increased understanding of life and its origins" and "I'm not dead". Hope that helps.

Ebert: Now, now, boys.

There is a speed to everything, or a rythm. This rhythm,I've measured, is 145 beats per minute. Everything HAPPENS on a kind of drum beat to this rhythm. Animals move to this rhythm, which means everything moves on this rhythm--for what are animals but just another thing such as the moon, or clouds...including us. Falling stars appear on this rhythm. We're going to die on this rhythm. Stars will die on this rhythm. Whatever happens during infinity it is going to happen on right on this rhythm. I suppose that raises the issue in that we have free will and can move along at a different rhythm than nature's 145 beats per minute and I suppose that is right...but maybe not right. Maybe we're only fooling ourselves until nature take's the wheel again.

Anyway, don't believe me, huh?

Look at a free online metronome that allows you to set the speed at 145 beats per minute. Know the beat: I usually use my hands as a kind of visual aide to kind of see the rhythm. Let nature start the count and watch it animate on rhythm.

Next step is watch nature and see it on this beat, in action.

Lightning (sorry for lame video; it's shockingly difficult to find a lightning video that just watches nature without trying anything); watch it appear right on rhythm, as does sound come right on rhythm! Find a better lightning and thunder video and post it if you can find one.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2009720

Meteor Showers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c383VYFZ8Co

Animals move to this rhythm. Notice how their stillness starts on rhythm and their movements start on rhythm.

Anything and everything in the world HAPPENS on this rhythm.

Happy nature watching.

Mark:

On which "intelligent design side" do you weigh in? Behe's, which accepts the ~4 billion year history of life and common descent? AIG's, which asserts that the Earth and it's life are merely 1000s of years old? Or any of numerous mutually contradictory positions in between? Or is it the "ID" of Francis Collins and Ken Miller, which accepts Darwinian evolution (if not the "Darwinism" caricature) as the only valid explanation of how God creates species?

Earlier I mentioned that Tarantino always has his characters explain why they commited an act of violence, which makes his portrayals of violence not immoral, and thus, just violence for the sake of violence (funny, Eli Roth could learn something from him). I'd like to mention something about the ending of the movie in light of this observation.

As I said, Tarantino's characters always explain why they commit an act of violence--Brad Pitt at the beginning says "Nazi's don't have no humanity", Shoshanna--as the cinema burns down--gives her motives right there on the big screen for her victims to know WHY she did it (and for us, I believe...the morality aspect). Okay, as far as Landa: throughout most of the movie Tarantino doesn't really explain WHY Landa commits the acts of violence he does; we just feel that he cruelly enjoys it. This leaves a moral void throughout the entire film because we never know why we are witnessing the things he does. Later on it is revealed that he is on the good side, and has been undercover. Tarantino is playing with our moral indignation even more here. We are left with this thought, "Even if he is on the good side, what he did was STILL wrong." Then Brad Pitt carves the Swastika in his forehead, killing him. Earlier Brad Pitt gave his reason for violence that he is killin Nazi's because they have no humanity, and with Landa it is no exception. But we still are feeling that moral indignation because Landa still hasn't given us an adequate reason for why he did what he did--"no humanity" isn't quite sufficient. So, with the ending of the movie, I think Tarantino is making us supply our own reason for why Landa enjoyed doing it so much. He did the same kind of thing in "Pulp Fiction" where we are left to decide for ourselves what was in the briefcase. At the end of the movie we are left feeling that it was immoral of Tarantino not to explain why Landa did what he did, but we get the sense that he felt it was unspeakable, which makes it right of him not to tell us, and in doing that he redirects are moral indignation from the external (movie screen) to the internal. We are left to ponder or kind of meditate at the end, "Why in the world is there such senseless violence?" It is a meditation for us to wonder WHY there is so much senseless violence in the world. This is an appropriate question to be asking ourselves at the end of a WW2 movie and I think the real subject of the movie.

I just thought I'd add one another thing.

Nazism happend because Germany had no cause--no cultural, no historical, no vocational: nothing. This is what caused it. Darwin is not responsible for Germany's lack of any kind of identity. It started long before Darwin from all the way back to the 30 Years War.

Debate? What is there to debate? These two positions are not reconcilable. The basis under which one can be accepted as possible can't be used to disprove the other. This is the patent nonsense of the internet, one sensible position facing an attempt to blur the arguments simply by the volume and steadfastness of the "opposing viewpoint", with the suggestion of one of two false situations: that either the truth lies between (not in this case) or else these are two propositions of equal merit and it's just a matter of opinion which one is right. But since one is a scientific theory (which does not by any means mean it is correct, it's just a theory which to a greater or lesser degree tends to correspond to scientific evidence) and the other is something that is not evolution and not scientific (whether you parade that as creationism or ID, neither of which is supportable by the scientific method and don't need to be for a person to believe in them since are theories of faith, not reason).

There is nothing to debate, it insults science to debate it against faith and insults faith to debate it as science. Nothing prevents both positions from being true, nothing prevents a devout Christian from practicing science, and nothing prevents a scientist from believing that God is the creator of all things. (And the more you learn about science, the more wondrous the world is, not less. And if you seek an intelligent hand behind it all, though that is not science, as your scientific understanding grew, the more astounding an intelligence would seem if indeed it was responsible.)

Science is an intellectual construct, meant to help explain the world, not to be the world. Newton's theory of gravity tends to explain a lot about the world, but it's not "true" and is ultimately an inaccurate explanation. That doesn't mean a theory of intelligent gravity can be rationally explored as science. It's idiocy to do it, or to ask it to be taught.

But it is a truly depressing symptom that our society has devolved to the point that we create, indeed cultivate and fuel intellectual, cultural, and scientific illiteracy at a frighting speed, inspiring idiot parents not to vaccinate their children because they are unable to intelligently weigh risk and consequences, idiot citizens to protest government actions that don't even exist, and idiot cultural policing warning the masses to fear anything and anybody who doesn't look talk dress speak or vote like they do. It's back to the middle ages, a fear of knowledge or at least a ceding of thought to a priesthood of AM radio hosts and cable news shouters ordained to interpret the social scripture rather than prizing knowledge via the championing of reason and education on the part of the individual, indeed as Jefferson would have said, as the responsibility of each citizen to think for themselves.

I know it's a lot of fun to tell us what you believe...

... but you've got to attempt to link it to some kind of scientific theory, or it's just Fundie Babble.

Reply to: K-H: The science crowd doesn't deny or disdain the notion of soul.

This statement is FALSE.

The human brain is complex enough to contain MEMORIES. We remember voices, music, sounds we heard when we were ten, many linked to emotions like sadness or joy.

The cerebral cortex of the human brain contains roughly 15 to 33 billion neurons, linked with up to 10,000 synaptic connections each.

Each cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly one billion synapses.

With the exception of a few primitive forms such as sponges and jellyfish, all living animals are bilaterians,(left and right sides that are mirror images of each other). All bilaterians are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that appeared early in the Cambrian period, 550-600 million years ago

The first appearance of the nervous system is as a thin strip of tissue running along the back of the embryo. This strip thickens and then folds up to form a hollow tube. The front end of the tube develops into the brain. In its earliest form, the brain appears as three swellings, which eventually become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. In many classes of vertebrates these three parts remain similar in size in the adult, but in mammals the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, and the midbrain quite small.

Neuroanatomists usually consider the brain to consist of six main regions: the telencephalon (cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons, and medulla. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some areas, such as the cortex and cerebellum, consist of layers, folded or convoluted to fit within the available space (end)

What is the MECHANISM OF "THE SOUL" used to preserve the billions upon billions of individual components that make me a thinking, intelligent human being with memories?

There is NO MECHANISM in an ENERGY FIELD that would allow for a "soul" to preserve a human being's ability to think and remember.

Unless you're talking about ... the Photonic Mechano-Ectoplasm from "Ghostbusters"? aka, the "slime." Now that stuff was awesome. Our Slime is an Awesome Slime.

Reply to: I'm in the science crowd. I definitely have a soul. I also believe that you have a soul, and Randy has a soul, and Roger has a soul, and turtles have souls, etc. etc

No, you're NOT in the science crowd. You're in the "let me share my Imaginary World with you" crowd.

Reply to: But, evolution does have huge gaps that many scientists have pointed out, enough that they cannot continue to believe in the theory. I think that many people who subscribe to the religion of Evolution are too blind to notice its innaccuracies,

Well, you're going to have to back that up before anyone here takes you seriously.

We've discussed all of the Christian views and shot them down.

Reply to: I'm just glad I'm not a science major, and don't have to touch upon this too much. Regardless of whether Evolution occurs or not, Christ is still Lord of my life, and that's ultimately all that matters to me.

That's why we call it an Imaginary World, populated by Zombie Jesus (the guy who was dead before he sat up and unwrapped his grave cloths) and Zombie Lazarus and all the others.

The Theory of Evolution trumps Zombie Jesus. And it has since 1859. Catch up.

Pat C. on September 4, 2009 5:38 PM
Insects such as cockroaches are much more resistant to radioactivity than human beings. This couldn't have evolved, since there haven't been enough atomic explosions in the past for natural selection to weed out the less resistant ones.

cockroaches have been around since dinosaurs. there has been plenty of radioactivity during the millions of years since the dinoboys, including a great radioactive event that wiped them out. every time something from space broke through the atmosphere, it brought radioactivity with it. uranium and radon are not so prevalent nor plentiful now, not just lying around for creatures to climb on, not now. but we don't know what the situation was before we took inventory.

Quote...Kyle;But, if you still need "proof" that evolution has many fallacies, listen to or read works by Lee Strobel or Kent Hovind, men that prove that one can be a legitimate scientist and still question evolution while not blindly following Creationism.

Legitimate scientist?...Are....you....serious?

Kent Hovind? The guy with no legitimate degree in science? The guy who's dissertation is under lock and key by the diploma mill that issued him what he calls his "degree". The guy that taught high-school level science for 15 years.....in his own creationist school he built away from the prying eyes of any recognized authority?

Wiki...Hovind; "As these were private schools, Hovind was not required to have any teaching credentials or accredited qualifications"

They guy the built Dinosaur Adventure Land, where you could see dinosaurs with saddles on them presented as actual history?

The guy that thinks he has 'scientifically proven' that the great flood was caused by the melting of an ice canopy which was suspended in heaven, encircling the entire globe?

The same Kent Hovind that's in prison for tax fraud because he thinks "that as a minister of God everything he owns belonged to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on the money he received for doing God's work".

The same Kent Hovind that has had every one of his 'scientific' arguments exposed as trash by actual legitimate scientists on Youtube for years and years?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbvMB57evy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKdfeP1sGIg

Is that the guy you are talking about?

If you think there are fallacies in evolution, then please point them out so we can discuss them. However, if you've chosen Hovind as one of your sources it's going to be very easy to debunk. There are mountains of videos and documents, even from creationists, that will do the job.

Quote..Answers in Genesis website.
"In the interests of maintaining Christian/creationist integrity, we believed we had to respond to Kent Hovind’s critique (albeit with a heavy heart), particularly because of the mistakes in facts and logic which do the creationist cause no good."

Ebert: I think that settles the Kent Hovind question.

By Sam Mills on September 4, 2009 4:07 PM
I don't recall Christ saying anything about evolution. In fact, there's a lot of "christian" beliefs that he never said one word about (like the issue homosexuality, abortion, just to name a few).

hey, sammie. christ didn't say anything about the civil war. what should we gather from that? he didn't say anything about a lot of things that hadn't yet been figured out. i don't recall him endorsing refrigerators. play-doh? not in my bible. he never ate curly fries, so i guess we shouldn't either? he never played scrabble, so what should i do with all those little tiles? he probably never played golf. should i toss out my clubs?

my mother never told me NOT to beat my brother with a hydraulic jack. i guess i should take one to meet the side of his head? i could do this all day, but my feet hurt and my dogs have to go outside.

if you'd like a humorous take on ID, please read my short story called "the sweeper" at either of these two locations:

http://brainsnorts.blogspot.com/2008/08/sweeper-short-fiction.html

or

http://www.pikerpress.com/article.php?aID=3483

Ebert: Abortion and homosexuality existed at the time of Jesus. If refrigerators did, there goes the theory of the Bible as an historical record.

Carra on September 4, 2009 7:53 PM,
wrote:
"... our Belgium director of Catholic Education mentioned that catholics have accepted evolution a long time ago."

A summary of the magisterial Catholic statements on the subject of Adam and Eve, the book of Genesis, the Flood and Creation Ex nihilo. can be found on-line at:

What does the Catholic Church Teach about Origins?
www.kolbecenter.org/church_teaches.htm

(partial quote)

- Genesis does not contain purified myths. (Pontifical Biblical Commission 1909)

- Genesis contains real history—it gives an account of things that really happened. (Pius XII)

- All the Fathers who wrote on the subject believed that the Creation days were no longer than 24-hour-days. (Consensus of the Fathers of the Church)

- The work of Creation was finished by the close of Day Six, and nothing completely new has since been created—except for each human rational soul at conception (Vatican Council I)

- St. Peter and Christ Himself in the New Testament confirmed the global Flood of Noah. It covered all the then high mountains and destroyed all land dwelling creatures except eight human beings and all kinds of non-human creatures aboard the Ark (Unam Sanctam, 1302)

- Evolution must not be taught as fact, but instead the pros and cons of evolution must be taught. (Pius XII, Humani Generis)

- Investigation into human “evolution” was allowed in 1950, but Pope Pius XII feared that an acceptance of evolutionism might adversely affect doctrinal beliefs.

References:
Genesis 1-11
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1-11&version=NIV

The global Flood of Noah
Genesis 6-10
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis6-10&version=NIV

Here's a red herring.

I walk on the beach and look down at a watch lying there. I pick up the watch and examine it. I inspect its gears, etc. and come to the obvious conclusion that the object must have been designed. Further expanding on this hypothesis, I conjecture that the designer was a variety of living being that contained intelligence. Further do I opine that this intelligent being, who clearly designed this watch I hold in my hand, must surely have evolved over time from less complex species until, being naturally selected, the species resultant was intelligent enough to design such a useful object to understand the motion of the Sun throughout the day. I turn the object over and read the inscription: "To my son Miles, for whom I have made this watch." I place the watch back in my pocket, where it belonged in the first place, instead of lying stupidly on the beach.

Miles Blanton, PhD
Department of Physics & Astronomy
Bowling Green State University

PS My apologies to my real father, a retired MD.

PSS Though, of course, this is not in the least a slight against watchmakers.

Intelligent Design is not science. This is not an opinion: it is an objective fact. If you say that Intelligent Design is science, is valid, and is in a genuine debate with the Theory of Evolution, you are either misguided or a liar. If you would cite small gaps in the Theory of Evolution as cause to legitimize Intelligent Design, which is almost nothing but gaps, then you are a fool. If you believe that Intelligent Design is not Creationism in a very thin disguise, then you are likewise a fool. And if you would move to force the dogma of ancient superstitious people who didn't know any better onto the modern world, you are a contemptible human being.

Ebert: Well, now we know your opinion.

Just a quick point on Darwin inspiring Hitler to cause the Holocaust.

I guess all those other leaders who committed genocide due to a feeling of superiority were just ahead of their time, eh?

"Okay, as far as Landa: throughout most of the movie Tarantino doesn't really explain WHY Landa commits the acts of violence he does; we just feel that he cruelly enjoys it. This leaves a moral void throughout the entire film because we never know why we are witnessing the things he does. Later on it is revealed that he is on the good side, and has been undercover."

I don't think that's right that Landa was on the good side undercover. Landa does what he does at the end, because he's a completely amoral opportunist.

Ebert: Anyone who thinks that's what Landa reveals at the end wasn't paying attention.

Mark Hughes: So my answers, then, are "truth and increased understanding of life and its origins" and "I'm not dead". Hope that helps.

Ebert: Now, now, boys.

Hughes STARTED it, Roger. I already went to the bathroom, so maybe I'll just invite ARMOND WHITE over here to do it for me, as that's how you feel about it, Donald Du-- er, Mark.

You're an easier mark than that short-tempered farmer in "Shane." But I have better ethics than the gunfighter Jack Palance played. So I'll be kind. Generous. Even sweet. Ready?

What you meant was:

QUACKquackquackquackQUACKquacktruthquackandquackincreasedquackunderstandingquack ofquacklifequackandquackitsQUACKquackoriginsquackandQUACKI'mquacknotquack deadQUACK. WAK!

Now pick 'im up and get 'im outta here.

Ebert: Just put it in my bill.

We don't really need to know what the answers to why everything is the way it is. To question is enough. To pretend like you have answers is the definition of insanity.

Straw dogs...

http://darwingoestothemovies.blogspot.com/2009/09/straw-dogs-1971-dir-sam-peckinpah.html

Sorry if I've sent this before...couldn't remember.

Ebert: Friends: this is the reader who has a fascinating blog discussing movies in Darwinian terms.

I farted real huge.

Ebert:

A gaseous teenager named Colton
Was so full of shit it was molten.
At the gastro-internist
He farted in earnest,
And screamed, "I have only begun!

Please, Ebert and others who do good work: You cannot level with those who contrast Nazism to Darwinism, and to explain why they are different only seems to make them even more suspicious, especially as they're not operating with any rational thought process to begin with (ie. to explain that genetic diversity is favorable in humans and occurs naturally between populations); this debate is only derailing your own thoughts and writings, delivered into a big stupid vacuous hole of dumb in which they don't stand a chance against obliteration.

I understand the urge to help people, and perhaps find a middle-ground, but there is no middle-ground like this in science. The nice Intelligent Design proponent Ebert described, who didn't believe in stunts like those pulled by Ben Stein, is just that; a nice guy. But he's wrong. So talk to him about something else.

Somebody quoted Dr. Francis Collins, that "faith is in fact the most rational of all choices...", which is like saying Freedom is Slavery and War is Peace. Collins is saying there must be evidence of a god because there's no evidence of a god.

Ebert re Darwinima: Friends, this is the reader who has a fascinating blog discussing movies in Darwinian terms.

LOL, that's wonderful stuff! Well done Darwinima! You're bookmarked.

Hi Karl-Heinz.

By comparison, what are Dembski, Behe, Wells and Johnson doing? Sitting around trying to construct bullet proof logic arguments, that's what.

Well, Dembski for one doesn't claim to be an experimental scientist, but a theoretician. He's a mathemetician, so he's not likely to be mapping viruses. He did say in "The Design Revolution" that what the emerging field of ID needs is for some research scientists to take it to the next level, and he offered some ideas for what that research might entail.

Behe is a biochemist or molecular biologist, can't remember which. My understanding is that his scientific work that is not ID related is useful, respected, and uncontroversial.

Randy

Creationism has something in common with evolution, namely that life got created at a specific instant of time. As against both is the perspective that life has always existed.

Two things I find myself intellectually exhausted by:

1. The continuous, unending propagation of the false dilemma that tells me I must chose between God & evolution; and

2. The continuous, unending propagation of enlightenment arrogance that assumes any substantive conclusions about the nature or origins of life - and how it should or should not be lived - that existed prior to the modern era is somehow inherently inferior to our modern intellect, or is somehow automatically negated by modern scientific discovery or practice.

As a narrator of a film on evolution vs. intelligent design, Ben Stein made a great TV game show host.

As a philosopher on the subject, Richard Dawkins makes a great biologist.

There is nothing in "box a" (the "natural world") that can tell you anything definitive about anything related to "box b" (the "spiritual world.")

For anyone interested in a respectful, reasonable take on such a discussion, I'd encourage you to at least consider reading Tim Keller's THE REASON FOR GOD. He's a Pastor from Manhattan who believes that God & evolution aren't mutually exclusive. He also writes reasonably, intelligently & with appropriate humility, encouraging people of faith to be more honest about their own doubts (& the substance of others' doubts), while also encouraging people of doubt to recognize they exercise more faith than they might realize.

Roger, if you haven't seen/read it already, I genuinely think you'd enjoy it, even if you don't agree with it. As opposed to the angst you felt over having invested time in THE DA VINCI CODE, I think you'd find this one at least time well spent...

Respectfully,

Deacon Godsey
Omaha, NE

Ebert: Of course you can believe in God and evolution. The Pope does.

Karl-Heinz - Thanks! Looking forward to your comments...

To Frank J on September 4, 2009 1:19 PM

...since Randy Masters cites Behe approvingly and "distances himself" from the YECs, has it been established if he agrees with Behe that humans share common ancestors with other species?

Without ducking your question, I'm still working out what I believe on the question of common descent. I'm aware of Behe's statements. Let me flesh out my thoughts for a moment.

On the other thread, I defined myself as a "Transcendental Punctuated Informationalist". A term I'm coining. By that I mean:

Transcendent: I have a worldview that allows for the possibility of a transcendent and purposeful actor.

Punctuated: It seems to me that there are periods of innovation in the history of life that deserve attention and explanation. For example, apparently all of the current body plans came into existence during the relatively short period known as the Cambrian Explosion.

Informationalist: The presence of purposeful information in living things needs explanation as much as energy and matter do.

So, how does that affect my thoughts on common descent? Well, I've been working to define that in my 30 year study of the topic.

The tree of life starts somewhere. First life. ID is, in my opinion, well in play in the explanation of first life. Abiogenesis is not convincing to me. I believe that the evidence shows a transcendent purposeful actor in first life.

After we have the first cell, what is the level of involvement of the designer? Not sure. For most of my life I've been of the opinion that a designer started it all, with a design that would evolve and grow without much interaction.

But then again, there are the periods of innovation in life's history that offer the possibility that the purposeful designer is at work.

Also, I hold the fairly standard ID view that ToE mechanisms for micro-evolution are correct, but not for macro-evolution. I don't agree that random mutation & natural selection are creative forces sufficient to introduce new species, only change within species. (Lots of good discussion on this topic in the Stein thread.)

So, is "common descent" flexible enough to incorporate the periods of innovation where a designer is working and also with ToE in the acts of change over time within species? If so, I'm with common descent. If not, I'm not.

At present in my study, I think that a purposeful designer is more evident through the history of life than just at the beginning. Although, I could come down at this: the designer's design incorporated enough capability in the first DNA for the design to then be perpuating and capable for growth in complexity through ToE. Still working on that.

Randy

Reply to: I'm newly energized to go at the issue. Why couldn't the excellent conversation that we had on the Ben Stein thread be repeated in a high school or college biology classroom? It was civil. It rehashed the design vs. unguided evolution debate that's been going on since Plato? Why can't students have the excellent debate that we had on the thread over 2600 comments? Randy

Quite frankly, it because you never made a valid point. Not a single one.

Every time we proved there was no design, you came back with the nonsense retort, "But I see design."

You posted a lot of personal opinions and beliefs, but you've never provided anything that would PROVE any of them. Let me explain the definition of the word "SCIENCE" to you.

Reply to: Kyle Lundberg: Large portions (but not all portions) of Creationism are based on faith. That is the point. If you do not have faith, Creationism will never make sense.

Do you see my point? Having a belief, or a statement based on "faith," isn't science. You have to go into a lab and PROVE it, one way or the other. And we've proven Creationism is false, time and again.

Reply to: evolution does have huge gaps that many scientists have pointed out, enough that they cannot continue to believe in the theory.

Kyle, put on your glasses.

When you log on, this topic says "Darwin, My Hero" at the top. Do you really think we're going to let you post that kind of drivel without demanding you back it up?

Reply to: But, if you still need "proof" that evolution has many fallacies, listen to or read works by Lee Strobel or Kent Hovind, men that prove that one can be a legitimate scientist and still question evolution while not blindly following Creationism

Actually, I've had several encounters with Lee Strobel over the years. He was a pastor at Saddleback Church, about 15 miles from where I live. He's a guest speaker at the Biola Apologetics events, and in all modestly, I am his Biggest Nightmare.

I am the man who calls Lee Strobel a fool and a liar.

In his blubs, Lee says he worked for a newspaper when he began investigating religion. He wrote stories about the court system in Chicago. In no way was he ever a scientist.

Pick up one of his books and read the title. "The Case FOR Christ." His books are NOT impartial accounts. They are not scholarly. They are interviews with other Christians who have book contracts with his publisher, and they only give the case "FOR" the topic.

which means that Lee Strobel NEVER represents... what did you call it?.... "men that prove one can be a legitimate..."

Lee Strobel is not a "legitimate" anything. He is selling Blue Sky. He's selling Christian nonsense.

In his chapter on demons and demonic possession, he quotes someone with a degree in psychology. After reading the interview, you come away with the impression that "legitimate" psychologists think demonic possession is real.

http://www.biola.edu/news/biolamag/articles/04summer/famousfathers.cfm

Like Father, Like Son
Kyle Strobel said that, as the child of a famous Christian, people make many assumptions about him.

In high school, people assumed Kyle was very spiritual because his father, Lee Strobel, was a pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois.

Today his father is most known for his bestselling book, The Case for Christ, that details how he went from being an atheist reporter to a believing Christian, using tools of investigative journalism. Because of his book, Kyle said many people think his father is a genius.

“If people saw dinner at my house, they would probably just laugh,” Kyle said. “We’re not dialoguing about philosophy.”

Kyle said his father is a normal guy, goofy and notoriously messy: it’s not unusual for his office chair to be resting on a car pink slip or one of his manuscripts.

One assumption people make about Kyle today is that he shares all the same views of his father. While Kyle admires his father as a godly man and evangelist, he has become a critic of the seeker-sensitive movement of which is father is a proponent. Before authoring The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel wrote the seeker-sensitive manifesto, Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary.

Throughout college, Kyle's theology professors made him the defender of seeker-sensitivity in classroom debates, not realizing he opposed the movement. “I would argue for it anyways simply because I knew my arguments were better than the ones people were using against it.” Kyle said.

In addition to his masters degree in philosophy from Talbot, he’s about to finish a masters degree in New Testament, also from Talbot. Then he plans to earn another masters degree and a Ph.D. (end)

Talbot is a department at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now located in La Mirada in Orange County.

Anybody can write a book about this nonsense called Creationism, or why they decided to be a Christian. It doesn't mean you have "legitimate" credentials as a scientist.

Kyle knows the arguments "FOR"... and can argue them in a debate, but personally, he doesn't believe a word of what he's saying. Learn from THAT!

Let me spark the next longest thread on your blog. Daffy Duck is superior to Donald Duck.

There, I said it.

Hi Frank J.

Also, on your question about the "Expelled Exposed" website, with the "Set Ben Straight" section: some questions:

1. Are you aware that the "Expelled Exposed" website is run by the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)? NCSE being a lobbying group with the purpose of "defending the teaching of evolution in public schools", with Eugenie Scott as principal lobbyist.

2. Why did the NCSE need to set up this separate website to poke at "Expelled"? Why not just cover it on the existing NCSE website (www.ncseweb.org)? Why the need to be once removed from this expose site?

3. Staff from the NCSE were involved in the Sternberg dismissal from the Smithsonian staff. Yet, here they are on the front site EE further maligning the expelled, without being upfront about that conflict of interest. Does that bother you?

Expelled Exposed is to me a sleazy front site that the NCSE is hiding behind, unintentionally confirming that the expelled were truly expelled. Take it with a large grain of salt.

Randy

Hi Nick: on September 4, 2009 1:38 PM

3 thoughts on your comment:

1. On ID as creationism, and the Wedge Document.

I am aware of the Wedge Document, and have commented on it. I don't see what the fuss is about this document, or about folks who believe in ID having a strategy to promote it. Johnson, who promoted the WD, was not a scientist but a strategy-setter. An entrepenuer, in a sense. He motivated others - credentialed scientists like Dembski/Behe etc. - to take it where it needs to go as science.

2. Perhaps you are also not aware that "Irreducible Complexity" is NOT in any way shape or form "evidence" for ID.

I did a 4-part defense of IC on the other thread. I see it as both: a critique of ToE mechanisms and evidence for ID. IC is a signature of purposeful design. The only source in our experience for purposeful (intelligent) design is an Intelligent Designer. Go read my argument. It starts around July 2 on the other thread.

3. Regarding Dr. Dembski teaching a divinity course. He is, after all, currently employed at a Theological Seminary.

However, he is multi-talented and multi-degreed. With doctoral degrees in both science (mathematics) and philosophy. He can write and teach on multiple topics.

What you need to do is evaluate his ID writings as arguments for ID. Read "The Design Revolution" - no theology anywhere in there.

Randy

I'm just going to start mumbling here. I'll be brief, I promise.

Stanley Kramer wasn't a bad filmmaker or anything; I like that we had a liberal in Hollywood at that time. The only problem is that you look at some of his films and they just seem, you know, NOT that liberal? On Turner Classic Movies, they were talking about how despite it broke new ground by pairing up Sidney Poitier with a white fiancee, they only had one kissing scene... and it was seen in a rearview mirror! Kramer didn't take much risks, I guess. I'll see "The Defiant Ones" and "Judgement at Nuremberg" one of these days, I've heard they're both great, but I can't see them right now. Just not right now! And then I saw "Inherit the Wind" on PBS one time. I'm a Darwinist and everything, but that movie got annoying quick. All that irritating screaming and arguing and slapping in the face and lawyers talking back to judges and collapsing on the floors and dying and the angry mobs outside the jail cell vowing to hang the teacher. Why does Kramer feel that in order to get the point across he has to be as obnoxious and loud as possible? He's worse than Alan Parker in that respect. Tracey and March both gave good performances, but I wish their characters' names didn't have to be changed. Can you imagine what "Inherit the Wind" would be like if it had been more faithful to the actual Scopes trial? If it had depicted how Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan really communicated on and off the courts? Sure, the film might not have been as entertaining but at least it would have had a more defined sense of maturity and, possibly, more nuanced filmmaking prose (listen to me using big words that I probably don't even understand). Bottom line, Creationists probably laugh when they watch the movie because it's so ridiculously manipulative and over-the-top. I think John Sturges' "The Satan Bug" is a more convincing account on evolution and it's not even a movie about Darwinian theories! It's a movie about a virus that kills people. It just kills a whole bunch of people and spreads across the country. And there's this scene at the end where this guy goes AHHH!!!! and jumps out of a flying helicopter. It's wicked.

Ebert: Of course you can believe in God and evolution. The Pope does.

---Yeah well, he'll believe whatever that butters his bread.

---Oh. And, uh, he was a junior Nazi. A Hitler Youth.

Hey guys I'm from Canada and universal health care is great.

Hi Jackson Sav on September 4, 2009 7:39 AM

...I would just assume somebody that well-rounded and knowledgable would automatically believe in Evolution.

Jackson, I've been at this a long time. Back in the late 70's I filled my engineering elective course requirements with courses in Anthropology, Astronomy, and a Biology department course in Evolution (studying Wilson's sociobiology concepts). I also was fortunate to get to go in the evenings to debates with Creationism folks like Dr. Henry Morris et al.

I've been reading about this topic for 30 years as a hobby. On both sides. I've been through all of the fads and phases of the creationism in schools issue. I've read not only Darwin and Dawkins and Dennett on one side, but books most people her have not read on the other side. Hugh Ross. Dembski. Stephen Meyer.

It's not as clear cut as you think it is, is all I'm saying. Keep studying. Keep a critical thinking edge. And my best advice is to read the source material on ID for yourself, and don't let others tell you what it says or why it's wrong.

Ask questions. (Where did biological information come from? Are the ToE mechanisms really "creative" enough to increase complexity in lifeforms? More. And don't stop until you've read both sides and know the answers for yourself. It's a lifelong study program.

Randy

Randy Masters,

I have question to ask. First I will try to see if we agree on the on the terminology. Intelligent design is the implication that there exists an entity that is an intelligent designer of a complexity that couldn't have occurred otherwise. If this is indeed true, then would it be correct to imply that the intelligent designer is complex?

Hi Miles Blanton.

I enjoyed your "red herring" watch on the beach story. Your reframing of Paley's classic argument which kicked this whole thing off with Darwin in opposition.

Of course, in your story you recognized design (the purposeful arrangement of parts, in this case gears and whatnot) and rightly inferred a designer (your father, in your telling).

The red herring part, I guess, was inserting an assertion that the intelligent designer of the watch "must surely have evolved over time from less complex beings" into the story. A fact not in evidence from finding a watch on the beach!

Team Paley and the Watchmaker vs. Team Darwin and evolution over time. A classic struggle over the evidence.

Pick a team, folks! That's the fun of it.

Randy

"Win Ben Stein" is still an amazing piece of commentary. I find it utterly frustrating that numerous professionals I know judge much of the Middle East population as religious extremists and yet take comfort in their own views of ID and disregard Evolution as scientific fact. Most of these people are scientists and engineers themselves; people who have crafted their analytical minds to use fact and logic to solve problems. How can this be?

Quote...Randy;Well, Dembski for one doesn't claim to be an experimental scientist, but a theoretician. He's a mathemetician, so he's not likely to be mapping viruses. He did say in "The Design Revolution" that what the emerging field of ID needs is for some research scientists to take it to the next level, and he offered some ideas for what that research might entail.

Behe is a biochemist or molecular biologist, can't remember which. My understanding is that his scientific work that is not ID related is useful, respected, and uncontroversial.

Hi Randy,

You can keep calling me Karl. I'm just adding the Heinz as a pen-name so I'm not confused with the other Karl's that I've read on here (some views I don't agree with, etc). Only my Oma called me KarlHeinz in real life. LOL

Yes, I read Dembski's suggestions in TDR, however I must confess I can't remember a single one. The weren't very concrete as I recall. Something about....nope, lost it. Can't remember. I'm guessing it's the same with you as far as those suggestions go.

About Behe, I agree. He does legitimate science outside of the ID world. But of course, he doesn't do any science what-so-ever within the ID world. He only constructs the 'logic arguments' that were mentioned above. He does not conduct experiments, nor do his colleagues. He does not propose any testable hypothesis, nor make any predictions. Basically, he's giving a personal opinion.

I know that Dembski disputes some of those points, for example he insists that ID is testable. But he never proposes a test, so...*shrug*.

Speaking of viruses, and of people not likely to be mapping them. I notice that two prominent ID defenders, Jonathan Wells and Phillip Johnson were early supporters of AIDS denialism, having signed this petition.

"It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group of diseases called AIDS. Many biochemical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken" - http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/group.htm

Of course, critical epidemiological studies were all over the place when they signed this petition. But since they were based in a science they've spent their careers criticising, perhaps we can see the reason why they had so much trouble accepting the results.

Did Stein ever respond to your earlier post about him?

Ebert: Nope.

Hi Bill Hays.

Having a belief, or a statement based on "faith," isn't science. You have to go into a lab and PROVE it, one way or the other.

Now Bill. That's not exactly true, as Stephen Meyer points out in his excellent new book "Signature in the Cell".

Meyer points out the distinction between "historical sciences" and "experimental sciences". While experimental sciences do in fact go into the lab to "prove" things, historical sciences for the most part do not. They work to theorize the best fit explanation from the past for things that we see today.

ToE, as an explanation for this development for life up until now, is mostly a historical science. Meyer points out that Darwin, in developing "Origins" didn't do so in "the lab". He made observations of animals, yes. But his innovation was to look at a multi-disiplinary body of evidence developed over time, developed in part by others, and to provide what to him was a best-fit explanation for mechanism - natural selection.

Darwin didn't, so to speak, "prove it" in the lab to develop "Origins". Same for the current ID theoriticians.

Randy

"Let me spark the next longest thread on your blog. Daffy Duck is superior to Donald Duck.

There, I said it."

Hear, hear!

Mr. Ebert:

I admire your stamina in creating these threads and moderating them.

On topic, I think you would find "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller a very good read.

Dr. Miller is one of many who both are actual, personal God-believing Christians (with all the attendant theological trappings that drive persons who think it impossible for "religious" people to be scientists [Dawkins comes unbidden to mind]) and he is an ardent, sincere and enthusiastic proponent of the evolutionary model, defending it intelligently against "intelligent design" adherents of various camps.

Yes, he is able to distinguish between them, which lends his defenses even more credibility -- he is sympathetic, but emphatic.

He uses Augustine and Aquinas to remind believers that God's creation is revelatory of His nature, and that (to paraphrase Augustine) a Christian who is willfully more ignorant of natural science than unbelievers -- should be ashamed.

"Finding Darwin's God" has taken a place of preeminence on the shelf of books I have devoted to the creationist/evolution debate.

Cheers,

I just felt like you should read this. If you havent already.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?printable=true

Ebert: It's clear that he's guilty, then it's clear that he's innocent. Texas executes more than the rest of the nation.

@ Mikey on September 4, 2009 6:47 PM
On a side note, Jesus seems to become more and more caucasian with each passing year. If He *does* ever come back, nobody will recognize Him.
I'm sure that's a typo and you really meant "Michael Jackson", but that's OK, I still understood.

Why would some great being design such flawed creatures that are us? Sure we have the fundamentals, but wouldn't it be better if we have the sight of an eagle, flexibility of a cat, and longevity like of one of those land turtles?

There is "intelligent" design, but one based on the complex patterns of DNA molecules.

Evolution straight to Nazi argument is as ridiculous as Monotheism straight to Inquisition argument.

Apologies if this has been covered in the previous thread (a quick though not thorough scan suggests it hasn't been here), but my preferred point against creationist logic is dog breeding. The fact that animals can be bred intentionally in a predictable way to produce desired traits pretty much proves the theory right there since it's an identical process to that happening in nature.

And he said it was and it was, but was it really?...

I love this debate. So many people trying to put there stake into the ground and make a case. My Grandpa may he rest in peace, told me once that evolution was a bunch of junk, his reasoning was "it just was." He refused to believe that we evolved. He was a very intellegant God fearing man, but in this case he was blissfully ignorant. He didn't care the reason or the arguement, you were wrong if you didn't believe it happened in seven days.
Needless to say when I argued with him he bought me a subscription to creationist magazine. I read and prepared my arguement just to see if I could get him riled enough to actually spark a debate and have a dialouge. Being only 16 I truely wanted answers to these questions. In the end he was unwilling to speak besides the occasional grumble. I love the idea of creationism. It gives an ease and comfort to a sometimes bleak world. A hope of something greater or a bigger purpose, but in the end I almost believe it selfish to argue the topic because we will never be 100% sure. I admire the courage of the movie to speak on behalf of an unpopular subject to most. Evolution uses observation and creationism uses faith. Faith isn't science, and shouldn't be taught as such but that doesn't mean faith is a bad thing to have.

Mark

Obviously, a debate between evolution and intelligent design could go on forever without really settling anything, but the scurrilous intellectual dishonesty of Expelled should be beyond debate. If anyone really doesn’t get it, just try to imagine getting a movie made that ended like this:
“I’m here at Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center, because as an American I needed to see for myself the true legacy of Newton’s Theory of Gravity and Three Laws of Motion.”
Or:
“I chose to finish our journey here at the Hiroshima Memorial because I could not imagine a more eloquent testament to the dangers of believing in Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table of the Elements.”

Did you know that "Brewster McCloud" by Robert Altman was released in widescreen on Laserdisk back in 1993? And that it stars Bud Cort from "Harold and Maude" - one of my all-time favorite movies ever?

Because it does.

It's also not available on DVD however and for that reason, I've never been able to watch it - I couldn't find anywhere - until recently that is, when it fell off the side of a black ship near Sweden! :)

I've just finished watching it - and what a cool movie! It starts off in a classroom with a professor at his desk (Rene Auberjonois) who appears throughout the film as its odd narrator, and then the film turns into what can best be described as a stream-of-consciousness absurdest satire complete with bird poo-poo and a surrealistic Fellini-esque parade for the final scene!

"How I yearn to throw myself into endless space and float above the awful abyss." - Johann Wolfgang Goethe (quote the narrator.)

"Man, incontestably the most advanced creature, has only to observe the flight of birds to realize the weight of the world's imprisonment. And so the desire to fly has been ever present in the mind of man. But the reality has been long in coming: has man truly realized his dream? To answer that, we must isolate the dream: was the dream to obtain the ability to fly - or was the dream the freedom that true flight seemed to offer man?"

Then all the crazy stuff starts! See for yourself... :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-sYrA3RrAA

And since we're all related to birds, and birds are related to dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are related that icky stuff - primordial ooze? Then "Brewster McCloud" is ultimately about "what the ooze was also dreaming" and gosh who'd blame it, eh? As I'd sure like to be able to fly.

Ooo, and drive a souped-up mango orange Plymouth Road Runner, just like Shelly Duvall in the movie. :)

Ebert: Not on DVD! Damn.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19701224/REVIEWS/12240301/1023

Ebert: I believe you're correct. I've never heard of an I.D. scientist who isn't American.

Rog, only last year, I met a German lutheran/evangelist who turned me to "Dr. Dino/Kent Hovind" and I nearly laughed in his face, however the conventions of social conduct restrained me and I tried my best to listen with a straight face as both he and Dr.Dino tried to convince me of their half baked ideas of existence, I could'nt help grinning ear to ear though :) Sadly, he managed to turn a well educated British christian family to this lunacy. Bear in mind this was a guy who said that he just did'nt get art, you know art like dadaists in general, Picasso, Dali etc. etc. He said that he did'nt understand anything not devoted to Jesus. This was also a guy who had a very shifty look about him, when he described his pet mice and asked me not to tell anyone that he performed "experiments" on them. American I.D. idiots it seems have long hands and are extending their reach into Europe. Karl-Heinz's comment on Hovind is brilliant.

Ebert: When I read The Ancestor's Tale, by Dawkins, I feel filled with awe and wonder. Evolution is such an elegant theory.

I agree both on evolution being an elegant theory and on The Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins, they both fill me with awe and wonder too. My feelings on Dawkins' The God Delusion however remain mixed, mostly positive, with a tinge of dissatisfaction at the tone and the proselytizing. My question is, must he sink to the level of the fundamentalist propagandists? I know what he is saying is factually correct and agree with it, but the way he's saying it makes me uncomfortable, because I think that he as a figurehead of known and respected scientists is representative of a lot of not altogether unreasonable people like myself, but I again reiterate that the way he and others are doing it, is to me reminiscent of the self-righteous preacher.

LOL at Tom, I was about to jump to your defense with Mark Hughes, until I saw you did a great job of it yourself :)
Tom said: "---Yeah well, he'll believe whatever that butters his bread.
---Oh. And, uh, he was a junior Nazi. A Hitler Youth."

True & true. Perhaps he is a reformed man? Entirely reformed? Doubt it, at least not what some of the comments of his papal reign would suggest. Both however sad indictments of the scam that organised religion appears to be. Whatever happened to personal spiritual journeys?

Tell me Mark, why must you and Bill Hays (don't start again Bill) jump down the throat of someone so much as casting half a shadow of an aspersion on evolutionary theory? Nietzsche, disagreed with it. He was wrong about the theory of evolution and a lot else, but he was right about a fair few things too. Tom does'nt seem to me a contrarian, he seems considerate, open minded and far, far more intellectually curious than you seem willing to give him credit. By the way, Christopher Hitchens who your comments suggest would be one of your heroes, has publicly admitted to being a contrarian; he's even written a book about it.

LOL at Roger's fart limmerick.

Bill Hays: "You posted a lot of personal opinions and beliefs, but you've never provided anything that would PROVE any of them."
This from a man who indirectly and unintentionally implied air does'nt exist. In an argument between you and Randy Masters however, I am inclined to agree just a little bit more with you.

Muttering to self - goddamned politicians, both theologically and scientifically minded of today would put Machiavelli to shame. Don't understand why people can't just go into their garden like Marie did, take a whiff of fresh air and be glad to be alive.

Computer inventor Babbage,
turned me into web surfing cabbage.
Web inventor Berners Lee,
made me free-er and from discussion forced me not to flee.

I'm off to worship at the altar of Charles Babbage and Tim Berners Lee.

Indian Idiot (H.W.)

Ebert: On theology, I prefer someone like George Bernard Shaw to Dawkins. He upholds the British tradition of bemusement.

Denying evolution is the inevitable result of taking the poems of man and turning them into God.

I think this is called idolatry, only the Golden Calf is now a Bible or Koran.

Spirituality is saying “God I do not know what you are at all, but I experience that you are all, evolution being a true part, but not all.

Randy Masters: "For example, apparently all of the current body plans came into existence during the relatively short period known as the Cambrian Explosion."

Thanks for your prompt answers. Not sure what the ~70% that refuse to answer have to hide.

I'm still not sure, though, where you stand with regard to humans and their closest relatives. Do you think it's more likely that the Creator (not necessarily the same as the designer) intervened within a continuum of cells (e.g. fusing the 2 chromosomes among other changes) from a lineage that began in the Cambrian? Or that new eukaryotic cells (human line? chimp line? both?) were assembled independently from “common designs”? Surely you have thought of it enough to pick a slight favorite.

Also, do you agree with Behe and mainstream science that the Cambrian Explosion occurred ~540 MY? If not or unsure, when would be your best estimate?

As for not finding abiogenesis convincing, surely you know it had to have occurred at least once by definition, regardless of whether a Creator was involved. The suggestion that it occurred independently for many lineages, is the extraordinary claim that lacks evidence, extraordinary or otherwise.

Hi Roger, here is my Longest Comment:

As a teacher of religion in a Catholic high school - not in America - I am concerned I may have some misapprehensions.

First, if you comb the Bible for its first error in science, it would be in the first chapter with the word 'firmament'. This word describes the ancient Hebrew concept of the cosmos, where something like a giant glass dome keeps water safely away above (!) us. Presumably, to start a flood, God would just have to open a latch on some gate and then WHOOSH! So to take the Bible as an ideal textbook on science does not go over well with the largest (population-wise) denomination of Christians, Catholics. The firmament is a neat idea, and I am sure it could indeed inspire the fear of the Lord into people who haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing the marvellous photo "Earthrise", taken on the lunar surface. But. No there is no dome.

Do Americans think there is a dome separating the waters above and below?

The Bible is not all literal. There are too many metaphors and too much poetry. God changes character too much. The devil found in Job is simply an accuser. How could a Christian think that Jesus used parables yet God is only literal? Think about that.

Us non-Americans sometimes get worried too easily. But a lot of people would like to know just how many people believe all of this is literally true. What is the state of education in the lone superpower? To what ends are these religious beliefs held? Are they tools, is ignorance being cultivated intentionally... Too many cynical questions, but people want to know, and gossip is never good enough.

Can't Americans just start travelling more and meeting real people with a variety of opinions? You would think after a while, after true reciprocation, the fundamentalists would start to think that they sound a little arrogant to suggest that God only cares for one faction in one country and they happen to be it. It sounds too lucky and too convenient to be born automatically with God on your side.

Travel. I think this would help the debate. Come to my school. The religion that is taught at my school does have a purpose. We are trying to cultivate compassionate people who rely on informed consciences. We come from a long tradition. To go back to when people were first starting to wrestle with God - and were nominated as such - shows us that morality is unfolding on this Earth through the effortful contemplation of impossible mysteries. Impossible, but not useless. Useful like Japanese koans, or isometric exercise for your brain (or soul if you prefer).

It is the struggle that is important. We should never give into temptations of assuming we are right and then categorically condemning any side in any situation. This is religion. Religion, despite the fashion to blame it for all evils, has had a central role in shaping human morality through a cultural language we can independently learn. Good things have come from it.

Perhaps objectively we see democracies, human rights and the UN gaining ground. Stephen Pinker reminds us that the world is a much safer place today. I cannot prove that religious concepts such as the dignity of life and the golden rule are responsible but I intuit it. We do not need a fight between science and religion and the world does not need polarization just because it can be commodified.

Science is science and religion is religion. Religious people can be concerned with science, but keep it honest: make sure that new technologies don't exploit the poor, make sure that our consumerism is for the common good, and in the long run, not just for the next quarter. The opportunity cost of weapons development and manufacturing - do we consider it at all? Just because questioning may sound unrealistic does not mean that we are absolved of all self-criticism. It is the piety of thought, according to Heidigger. There are so many valid contemporary issues that religious people can confront that all of this hype against evolution is mind-boggling. Do something good, be compassionate. Choosing to fight scientists who are following an objective standard might keep you from scrutinizing inequalities in your midst. God wants you to fight for what? Which side of education is failing here?

This is all coming from a Catholic perspective but I would like to know: is the problem scientific illiteracy in America, or is it religious?

Ebert: Only a minority of American Christians are fundamentalists. But a great many Americans are poorly educated and illiterate about science.

My apologies for going off topic with this question, as it doesn't have anything to do with Evolution/Darwinism/ID. However, I remember in a previous blog post that you were upset by the fact that, for the American release, the producers of Inglourious Basterds were going to make Tarantino shave off something like 40 minutes of the film that was shown an Cannes. You said you were going to write (or already have written) a blog regarding your feelings about that, as well as your opinion of the current film industry, sometime after the film was released. Well, the film has been released, and I have yet to see such an entry. Will you still be posting it? (On a side note, I heard that the American release was one minute longer than what was shown at Cannes.)

Ebert: Tarantino was not forced to cut anything, but did some tweaking for the final release print.

Roger -

I'm glad that somebody as verbally competent as you so stalwartly defends evolution - as I believe it to be an important debate and it warms my heart to know that even intelligent film reviewers are taking the lead in the argument.

However, I think it weakens the "evolutionists" (of which I consider myself a passionate member) argument when the defenders make statements that claim that evolution may be the most "useful theory in the history of science." Not only are you not particularly qualified to make this statement, it distracts from the overall argument at hand. One can unequivocally say that the theory of evolution is extremely sound science - and those who disagree have some problems. Still, at the same time, you are discounting so many other important scientific discoveries that have saved millions of lives (inoculation), given us the potential to explore other worlds and enhanced our understandings of the inner-workings of the entire universe - not just our own planet.

In some sense, even though the theory is a vital scientific one, evolution has little practical application at the moment. In some senses, that would completely obliterate the idea that it is "useful" as it is not very practical.

Again - I commend you for continuing this argument as it is an important one - please just be more careful to not taint it with unsupportable and distracting declarations.

Ebert: I was thinking of its application in so many sciences, including astronomy and the social sciences.

Dark says:
'...So, this debate has the same quality of millions of people vehemently preaching for a political bill they haven't even read -- and biting the fingers off those who probably have, if the LA Times report was true, the other day.
Darwin died knowing there was no empirical proof for the random occurrence of biological characteristics, supposedly accidentally improving the ability of any species to survive by accidentally improved adaptation to the environment and in domination over any other species. He wrote so. I never see anybody quoting this letter, written to his brother Thomas.
"Natural selection" is only a euphemism for "random selection," as I ably pointed out. Some of you Darwinist Rednecks are sorely literal-minded. That's how wiping out whole villages of innocent people gets called "Ethnic Cleansing" by the perps...'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What an angle, Tom Dark (not to pick on you, but you just glow). So, lacking the 'missing link' one should just turn out the light and go back to bed? If I understand you, you object to 'redneck' Darwinism because it's misused? Or do you mean because it's unprovable down to the last turtle? Or are you, like I'm wont to do, segueing your political rant into this topic?
Be that as it may I'll say this:

Darwin had a specific hypothesis that had been sorely wanted for a long time regarding the animals and the mystery of life itself. For, among other reasons, the more intelligent amongst us were sick of the force fed nonsense from the religious authorities on this topic.

Darwin found support for his hypothesis in observations of the traits of numerous animals -- this 'hypothesis' has proven over the years to remain intact despite attacks upon it by the likes of Hitler, the Pope or you (.
It was not his intention to implement some evil plan for the likes of Hitler (if I'm getting what you say correctly) but to shed light upon how things actually work in this world. Evidently, 'God' will allow us this insight.
What Darwin did is open up the mystery of existences to meaningful investigation -- rather than have the matter summed up in some cheesy story, as with Genesis. Darwin invited participation from the best amongst us, with the moral underpinnings of human reason itself, not of some self-appointed spokesman for a demented Allah or god.
Stupid animals, as you know, often put their snout where it doesn't belong, but that's hardly a reason to dismiss the subject of their meddling. You wouldn't let a chimp fly a passenger jet (hint 9/11) -- or cease using such transportation that serves us well, because chimps couldn't fly one competently even if they tried ... would you? Hey, as Kafka says: life's unfair ...

To Mr. Ebert.

I would like to expend a little on the scientific concept/definition of THEORY.

Creationists often state that evolution is only a theory. They wrongly use 'theory' in those cases as it is often used in regular non-scientific conversation to refers to a simple idea - a careless explanation. (Ex: I have a theory for the recent bad performance of the Yankees).

In science, an idea or a possible explanation for a phenomenon is called an 'hypothesis'. Only, and only when an hypothesis has been tested rigorously with different means throughout a significant period of time, that it is called then a THEORY. Being tested with different testing methods(dna, fossiles, ect..), and being non-contested in the scientific community for now many decades, evolution definitely deserves to be called a scientific theory.

However, when a scientific theory becomes so unequivocal, it graduates to become a scientific law(ex: the law of gravity).

I think that it is time to qualify the theory of evolution as the LAW of evolution. Therefore, ending the non-sense debate that sadly still occurs in the United States.

Cheers,

Andre-Frederic

Long live the Law of Evolution!

Ebert: A law admits of no improvement. Because theory is misused is not reason enough to abandon it.

Hello progeny! I am Blobbo! I am the original one-celled organism!

No, no, I am not a replica. I am still me, the first animate life to form on earth! When this sun goes out, I will float around in space until I land on some other planet. It's fun!

I am sure you have many questions, my progeny. First of all, yes, it is boring being a one-celled organism. That is why I laid the vegetable and animal kingdom here on earth! First, I lay many microbes, each in a certain mood, then voila! They generated organisms of their own, representing my many moods!

Of course all this took awhile, but when you're a molecule-size one-celled organism with nothing but time, what's the hurry?

Now, I as I read through this blog I am not so sure anyone will have many questions after all, as everyone is so dead sure of their answers. In fact you seem like quite an incurious lot, and I do not remember ever having been in an incurious mood. I might have been constipated that particular moment.

Yet for all of you who are too certain of your answers, I must at least mention that the only thing I created "at random" was Mark Hughes. Like him, I am not very good at math.

With love to a good many of you,

your original prototype,

Blobbo

The problem with survival of the fittest is that there is no stress test for humans any longer.In the animal world we are shown examples of where a mutation that gives an organism an advantage leads to that trait being the one that ends up being passed along because more of the progeny survive to pass it along. All you have to do is to look at the various breeds of dogs to see where selective breeding gets you. In the human world accidents cause people. Oops, the condom broke, oops I had a little too much to drink, oops I didn't think. So humans get by with random chance being the determining factor. This thinking in no way condones the "Master Race" view, but does give thought to the wide parameter of what passes for a normal human being. If you have ever had the pleasure of conversation with a brilliant mind, you can count yourself as one of the lucky, for it is there that you see what the wonder that humanity can be.
And yet there is a selection process going on in the human world, of the lowest common denominator it seems. The feed back loop of the mass media seeking the largest audience catering to the largest audience.
There is comfort in the crowd, do you think the people in the stands of the coliseum are any different than the crowds at any WWF match, well except for the ability to give the choice of life over death.
Where the attitude of superiority and intolerance comes from in the human beast is the question that needs the answer.
The saying "Never argue with an idiot. First they drag you down to their level and then they beat you with experience" does come to mind as I read through this.
It is a sad comment on society today that self interest groups are allowed to determine what is right for all and even worse, determine what will be done.

I think Iris Dement says it best in "Let the mystery be"

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Gary

Sam,

"I don't think that's right that Landa was on the good side undercover. Landa does what he does at the end, because he's a completely amoral opportunist.

Ebert: Anyone who thinks that's what Landa reveals at the end wasn't paying attention."

Landa wasn't on our side? I thought he revealed that he really wasn't a Nazi. I did go see it with one hour of sleep that day, at the 7:00 p.m. show. I know realize my brain checked out at that point.

The thing that interests me the most about the theory of evolution is its impact on philosophy and ethics - an impact which I think is not entirely clear yet.

Now, before I go any further (I've got a question I want to ask), I want draw attention to something which I've seen some other people mention, but I'd like to reiterate it.

It is possible to think of evolution as a process (rather than an original cause) and so in no way contradictory with "creation" per se. God might have created (or "designed" if you prefer) the original organism and allowed the process of evolution to take place, fully aware (in his omnipotence) of where it would lead (i.e. humans). In the same way God might have designed the universe, created matter and allowed the whole system to work itself out on that scale, the laws of physics and chemistry leading eventually to the orignal organsim which would then evolve. Evolution can be reconciled easily with a Deist "clock-maker" God, and to some degree it can be reconciled (though with more difficulty I think) with a personal God who might be active in the world even now. It seems to me that such beliefs are a natural way to ease the tension in the debate, and I don't know why they aren't more popular.

But this is not the way in which the debate is typically framed. The scenarios I just presented are considered "Creationist", Evolution proper must mean that there is no God at all. Certainly in the media evolution is presented as the diametric opposite of religious faith, which is quite hyperbolic (as is typical of the media), but I'm attending university right now and have met and spoken with many people working in the field of Evolutionary Biology (including undergrads, grad students and proffessor - in fact my Biology 101 professor had his P.H.D. in Evolutionary Biology) and they also seem to mostly believe that Evolution is incompatible with the scenarios I mentioned above. My professor in particular was explicit in his belief that the origin of the original organism had to be random ("lightning striking the soup bowl" he used to say) in order for the theory to be legitimate. They all believed (or so it seemed to me) that not only evolutionary biology but science in general demanded that there be no God at all, and to them I posed a question that they failed to answer to my satisfaction (and I'm about to pose it to you, because I would love to hear a good response)

And to be clear, going forward I'll be using the terms "Creationism" and "Evolution" in the broader manner that in my experience scientists, journalists and uneducated members of the public use them: Creationism = Any belief in which any part of the universe was in any way "created" or "designed" by any entity supernatural or otherwise at any point (whether it be prior to the big bang or 100,000 years ago when human beings appeared); Evolution = The belief the the entire universe is the accidental consequence of natural forces, life on earth being only one of the many random peculiarities taking place all over the universe.

The question I would ask is this: If evolution is true, doesn't it mean that the Western moral system (and really I would argue all morality) is worthless?

If evolution is true what exactly is wrong with murder? Or theft? Genocide? Rape? Slavery? If human life is accidental what is the nature of its value? Can human life have intrinsic value if evolution is true? Isn't eugenics a logical endeavor? If life is an accidental but inevitable result of chemistry and physics than can it be more valuable than a rock (which is also a result of chemistry and physics) and can human life be established as more valuable than any other - say a bacteria, or a leaf. If a member of the stoneage can craft a rock into something useful (like a hatchet blade or an arrow head) we do not call it immoral -
therefore if a person can subjugate another person to some useful purpose how can that be immoral? Male lions fight and often kill eachother for the right to lead the pack and mate - why shouldn't humans do the same? Aren't we just animals like anything else? The implications (to me at least) seem to be endless - for instance, why would anyone who believes in evolution be a vegetarian? Isn't killing and eating a plant of precisely the same moral weight as killing and eating an animal? For that matter even another human? There are other animals that naturally eat members of their own species - why restrict ourselves? Why, ultimately, this pretense of "civilization"? Without addressing whether or not Hitler believed evolution justified the holocaust (my understanding has long been that Nazi scientists did use evolution as an explanation for what they were doing but that doesn't prove anything at all as brutal regimes regularly use whatever theories or ideas they can to justify whatever crimes they may be committing which doesn't mean those ideas caused those crimes) doesn't evolution suggest that the only moral problem with the holocaust was Hitler's calculations that Jews were inferior? That is, killing inferior people in order to cleanse the gene pool is a logical concept in the world evolution describes - perhaps objective tests could be generated to locate such people? I knew a guy in high school who used to argue sincerely that the best way to fight genetic diseases was to kill the people who had them so they couldn't reproduce. You test infants, even before birth, for such ailments; that way we could euphemistically call it an abortion. Speaking of abortion - doesn't evolution suggest that it should not only be legal but even mandated for some; say, those whose incomes are too low, or with certain troubling histories? Anyway, I could go on and on but I think everyone gets the point. I would ask this question of my professor or friends who espoused the theory of evolution as described above (and I ask from the perspective of an agnostic - that is, I'm truly wondering, not trying to trick people, or trap them into saying something foolish) and they would typically deny that evolution meant that murder (or whatever, I've used various examples) was okay. And I would say "why not?" and they never seemed to be able to give me a logical answer. They would appeal to emotion or a sense of conscience ("Does it seem like that would be alright to you?") but this is not good enough for me - I demand truly logical justification for actions, especially government policy. For instance we used to debate the Iraq war (I was a bit of agnostic about that aswell, at least for a while) - I would argue that there was a certain internal consistency to the logic of George Bush's middle east policy and they would respond that it didn't matter, it was immoral. I was incredulous - "How do you know?" I would ask and they seemed to find that question so bizarre that they couldn't even answer it - They just sort of repeated it at me ("What do you mean 'How do I know'?").

Anyway, if anyone on here can offer me a logical explanation for how the Western moral system can survive evolution or point out a logical fallacy in my thinking I would be extremely interested, as this is something I've been wondering about for years. I have a feeling however that I am right, and that if the absolute atheism that Evolution seems to demand (at least, to some people) really became the dominant belief then we would find ourselves living in a very different world indeed.

Ebert: Cosmic ancestry still requires that life evolved somewhere.

Nope. Cosmic ancestry places no specific requirements on the origins of life. It simply holds that life comes from life.

Life's origins, according to cosmic ancestry, remain a complete mystery.

If life evolved, as you propose, cosmic ancestry would require it to take a really, really long time - basically an infinite amount of time.

Conversely, cosmic ancestry does not rule out ID, or any other theory of life's origins, it simply explains how life propagates throughout the universe.

Ebert: Cosmic ancestry rules out ID for the same reasons it doesn't work on earth. No matter where life comes from, it has to begin, and there is no way ID can account for that other than a magic trick.

Since now I know my brain checked from sleep deprivation during "Inglourious Basterds" I now realize it is a different movie from what I thought it was. It's a little harder for me to understand now (why Landa would turn himself), but that fault lies with me.

Sam said it was because he was an amoral opportunist, and I don't have any reason to doubt that. So, he got his street justice, I see. Okay, thanks, I got it now.

Regarding morality being a human attribute:

We can have one or the other but not both. In many posts (most recently the one where you quote Christ), you are assuming there is some kind of authority behind your position and also the words of Christ. But, if morality is a human attribute, there is no standard by which to differentiate between moral and immoral. You have your values and preferences and others have theirs. To classify these differences as moral or immoral, as opposed to just different, assumes not just a moral law, but an authoritative lawgiver. And to assume that much, assumes intelligence transcendant to the natural order.

So, you can have it one way or the other, and you may choose as you wish. But, it is a bit absurd and hypocritical to have it both ways. If morality is a human attribute, then it would be silly to seek guidance from someone claiming to speak on behalf of the Divine. If there is no intelligence, Christ made a much larger fool of himself than any ID person ever has.

Pick one side or the other. It's intellectually dishonest to try to have it both ways as each situation proves convenient. That's not exactly morally virtous. Nor is it rational.

There either is intelligence beyond the natural order or there is not. Choose which side you wish, but go ahead and live by all the logical consequences of each position. If it's moral standards and authority you believe in, you'll have to assume or posit some kind of intelligence. If your beliefs hold to no intelligence, the moral clamoring should either end or at least be acknowledged as nothing more than mere personal preference.

On this topic, here is a great six part back and forth between Christopher Hitchens and a theologian on the topic. It's insightful, humorous, and altogether enjoyable. You may decide with Hitchens, but you'll notice he never shows a standard by which to measure what is moral or immoral. As the theologian says, he has no book (standard by which to differentiate), just his preferences. The theologian may be wrong on whether the supernatural exists, but without the supernatural, let's stop all this 'moral' and 'immoral' nonsense in your posts.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html

I just had to post on the connection between Darwin and Hitler, because it illustrates one of the great mistakes when trying to make reasoned arguments. Item A causes/influences Item B. Item B is evil/great. Therefore Item A is evil/great. That type of argument ignores basic cause and effect logic. If Mark Twain inspires me to write a novel, and that ensuing novel is horrible, does that make Mark Twain a horrible writer? Of course not.

Yes it is true Darwin's theories inspired Hitler. Yes it is true that Hitler was evil. It is not true that makes Darwin's theories evil, or even more ridiculously, untrue.

If chocolate cake influenced Hitler instead of Darwin, would anybody make the argument that chocolate cake is evil? Probably, but they would be ridiculed for it.

Are railroads evil because they helped transport Jews to concentration camps? Without an efficient rail system the Holocaust would have been so efficient. Should we have never invented railroads?

Well, RDS, my Chimpanzee Kafka has advised me to be tender with you, because he thinks many humans are crazy.

He said "...so don't say things like 'what is your point', or anything that might bring up the image of a sharp stick."

"...and DON'T say things like 'hasn't anybody actually read up on Darwin or the times that caused this international fixation on random origins of the universe," Kafka said. He really is cute when he shakes his head in wonderment, as his big ears wiggle.

So I'm stymied. Kafka thinks nobody will even hear about Laplace or Lyell or what they were actually looking for or the true character of Darwin's dad or the oppressive religious dogma that birthed a kind of guilt-rebellion in the name of science or nothin'. They're like that Muppet "scientist," who has glasses but no eyes. Of course, since they all make pretenses of being reg'lar beer-drinkin' sports-and-girl-watchin' types, "Rednecks" fits. Until they start trotting out what they think they believe.

"It's like watching a bunch of adult male primates march around in a circle beating pots and pans in a Romper Room parade," I told Kafka, "only no 4 year old would march with such grim determination about how ignorant everybody else is supposed to be."

"Mmmphaa" Kafka replied.

Now who said humans were better than chimps?

I don't believe in evolution of any kind. Therefore, my views will never change. Free will, you say? I'm predetermined thank you very much. You should see me do the robot.

Hi Roger,

Some religious people misunderstand the purpose and scope of science. And some scientists misunderstand the purpose and scope of religion. As a person who is able to draw constructively from both domains, I do not find any actual contradictions. I like it that can keep each other honest, humble, and focused on what they have to offer to our human experience. Science offers provisional understanding of what is observable. That is its limitation, but that is also its power. Religion attempts to provide provisional understanding of things beyond factual observation. Again, limitation and power. Human understanding seems to be able to deal with and even crave both kinds of ideas. And both kinds of understanding are provisional: science revises and changes its understanding as needed to conform to what we observe or deduce; regions changes its understanding to conform to changing human culture and self-awareness. Science and religion, you are like an old married couple that somehow get along and need each other. It's beautiful to watch the two of you together, but please don't complain about each other's quirks in front of guests.

Creationism vs. Evolution
Judaism vs. Islam
Right wing vs. Left wing
Black vs. White

blah blah blah. Respect other people. Respect yourself. Find someone to love. Love your kids. Any questions? Do I need to write a book?
I love your site Mr. Ebert, may this post find you and your loved ones well.

Randy Masters is very keen on repeating the claim that ID is not creationism. I respectfully disagree. Philip E. Johnson, the law professor who invented the whole ID movement has said this in Forword to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000): "The Intelligent Design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word," and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message."

If that's not creationism, I don't know what is.

Sure it might be possible that some day one IDist gets past the point of saying this or that complicated puzzle is to be answered with the default explanation called "God did it", but perhaps a new term to describe that position should be coined then?

I have yet to see any truly falsifiable arguments put forward by IDists. Behe's Irreducible Complexity, which Randy mentioned, has been said to be one, but Behe still clings on that even though it wrongly assumes that only additions of single molecular parts are possible in evolution, neglecting deletions, changes in function, duplication of multiple parts, addition of a second function to a part, and gradual modification of parts as plausible evolutionary changes. See http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html

"By Carra on September 4, 2009 7:53 PM
If it rains in the USA, it drops in Europe. I thought of Intelligent Design as something American that had luckily not reached our shores.

But a few months ago I read that the minister of education from our neighbour country the Netherlands wanted to teach Intelligent Design at school. That caused quite a bit of uproar over there and over here in Belgium. A reaction from our Belgium director of Catholic Education mentioned that catholics have accepted evolution a long time ago. ID is apparantly more represented in protestant countries. Noone has seriously proposed to teach ID over here. If someone would, the public reaction would be entertaining."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RApapDXJt4A&feature=related

Quote...Daniel Goldhaber;In some sense, even though the theory is a vital scientific one, evolution has little practical application at the moment. In some senses, that would completely obliterate the idea that it is "useful" as it is not very practical.

Hi Daniel,

Good post, however I would make this comment. The ToE has enormous practical applications, and has had since Darwin first proposed it. You give a perfect example in your comment, namely inoculation/vaccination. When biologists develop vaccines, they must begin with a thorough understanding of the virulence and how it evolves. For example, why has HIV-1/2 evolved over the decades to assume multiple guises which differ from place to place across the globe? The virus itself is mapped out in a phylogenic (Darwinian) tree of life, and it's various progenitors and offspring are placed within that tree using the exact same methods that place humans in the lineage of apes. This gives all the various scientific endeavours a thorough understanding as to what the virus is right now. Each branch of this mini-tree is known as a clade in evolutionary terms, and each clade has it's army of scientists studying it. The predominant subtype in the western world is clade B.

So by comparison, the ToE has placed all lifeforms into organized hierarchical clades. We, as humans, belong to series of these branches, namely Primata/Haplorhini/Anthropoidea(monkeys)/Catarrhini/Propliopithecoidea/Hominoidea(apes)/Hominidae/Hominini(humans)/Homo(man)/Sapiens(us).

While another lifeform known as HIV belong to another cladastic hierarchy, named (less romantically) A-D,F-H,J and K.

Once a virus is placed within it's proper Darwinian branch on the tree of life, scientists can begin to devise the weapons needed to combat it. So you can see that the ToE is indeed very useful. Scientist know that viruses are subject to gene shifting, and random gene mutation, just like we are. They are subject to the changing conditions of life which cause old strains to become extinct, just like the changing conditions of life caused homo habilis, rudolfensis, egaster, erectus, neandertalensis and florensiensis to become extinct. Leaving only us, homo sapiens.

Have you ever read Darwin's theory? Please remember it is a theory and is not accepted as fact by the scientific community. All theories have a hypothisis, data, and a conclusion. please read his conclusion. If the conclusion does not appeal to you, you have to start over and perhaps wait another 200 years for it to be accepted. Maybe you & Ben Stein could write one up together,,,,,,,,
" The origin of species " by Ben Stein & Roger Ebert or maybe by Roger Ebert & Ben Stein?

Ebert: No theory is accepted as a fact. I'm not sure you understand the difference between the scientific and everyday use of the word.,

Ebert: I was thinking of its application in so many sciences, including astronomy and the social sciences.

ToE (Darwinism) has applications in the social sciences? As in, perhaps Social Darwinism? As in eugenics? I thought that link couldn't be made? :)

Hmmm. I had my say on that topic on the other thread. I'm going to try to leave it alone on this one.

Randy

From the tail end of the other thread…

By rmasters on August 21, 2009 1:08 PM (On eugenics:is Darwinism "necessary but not sufficient?")

By Karl on August 22, 2009 2:16 AM (Darwin is not "necessary" to eugenics, nor is eugenics "an application of" Darwinism.).

By rmasters on August 31, 2009 1:33 PM Responding to another person - (You gave me back generalities. Religion "necessary but not sufficient" for genocide?)

And so, to pick up where we left off...

1) Were the Nazi’s atheist?

Firstly. It takes approximately four hours in a library to know that the Nazi’s were not atheists. Or about three minutes of youtube video.

Nazis not Atheists. (2m30s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWvvSdxu9eo

Hitler Oath. (26s) When Nazis swore their oath to Hitler, who were they swearing by?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq5L4k9gKgs

Wiki - The German Christians
The German Christians were, for the most part, a "group of fanatically Nazi Protestants." They began as an interest group and eventually came to represent one of the schismatic factions of German Protestantism.

Wiki - Positive Christianity
…is a term adopted by Nazi leaders to refer to a model of Christianity consistent with Nazism. Adherents of Positive Christianity argued that traditional Christianity emphasized the passive rather than the active aspects of Christ's life, stressing his sacrifice on the cross and other-worldly redemption. They wanted to replace this with a "positive" emphasis on Christ as an active preacher, organizer and fighter who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day.

"The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ. -- Christian spokesman Herman Gruner, soon after December 20, 1933 when Protestant youth organizations were incorporated into the Hitler youth."

2)Were the Nazi’s Darwinists?
“Himmler also found time to take Bohmer aside at a gathering to convey his personal views on the subject of human evolution. It must have been an instructive conversation. As Bohmer later reported, Himmler dismissed outright, for example, the current notion that the human race was closely related to primates”. –From The Master Plan by Heather Pringle (page 134)

Take all that you personally know about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Common Descent. Can anyone actually claim that this idea fit into the ideology of the Nazi’s? Do you think Hitler and Himmler and all the other worshipers of the mythical Aryans accepted for one second that they were classified as Apes in Darwin’s Tree of Life? Himmler himself believed that the Aryans came from Atlantis.

“Himmler believed that ancient emigrants from Atlantis had founded a great civilization in Inner Asia, the capital of which was a city called Obo.”…..”Himmler mentioned his belief that the Nordic race did not evolve, but came directly down from heaven to settle on the Atlantic continent”. – United States Forces - European Theater, Military Intelligence Service Center, APO 757 Final Interrogation Report (OI-FIR) No. 32 Feb. 12, 1946 “The Activities of Dr. Ernst Schaefer”.

Himmler, with his ‘direct from heaven’ lineage was the actual architect of the holocaust. He also created the Ahnenerbe (the inspiration behind the Nazi relic hunters in Raiders of the Lost Ark). This organisation had the specific task of unearthing the divine lineage of the “Master Race” (see Wiki, Ahnenerbe).

3) Were the Nazi’s Creationists?
From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us, that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump , as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today. - Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Tabletalk

The most marvelous proof of the superiority of Man, which puts man ahead of the animals, is the fact that he understands that there must be a Creator. - Adolf Hitler, ibid.

The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with which the individual specimens are endowed. (Mein Kampf, vol. i, ch. xi)

So were the Nazi’s Creationists? I’ll let you be the judge. Did Hitler believe the Perfect Aryans evolved from a lower lifeform or did he think they were ‘specially created’ and then corrupted through the years by ‘others’?

As we ponder that we can ask ourselves, what were the roots of their thinking in regards to all ‘others’, and in particular the Jews? They certainly weren’t waving around copies of the Origin of Species as the Brown Shirts roamed the streets of Germany. What book were they waving around? I’m being literal here. Some were waving a particular book in the air during the Night of Broken Glass, which most scholars agree, was the start of the Holocaust. I’ll talk about that book in a moment.

4) How far back did the superior/inferior race concept go before the Nazi’s came into power? Did it start with them or do the roots go deeper?

Here is one source of their thinking…

Wiki – Martin Luther. (1483-1546)
... changed the course of Western civilization by initiating the Protestant Reformation.

Luther taught that salvation is not from good works, but a free gift of God, received only by grace through faith in Jesus as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority of the pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.

Martin Luther was not some rouge priest. He was the founding father of Protestantism (52% of American who are religious, say they are Protestants). He was also a professor of Theology and a German, or born in the land that would become Germany. He was vehemently anti-Catholic and played a major role in breaking his country loose from the Roman Empire.

Did this giant among Christians have anything to say about the Jews?

Wiki - Martin Luther
Much scholarly debate has focused on Luther's writings about the Jews. His statements that the Jews' homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated, and liberty curtailed were revived and used in propaganda by the Nazis in 1933–45.

Now back to that book I was talking about…

Wiki - On the Jews and Their Lies – by Martin Luther.
In the treatise, Luther writes that the Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth."Luther wrote that they are "full of the devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine,"and the synagogue is an "incorrigible whore and an evil slut".He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.

And so, as any student of World War Two will know, this is exactly what happened. During the Night of Broken glass they burn synagogues, arrested some 30,000 Jews, and destroyed or confiscated property. Almost like they were reading out of an instruction manual. This was the beginning of the Holocaust.

Wiki - On the Jews and Their Lies – by Martin Luther
The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the National Socialists displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.

Further quote from Martin Luther’s Holocaust inspiring writing…

“We are at fault in not slaying them. Rather we allow them to live freely in our midst despite all their murdering, cursing, blaspheming, lying, and defaming; we protect and shield their synagogues, houses, life, and property. In this way we make them lazy and secure and encourage them to fleece us boldly of our money and goods, as well as to mock and deride us, with a view to finally overcoming us, killing us all for such a great sin, and robbing us of all our property (as they daily pray and hope).”

So we can begin to see the foundation stones of the Holocaust. We can find other authors in positions of authority, we can find other popular books by Luther, we can investigate his belief in the "Divine Right of Kings", which helped lay the foundation for a Fuhrer. And we can look inside the bible itself, and ask ”How did Christians, pre-Darwin, see the world and it’s people. What idea was Darwin replacing, specifically?”

I’d like to submit something on that next.

Hi djones01 on September 5, 2009 3:57 AM

...my preferred point against creationist logic is dog breeding. The fact that animals can be bred intentionally in a predictable way to produce desired traits pretty much proves the theory right there since it's an identical process to that happening in nature.

Darwin apparently thought so.

I dissented, on the other thread. The point that I made is that it seems to me that dog breeding is NOT what is happening in nature.

Dog breeding introduces the element of purpose. I doubt that dog breeders take their capital investment (their breeding stock) and wait for random mutations to occur and then be acted on by natural selection. Dog breeders purposely (read: intelligently) select for traits. It is not random in any sense. It is not unguided - which is supposed to be the hallmark of ToE.

The dog breeder is the Intelligent Designer in that particular activity.

Have you thought about it in those terms? Agree or disagree?

Randy

It has always struck me that these creationist/intelligent design arguments are so beside the point. If God choses to work on astronomical time scales—taking 4 billion years to make man instead of 4 thousand—how does this in any way argue either for or against His existence?

This whole issue is really a straw man. Creationists use it as a rallying point to point out the "infidelity" or those who think Evolution is a reasonably accurate description of how we came to be. I believe in both God and Evolution and see no conflict there whatsoever. So why am I to be reviled?

The mistake is entering the debate. That's like taking sides on abortion. There are no winners there...

For those that want to understand God in everyday life, read Paul Tillich.

I just finished reading his three volumes of "Systematic Theology", but I was also a bit sleep deprived (aside from it needing to be reread a few times), so, I probably can't do too much to help you (see my above comment on "Inglourious Basterds" if you want to see what happens when I try that).

I'm always sleep deprived. So, even right now, it will be hard to help. But I'll give it a shot incompetently anyway.

A few quotes I remember is that Tillich calls God the "eternal present" and "beyond essence and existence" (I think he said existence). He said to try to define him was atheism. Although, he of an Intelligent Design type argument, I think he said that god is "spontaneity." The spontaneity of atoms and everything and so forth. This was just one possibility he put forth during a time when we were just beginning to understand atoms, but perhaps there is still something to it; he is a man ahead of his time. Notice how I capitalized god on one instance but not another. The God as defined first is the capital lettered God, "the god above god." Sorry, that's all I can think of for that right now. God is infinite and we are finite, but there is a POSSIBILITY that we share in the infinite, which is why we can question god or our existence in the first place. This is what Christianity is about. The Resurrection is about God, not Jesus. Jesus with the Resurrection points to a mystery. It is not to be taken literally, although it is to be taken as having happened--everything except the actual coming back to life. The Resurrection is about the New Being, of being in touch with God, (the eternal present), and thus, transformed--it's a participational process--and this is how you believe. You believe in the Resurrection BECAUSE you have participated in its mysterious, transformational powers, NOT because it literally happened. Only after participating in it do you understand what the Resurrection is about, or points to rather, which is infinity. It makes the mystery transparent, but still a mystery nonetheless. So, it is both actual and symbolical. There is a new kind of Christian history. This is the Kingdom of Eternity. Humanism is based on a religious tradition. And the Resurrection is seen as the most transparent of this Through God's love, we may love. God is about making sure that nothing we do here is, being finite, is raised to a level of infinite, or ultimacy; when a certain power has been broken democratically, the church doesn't fully reject or fully accept it, but recognizes that it is God's power that has done it. This is what our system of checks and balances is about, and in every aspect of ourselves...if we let it. Things in our finite world can become raised to a level of ultimacy and in that they cannot stand, and this is where God comes in. God is meant to bridge things. It is to be used to protect from idolatry, demonization and secularism. We can still be all these things we say we are today and believe all of those things Dawkins and so forth have said, but realize the dangers in raising those things to infinity.

Re: ANDRE-FREDERIC

Unfortunately, to label evolution a law simply to win an argument would be intellectually and academically dishonest. It remains a theory because it is in many regards an attempt to explain something we have observed in the natural world, like the Theory of Relativity. (I will give a more detailed example shortly.) Evolution is a result of the nature of life, but it is only that, just like Kinetic Theory is a result of the laws of physics. It is not a fundamental principle of science; if we wanted to make a law out of evolution, it would likely reference the method by which organisms mutate, and postulate percentages of mutated population, and little else. The theory of evolution would continue to be a theory, but would incorporate this hypothetical law into its evidences.

Consider Kinetic theory, specifically the Kinetic Theory of Gasses. We created this theory to explain the behavior of molecules in their gaseous state. We derived equations to model it. In spite of being "only a theory," KTG has never failed us. But it is a model to explain the behavior of something we have seen in the natural world. The laws that back it up are Newton's laws of motion. Newton's laws are fundamental principles of physics. Kinetic theory is a specific model to explain the movement of particles. Similarly, evolution is specific model to explain the change in the genetic makeup and physical characteristics of species over time.

We will never be able to call evolution a law, but this does not make it any less valid. All it means is that what evolution describes is specific, and is not fundamental enough to be considered a law. Next time you hear somebody talking about how evolution is "only a theory," explain to them that what makes their car move (Collision Theory explains chemical reactions, such as the one used to refine gasoline) is "only a theory." Don't let people get away with scientific ignorance. Explain to them that the choice of the word "theory" to indicate a set of observations and models that describe something we see in the natural world is unfortunate, but that this should not be an argument against scientific theories. We shouldn't cheat our way around it by labeling evolution a "law" when it can never be.

It's a shame I never read the original entry. I probably would have put in a response.

As a Christian, I find the idea of fundamentalism a bit odd considering Jesus was incredibly liberal for his time.

I always thought if it really was worth arguing the matter of the time frame in which our world came to be what it is, the book of Genesis would have more specifics on the topic of creation. But since it doesn't, I interpret it as meaning that it really just isn't a priority to be dwelled upon, especially when it seems to burn bridges.

Tom Dark: "You're an easier mark than that short-tempered farmer in "Shane." But I have better ethics than the gunfighter Jack Palance played. So I'll be kind. Generous. Even sweet. Ready?
What you meant was:
QUACKquackquackquackQUACKquacktruthquackandquackincreasedquackunderstandingquack ofquacklifequackandquackitsQUACKquackoriginsquackandQUACKI'mquacknotquack deadQUACK. WAK!
Now pick 'im up and get 'im outta here."

Which, of course, is a lot of words that mean about as much as what you wrote before. Rather than an actual response, as usual. From the guy who flew in flapping his arms furiously and snapping his bill at everybody else in the room. As usual. That's just trolling, Tom. And your trolling gets more and more rude if anyone actually questions your behavior, I've noticed.

Why is it okay for you to always insult everybody else, to question their intelligence and their integrity, but we're supposed to just laugh it off since it's ol' Tom Dark doing it and we aren't supposed to respond to your rudeness about us? Rudeness is rudeness, online bullying is online bullying, however much someone might try to disguise it with attempted wit and more clever name-calling. Why can we point out such things here in this discussion where we're already talking about the behavior of either side of the debate, but not point out the same behavior taking place right here in this discussion? I didn't just step out and start insulting you, Tom, you walked in and insulted me and a lot of other people, and my comments to you are due to your own tone and what you said to me and other people here.

Oh well, Mr. Ebert doesn't seem to want these exchanges in the thread, which I regret since it seems similar to the exchanges between the ID side and Evolution side of this debate, and goes to some of the same issues about the methods of argument and posting used (a topic of some of the broader debate). So I'll simply avoid reading or responding to your posts in the future, because I do think you've been repeatedly rude toward everybody else and that you seem to resent having that pointed out, and you won't respond directly to actual points (most of my post to you responded to your direct question about what the theory of evolution has done for me, and you didn't even attempt to respond after having repeatedly asked for someone to respond).

Blobbo... on second thought, I'm feeling rather incurious again and pretty certain about the randomness of your comments on math and... er, randomness.

Generally speaking, I think that we should recognize that the actual loudest proponents of ID (who are actively going out to publicly push and promote their agenda, who get on Fox News etc and insist that Christians are being "persecuted" for their beliefs, and those like the makers of "Expelled" for example) are a different lot from the average Christians and even from those who might believe ID teachings. I don't think it serves any purpose to speak with contempt and condescension about every single religious person, or every single Christian, or every single person who believes in Creationism or ID. I don't think they are all just either liars or complete fools, regardless of what I think about their specific belief systems and the religious leadership who promotes that belief system.

I have faith in the ultimate goodness in humanity. I believe, despite all of the evidence to the contrary throughout our history, that there is hope for our species, that there is something WORTH saving and preserving in humanity. I believe that it is almost always important to judge a person by what's best in them, rather than their worst failings. There's no solid evidence or reason to believe in this intangible "goodness" and notion of inherent "worth". But I believe it nonetheless, despite whatever cynicism I have about government or religion or aspects of human nature in specific contexts.

So I understand faith in the intangible, I understand a belief in inherent goodness and hope, and I think this is where much of the religious faith in many people comes from. It shouldn't be dismissed or insulted, because it may be a very important aspect of humanity's search for truth and understanding that leads to scientific breakthroughs, to political reconciliation, to cooperation, to progressive advancements in our treatment of our fellow man (trying always to keep apace and hopefully someday to surpass the advancement of our killing of our fellow man). The religious leadership take advantage of lack of education, lack of information, false claims and "evidence", spreading rumors, feeding fear, and other such reprehensible behavior to gain support for things like ID among the broader population.

When a parent says, "It sounds reasonable to let them also teach ID in school, after all they do have scientists on their side and evolution isn't very popular among scientists anymore," they aren't being stupid or lying, they have plenty of reason to believe what they are saying is true -- they've heard it in the news, seen it in film, been told it at church, read it in e-mails, and so on. The idea has been reinforced as truth over and over, and not every person is adequately informed about geology and history and anthropology to recognize the flaws in ID claims or the falsehoods in ID assertions about evolution. So those claims sound valid, it appears to come from educated people in the relevant fields, and everyone around the parents are nodding yes and insisting it's all true.

Someone who believes those things isn't inherently an idiot or a liar, they are just a person who believed what was being said and repeated by a bunch of people who claimed to be experts and who are treated as such by the media and politicians and churches and friends etc. Why can we understand so clearly the role of the media in helping spread so much false information about Iraq's supposed WMD programs that lead to support for the war, without calling all of the public a bunch of idiots and liars? We see that the news media and political leadership spread lies and deceit in that instance, and so we can understand why an average person without more information would believe what they were being told. For religious persons, there is often an even more closed loop of information that reinforces such beliefs, and I can fully understand how and why it happens.

So my own anger and contempt is for those who know what they are doing in spreading false information and intentional distortions and disinformation on behalf of ID. It's for the religious leaders, the so-called scientists, the media who treat it as if it's a real two-sided scientific debate, the famous people who lend their faces and voices to films that promote such lies, and so on. But I don't hate or hold in contempt all religious people or even all believers in ID. And I certainly don't dismiss the entire concept of faith in the intangible. So I hope people won't just resort to insulting every single religious follower or believer in ID as if they must be either stupid or lying -- I have known and still know plenty of deeply devout religious people who are neither stupid nor liars, and it's unfair to label them all as such, however much I reject and regret religious beliefs and their influence on history and today's world.

Where's a Babel Fish when you need one?

In my last post I said "Kingdom of Eternity" and I think I meant "Kingdom of God". Here is another quote from Tillich, perhaps explaining that...a little bit:

The appearance of Jesus as the Christ is the point at which history becomes aware of itself and its meaning."

Natural selection is proved everytime you receive a flu shot. Doctors manipulate the vaccine to take into account influenza's evolution. Creationists have simply not kept up with the science, and continually refer to his book on natural selection picking apart a sentence here or there while ignoring the last 30 years of genetic research that have proven the theory again and again.

There is nothing wrong with believing in a God that created everything. Said gods could be an advanced alien civilization, or Shamoo the talking hyperspace whale, who knows.

The problem is believing in a God who is active and intervenes in the daily life of the universe. Such a god clearly does not exist, but is instead purported to exist by various shady spiritual leaders who are solely in it for power, fame and profit. This confusion leads to man-made laws supposedly directly received from a divine authority and any challengers to this power structure are burned at the stake like Giordana Bruno. Since our world is currently at it's most volatile state while we transition to a type I civilization it's easy to understand why so many are attacking progress.

If creationists want to understand or 'read the mind of god' as Einstein put it, they should put their 2,000+ yr old book of parables written by bronzed-aged nomads down and instead learn mathematics. It's clear the language of the universe is math with all it's startling symmetries, so if we are all indeed formed by a creator studying the creators equations is the best way to understand what the hell is going on.

Reply to: Randy Masters: ToE, as an explanation for this development for life up until now, is mostly a historical science. Meyer points out that Darwin, in developing "Origins" didn't do so in "the lab". He made observations of animals, yes. But his innovation was to look at a multi-disiplinary body of evidence developed over time, developed in part by others, and to provide what to him was a best-fit explanation for mechanism - natural selection.

Randy, some of your Creationist drivel is getting on my nerves.

Darwin published in 1859. No, he did not base his theory on a computer analysis of the human genome which was completed in the last decade. I am so glad you pointed that out - because you're trying to scam people into thinking Darwin isn't credible.

You're becoming one of the Bad guys. seriously. You are an example of the flim-flam and the deceit that Intelligent Design (and Lee Strobel) are trying to pull on the American public.

You were talking about:

Reply to: Randy Masters: It's not as clear cut as you think it is, is all I'm saying.

Actually, it is clear cut. The problem, you keep pretending that Evolution can'be be verified in a lab, and now we have two genomes (chimps and humans) to compare.

Reply to: And my best advice is to read the source material on ID for yourself, and don't let others tell you what it says or why it's wrong. Ask questions. Where did biological information come from? Are the ToE mechanisms really "creative" enough to increase complexity in lifeforms? More.

Yes, Randy, you keep asking these goofball questions. And then, there are legitimate scientists who answer them. Big difference.

http://brembs.net/gould.html

Stephen Jay Gould: The earth is 4.6 billion years old, but the oldest rocks date to about 3.9 billion years because the earth's surface became molten early in its history, a result of bombardment by large amounts of cosmic debris during the solar system's coalescence, and of heat generated by radioactive decay of short-lived isotopes.

These oldest rocks are too metamorphosed by heat and pressure to preserve fossils. The oldest rocks sufficiently unaltered to retain cellular fossils - African and Australian sediments dated to 3.5 billion years old - do preserve prokaryotic cells (bacteria and cyanophytes) and stromatoIites (mats of sediment trapped and bound by these cells in shallow marine waters).

More complex creatures arose sequentially after this prokaryotic beginning -

first eukaryotic cells, perhaps about two billion years ago,

then multicellular animals about 600 million years ago, </