chance to see it tonight.  

Ben made a lot of points in his expose on Academic hypocrisy over a single issue, the inclusion of "intelligent design" in evolution.  I won't go into all that he covered, suffice to say that this movie goes significantly enough against the political correct opinion, that unlike Michael Moore, Ben Stein will not receive the adoration of the media or the Hollywood groupies...  sadly, he should - as his quiet questioning exposes much of what is wrong with academic science.  Strangely enough, he did not quiz the National Academy of Science - when he should have.

The single most moving scene in the movie was his tour of the German psychiatric hospital at Hadamar where a form of eugenics was practiced.  It is particularly chilling as he goes through the hospital - and sees the chambers where the Nazis perfected the gas chambers as an instrument of extermination.  He is accompanied by an attractive woman (perhaps in her 40's) and as they walk, he asks her what she would say to the doctors and staff at the hospital if she were to meet them - today. She says that it would not be her position to pass judgement on them... he also asks her if, in her opinion, if those in charge of the facility were more insane than those interred in the "hospital."  She responds with a hesitant "no."  Chilling indeed.

Least anyone wonder, I am aware of the eugenic studies conducted in the early part of the 20th century in this country!  and which was supported by No Bell prize winners...  and the government....  hat tip to the Rev Wright for knowing his history.

While Stein is very careful to point out that Darwinism does not directly lead to eugenics, he does point out that the 'purification of a race' as being practiced by the Nazis does have its "Scientific" principals in the "survival of the fittest" claim of some evolutionists.

I've read other reviews of this movie - so please spare me a reiteration of their diatribes... Ben covered those as well in his interviews in the movie... ANYONE who even suggest that intelligent design is a part of how we got here!  is clearly of lesser intelligence - that is clearly stated by some of the open minded scientists Ben interviewed.... so that has already been covered.... spare the electrons...

For those with an open mind... a pretty good movie.... for those with a closed mind - skip it.... you already know how the movie ends... and sadly that is the point.

-- Modified on 5/9/2008 9:44:54 PM

-- Modified on 5/9/2008 9:46:26 PM

The First Lady of American Eugenics was Margaret Sanger a big socialist hero to the left and the founder of what is now called Planned Parenthood which administers quite a number of "birth controls" every year. She was a proponent of sterilization and "euthanasia" of the "lower races," which included, according to her, "Negroes" and Australian aborgines. One of the keys to understanding the elite Left view of abortion is that all the right people get them, and that cohort certainly does not include their daughters. That is why many Black churches are now wondering if abortion is not a quiet form of eliminating AfAm's.

Sanger was born Catholic, but despised the Church so much she voted against Al Smith and JFK and voted Republican in those elections. That is some kind of hate!

From what I've read, Big Dave Dawkins the Atheist would rather believe that aliens (from another planet, not Mexico) started life on Earth. As has been said, if you don't believe in God, you are likely to believe anything.

I'm seeing Expelled today.

Bring on the pedophile rants and Jesus jokes, you predictable libs.

Thanks,

In the movie - the transpermia theory is presented to one of the scientific elite... Ben - in his quiet persistant way - asks - so where did that life come from?  they guy stops and simply has no answer -

Most of these theories are great at telling us how... but lack the inquisitiveness to inform us as to "why!"

The single greatest accomplishment of the movie was the exposure of how closed minded “Big Science” can be and even mandates. Certainly many in the Intelligent Design community are trying to push religion, but that fact is unfortunately used to denigrate the entire concept. The point is not to claim or prove that God made everything. The point is to keep an open mind. There are so many holes and dead ends to evolution. No one has yet has come close to filling so many gaps. On the ID side there are too many that want to be too faithful and give the credit “God”, but on the evolution side, too many (if not most and certainly those in power) have constructed barriers to exploration into any realm that could even slightly be considered intelligent design. The “scientific” intelligent design people do not purport to have proven anything of the sort that God created life (yes, many others do). They simply put forward questions (far far more questions than even hypothetical answers) concerning the holes and gaps in the evolution community’s thinking. It is the “absolutists” on the evolutionary side that are the true “Flat Earthers” Remember, it was the original flat earth believers that KNEW everything that that thought they needed to know. It was THEY who were closed minded to the possibility that there might be something else “out there”.

This same sort of dogma is also being applied by the Al Gore society (aka Flat Earth society) to the global warming debate. Oh yea, I forgot. What debate?

-- Modified on 5/10/2008 1:11:48 PM

the cretionist argument.  Oh, he does get close, but certainly he did not fire someone for merely being an editor of a journal that permits the publication of an article (that was peer reviewed - love how "that" works, you could substitute the words "old boy's club" for peer review) that merely asks the question (in the discussion section) of whether or not the results in the study might be the result of intelligent design....

Open minded - ??? right.

but I suppose it depends on what you consider intelligent, eh?

So (god forbid) let's think about this for a minute.  Hypothesize an intelligent designer.  What did they do, abdicate?  Or are they still on the job?  Did they design a pre-destined program, or just sort of like start a pinball machine going?

So what kind of intelligence would we be talking about here, if it designs the world as we observe it, to include complicity in any number of massive crimes?

So would it be an amoral intelligence?  Maybe a little thoughtless, even stupid?  How stupid does it have to be, before we're not talking about intelligence anymore?

I'm thinking that the kind of intelligence we're dealing here is probably the kind of accounting intelligence that the author's publisher has.

nobody can help you people with random minds and irreproducible science.

I think CD's argument is that an Intellignet Designer would work out the problem  fully, and insure intelligent processes and intelligent outcomes?  

why couldn't aliens have been the Intelligent Designer?  and is it possible, just possible, that those aliens are/were the product of evolutionary process a gazillion light years away, and designed us?  

the universe is a big place  -- maybe evolution happened in some places, and those alien supergenius races travelled around seeding the universe with their [ahem] handiwork?

you would then have to ask

"Who made the aliens....?"

indicates that he is appying HIS template for intelligence onto the implied designer's. And that analysis is actually closer to correct in that jack0 is applying HIS set of possible motives onto said designer. I'm pretty sure jack0 has motives, but intelligence. . . not so much.

Personally I'm rooting for the pinball idea.

and the same question would have to posed about any "Intelligent Designer". And that's one of the reasons why, from a strictly scientific point of view, ID is a non-starter.

not when ID is, "always was, always will be".

from a "strictly scientific standpoint" that is unproveable so it can only exist with faith. there, the "religious" fall on their face because so many want to profess to know.

I'm okay with, that just what I believe,.....

not when ID is, "always was, always will be".

from a "strictly scientific standpoint" that is unproveable so it can only exist with faith. there, the "religious" fall on their face because so many want to profess to know.

I'm okay with, that just what I believe,.....

but as far as we posit any intelligent designer, they're pretty clearly criminal (or maybe criminally insane) by any human standard.

And, as we see with BZSD, there are all sorts of intelligence.   I just happen to assume the common English meaning.   There's really no reason that an intelligent designer couldn't be some sort of Rainman.

criminally insane.

What does that do to your theology?

Absolutely, I assume the general sort of "intelligence" that is the common English meaning of the word.   Yeah, it could be ANYTHING, but that's another issue entirely.  The moon COULD be made of green cheese.

-- Modified on 5/10/2008 8:36:32 PM

Religion and theology have nothing to do with it.

jack0, you're the very last person that I thought would have trouble thinking outside the box.

-- Modified on 5/10/2008 9:09:28 PM

not too many of us are interested enough to read minds.

Questions of good and evil - don't have a clue as to why both seem to be a part of creation - any more than I've a clue as to why anti-matter exists.... or is necessary for the existance of the universe... or for that matter dark matter.

Jack - this entire thread has demonstrated that for ID to exist - there does NOT have to be a god or even evil- just a design....  kind of like the design of a car - the maker of the car - once it leaves the lot cannot predict if the car will carry little jack to his tiddly-wink contests - or be used to transport drugs... but there IS a finite probability that it will do each - or both.

design of the universe - and why did it start - even Hawking says he has no clue - and here you are telling us - that you know... wow.  how arrogant.

-- Modified on 5/10/2008 10:46:32 PM

Everybody should know that the big guy "GOD" has the whole world in his hands!   And the whole universe and ALL OF TIME!!!!!

The only place where time exists is right here.  God can go anywhere he wants and at any time.  So God can go back to ancient Rome and see the Gladiators fighting or go back and see any moment of horror- to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, the battle of Stalingrad, battle of Berlin, China massacres/mass starvation, Ukraine  mass starvation/massacres, indochina horrors and every single human life of quiet desperation- or to any fantastic moment of human victory.

It's that simple case closed.  God made earth and the universe.  Case closed.

either ignorant or you're not.

JESUS!!  How do you get so stupid!!  

We've already said intelligence can be lots of things.   But if it means anything useful, intelligence has to imply some sort of consciousness, and thus (by every human standard) massive criminality.  Sure, we could be "wrong" (whatever that means).   But that would prove the point even more strongly, that the designer was at least criminally insane.

I'm not contending any sort of being, only noting that intelligence - in the usual sense of the word - requires some sort of consciousness.

But, if you want to argue intelligent design based on your ignorance, you've just defeated your own point.  Yet somehow you can't see this.

i'm god's attorney-in-fact.

of the anti-ID folks seems to be, "If I don't understand how the Intelligent Designer thinks, acts, etc. then it must not exist."


So, does it follow that if a 3 month old baby doesn't understand how a 747 operates, then it must not fly?

You just assume from your ignorance, that because it's complicated, it must have been an intelligent design.

That's as sensible as dreaming up any random creature, and alleging that it created the world.

Intelligent design is a possibility, but it sure left you out.

is ALL I ask.  that it be considered a possiblity.  That the anti-ID scientific status quo would deny that troubles many as close minded, as it should.

I think I'm due some credit here.

It's POSSIBLE that you're hallucinating yourself into existence!  and those last ones look one hell of a lot more probable than your 1st proposition.

Obviously, you don't consider anything outside your own head, and haven't thought about anything that's been said here.

So the obvious question is, why do you want the statement?  Do you think the probability is worth discussion?  There are anny number of creation myths, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth and some involve turtles, and there's no reason we couldn't come up with something far more bizarre, and postulate that as a possibility.  It COULD BE TRUE.  It's not worth the BANDWIDTH, but what the fuck.

What is your evidence for intelligent design?  That you don't understand what's going on?  That you can't imagine any other origin?  If you can't imagine another origin, then exactly how intelligent do you think you are?  How would you recognize intelligence if you saw it?

What you mean is not "intelligent design" - what you mean is, since you aren't sure how this happened, you think it was probably magic.  That's OK - magic pretty much covers anything we don't understand, so that puts you back where you started.  What about a turtle?  It could be a turtle, you know.



-- Modified on 5/12/2008 2:06:05 PM

a being that is more powerful or more intelligent or more whatever than the puny humankind.  why the fear?  

Turtle... sure why not- but a "superior turtle" one with capabilities - not the type that poops on your arm when you pick it up.

I've no argument against evolution or for that matter selective survival of the fittest... I've also no argument for the "Big bang" theory of the universe.... and I certainly believe that once upon a time great big dinosaurs roamed the earth - and that all the contintents were joined as one...   I believe all that.  I believe that all of these came into existance over time....  and further I believe that they all play by the rules (known or unknown) of the observable, physical universe....   but NONE of what this that I believe precludes the existance of intelligent design - that is, it neither supports nor disproves a conscious decision to create and create according to some fundamental rules of how things are to be.

Why is that belief so freightening to you - it does not inhibit my thinking - rather the possibility gives me one more option in my thinking ... and isn't that what we want - more options... espcially when working with cosmology?  remember - cosmology, evolution, these give us the how.... but not the why.

Most of what "goes wrong" with human behavior is due to:
1) mankind's inability to control his own nature to do harm
2) mankind's unwillingness to speak up against moral wrongs.
3) the exercise of free will - to choose to do either 1 or 2.

and no, not back where I started from... have you heard the arguments for the formation of life?  experimental pro-biology still cannot explain how we go from being able to create a few amino acids to a fully functional cell... heck - even to get DNA formed.  Your arguments resort to name calling pretty quickly, and what you cannot explain - well - you offer no solution to, but you deny that others might have an answer.... without name calling.  

This is not about religion - it IS about an alternative way of addressing the formation of the comos and its inhabitants.

what intelligent design is typical of, is people who mistake their stool samples for relevant evidence, instead of what they are, ie their fucking brain cells.

What's FRIGHTENING to me is that we may have discovered the 3rd most dangerous thing in the world, alongside 2/Lts with pens, LCpls with Thomsons, and Bizarro Dudes with spare time and a keyboard.

there was a time that it didn't exist?

I mean, apart from the knowledge in your bowels.

You are truly frightening.  It frightens me to think that some employer might trust you with a lightswitch, and maybe even some keys.  It scares the shit right out of me to think I might be on the same road with you.

your ignorance of phenomena is evidence of the involvement of magic?

Why can't you just say you're clueless, and leave it at that?  I mean, the rest of us have known that as long as we've been here.

You're nothing short of fuckin amazing, and indeed, powerful evidence of your own argument of the fundamental idiocy of institutional science.

He dunno where the earth comes from, so it mus be some rilly smart guy who did it!!

How do you know God isn't some moron who lost his ball?

See, you don't, do you?  So you need to postulate a "ball lost in game by moron" theory.

Without proof to the contrary anything is possible. Is it likely? is a different question, and is is it even remotely possible that one of the major religions got it right over all the rest? borders on the astronomical.

The one thing we know for sure, billions of people are wrong about the subject. Sometimes the smart thing to do is admit that you don't know the answer.

Why?

Because jack0 is an atheist. To him, this entire argument is about anti-atheism. For his mindset that translates to religion, which he hates. Or worse, it means there is a power greater than himself. Of course we know that all those assumptions on his part are pointless, but he doesn’t know that. So is therefore doomed to attempting to destroy the argument by any means at his disposal and presently that does not include rational thought.

but no more clueless than anyone else on the planet. Jusat because someone doesn't believe in God doesn't make them afraid of God. People that believe in little green men don't make me afraid of little green men, they do on occasion make me afraid of the "believers", especially when they are put in postitions of power, but they don't make me afraid of THEIR delusion.

Interject God for little green men, and you still don't have any stronger argument that your fairy tale is true. Nor does it make me any more afraid of the God of your delusions then the little green men I was referring too.

--how else can you explain Keanu Reeves?

evolution, not even evolution of species. And then there are others that are open minded. They understand and believe the basic and not so basic concepts of evolution. They also can see the pitfalls of the roots of evolution. Where evolution fails to satisfy they simply use that open mind to not rule out intelligent design as one of the possibilities, but not the only one. The whole point of the movie was to point out those on the evolution side that are as dogmatic as those opposing, to the point that they use their power to silence everyone not in agreement.

-- Modified on 5/12/2008 8:37:50 PM

make shit for difference - I mean, what are you going to do differently if you found out some turtle made your world?? and yet whole nations sweat blood and slaughter each other over it.

WTF?  Time for another drink.

you can't be asking these questions, or the Great Turtle will get pissed off.

Maybe come shit on your head.

to keep a pisspot of televangelists going for the rest of this lifetime, at least.

How much money do you think there is in this particular theology?  The start up costs are pretty minimal.  I drive down the street, and I see that any number of unknown fools can scrape together enough to lease warehouses based on the cash flow from ONE FUCKING DAY A WEEK, while the camera repair joint next door struggles with 400 sq feet working 6 days a week.


It really doesn't take a lot of brains to realize that the money is in one sort of theft or another.  There's really not much percentage in honesty.  You just have to make sure you're not pissing off people more powerful than you.  Don't be fucking with the BIG guys.

that somebody may not give a flying fuck about who begat whoever else?

I will concede and stipulate that Adam fucked his daughters to populate the world, if you will leave me in peace & quiet to watch the fucking game!

going to kill many many Chinamen.

are in no way affected by their belief about the origin of the cosmos, nor by their beliefs about ancient Greek literature, AND YET they will cheerfully send their social security checks to televangelists so they are more completely engaged in foaming at the mouth about shit that cannot help, and probably hurts their world, but mostly just enrages them.  

They will go to war with and slaughter each other over the hierarchy of prophets that do not make shit for difference except as tribal totems.

These are some seriously deficient folks, who should  not be subsidized, but should be encouraged to meet their virgins, or whatever else is waiting for them.

So when somebody starts talking about the possibility of Intelligent Design, we can be sure  we are talking about some SERIOUSLY underemployed people, who really need to GET A LIFE!   Go rescue a Chinaman or something.  Sheesh.  Teach an Afghan to read or something.  Buttfuck a buffalo - you know, something useful.

try living somewhere closer to the middle sometime. If you can stay there long enough you just might get it.

And once again, it's got nothing to do with religion, but since you hate religion so desperately I really can understand your confusion.

so the answer (following directly from Hawkings "A Brief History of Time") yea... I do think that there was a time that the Universe did not exist.  but that does not go against Intelligent design either... so what is the problem????

of cosmology) prove right or wrong - much as we cannot prove evolution right or wrong - it happens to fit "most" of the data (but not all).

Religion - as Jack0 correctly asserts is mankinds attempt to define the "intelligence" behind the "intelligent design" and is somewhat subject to all the inadequacies of ANYTHING manufactured by man....  Religion(s) fail mankind - all of them.  But that does not in of itself prove or disprove ID.  Why?  because religion is tainted by man's own inadequacies....   and I don't recall ever being taught - ANYWHERE BY ANYONE that the universe we currently inhabit is perfect....   but maybe I skipped that day.