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Help defend science: flunked not expelled
Author: cbit on April 18 2008 Viewed 7009 times. 29 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: EsromCole, yghartsyrt, bodo, Zanf, Analog, Logo, hecanjog, crabster, bleen, license, Otterfan, minisystem, mlbot, Jetsom, subset, 11t1, zach, monty, Spark, SenorFrio, Fredo, ignatius, delete, tantan, p, tylth, jp, sAMsKi, flies
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Apologies, a completely non-music related post.
The creationist/ID friendly pseudo documentary called Expelled will be screening near you soon. In the film, Ben Stein claims that scientists critical of the theory of evolution are being silenced by the powers behind "big science". Through ham fisted montages the film also tries to establish a link between the theory of evolution and Nazism and other genocidal ideologies.
Christian fundamentalists are lobbying hard to promote this film, even offering incentives to school groups to go and see it.
A counter site has been launched by the national center for science education that lists, and refutes, the lies and important omissions of the expelled film.
Publishing hyperlinks to the expelled exposed site, using 'expelled' as the visible link text, will help make the counter site more visible in search engines, and help ensure that people really do hear 'both sides' of the story. If you can, please help out.
Here's a review of the film:
link
Digging this page will help spread the word too (there's a subtle digg link beneath this blog post)
edit: "help defend science" == shorthand for 'help protect people from being robbed of the chance to understand the scientific method, to understand the crucial importance of evidence based reason in evaluating truth claims, to understand the principles or critical thought, to appreciate the enormous weight of evidence in support of evolutionary theory.' | |
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04/18/08
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tantan
ELECTRICITY IS BULLSHIT! Have you ever held electricity in your hand???? I DIDN'T THINK SO!
04/18/08
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zach
spark said: "You believe and take for granted all that you have not personally witnessed."
If you want to get into a Baudrillard-like discussion of reality itself being unprovable, that's something completely removed from (as tantan said) "provable scientific results" versus belief in deity. Otherwise, someone shouldn't have to personally handle a rock from Mars to know it exists.
I haven't touched any of the dudes from Foreigner but I know that they exist. Dave Coulier exists. Mark-Linn Baker exists. Science!
04/18/08
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tantan
I touch the dudes from Foreigner every night, they exist all right
04/18/08
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monty
interesting news item: link
bbc news site said: "A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face prosecution if they cannot justify their claims. Spiritualists are delivering a mass petition to Downing Street and complaining that a genuine religion is being discriminated against."
04/18/08
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cbit
mlbot said: "Cbit, I don't think anyone religious will stress over the appendix. there are much bigger concepts that have caused serious philisophical struggle."
Yes. But this kind of biological imperfection means that you have to do some serious metal gymnastics if you want to maintain that a perfect being designed us.
mlbot said: "Athiesm may try to explain it (shit happens) but doesn't do a very good job when it comes time to deal with it."
You're expecting atheism to do more than it's capable of i think. Atheism says 'i don't believe that a god exists', and nothing more. It's not a worldview or an explanatory framework or ideology etc. So it's certainly not capable of providing the kind of comfort that people derive from religion. It's much more modest than all that.
minisystem said: "when a layperson says 'I personally am not convinced of evolution' i raises my hackles a bit. after 10 years of studying biology i'm not even close to being up to snuff on contemporary evolutionary theory. but i'm happy to let the evolutionary biologists work it out and take their word for it."
I can imagine 
spark said: "Someone, has a vested interest in how that information is related back to the public, and it is those individuals who shape the idea of science in our lives."
Sure. Science is done by scientists who have biases, and funded organisations who have biases. The beauty of it is though, scientists have a system, the scientific method (including all that good stuff like double blind testing, peer review etc), which renders all that bias impotent when you adhere to it. No other 'way of knowing' has such a mechanism built in. This is why science, even when its done by scientists with agendas, is massively superior for getting to the facts about the world than anything else out there.
spark said: "Is Science (capital S), Making lives better for Humanity?"
Your science with a capital S is not the science i'm saying deserves protection.
tantan said: "The best example as far as I am concerned is the most obvious one: death. We have no fucking clue. Why not fill the gap with faith instead of fear?"
Here's a reason that I hope you'll agree is quite a good one: Because once you've legitimised faith by agreeing that 'belief in things unseen' is an acceptable alternative to plain old 'i don't know', you can no longer consistently oppose people who kill others because of their convictions about what awaits them in the afterlife.
04/18/08
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zach
lol ;)
tantan said: "'Urgent' was about me."
04/18/08
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tantan
hey cbit -- oh yeah, I agree completely and make the same point when preaching to the choir (hah, bad metaphor in this thread!).
However, I've had to relent a bit on this in the interests of understanding the psychology of a lot of people close to me, who choose faith over "I don't know," quite simply out of fear of the unknown. I can't do the same, but I understand why others do. If I see the same sort of psychology extended as you say, then clearly that's where I speak up with those folks.
04/18/08
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cbit
spark said: "In todays "modern" society believing in a religion shows a great deal of humility, which I respect."
Are you SERIOUS? You think that a point of view which says that the universe and everything in it was created for the benefit of human kind, and that you know what the creator of the universe wants from us, is humble? You've got to be pulling my leg man.
spark said: "Believing in science is unscientific, you either conduct scientific experiments and are a scientist or you believe in science like how a Christian believes in god."
Nonsense. All it takes to trust science is the observation, from first hand experience, that evidence based reasoning is the most reliable way we have of assesing truth claims. This is how we rationally put trust in the scientific method.
spark said: "You are merely a consumer of scientific facts, which you take for granted, and trust the source of the information as being objective and in your best interests because you "Believe". "
Do you know me? no. Strange then that you have me pegged as someone who uncritically accepts anything he reads as long as it confirms his preexisting convictions.
tantan said: "I definitely believe that reality is relative and subjective"
You know that universal skepticism is incoherent right? You may as well say 'i excuse myself from this discussion' ;)
04/18/08
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em978
i'm sure this lame crap won't change anyones mind...wiki had this which is far more shooking
"The film is largely devoted to portraying evolution as responsible for Communism, Fascism, atheism, eugenics, Planned Parenthood and, in particular, Nazi atrocities in the Holocaust.[14][38] This is a common creationist claim.[41] As Scientific American notes, the film almost always inaccurately labels evolution with the outdated term "Darwinism" to imply an ideology.[42] Christianity Today film critic Jeffrey Overstreet's "spoiler" describing the film’s specific content was also posted on the official Expelled website:[43]
“ Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.[44] ”
The film opens with images of the Berlin Wall, and repeatedly uses what Richard Dawkins describes as the amateurish "Lord Privy Seal" technique of illustrating every point with images, including a guillotine, fist fights, and above all Nazi gas chambers and concentration camps.[45] In the film, intelligent design proponent David Berlinski says that Darwinism was a "necessary though not sufficient" cause for the Holocaust, and Stein presses the message of evolution being responsible without acknowledging more direct causes such as the economic ruin of Germany after the World War I and the racism and anti-semitism dating back over seven centuries before Charles Darwin, particularly Martin Luther's book On the Jews and Their Lies.[41][8] In fact, the works of Darwin were burned by the Nazi Party.[46] The same purported linking of Hitler to Darwin was made in a Coral Ridge Ministries film which the Anti-Defamation League criticized as "an outrageous and shoddy attempt by D. James Kennedy to trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust. Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people."[41]
From a scientific viewpoint, any distorted misunderstanding of evolution incorporated in Hitler's thinking is irrelevant to the scientific validity of Darwin's theory of evolution.[8] Michael Shermer, who was interviewed for the film, wrote of this:
“ When Stein interviewed me and asked my opinion on the impact of Darwinism on culture, he seemed astonishingly ignorant of the many other ways that Darwinism has been used and abused by political and economic ideologues of all stripes.... Because Stein is a well-known economic conservative... I pointed out how the captains of industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries justified their beliefs in laissez faire capitalism through the social Darwinism of 'survival of the fittest corporations.' ... Scientific theorists cannot be held responsible for how their ideas are employed in the service of non-scientific agendas.[7]"
this is evil
04/18/08
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Spark
In no way am I denying the need for or benefits of scientific inquiry or even theoretical science.
We all depend on that.
ML quit being a poop and youiALREADY think I'm better than you.. or else you wouldn't get all pissy pants about everything I post.
04/18/08
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tantan
I should add -- I also have not found that choosing faith in these cases necessarily leads to fundamentalism, at least not to a violent degree. I think that it is very important that we not equate the two. Again, religious extremity is its own beast, and only a terrible few follow their faith that far.
04/18/08
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tantan
cbit said: "You know that universal skepticism is incoherent right? You may as well say 'i excuse myself from this discussion' ;)"
For me it simply boils down to an earnest belief that who we are -- intellectually, emotionally, etc. -- frames our perceptions and responses to everything. This does not affect the hard cold fact of physical reality, of course. I needed to extend the thought, however, in the interests of finding some philosophical common ground with Sparky.
04/18/08
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tantan
Spark said: "In no way am I denying the need for or benefits of scientific inquiry or even theoretical science.
We all depend on that.
ML quit being a poop and youiALREADY think I'm better than you.. or else you wouldn't get all pissy pants about everything I post."
oh for fuck's sake you bratty provocateur, lay off of it. He's obviously already off crying in a corner, leave him alone!
04/18/08
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tantan
Can I add that we are all a mess of hopeless contrarians and shouldn't be allowed to speak to each other?
04/18/08
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cbit
spark said: "But the fact remains. Have you ever seen one? Have you ever touched one? Personally?
You are exactly the same as some god loving Christian is what I'm saying ML. "
Spark. If you think about this for a while more you'll notice its not the same thing at all. It's important to distinguish two separate meanings of the word faith:
Faith in an authority (small f): this is the belief, based on evidence and reason, starting with first hand sense information, that source X is reliable. These beliefs are provisional, certainty in them scales according to the strength of the evidence.
Faith in things unseen, unknowable (big F): this is belief in something despite total lack of evidence. Furthermore, no evidence for this thing is possible, since if it were available, it would cease to be Faith. This is the irrational territory of religion.
tantan said: "I should add -- I also have not found that choosing faith in these cases necessarily leads to fundamentalism, at least not to a violent degree. I think that it is very important that we not equate the two. Again, religious extremity is its own beast, and only a terrible few follow their faith that far."
[emphasis added] Can you explain then the fundamental difference that there is between them? As far as i can tell both groups think they know what god wants from them, they just have different ideas about what that is.
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