56 Responses to “Ben Stein, Scientific Crusader”

1. ParrotLover77 Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

   Wait. At the ending, didn’t Stein just exercise the right he’s complaining he doesn’t have?

   Also, do all evolution deniers have the same hand-outs? His interview was almost verbatim what the trolls posts here at bay-of-fundie when they grace us with their presence! The only thing missing was the out of context quote mining.

   Last, you missed about three “pot calling kettle” opportunities in Stein’s interview. That can never be overstated enough. When a fundie uses the “stuck in their ways” argument, it is always time for a good, long, hearty laugh.

2. Troy Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

   Didn’t know he was a fundie (figured he was Jewish, are there Jewish fundies?). He is an intelligent and knowledgeable person self deprecating and amusing. I guess I’m a bit shocked he’s an IDer. Blinders can shackle even a well refined mind.

3. ericsan Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

   Troy, you’re only shocked because you know him from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. When you hear the “real” Ben Stein (he’s been on Bill Maher a few times and he’s had a few “opinion pieces” here and there) you realize that it’s just a veneer and the guy is batshit crazy. The “self deprecating” bit is an act. The guy is a pompous, arrogant prick that makes Rush Limbaugh sound intelligent and reserved in comparison. I have to admit, the ID support is a new one to me, but I’m not surprised, he’s just mouthing some right wing candidate’s bullet points.

4. Thanny Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

   Stein is actually correct about the term “species” not being well-defined. But that’s to be expected in an evolutionary history of life.

   For an example, consider the fact that for any living chimpanzee, you can construct an unbroken chain from that chimpanzee, through its mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and so on, down to its 500,000-great-grandmother or so, which will also be your 400,000-great-grandmother or so, back up through your grandmother and mother, to you.

   We can easily say humans and chimpanzees are separate species, only because all the forms intermediate between them their most recent common ancestor have died.

   If some god created everything as specific “kinds”, however, there should be no difficulty labeling every single living organism, living and dead. That’s not what we observe in existing forms of life today, and even less so in what the fossil record has preserved for us.

5. Jianying Ji Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 7:08 pm

   I don’t understand why fundies keep thinking that marxists or communists would be pro-evolution. Both china and soviet union at the height of ideological fervor was decidedly anti-evolution. Both countries labeled evolution “bourgeoisie” and materialistic and capitalist theories to keep the proletariat down. Studying evolution would have landed you in jail or worse. In soviet union we have the infamous lysenko who wreaked much damage by trying to teach summer wheat to be winter wheat. (After all there’s that intelligence in each cell which then would certainly be amendable to teaching, the old soviet labor camp way.)

   Just like the fundies, these communist ideologues thought to taylor reality to fit their world view. If reality didn’t comply, well reality obvious has become counter-revolutionaries and must be subdued and conquered.

   I would love to see in a contra-factual world where lysenko and ben stein sitting together, and ben horrified at the fact that lysenko agrees with him.

6. Brian Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

   Ben Stein, I really do think I could win your money.

   What is so goddamned frustrating about these people is that 1) evolution is not a difficult concept to grasp, 2) they absolutely refuse to be shown that they’re wrong, and 3) they are hell-bent on stuffing this tripe down our kids’ throats. This is why I believe that religion will be our civilization’s downfall. In so many ways it stifles and suffocates human intellectual endeavors and blunts our curiosity. These people care about nothing more than perpetuating their infantile notions through the next generation. Dawkins was right when he compared religion to a virus. And the only vaccine is reason and critical thinking.

7. matt Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

   As a former lawyer, stein should realize that the first amendment right to freedom of speech has nothing to do with this issue. You do not have a constitutional right to have your crackpot superstitious belief in pseudoscience endorsed by the scientific community or taught in public classrooms. The first amendment only comes into play when the government censors speech - not when your idea is laughed out of the room by people who are smarter than you. It might be that ID proponents such as Stein are deliberately invoking the 1st amendment in an effort to (a) mislead stupid people and/or (b) re-tool their attempt to force ID into public school classrooms.

   Remember, that was the same strategy used by the religious nutjob science teachers in several of the earlier creationism v evolution/ school board court cases. These “teachers” actually tried to say that they had a first amendment right to teach creationism as a form of “free expression.” Luckily, i don’t think any of the courts were so retarded as to buy this argument, but it was an interesting strategy. Of course, creationism has since evolved (ha) into ID in an attempt to pass itself off as science, so proponents of ID may think it’s a good time to take another swing at the courts using a similar approach. Not at all likely to work, but you never know what these guys will try next.

   Ben stein may be deranged by his beliefs but he is not stupid. Whatever his motives may be, he is obviously being deliberately deceptive by invoking “free speech” rhetoric in this scientific discussion.

8. Daniel Says:
   January 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

   I don’t really understand why Creationists are always lumping evolution with communism. Evolution (more precisely the way Creationists think it works) always struck me as Capitalist. And I’m pretty sure Jesus was decidedly anti-capitalist. It makes me wonder if they ever stopped to think.

9. S. Haqdsoni Says:
   January 19th, 2008 at 12:17 am

   “Didn’t know he was a fundie (figured he was Jewish, are there Jewish fundies?).”

   There are. And not just in Conservative Judaism or Orthodox Judaism (i.e. occasionally in Reform). But it’s uncommon. It has to do with
   Darwinism > White Supremacy > Hitler > Holocaust > Darwinism Bad = Genesis Literal
   As the first book of the Torah, and written by Jews FOR the Jewish religion, you are of course going to have some literalists somewhere in the Judaic community.

10. Jason Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 3:52 am

    Stein Says:

    “We want all our rights, not some of them, all our rights to free speech.
    We want them here in America, and we want them now.”

    So, does the right of free speech include the right to pass barefaced lies? OK, the answer to that is self evident. Yes, it does.

    So in essence, we come to this: Ben Stein, among thousands of others, pisses in the fountain of truth, and does it with the protection of the US constitution, and does so at a time when a majority, according to some surveys, agree with him.

    So here’s the plan. If you’re not entirely insane, leave. Leave these morons to rot in peace. Secede from the Union. If your state won’t or can’t secede, move to one which can or will. Leave the morons in the red states and consolidate on the coasts. Then, once you have your newly independent states, form a new Federation, one which intrinsically values truth above lies. Free speech is all very well, but you need a “lies amendment”, and the only way you’re getting that is with a new government.

    But keep the nukes. PLEASE keep the nukes.

11. Reid Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 6:51 am

    It’s always sad to see someone with talent go quite this crazy. Oh well — it is was it is.

    @Jason: the whole “leave” thing. Why not just start talking more? It’s tempting, but disengaging will likely make the problem worse. We need more conversation, more interaction, not less. Sometimes it will be stressful, but we’ll have to have it sooner or later.

    Better sooner.

12. Mark Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    Read Naomi Klein’s book “Disaster Capitalism”.

    There are “Fundies” and there are those who are better described as “Fundie Manipulators”. Ben Stein is more the latter than the former.

    Naomi’s book will show you just how brilliant the “Fundie Manipulators” have been over the last 35 years.

    These manipulators aren’t crazy, and they aren’t stupid.

13. Scott McAdams Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    Isn’t an impassioned, point-by-point attack on Ben’s position the ultimate irony? If what Ben is saying is false, there is no reason to worry that someone might actually believe him: In the marketplace of ideas bad ideas tend to fade away naturally. Anyone who passionately defends their “belief” in Darwin’s theories and attacks religious people looks as ridiculous to me as the people who argue that their own personal religious belief is the all-encompasing truth everyone else must believe. I believe that everyone–creationist to scientist—-makes up their mind first if they WANT a God to exist then invents rationalizations pro or con afterwards. That’s not science, it’s belief. Watching both sides of people who “know” they have the answer arguing with one another is just dumb. The Bible has well documented flaws, Darwin’s theories have flaws as well. (There is no EVIDENCE of macroevolution; your belief in it is pure faith.) No one among us knows the answer. Mute your own inflated ego for a moment and you’ll know that “no one knows the answer” is really the truth ..so stop pretending to others and lying to yourself that either a man in vestments or a man in a lab coat has all the answers. YOU DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T KNOW. It’s okay. Now stop telling everyone else what to think, evolutionists, you’re as bad as the door-knocking Christians. Maybe worse.

14. Mark Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

    Scott,

    Hitlerian ideology nearly decimated the planet. It was factually dubious.

    Galileo was muffled by the Church setting back progress possibly for a thousand years. That Church dogma was also factually dubious. (I think it was Galileo’s contention that the earth revolved around the sun that eventually did him in.)

    And Marxism continues to enslave when Marx meant for it to “free” people.

    In other words, sometimes “false” assumptions can succeed for a very long time in the marketplace of ideas. So sometimes arguing against such ideas point by point is a good thing. We don’t always have time to just let the “free market” of ideas sort it out.

    As for the various arguments in the above comments, I think you profoundly missed the point. Ben Stein is free to believe and say anything he wants. What Ben is not free to do is force those beliefs down our throats and THAT is the gist of almost every comment above. We commenters are not under any circumstance telling Ben or anyone else what to believe. But we do fear that his ideas will set back science, a la the “muffling” of Galileo.

    And as for “Darwin’s theories”, surely you realize that his concepts are 150 years old. Current evolutionary theories (using the scientific use of the term theory) is not embraced out of a “belief” (using the religious use of the term belief). Scientists conclude that evolutionary theory is a correct explanation for the world because that is where factual conclusions take them. So yes, scientists “believe” that evolution is true. But that is an entirely different mechanism than a “Belief” as used by religion.

    And the evidence for Macroevolution is considered by actual scientists to not only exist, but to be astoundingly overwhelming.

    But I’m not telling you, Ben, nor anyone else what to think. But if you or anyone else wants to put certain subjects into science classes, you need at least a semblance of evidence that it belongs there. Ben Stein, et al, have not done that. Not even close. But Ben Stein, et al, have been very astute at the use of false and shoddy arguments. Pointing out those false arguments is every bit my right to point that out as it is for him to make them.

15. Brian Edwards Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    @ Scott Macadams - ummm… once again reinforcing the very problem with ID / creationists, you even make the statement in your rambling post that “I believe that everyone–creationist to scientist—-makes up their mind first if they WANT a God to exist then invents rationalizations pro or con afterwards.”… Holy Crap… what rationalism THAT is. So you believe it, so must it be true, right? THAT statement is at the heart of every ID creationist’s argument. No science required. In fact, trying to USE science to prove (or disprove) creationism is an affront to the term “faith” in the first place… so on a very basic level, science is subconsciously tossed out the window from the start for this group.

    Well, I’m here to tell you, HORSEPUCKY. From my own personal experience, I was a born Roman Catholic, alter boy, was Confirmed, and spent the vast bulk of my early childhood believing and never so much as questioning. I would actually say I was never even given the choice to think otherwise based on my family and surroundings. What brought me around was SCIENCE. PERIOD. I got into science heavily in High School, and the more I learned about the BASIC scientific principles of hypothesis, test, control, result, and independent confirmation, the more I began to realize that NONE of what I was taught about the origins and development of life on this planet could ever possibly fit into any sort of scientific principal. And I learned more, and more, and began to read more and more about the subject… I began to question why the very MENTION of God (in the Christian context) was foreign to the entire population of the WORLD at the heights of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires. Was God hiding? Not ready to bless us all yet? What gives? Or was it that the peoples of those times used their theistic beliefs to shelter themselves from the things they did not understand, as best they could? THAT is the very basis of religion in this world… the “evolution” if you’ll excuse the pun, of religion… religion has changed over the years as has our understanding of the world (see how the Christian churches responded to Galileo and re-wrote the Bible once they realized that a geo-centric universe just wouldn’t hold up any longer). When it became obvious to humans that Zeus was not flinging lightning down from Mt. Olympus, the theology died out. But the NEED to comfort ourselves from solitude and fear, and to bring meaning to things we can’t understand, still persisted… but lest we be ridiculed by proposing deities whose existence could easily be disproved (by climbing to the top of Mt. Olympus, for example), we needed to conjure up something far more obtuse… something more spiritual than physical. You could actually TOUCH the old Greek gods… you could physically interact with them… this was both their appeal and their downfall. The belief in a single, all seeing, all knowing deity who was by definition impossible to see… why, that was just vague enough to defy scrutiny. You can claim you have seen God, or talked to him, without ever having to prove it. Those whom God has chosen, will never question it. Never did I understand all of this as clearly as I did once I began to embrace science.

    And then I began to read about the history of Christianity and the Crusades and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and I read a book by Eric Russell Chamberlin called “The Bad Popes”… I did what any good scientist would do, and tried to give both sides of the issue equal time… tried to see what compelling arguments could be made to support what I once believed without question. And I could not.

    So you see, my choice to NOT believe in the ID / creationist way of thinking was NOT a pre-determined choice one way or the other… it was an inexorable conclusion I had no choice but to come to after years of research, study, and analysis.

    I consider myself to be a very tolerant man. And I do not begrudge anyone their beliefs, although I may find them misguided. However, I draw the line at your “YOU DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T KNOW” craptacular statement. IDists use this term regularly to bolster their position that evolution and ID should be given equal time in the classrooms of America. But the problem is with the statement itself. It’s just not as SIMPLE as “YOU DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T KNOW”. See, with ID, they DO KNOW… if they DIDN’T know, they would have no choice but to try and PROVE or DISPROVE it, and since the existence of God is impossible to put to scientific methods of testing, that’s not an option. So, IDists return to “WE DO KNOW”. Evolution… perhaps it’s NOT the end-all, be-all solution to the puzzle of the creation of life… but it’s pretty damn close, and as has been pointed out here already, is constantly being improved upon. It is science at its best… being put to the test not just by one group of people with one system of pre-determined outcome beliefs, but by millions of scientists around the world with NO RELIGIOUS AGENDA whatsoever. It has been tested, and retested… it is science. ID / Creation theory is supported solely by a BOOK written thousands of years ago, and has no more place in the Science class being TAUGHT as science then a book on the seasons being caused by Persephone eating the friggin pomegranate. And THAT is where I have to draw the line. I have a six year old daughter and I do NOT want our PUBLICLY funded schools using PUBLIC money to fund the teaching of NON-SCIENCE as SCIENCE. And the fact that this view is supported ONLY by peoples of a specific religious bias, the SPECIFICALLY precludes it from belonging in the public schools by our own constitution. I just can’t tolerate that.

    And THAT, Mr. Macadams, was NOT a position I pre-determined myself to have.

    Sorry for the long post… but I just had to respond. I hope you all enjoyed it.

16. Deb T. Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    “There is no EVIDENCE of macroevolution”

    Double-check your source. This news would be revolutionary to the field and to the building-fulls of evidence showing otherwise. Somebody simply thought, rather than spend a portion of your life investigating this claim, you’d simply buy it. It takes a long time to study evolution due to the size of the subject. It inly takes a minute to tell someone “God did it”. Therefore, it’s very easy to teach ID (et al), knowing that it’s simply easier to convince/control the populace with a one minute version.

17. CGM3 Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    So, if I advance the theory that what we call “evolution” has actually been the result of pixies influencing the development and termination of various species with their magic, and it’s rejected by the scientific establishment and viewed with ridicule and derision, then I must be the victim of a vast and unified conspiracy?

    The pixies will be so disappointed.

18. VR Says:
    January 19th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    By far, the most telling statement about his belief system was:

    “Stein: Third is, if they acknowledge the possibility of intelligent design and that intelligent design is God, then they may think God has moral expectations of them and they may be falling short of those moral expectations, and they may be worried about some sort of judgment upon them.”

    This argument only makes sense to someone with a particular set of religious beliefs. One can accept the science of evolution and also believe in a god with moral expectations. Or, one can believe in ID, reject the science of evolution, and believe in a god that has no concept of human morality.

19. Irma Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 2:08 am

    I don’t get it.

    Honestly, I am at my wit’s end with this entire issue… I am living a sort of cognitive dissonance: I choose to stand by the notion that Humans are essentially good, sane, and aware, unless afflicted by some severe debilitating malady.

    …Yet I run into yet another ID-championer every bloody day, and at this point, the quantity and diversity of these individuals is grinding against every ounce of hope in humankind I harbor.

    Why do they do it? Why do they willfully compartmentalize their brains in such a destructive fashion? Don’t they ever wake up in cold sweats, wondering about the larger picture–about what they are doing to humanity? NO ONE IS *THIS* STUPID.

    I am going to experience SOME sort of mental breakdown VERY soon. I will either cry, scream, and give up, resigning myself to a life of miserable cynicism and bitterness, or I will destroy myself. I cannot read another display of this magnitude and endure.

20. Stevo R. Apt-Title Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 3:35 am

    #
    So the Discovery Institute fundamentalist liars are calling their movie “Expelled.”

    Is that subtitled :

    “From the bowels of a bull suffering chronic diarrhea?”

    ——————————

    Hang in there Irma.

    Bush the Lesser is departing soon - not departing as he should by beingimpeached and tried for warcrimes (& hell only knows why not!) bvut departingand fadingaway along with all the neo-con loonies and Religious Wrong nutters he rode in on … lets hope.

    Perhaps with a new Democratic Party President in power shortly (oh yegods lets hope so!) things will improve and Amercia will again exhibit its best rather thanworst aspects to the world.

    Take a breath.

    This too shall pass … as all things do from Pluto’s planetary status toZarathustra’s might.

21. Stevo R. Salaam-Yall Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 3:58 am

    On January 18th, 2008 at 3:55 pm Troy asked : “Are there Jewish fundies?”

    Sure are. They’re called Israelis - & Neo-conservatives & Jewish-American lobbyists.

    Seriously, the most dangerous , intolerant bits of the Bible come from the OT - the Jewish Torah / Talmud. Its full of ugly, racist, fundamentalist tribal things like God demanding the extermination - the genocide of the Canaanite civilisations & people’s so his “Chosen People - 12 tribes of itinerant stiff-necked goat-herders - can rule their “Promised Land” which was, (like with the Palestineans today), news to the pre-existing indigenous population. In fact one of the tribes they Jews /Israelites fought was the much more advanced & often wronglymaligned Philistines -the ancestors of today’s Palestineans.

    More examples? Try tehse 3 -all in the Old Testament & Talmud / Torah :

    1) The “prophet” Samuel personally beheaded the King of the Amalekite tribe after King Saul tried to spare his life - & condemned Saul to death for attempting to show mercy.

    2) The tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out by the other Israelite tribes after a war sparked by some of the Benjaminites mass-raping & murdering a concubine (slave-girl) of a Levite who sacrificed her to spare himself - then cut her corpse into bits and sent the bits to the other tribes calling for revenge. Then to stop the tribeof Benjamin going extinct

    3) Moses - post Sermon on the mount - came back down to find some of the Israelites worshipping Baal. (a rival god -Yahweh / Jehovah was then only one of many) So he had them all killed. (Or was that the loving, forgiving, merciful god? I forget which now -anyway ..)

    If I’m allowed to post a link (hope & think I am, my apologies if not) & if it works I suggest y’all check out : ‘An open letter to Dr Laura’ on fundamnetalist insanity & a reply to one homophobic Jewish extremist :

    http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/laura.htm

    Some Jewish nations, groups and individuals - to the eternal shame of the religion they claim to represent - haven’t come very far since.

22. Stevo R. Salaam-Yall Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 4:18 am

    Oh yeah Levite = preist, one of the 12 tribes of the ancient Israelites for those who don’t know.

    There’s one (I think Jewish) writer (whose name I forget, alas, books from library not mine) whose written biographies of King David, Moses and an excellent, very readable book called (perhaps unpromisingly) “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” from where I got a lot of all that plus more - & confirmed it later.

    3 further examples of Biblical insanely cruel punishments or general sickness -

    1) Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt for looking back at home while god destroyed it,

    2) King David’s daughter Tamar being raped by her brother Amnon - who is then killed by another brother Absalom. Absalom then rebels, screws his father’s harem in public on the rooftop of David’s palace and is killed by King David’s general Joab.

    3) An Israelite warrior in the book of Judges J-something? Z-something? Japeth maybe?) promising to sacrifice the first living thing he meets in exchange for success in battle, winning the battle, being met first by his own daughter -and keeping his promise by sacrificing her! (Oh yeah, he goes unpunished if losing your daughter as a human sacrifice to Jehovah /Yahweh /Allah / Christ to god - like how Isaac nearly died - counts as unpunished…)

    No I am not making any of this up. Promise.

    Yes, religion esp. the one (shared) Abrahamic god Judeao-Christian-Muslim one seems pretty bloody sick to me at times …

    If you’re religious & offended by this then I’m sorry but it is all there in the joint holy text of teh OT /Talmud / Quran & I don’t mean to upset you but point it out as it really does bug me & turn me right off organised religion …

    Salaam, Shalom, peace (same meaning to all 3 words)

    Amen.

    Ye gods!

23. Stevo R. Salaam-Yall Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 4:19 am

    There’s also this brillant quote from my favourite author Isaac Asimov which Ijustcan’t resist posting here :

    “ I am not in actual fact a Zionist. I don’t think that Jews have some sort of ancestral right to take over a land because their ancestors lived there 1,900 years ago. … Nor do I consider to be legally valid the biblical promises by God that the land of Canaan would belong to the Children of Israel forever. … But don’t Jews deserve a homeland? Actually, I feel that no human group deserves a “homeland” in the usual sense of the word. The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other considerations. … I am not a Zionist, then, because I don’t believe in nations … There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”

    - Source : Isaac Asimov, Pages 419-421, ‘ I Asimov : A memoir’ chapter 7 ‘anti-Semitism’, Bantam Books , 1995.

24. Shalom Minnasan Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 4:26 am

    Back to the topic :

    If folks are curious an excerpt from the ‘Open letter to Dr Laura’ link explains what spark that classic item :

    ***

    For those of you that are not following the recent controversy that has to do with Laura Schlessinger: she is a radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. Paramount Television Group is currently producing a “Dr. Laura” television show. Recently she has become a convert to Judaism, and now she is Ba’al T’shuvah. Recently, she has made some statements about homosexuals that has caused the Canadian anti-hate laws to censure her… The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura which was posted on the internet…

    ***

    So there’s evidence of at least one Jewish extremist spewing hate into an already hate-saturated globe for y’all.

25. Shalom One-last-thing Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 4:49 am

    One last thing because I forgot to finish one of my real Biblical story examples :

    The tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out by the other Israelite tribes after a war sparked by some of the Benjaminites mass-raping & murdering a concubine (slave-girl) of a Levite (Ancient Jewish Preist caste) who sacrificed her to spare himself :

    & a couple of strangers - a Benjaminite mob rocks up at this house where they’re staying - calls to have the men, yes men, brought out so they can be raped. The Levite refuses to surrender the strangers but offers them his concubine for their sexual gratification instead. She’s given to them, they pack-rape & murder her and in the morning they find her dead, stretched across the ‘lintel’ (doorstep?) of the house.

    The Levite cuts her corpse into bits and sends the bits to the other 10 tribes calling for revenge. The other tribes slaughter nearly all the Benjaminites - & all their women - Then to stop the tribe of Benjamin going extinct …

    … *another* Isrealite village (Jabesh-Gilead if memory serves?) is plundered and destroyed and _its_ women handed over to the few surviving Benjaminite trbiesmen as their “wives.” King Saul later comes from this tribe to be the first Jewish King. The Levite and the strangers (angels?) go unpunished (as far as I recall) for their cowardly, selfish & tribe-hate-inciting actions.

    & that’s in the “Good Book”, the supposed Moral handbook for everyone!

    Thatcomes from the ‘Book of Judges’ chapter in Old Testament / Torah-Talmud & is retold superbly in that “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” book I mentioned.

    The story (and its link to Mark Twain of all people!) is also mentioned and discussed in this excellent novel examining censorship :

    “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book” by Nat Hentoff, Penguin books, 1982.

    - which I’d strongly reccomend if you can find a copy!

26. Sources Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 5:43 am

    See pages 126-130 in “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book” by Nat Hentoff, Penguin books, 1982.

    See the Bible, Chapter Nineteen (19th) Book of Judges (Judges 19) for the Butchered Concubine’s Revenge. (Where the concubine had run away from her Levite [Preist tribe/caste] master. The Levite went to take her home & was doing so when the Benjaminite-Israelite tribe attacked, he gave her to them, she got pack-raped, murdered & chopped into pieces as a bloody call for vengaence.)

    & see the Bible, Thirteenth (13th) Chapter in the second book of Samuel (Samuel 2 : 13?) for King David’s son, Amnon, raping his sister, Tamar.

    See further in Samuel, Judges and Kings for all sorts of weird sick ugly shit like Absalom screwing his daddy’s harem in public after killing his rapist brother Amnon, King David arranging the death of a cuckolded husband, Uriah the Hittite, so he can get away with getting Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, pregnant & so forth …

    & See the book of Leviticus generally for weird, bizarre, pointless & brutally punished obscure Jewish laws. (still current to fundamentalists?)

    & God (aka Yahweh /Jehovah / Allah / Jesus Christ & Holy Spirit) is a meant to have chosen the Jews as some sort of specially good race or tribe or 12!!!???

    & The Bible is meant to advocate love & forgiveness (like stoning people for swearing? Or eating shellfish? Or having sideburns trimmed?) & consistent moral ethical codes (”Thall Shalt NOT Suffer a Witch to Live / Thall Shalt NOT kill!)

    Hmmn …. On reflection, right now, I’m tempted to put the morals of “Debby does Dallas” above those the Jewish-Christian-Muslim Holy text!

    Parts of it anyway.

    To be fair, there *are* some great lines & ethical lessons in the Bible too…

27. Scott McAdams Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Funny how everyone assumes I’m an advocate of ID.

    I’m not.

    There are more than two sides here. It’s not ID or Science. Those are just two of the many options available to thinkers.

    My position is that you evolutionists are just as bad as the Christians in telling other people what to think. Apparently, many of you aren’t self-aware enough to see how much you resemble them in your preachiness.

    I won’t worship Darwin. Sorry! He borrowed many of his ideas from The Origin of Species from other writings. The Origin of Species is not my bible. However, just like the bible, we don’t have to interpret everything Darwin said literally for the book to have significant meaning.

    I expect long, empassioned responses to this how I must be stupid because I don’t worship what YOU call science.

    Real science remains objective. This vehement advocation of Darwin is not objective. Therefore, logically, picking on Ben Stein for believing in religion is not science. It’s advocacy. Evolutionists are supposed to be the “smart” ones…why don’t you see that?

    Let him believe what he wants, and I’ll stop picking on evolutionists. Keep picking on him, and to give you a well deserved taste of your own medicine, I will keep attacking your God: Chuck Darwin. Oops. I used Chuck’s name in vain. Does this mean I’m banned from the Science fair?

28. casey Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Scott MacAdams, did you read this?

    “#

    @ Scott Macadams - ummm… once again reinforcing the very problem with ID / creationists, you even make the statement in your rambling post that “I believe that everyone–creationist to scientist—-makes up their mind first if they WANT a God to exist then invents rationalizations pro or con afterwards.”… Holy Crap… what rationalism THAT is. So you believe it, so must it be true, right? THAT statement is at the heart of every ID creationist’s argument. No science required. In fact, trying to USE science to prove (or disprove) creationism is an affront to the term “faith” in the first place… so on a very basic level, science is subconsciously tossed out the window from the start for this group.

    Well, I’m here to tell you, HORSEPUCKY. From my own personal experience, I was a born Roman Catholic, alter boy, was Confirmed, and spent the vast bulk of my early childhood believing and never so much as questioning. I would actually say I was never even given the choice to think otherwise based on my family and surroundings. What brought me around was SCIENCE. PERIOD. I got into science heavily in High School, and the more I learned about the BASIC scientific principles of hypothesis, test, control, result, and independent confirmation, the more I began to realize that NONE of what I was taught about the origins and development of life on this planet could ever possibly fit into any sort of scientific principal. And I learned more, and more, and began to read more and more about the subject… I began to question why the very MENTION of God (in the Christian context) was foreign to the entire population of the WORLD at the heights of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires. Was God hiding? Not ready to bless us all yet? What gives? Or was it that the peoples of those times used their theistic beliefs to shelter themselves from the things they did not understand, as best they could? THAT is the very basis of religion in this world… the “evolution” if you’ll excuse the pun, of religion… religion has changed over the years as has our understanding of the world (see how the Christian churches responded to Galileo and re-wrote the Bible once they realized that a geo-centric universe just wouldn’t hold up any longer). When it became obvious to humans that Zeus was not flinging lightning down from Mt. Olympus, the theology died out. But the NEED to comfort ourselves from solitude and fear, and to bring meaning to things we can’t understand, still persisted… but lest we be ridiculed by proposing deities whose existence could easily be disproved (by climbing to the top of Mt. Olympus, for example), we needed to conjure up something far more obtuse… something more spiritual than physical. You could actually TOUCH the old Greek gods… you could physically interact with them… this was both their appeal and their downfall. The belief in a single, all seeing, all knowing deity who was by definition impossible to see… why, that was just vague enough to defy scrutiny. You can claim you have seen God, or talked to him, without ever having to prove it. Those whom God has chosen, will never question it. Never did I understand all of this as clearly as I did once I began to embrace science.

    And then I began to read about the history of Christianity and the Crusades and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and I read a book by Eric Russell Chamberlin called “The Bad Popes”… I did what any good scientist would do, and tried to give both sides of the issue equal time… tried to see what compelling arguments could be made to support what I once believed without question. And I could not.

    So you see, my choice to NOT believe in the ID / creationist way of thinking was NOT a pre-determined choice one way or the other… it was an inexorable conclusion I had no choice but to come to after years of research, study, and analysis.

    I consider myself to be a very tolerant man. And I do not begrudge anyone their beliefs, although I may find them misguided. However, I draw the line at your “YOU DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T KNOW” craptacular statement. IDists use this term regularly to bolster their position that evolution and ID should be given equal time in the classrooms of America. But the problem is with the statement itself. It’s just not as SIMPLE as “YOU DON’T KNOW. THEY DON’T KNOW”. See, with ID, they DO KNOW… if they DIDN’T know, they would have no choice but to try and PROVE or DISPROVE it, and since the existence of God is impossible to put to scientific methods of testing, that’s not an option. So, IDists return to “WE DO KNOW”. Evolution… perhaps it’s NOT the end-all, be-all solution to the puzzle of the creation of life… but it’s pretty damn close, and as has been pointed out here already, is constantly being improved upon. It is science at its best… being put to the test not just by one group of people with one system of pre-determined outcome beliefs, but by millions of scientists around the world with NO RELIGIOUS AGENDA whatsoever. It has been tested, and retested… it is science. ID / Creation theory is supported solely by a BOOK written thousands of years ago, and has no more place in the Science class being TAUGHT as science then a book on the seasons being caused by Persephone eating the friggin pomegranate. And THAT is where I have to draw the line. I have a six year old daughter and I do NOT want our PUBLICLY funded schools using PUBLIC money to fund the teaching of NON-SCIENCE as SCIENCE. And the fact that this view is supported ONLY by peoples of a specific religious bias, the SPECIFICALLY precludes it from belonging in the public schools by our own constitution. I just can’t tolerate that.

    And THAT, Mr. Macadams, was NOT a position I pre-determined myself to have.

    Sorry for the long post… but I just had to respond. I hope you all enjoyed it.”

    This was a very good response to your original foray into what you call “thinking,” and I think it holds as an excellent response still to your last post. Why don’t you read it this time?

29. Elf M. Sternberg Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    The cancer claim came from a poster Jonathan Wells put up at ID seminar about four years ago. He claimed that if three important things about the centriole could be proven true, then he would have demonstrated that intelligent design was a better model for the development of cancer than evolutionary biology.

    Sadly for Wells, no research to demonstrate any of the claims he needed demonstrated has since been forthcoming.

    Now, you can say two things about this. First, you can say that big science is not doing the research because they’d rather see money foregone and people die than have a better tool for understanding cancer than evolutionary biology. OR, you can say that even a grad student can see Wells’s three requirements are so bloody unlikely to produce meaningful results, and/or that his conclusion based upon that research is so completely unwarranted, that no one is willing to throw away valuable research time chasing down his absurd claims.

    As it turns out, the first of Wells’ three claims is true: there are rare physical behaviors within the cell so violent that chromosomal damage seems probable. How this claim invalidates descent with modification, or bolsters intelligent design, is beyond me.

30. Scott McAdams Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    I read it, but we come from different worlds. I too, was an altar boy, but that’s where our similarities end.

    It sounds like you came from one of those intolerant, retarded Republican households that forced religion down your throat. I’m sorry, but those people aren’t Christians. They are intolerant fools disguised as Christians.

    Christianity is a personal journey–it’s never supposed to be about telling anyone else how to live their lives–it’s about telling YOURSELF how to live.

    I was taught of the love of Jesus Christ, and forgiveness. I was taught that Jesus stood for peace and love, and the actual good things. No one ever used hell to scare me into being good.

    At the Catholic school I went to, they were open about the Crusades–I learned about them in 6th grade. I never was told that Catholics are perfect or even right all the time. I was told that the Bible is NOT literal. They told me early that the stories are allegories. Meaning, that the stories were NEVER meant to be taken literally, but as examples of how personal behavior affects consequences.

    For example, they taught me that the creation story isn’t about how the world was created. It’s about what happens when you do bad things. It’s more of a story about Karma than talking snakes and apples. If you don’t do things right, they don’t turn out for you.

    Only retarded Republicans actually believe in the 7 days, garden of eden, etc.

    I never got the negativity out of Christianity that you got out of it. I’m not rebelling against it, because unlike you, they never lied to me about anything. I’m sorry you encountered non-Christians posed as Christians, and now you’re all hostile to “Christianity” but what you call Christianity isn’t Christianity at all.

    And I never, ever agreed with a fundamentalist about anything. Ever.

    But == YOUR problems with the church aside, my issue is about Darwin.

    Science….real science….is open to questioning. Darwin’s writings have been around for a while. Real science teaches you to question EVERYTHING. Even Darwin. Many scientists have tested Darwin’s writings. At one point, the scientists you revere so much rewrote his theories to encorporate new facts that disputed some of his earlier theories.

    So what you’re studying is a re-written version of it. Did you know that? Guess what? It’s still okay. It’s not like eventually being proven wrong makes Darwin an idiot. Even Einstein couldn’t solve the apparent disproving of his theory when quantum physics came along. Real science is about getting the facts right, not getting credit.

    Science evolves…and Darwin, to actual scientists, is a base for new theories.

    One day, someone will disprove him, much like they disproved Aristotle’s “humors” theory about how the body works. No one thinks less of Aristotle–he made the best theory based on the facts known to him. Eventually discoveries would disprove him.
    In 200 years, we’ll probably have a discovery that disproves Darwin, so I wouldn’t marry yourself to his–or anyone else’s ideas.

    Darwin talked about Macroevolution (species turning into other species) and microevolution (species evolving over time through mutation, etc.)

    Darwin’s microevolution writings have never been questioned-in fact, there are billions of examples of microevolution everywhere. It’s nearly accepted as fact because it’s obvious to us now.

    Macroevolution, however, doesn’t exist. NO birds turn into reptiles, or vice versa. The scientific method requires observation. Have you ever seen a species transmutate?? Neither have I…it’s as implausible as a talking snake that makes you eat apples.

    Real education/thinking involves continuously questioning everything — especially your own beliefs.

    This page is self congratulatory. Yay, you’re smarter than one of Nixon’s speechwriters. Big deal. So is everybody else.

    I wish this debate would evolve. If you, the brilliant elite science people, ever delved into say…philosophy..you’d realize that Darwin had something to say, but he’s hardly the last word.

    The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. — Albert Einstein

    I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional “opium of the people”—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.

    — Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941

31. Scott McAdams Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

    Oh, and something personal.

    The easiest way to beat ID is to teach your children critical thinking skills. ID isn’t the only thing they’re going to come across in their lives that can easily be reasoned away.

    Having said that, one point on ID: The human body is billions of cells acting in harmony and concert. The idea that those cells just randomly formed that way–so there’s no further reason to worry/question/test/theorize about it–is as dismissive as early Church arguments against the sun being the center of the universe. You’re on the wrong side of history–someone will eventually discover through the scientific method how all those cells act in concert with one another, so don’t defend “it’s completely random and it cannot be understood” because that’s probably not right.

32. Jason T. Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    (an open letter, sent to BenStein99@aol.com)

    Dear Ben,

    I’ve been a fan and a reader of your blog for years, but I’m extremely disheartened to read of your role in creating the upcoming movie “Expelled”. Sir, evolution is fact. If you believe otherwise, you are underinformed, and I would therefore urge you to learn some more about science before publicly taking such a position. You have a unique opportunity as a public figure and I believe a moral obligation to promote scientific literacy in our society.

    Here’s a good book to that effect: http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200886080&sr=8-2

    Best Regards,
    Jason T.
    Seattle, WA

33. Jalestra Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

    Scott, it’d be a lot easier to let them believe whatever they wanted to believe if they didn’t spend all their time trying to force it down everyone’s throats. I know *I* wouldn’t give them half as much crap if they were quiet and did their own thing and left us alone to do ours.

    True, science teaches us to question everything, otherwise how would we progress? But it is still something reasonable and rationale, that can be proven using the process we’ve established. I WANT my children to learn SCIENCE and those processes. To learn the critical thinking any scientist needs to be a GOOD scientist. However, to insist we all learn fairy stories as fact is beyond the pale. If you want your kids to believe fairies are real, then teach them that at home. My children do not believe in fairies and I really don’t need your imaginary friends gumming up my kids’ education. It’s one thing to take a religions class and another to try to pass religion off as a science course.

    If you’ll notice, the problem isn’t so much Ben Stein’s belief system, as his insistence that we should all learn about it as fact, as a science. ID is not fact, it’s not science. It has no business being passed off as science. And if he doesn’t want us making fun of it and him, then I suppose he ought to go believe in it quietly and quit trying to make everyone think it’s something it’s not, at least until he can PROVE otherwise.

34. Parrotlover77 Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    “— Einstein to an unidentified adressee, Aug.7, 1941 ”

    Out of context quote mining: the hallmark sign of a fundie troll, no matter what they may call themselves or how “open minded” they claim to be.

35. Parrotlover77 Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

    “You’re on the wrong side of history–someone will eventually discover through the scientific method how all those cells act in concert with one another, so don’t defend ‘it’s completely random and it cannot be understood’ because that’s probably not right.”

    Okay, I’m not a biologist or anything here, but uh… doesn’t organic chemistry explain exactly just that already? Not that we understand every nuance, mind you, but I’m reasonably sure we understand a pretty substantial amount of the chemical channels active in the human body.

    (we = collective human intelligence, not bay-of-fundie posters hehe)

36. Healyhatman Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 7:00 am

    I hate Intelligent Design people and fundamentalists SO MUCH… Their complete lack of intelligence, refusal to LEARN about what they’re going on and on about….

    Most of all, I HATE them for the blind belief, and the fact that they call “darwinists” irrational! WHAT COULD BE MORE IRRATIONAL, people, than believing in something with absoloutely no proof, no evidence, NOTHING, except for a book some goat-sacrificing flat-earth sky-is-covered-in-protective-bubble-of-water sun-revolves-around-earth filthy peasants wrote in the dessert few thousand years ago? Especially considering a lot of it (at least the new testament) was written decades to centuries after the so-called jeebus?

    These retards, with their “evolution is irrational” shit…. If I was to say I worship an invisible pink unicorn they would think me insane, yet their invisible friend is somehow different.

37. Healyhatman Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 7:09 am

    Scott McAdams Says: A whole bunch of shit.

    Macroevolution, dumbass, does NOT mean “one species suddenly turning into another”

    No real scientist is saying a chicken is going to give birth to a lizard. That’s not the way it works. Everything was fine up until you stuck your stupid foot in your stupid mouth and sprouted your macro-evolution bit, with your talk of transmutation.

    And I seriously doubt they’re going to disprove the theory of evolution… Micro-evolution has been proven as realworld see-it-with-your-own-eyes fact. Macro evolution is just micro spread out over millions of years.

    So if that doesn’t sound like it would work… what do YOU think causes speciation? Because if it’s not gradual changes over millions of years happening to a group of isolated organisms…. Well the only other thing I can think of is magic. Which is stupid.

38. MattFunke Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am

    Scott McAdams: “Macroevolution, however, doesn’t exist.”

    Patently false. We’ve observed macroevolution (or “speciation”, if you prefer). Directly. In historical times, in all manner of organisms — from single-celled bacteria (Helacyton gartleri) to mosquitoes (the molestus form of Culex pipens) to plants (Primula kewensis) to deer mice (Peromyces maniculatus) to greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides — they’re birds) to bees (Hoplitis (Alcidamea) producta).

    Some organisms speciate spontaneously if their environment warrants it. A Wolbachia bacterium causes postmating reproductive isolation between the wasps Nasonia vitripennis and N. giraulti when it infects them.

    My personal favorite is Helacyton gartleri. It’s now an autonomous single-celled organism, and appears to be effectively immortal if nourished properly. It *was* Homo sapiens — a woman named Henrietta Lacks. (There are now more Helacyton gartleri cells than there were cells of Henrietta Lacks when she was alive.)

    There’s also a nifty report in Britton-Davidian et al.’s article “Rapid chromosomal evolution in island mice”, Nature, volume 403, p. 158, which details *six instances* of speciation in house mice on Madeira *within the past 500 years*, thanks to nothing more than geographic isolation, genetic drift, and chromosomal fusion.

    This is especially interesting to me because of the following (somewhat unrelated) genetic fact: the biggest genetic difference between humans and their apelike ancestors is a chromosomal fusion. During this 500-year period, some of those poor mice suffered *nine* chromosomal fusions. What possible mechanism could there be to allow nine chromosomal fusions in mice, but prevent chromosomal fusions in human ancestors?

    You might also want to try reading “Observed Instances of Speciation” by Joseph Boxhorn; or “Some More Observed Speciation Effects” by Stassen et al.; or “At the Water’s Edge” by Carl Zimmer; or “Darwin’s Cathedral” by Wilson; or “Lying Stones of Marrakesh” by Sterelny; or “Sex and Death” by Sterelny and Griffiths.

    The fact of the matter is that small changes can accumulate into large ones. If you have evidence that change will stop at some arbitrary barrier, please present your evidence. Otherwise, we’ll have to call the idea that “macroevolution” does not occur mere speculation, since speciation — and, by extension, increasing separation of all species — is fully consistent with what we’ve observed thus far.

39. Brian Edwards Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 8:56 am

    Scott -

    I appreciate your passion here, although it is terribly, terribly misguided. You make many statements about your Christianity being about love and tolerance and critical thinking… however in the same post you make one-sided, judgmental statements of fact like “It sounds like you came from one of those intolerant, retarded Republican households that forced religion down your throat.”… That’s a pretty bold, nasty, intolerant and judgmental statement to derive from what I gave as my background upbringing. I’m afraid is was not nearly as “retarded” as that. And in fact more common than I think you are giving credit. But thanks for the sentiment just the same.

    And although I’d love to spend the next hour easily knocking down your other statements about Darwin and such, that really was not and IS not the point of the post.

    At the very heart of what I was saying is the very thing you still don’t seem to understand, even though you point it out yourself. You yourself said that science is about being objective, science is open to questioning. Well… see, you are absolutely correct… BUT, Christianity, and ESPECIALLY fundamentalist Christianity which is at the forefront of the ID / Creationist movement, is NOT objective… and it is NOT subject to question. In fact, how can you possibly call any “theory” or “science” objective and open to question when the penultimate answer is “Because the Bible says so”. And THAT is at the heart of the problem. Science would NEVER accept that. Does science accept evolution because Darwin said so? Of COURSE not… and if you believe that, well than you are either uneducated or misinformed… or both. Evolution persists because it has been tried and tested… it continues to be updated to include new findings all the time, but the BASIS is the same. And NOT because “Darwin said so”… but because millions of brilliant people put time and effort into subjecting the theory to testing, and re-testing… and as I even said in my post earlier, Darwin’s original theory is almost certainly NOT the end-all be-all of the answer to the origins of life on this planet… but SCIENTIFICALLY, it is damn close, and is based on decades of real, honest to goodness, objective SCIENCE. And when and if the day DOES come that we can lay claim to an indisputable truth regarding the question of origins (like we did with say, the solar system), I can promise you that it will be the result of more decades of scientific research and analysis. I mean, ask yourself… how many of the natural truths that we know to be fact are known as a result of scientific research? And how many are the result of Biblical declaration? Gravity? Planetary motion? Solar cycles? Weather patterns? I could go on… but hopefully you get the point.

    So ask yourself, Scott… how many things in your life… in the world around you, that you believe to be true… you believe simply because “The Bible says so”. If ANYTHING fits into that category, and you accept it… well, then I can not accept any opinion you might have on critical thought, because a critically thinking person would never accept that answer. And THAT is why we must continue to battle ID / Creationists… not because of your idea that we “just have a different basis of belief”. It is the very lack of critical thinking that I explained above that makes it so dangerous to be accepted as ANY sort of science. We’re not “picking on Ben Stein”, Scott… we’re reacting with genuine concern about one group trying to turn what they believe into what we should all accept as FACT without any possibility for critical thought. And THAT is dangerous… it has been tried before many times in our human history with disastrous results… just look it up.

40. Brian Edwards Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 8:59 am

    … many, many typos in that last post… forgive my clearly declining typing skills and shame on me for not better proofreading before posting. Sorry.

41. Sam Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 9:20 am

    “In 200 years, we’ll probably have a discovery that disproves Darwin, so I wouldn’t marry yourself to his–or anyone else’s ideas.

    Darwin talked about Macroevolution (species turning into other species) and microevolution (species evolving over time through mutation, etc.)

    Darwin’s microevolution writings have never been questioned-in fact, there are billions of examples of microevolution everywhere. It’s nearly accepted as fact because it’s obvious to us now.

    Macroevolution, however, doesn’t exist. NO birds turn into reptiles, or vice versa. The scientific method requires observation. Have you ever seen a species transmutate?? Neither have I…it’s as implausible as a talking snake that makes you eat apples.”

    You are completely wrong here, Scott.

    1) ‘Macroevolution’ has been observed : http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html.

    2) Generally, subsequent to the development of the scietific method (so Aristotle doesn’t count) science tends to build upon what has gone before. The modern synthesis, Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics didn’t dispute or refute Darwin’s findings, so much as they expanded upon them owing to new discoveries, just as Einsteinian relativatity expanded on Newtonian mechanics (which is still perfectly adequate in many cases). Quantum mechanics didn’t refute the existance of the atom. These aren’t overturnings of previous theories, but refinements of them. That’s what science does, refines its theories to accomodate all the available data

    3) Skepticism is a good and healthy default position when confronted with the new. Skepticism of a theory in the face of 150 years worth of contributory evidence (and no undermining evidence) is willful perversity. Of course it’s possible our theories of what makes evolution tick may be further refined with further discoveries - that is what makes science interesting - but the overarching fact that evolution occurs is deniable only by those who refuse to honestly examine the wealth of evidence available.

42. Ron Britton Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 9:49 am

    Scott McAdams:

    Funny how everyone assumes I’m an advocate of ID. I’m not.

    Yes you are, because you’re spouting off many of their talking points.

    I won’t worship Darwin. Sorry!

    Nobody around here worships Darwin. That’s fundie propaganda. You bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

    Real science remains objective. This vehement advocation of Darwin is not objective.

    Evolutionary science moved beyond Darwin decades ago. In fact, the only places I even mentioned Darwin’s name were in reference to specific claims Stein made. Again, your fixation on Darwin proves your ID creationist leanings.

    I’m sorry, but those people aren’t Christians. They are intolerant fools disguised as Christians.

    That’s the No True Scotsman fallacy. Sorry. They are Christians, even if they’re not the type you approve of.

    They told me early that the stories are allegories. Meaning, that the stories were NEVER meant to be taken literally, but as examples of how personal behavior affects consequences.

    Wrong. When the Bible was cobbled together out of earlier myths, the stories were intended to be taken literally. The Catholic Church’s current position on the stories is a change they made much later.

    At one point, the scientists you revere so much rewrote [Darwin’s] theories to encorporate new facts that disputed some of his earlier theories.

    So what you’re studying is a re-written version of it. Did you know that?

    Yes. We all know that. You’re the only one around here who is talking about Darwinism.

    Macroevolution, however, doesn’t exist. NO birds turn into reptiles, or vice versa. The scientific method requires observation. Have you ever seen a species transmutate??

    Others have pointed out that we have seen speciation occur. You seem to be talking about the really really big changes. That is all in the fossil record. Nobody has sat in space and watched the Earth move around the sun either, but we know it happens, because we can observe it by other means.

    [O]ne point on ID: The human body is billions of cells acting in harmony and concert. The idea that those cells just randomly formed that way–so there’s no further reason to worry/question/test/theorize about it–is as dismissive as early Church arguments against the sun being the center of the universe.

    Nobody around here has claimed that the human body “just randomly formed that way”. Evolution is not random. You clearly don’t understand evolution — excuse me, “Darwinism” — yet you act like you do.

43. MattFunke Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am

    Sam: “These aren’t overturnings of previous theories, but refinements of them.”

    I think you hit on a key idea there, Sam. Science doesn’t claim to proclaim the truth; at best, it can only *converge towards* the truth. Science does not work by dogmatically stating things that scientists must then work to “prove true”; it works because it sets a limit on error. An ethical scientist will do the best she can to prove her favorite theory wrong and keep error to a minimum.

    For example, as far as most people are concerned, the Earth might as well be flat; Earth’s curvature simply doesn’t factor into what a lot of people do. This model worked well enough for a long time, until discrepancies started to show up. The Earth only curves away an average of eight inches for every mile you go forward, but that’s enough to throw off some results when you navigate over long distances. So the model was revised — this time to a spherical Earth.

    But the Earth isn’t spherical, either, as people who plan the trajectories of orbital satellites can attest. Its equator bulges a tidge, and the south pole is a little closer to the center of mass than the north pole. We’re talking about differences of *a few feet* over the entire circumference of the planet, but it was enough to show us that we needed to revise the model again, getting a little closer to Earth’s true shape.

    Do we have it exactly right *now*? Of course not; as instruments get better and our need for a still better model becomes apparent, our idea of Earth’s shape will continue to undergo refinement. But to claim that our current idea of Earth’s shape is every bit as wrong as the idea that the Earth is flat is to sorely misunderstand what it is that science tries to do.

    (It’s interesting to note that “no macroevolution over 6000 years” is very close to “macroevolution over 3.5 billion years — at least as far as the layman is concerned. It is that closeness that allows IDists to continue to preach their nonsense, because it’s not *obviously* wrong.)

    There is no prestige to be gained in science by agreeing with established ideas. The real notoriety comes from showing exactly why what everyone has been saying is wrong. If there were real evidence that evolution is wrong, wouldn’t *someone* have sought out that prestige by now?

    It should be noted that even though everything in science is subject to testing and verification, there are some ideas that are so well-established that questioning them is silly — or, at best, questioning should be done carefully, because a great deal of data on the matter exists. We may not be able to explain gravity *exactly* right (there is actually quite a lot of contemporary debate on this subject), but doubting gravity altogether is ridiculous. Similarly, we may not have the details on how evolution works *exactly* right, but there is absolutely no doubt that evolution does and did occur.

44. Muhranda Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:24 am

    I am really enjoying this thread. Thank you everyone for an intelligent conversation. McAdams has been trying to play the Devil’s Advocate and he is getting his ass kicked and that itself is worth the read.

    Too bad actual ID advocates haven’t been here, but I suppose real “Fundies” wouldn’t dare to check out this site.

    Thanks to this thread and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster site, my productivity yesterday and today is almost zero. But I feel great! RAmen!

45. Ron Britton Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:56 am

    An ID creationist did visit us a couple of weeks ago. His primary tactic was quote mining, so he didn’t actually say much himself. He’s the reason I added the no quote-mining rule for comments. He was just flooding us with quotes and drowning out real discussion, the same way spam drowns out the usefulness of email. Anyway, you can check out the two main articles here:
    Access Research Network: Lie Big. Lie Often.
    ARN-wrestling with Facts
    The first article has most of the comments. The second article rebuts their rebuttal of the first article.

46. scripto Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    “Rigid Darwinist”? As opposed to what- a flaccid Darwinist? Is this an either/or proposition or quantified on some sort of sliding scale dependent on the excitement of finding some confirming evidence for speciation?

    Clue me in, science guys. It sounds kind of kinky.

47. ParrotLover77 Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    “That’s the No True Scotsman fallacy. Sorry. They are Christians, even if they’re not the type you approve of.”

    THANKS, RON! I’ve been wondering what that logical fallacy was called for a long time now!

48. Brian Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Wow, Ron. This thread certainly seems to have touched a nerve. Who would have ever thought Ben Stein could generate so much interest? I’m glad to see more people seem to be coming here. The comments here have been very lucid and erudite, but I’m ready for some more fundie goofiness we’ve come to know and love. Got anything else to share?

49. Stickly Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 12:21 am

    It annoys me that so many opponents of evolution (and not just fundies, anyone who just doesn’t quite agree with it) repeatedly make the claim that “chance” or “unlikely” means “impossible”.

    That seems to be the crux of their argument to me. That because something is unlikely, or needed a certain amount of random chance, that it is impossible. It’s like they view it as offensive, and believe that we have to have been planned thoroughly because the possibility that we came from a lucky break hurts their ego.

50. MattFunke Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 am

    Stickly: “That seems to be the crux of their argument to me. That because something is unlikely, or needed a certain amount of random chance, that it is impossible.”

    It’s kind of a dim view of God, too, if you get right down to it. If you *need* to find things that are difficult to explain so that you can point to where God must have been involved, what kind of a minimalist God is *that*? It’s one who’s powerless to act in the really real world that you and I inhabit (unless He gets in the mood to shoot lightning bolts or something), and one who’s shrinking all the time as we learn more and more about what the Universe was like before we got here.

    Such a limited God is too tiny for any theology I might ever think about wanting to embrace. Thanks anyway.

51. ParrotLover77 Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 6:18 am

    If god designed the very rules that govern the universe’s behavior and also the preconditions necessary for our existence billions and billions of years ago and we get where we are today because of it, that, to me, sounds much more fantastic than making us out of play-doh and having to intervene all the time because the initial creation kind of sucked and didn’t work out as planned (I guess bugs pop up in god’s work too).

52. Brian Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 am

    MattFunke,

    I think you make an excellent and oftentimes overlooked point. The god one must conjure up within an ID explanatory framework is a pale imitation of the god most Christians believe in. Whenever they hitch their hopes of spreading the word to ID’s broken-down horse, they fail to realize how they’ve fundamentally undercut one of their most treasured fantasies.

    One of our local NPR stations does a regular Monday morning show called “Interconnect”, which usually focuses of faith and spirituality. One morning last year while driving to work they had as a guest one Micheal Corey, who was an astrophysicist pushing his new book, “The God Hypothesis”. This man claimed to be a scientist, and was claiming that the structure of the universe indicates a designer. I couldn’t help myself. I called in and got on the air, and told him that as a religious belief, what he was saying was fine, but it wasn’t science. He rebutted something about God starting everything and letting it proceed apace, and I said something to the effect of “But that’s not the God everybody imagines exists”, which other subsequent callers took him to task for. Its not everyday when one gets to confront an astrophysicist on the air.

    Anyway, good point.

53. bipolar2 Says:
    January 24th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Ancient Egyptians surmised that a dung beetle created the Earth. I accept a fecal gospel of “intelligent design” as long as it is extended — the entire cosmos emerged from the collective wisdom of committees.

    They’re still in charge . . . and having some problems (as committees always do):

    ** The Arthropodic Principle — note from HQ **

    To: All
    From: CEO, Sentient Beings Inc.

    Subject: Major anthropic screw-up, causes and proposed solutions

    It was the Corporate Committee on Systematic World Ordering which initiated an RFP, cost-plus basis. Failure to recognize that Hellaburton was an unreliable contractor, created certain problems with shoddy workmanship and substandard materials which quickly emerged.

    These however were plastered over for at least 4 billion years until the first multicellular creatures appeared in planet’s Precambrian oceans. By then it was too late to adjust any nucleotides. After all, it is a double blind test.

    The last 550 million years, however, have proved one unforeseen disaster after another, culminating in Nature’s Greatest Mistake, humanity. Currently, almost 7 billion cases of hypertrophy of ape prefrontal cortex! [Walking and talking mutants all of them!]

    Delicious irony though. The defect provides an illusion of having “free will.” Of course, homeostatic causes are still causes. But, as delusions go, this one is a sicko. Unfortunately, the trait is far too entrenched now to be wiped out by laws of population genetics.

    Looks like human heads must roll. The Corporate Committee on Oort Cloud Exploitation hopes to find a suitably large comet in the next 65 million years, give or take 5 million years.

    However, let there be light. The standing Corporate Committee on Bio-organics has estimated that the average species lasts only about 2 million years. Patience hath its rewards.

    Personally, I want the testing to continue. I find myself inordinately fond of beetles. Let it be called the arthropodic principle.

    bipolar2
    © 2008

54. Alex Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    What stuns me about Stein- and most creationists/ID/whatever they call themselves - is that his argument mainly consists of smearing evolution. This fails on the basic logical fallacy of bifurcation. Any closer they get to disproving evolution gets them no closer to proving creationism.

    I have to hand it to Stein, though, he ticks all the boxes for infuriating creationist rhetoric. His Marxist conspiracy ‘theory’ sounds like cold war propaganda.

    I hope this doesn’t get released in the UK.

55. Mike Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    I see absolutely no beauty (or logic) in Intelligent Design as they like to call it. To me the idea of evolution holds much more wonder and indeed makes much more sense.

    These people are blinded by their own faith to rationalize the whole situation. Firstly all religious texts out there are as far from truth as African Pygmies are from arctic ice. So if we can’t logically trust the texts, why would we trust any ideas emerging from them?

    This whole debate about ID vs. Evolution is nothing but a means to introduce religion back into our education system and hence indoctrinate and propagate religion into the future.

    Evolution has proof, whereas ID has nothing but faith, which for science means absolutely nothing.

56. John Says:
    February 3rd, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Don’t be so hard on the fundies, ya’ll, they’re motivated largely by fear of their own death. This is evidenced by their insistence on a “personal” saviour, immortal soul, etc.. I, like Scott, was raised in a Catholic household but one which revered science. I was encouraged to read about evolution at an early age and always understood that science is neutral on the subject of God.
    If Scott is still a Catholic, perhaps he’s unaware of Papal encyclicals which view evolution as not antithetical to Catholic theology or the eloquent way in which John
    Paul spoke of “a commitment to the truth”, however science reveals it.
    I am no longer a Catholic, more of a zen buddhist, but I am disappointed
    with christians who think that embracing science means abandoning spirituality. If your mind is truly open to the wonder of the universe that science reveals to us then this is itself an inspiration and a means of nourishing your “spirit”.
    As Alan Watts put it, “We are all simply apertures through which the universe is examining itself.” Our highest, noblest calling is the exploration and understanding
    of the universe we live in. Science is the method. Timid, Fundamentalist, mindsets
    are a hindrance.

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