A while back, I pulled down a pdf of something called the “Leader’s Guide” from the Expelled website. I was agog. It’s flat-out fundamentalist Christian creationism, through and through — quote-mines, sermon suggestions, etc., etc., etc. I was thinking that here’s another nail in the coffin for the next time this garbage comes to trial, and that I should dig through it and pull out the tired old creationist quotes from it.
Now I don’t have to: Troy Britain has put together a two-part dissection. Take a look, and be amazed. Henry Morris would be so proud.
It is amazing how low creationists will stoop. I have a site that debunks the claims of christian apologists as well as IDers and creationists:
http://www.godriddance.com
Peace!
There’s also a side-by-side up at rationalwiki: http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Expelled:Leader%27s_Guide
I second mya. The one at rationalwiki is nice.
The section on ctenophores and the alleged conspiracy of the Smithsonian secretary to hide “the truth” about evolution is a nice salve after the initial nausea of having to acknowledge the reality that Expelled really is as stupid as I feared yet again. But I guess this reality makes me feel a little less insane than usual by comparison, so there is a happy thought for the day!
Damn, I just cannot get through that insane drivel without choking up with uncontrolable anger! There just has to be a more effective way to counter these moronic retards; but with what ouside of reason which absolutely has no effect on them? Maybe we should start using the methods that the Korn Pone is espousing, namely, violent, suggestive assaults that garner our attention because all else fails. We just have to get even more nastier in our rational condemnation of this insane and dangerous slime.
When I went to one of those “private” screenings, in the Q&A session after the movie they outright said that the getexpelled site was for the “people of faith”.
That’s at least one surprise for me with this movie, they’re being really obvious about the connection with religion, I thought they’d put a little more effort into putting a firewall up between the parts where they talk about God, and the parts where they talk about the science.
I saw Expelled this afternoon. It was a great film. I think that your views will become a fairy tale in years to come, as you knit yourself a Darwinian sweater for your old age.
God bless.
I’m troubled that there may be young people who might be taken in by this nonsense. My own teenager believes nothing anyone says (especially me) but he might be an aberration.
Stushie @ 7 Of course you think that shit pile movie is a great film, because your religious demented cesspool brain cannot reason it to be otherwise. There is no chance of your deeming a movie on science or any other rational film as worthwhile, as your reason has been horribly compromised by the insane crap that infests your sorry brain. Even cartoons are above your level, you maroon!
Stushie, here have a cookie.
Now run along.
Stushie @ 7 Follow up. At least we will have a nice warm Darwinian sweater to keep us warm in our old age. All you will have is an imaginary shroud to perpetuate your insane nonsense in a cold dead brain.
Where was Magog in all this?
“It was a great film.”
Yeah. Clearly.
Mindless zombies.
hooray for the folks who posted teh side-by-side at rational wiki.
Upon reading it I came to this part:
Furthermore, genomes contain masses of nonsensical “junk” DNA that has little or no functionality. Why a designer would include large amounts of gibberish in its handiwork is anyone’s guess.
We also observe that any computer programmer that hasn’t already been fired liberally salts their code with comments explaining what the various subroutines do and what the variable are for.
One RationalWikian’s challenge to ID has always been: Show me the comments in the DNA before you claim someone (or thing) wrote it.
I have an easy answer for that. I think someone needs to update this part of the wiki. Here is my answer.
Comments in code have no functionality except for people reading the code. If I am a russian programmer and I comment my code, that doesnt mean an american programmer can read my comments.
How do you know the “Junk” DNA aren’t the comments?
Now before you all go medeival on my ass, check out my blog. I’m not a creationist troll. I just think that if we are going to give ammo to the creationists to further misunderstand evolution, we should be prepared for the responses.
They are actually suggesting that this stuff be used in classrooms:
… presumably after the teachers are immunized from educational malpractice by “academic freedom” laws, such as Florida’s proposal that all “germane current facts, data, and peer-reviewed research specific to the topic of chemical and biological evolution” are permitted.
I carefully packed my brain, irony meter, and other sensitive or easily damaged parts in layers of cotton wool and bubble wrap, and then visited Stushie’s blog (@7).
Sigh… from the 16th April post, “Atheists – The Real War Mongering Killers in the World”:
The cotton wool caught fire, the bubble wrap melted, and now there’s another mess on the floor I should clean up.
Which makes it very odd that they featured an appearance by Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute, to deny that ID is religious. He looked very nervous when asked, hurriedly looking around to make sure he hadn’t left any copies of the Wedge Document sitting on his desk, etc.
techskeptic: There’s a school of thought that opinionates you should not read the comments when trying to understand computer code. The reasoning is (this is from memory so I’ve probably got it a bit muddled, and it’s very probably mixed up with my experiences) that the comments probably do not reflect the reality. Code changes, and so do comments, but comments have a nasty tendency to change (evolve?) at a different rate and for different reasons. Hence, even if the comments started out being somewhat useful or accurate (ha ha!) they can, rather too easily, wind up being anything but.
What has this to do with evolution or biology? Fecked if I know.
techskeptic @ 14 Checked out your site; some good stuff there, especially the Zero Balancing crap! Good freaking grief, is there no end to this insane nonsense? Of course, what the practitioners have not mentioned of ZB is the base of all this energy flow, the spirit who causes all!
Anyway, it is entertaining , non the less insane drivel at that!
Posted by: Stushie | April 22, 2008 4:41 PM
I think that your views don’t need the “years to come” to become fairy tale, as they meet those criteria right now, and have for the entirety of their existence. And I’d be overjoyed to have a Darwinian sweater knitted for me – but why wait for that to happen when I can get it to enjoy in my young age?
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/progressive/-/pd_30292831?CMP=PF-CA-Shopping-30292831-PlatypusFaction.23
That’s because, unlike a commentary in Russian, the sequencing in Junk DNA does not suggest that it is a commentary of some sort. Furthermore, Junk DNA, and functional DNA do not behave similarly to computer programming code, in that, a comment in code can not be spliced into a program, or even a different program in order to augment or change that particular program’s function, nor can a comment be spontaneously transformed into a program, itself. Junk DNA can do this, like when a fish off the coast of Argentina had a start codon spliced in front of a sequence of non-coding DNA to form a gene for an “antifreeze” glycoprotein (protein with sugar molecules in its structure).
Also, Code commentary is not used to separate or “cushion” programs in the way Junk DNA does for genes.
The funniest thing about the whole movie is there truly *is* a connection between Hitler and Darwinism…
Unfortunately for Stein, the distant connection is when Darwinism is horribly misunderstood and misapplied, things such as eugenics and racism can be a result.
For the producers it must be a bitter mouthful to swallow. Their premise only emboldens the need for Evolutionary understanding in our public schools, not the exclusion or dilution of it.
This sort of thing is actually a good development. In the Dover litigation, the lawyers had to do a lot of digging to establish the religious motivation behind the actions of the school board. But the more these people come out of the closet and reveal their true intentions, the easier it will be to defeat them when the next case comes along.
That Leader’s Guide was both new and original. *rolls eyes* I’m still waiting for new ‘evidence’ they have for ID.
Which programmers are these? I’d like to meet them.
I can see why some people like to compare DNA to code; I’ve worked on several projects that grew “organically” (translation: deadlines and funding constraints precluded an actual design phase) and were chock full of dead or deprecated code, jerry-rigged functionality, redundant subroutines, and comments that bore absolutely no relation to the code that followed.
Shorter response to Stushie:
Wrong.
Awesome work by Troy Britain. Very nice.
I agree with Stanton #21. The “code comments x junk dna” analogy is flawed. Junk DNA is more like a method or function in the code that is not being used by the program any longer. The function itself is still valid code; just nothing in the program calls it. If you were to copy that function and place it into another application that then calls the function it would still work (if not the way you’d expect).
However, the analogy that DNA is like computer code is flawed to begin with. An idea that I’m still trying to figure out. Being a software engineer, I personally liked that analogy. :(
#7 Stushie –
Why is it that insults and thinly veiled threats from Creo’s typically end with “God bless”? I already know I’m blessed Stushie. I heard it the first time when I was a kid in church. Why do you feel the need to constantly reaffirm your beliefs? Is there a little voice in the back of your head that keeps whispering “No, this can’t be right.”? Oh, no wait. That’s not reason; it’s just the devil trying to shake your faith.
We need a new word, something beyond atheist, we need a word that encompasses opposition to all dogmatic ideologies, because fanatical communism is every bit as stupid and brain killing as any religion. We know there’s no substantive difference between Stalin’s communism and any religion you care to name, both are fanatical fundamentalist approaches that lacked a rational foundation, but the god-botherers are incapable of seeing that. I’ve never met a sane atheist who’d believe that Stalin or Mao’s approaches where right, and I’m tired of morons trying to conflate them with us. Hitler is even worse since he was very much a Christian by any measure, and only the true scotsman argument says otherwise. Atheism doesn’t lead to genocide, but neither is it a shield against the evils mankind is capable of.
“Theoclast”?
How far is it from, “atheists are evil,” to “it’s ok to exile, torture, and kill atheists?”
Hitler names himself a Christian in Mein Kampf, and fits in quite well with nigh on a thousand years (my knowledge of pre-Crusade anti-Semitism is a bit shaky, although I suspect a little homework would drag it all the way back to Rome), so there’s little question to the untruth of that claim. Stalin wanted people to worship the state, not God, and I’d be inclined to blame his evils on megalomania more than atheism.
Stushie is a bigot, and deserves to be denounced as such. Loudly, and preferably in public. Although I’d lay off the swearing in public (Great Darwin’s Scrotum, I do love swearing, but there’s a time and a place, after all).
How far is it from, “atheists are evil,” to “it’s ok to exile, torture, and kill atheists?”
Hitler names himself a Christian in Mein Kampf, and fits in quite well with nigh on a thousand years of European anti-Semitism (my knowledge of pre-Crusade anti-Semitism is a bit shaky, although I suspect a little homework would drag it all the way back to Rome), so there’s little question to the untruth of that claim. Stalin wanted people to worship the state, not God, and I’d be inclined to blame his evils on megalomania more than atheism.
Stushie is a bigot, and deserves to be denounced as such. Loudly, and preferably in public. Although I’d lay off the swearing in public (Great Darwin’s Scrotum, I do love swearing, but there’s a time and a place, after all).
Great Darwin’s Nutsack, I inadvertently double posted!
(I told you I liked to swear)
“Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”
Isaac Asimove, 1984
“as you knit yourself a Darwinian sweater for your old age.”
What does that even mean?
Drat – thats Asimov, of course!
*must. use. preview.*
Stalin was a funny kinda atheist. I recently saw a programme about the Kremlin where his old bodyguard was interviewed.
He showed the producers a small chapel where he insisted Stalin had worshipped every day throughout the war.
Of course, I fully expect him to be lying. It’s just funny how a Stalin apologist feels the need to insist that the man who murdered about 100M people was a true christian(tm).
Perhaps it’s more appropriate to knit Darwinian mittens that evolve into a sweater.
PZ, add a link to the RationalWiki one. I think you’ll love it.
I wonder how Stalin prayed? “Blood and Souls for my Lord Arioch?”
Hmm. . . that’s a thought for the next witnessing to which I find myself subjected.
1st graffiti message: “Darwin made me an atheist”
2nd graffiti message: “If I provide the yarn, will he make me one too?”
My man Isaac Asimov!
I’m wondering why you are all aggressively defensive? Are you trying to hide something or run away from the truth? I thought that you were into debating points and making this a dialogue, but it seems that you are all trying to preach to me about your atheism.
I’m amazed that the term ‘bigot’ is being applied to me. That’s usually code for “I don’t like what you are saying, so I’m going to label you, and therefore everyone will know that your views are not relevant.” Why not just sew a yellow cross to the back of my clothes, so that you can kick me about cyberspace?
If you want to find out what kind of Christian I am, then look at my video on Youtube and listen to my song “Blindness”.
I should warn you, my singing will never get me on American idol, unless it’s in the funny bits.
I take pot shots against inhumanity, whether it’s atheistic or religious. I will seriously read and listen to your life statements without resorting to cussing you out.
And as for the blessings, that’s just a part of who I am.
May God bless the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed…especially during the Finals.
You know what would be sweet, a raffle in which the grand prize was dinner and two tickets to see Expelled with PZ Myers as your guest. Proceeds would go to NCSE. Or how about a C.A.S.H. screening of Expelled with special guest PZ Myers?
Tickets would be purchased for a movie running at the same time, or if we were feeling particularly generous… (Ben Stein has to eat!) the Expelled movie.
Listen up, Stushie — I’m only going to say this once.
Claiming (incorrectly in at least one case) that people with whom you disagree about the presence or absence of God (or Allah, or Dr. Zaius, or whomever) are as inherently immoral as some of the most notorious killers in recent history is a hostile act, period. I have never attempted to paint all Christians with the Hitler brush, nor even a majority of them.
But that’s just what you did to me.
Yes, people are awful to one another. It’s not something any sane person likes. But to paint everyone with that brush (and that’s how you come across when you link names like those to anything people believe) is an act of hostility.
And an act of bigotry.
“I thought that you were into debating points and making this a dialogue”
Sheesh, you guys are so predictable. Start with an inflammatory statement (our “views” are fairy tales), then whine about how we’re not having an Algonquin Round Table with you.
“Why not just sew a yellow cross to the back of my clothes, so that you can kick me about cyberspace?”
So very touchy.
“May God bless the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed…especially during the Finals.”
As long as the Lakers lose, I’m happy.
PS I forgot to mention that with reference to cartoons, I actually create my own political cartoon blog. You can see the latest Obama/McCain/Clinton efforts at http://www.stushietoon.blogspot.com
“as you knit yourself a Darwinian sweater for your old age.”
What does that even mean?
I’ll buy my sweaters, but I wouldn’t mind carving a walking stick like Chuckie’s.
The name of a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack aimed at successful scientists for the crime of being sucessfully able to document the correct order in which plants arose on the land as given in both Genesis 1:11-19 and Genesis 2:5-7.
Holy freaking crap! You are worse than we imagined! “Hide something”? Like what, our detestation of rampant insanity? I assure you we will never hide that, and freely express it openly and loudly! “Run away from the truth”? Are you totally insane to what truth is? Religion is not the truth, but a pile of insane beliefs formed from humans superstitions since we were able to think, many of us irrationally at that. “I don’t like what you are saying, so I’m going to label you”. Of course we don’t like what you are saying because it is insane crap and we have to label you as insane. Can it be ever as simple as that? And your crap website is a nonsensical farce, not only because you have a crappy voice but your content is ludricous and can only appeal to the like insane of your persuasion! How the hell did you manage to infect our site with your deranged crap? It may have been open house, but there should have been a caveat of “intelligence only”. Good freaking grief, are we to waste our time expunging your insane drivel every time your deranged brain purports to have a meaningful and sensible dialogue with your betters!
“Sheesh, you guys are so predictable. Start with an inflammatory statement (our “views” are fairy tales), then whine about how we’re not having an Algonquin Round Table with you.”
Well said Rey.
Then they usually follow with some ad hominem challenge. Inflame, complain, then follow with false claims of victory or false challenges. Typical.
Why not Allah Stushie? Word has that deity ranking pretty high as well. Delusional idiot.
The old cougar opens one eye…. purrrrrrr…
I recently read “Voyage of the Beagle”, a fascinating read. In more than one passage in the book, Darwin speaks of his belief in God, attending church services, etc… In researching his life further, namely after publishing “On the Origin of Species”, I haven’t seen any statement of his that he renounced this belief. My thought is Darwin, like many folks after Calvinism and the “enlightenment” (and, for that matter, even today), may have believed God’s power and intelligence to be so omnipotent, that it would be impossible for ordinary people to comprehend in the slightest, and that deeper and deeper scientific discovery merely peeled back the most paper-thin outer surface of His design. Furthermore, that these revolutionary theories offered PROOF of God’s existence and not the other way around. This fits in well with the thinking of Deists of the period and their “God is the clockmaker” philosophy; that His creation, once brought forth and to life, runs on by itself, not necessarily with His daily direct involvement.
Please explain how using your own relationship with God to advertise your disapproval/contempt/hatred of atheists is not a form of bigotry?
Furthermore, how can you do such a thing, especially when the Bible specifically admonishes that those who pray to God in public places, as well as advertise that they are doing so are hypocrites, AND that the Bible states that those who claim to know the Light, and hate their fellow man, are liars?
When you say, “millions of people were slaughtered by atheism,” it’s no different from from saying they were slaughtered by Judaism, or Christianity, or Voodoo.
Sure, people have been murdered by Christians, and Jews, and Houngans, but that isn’t grounds to denounce the whole group.
In fact, a certain brand of political Christianity did get a lot of Jews killed (and every Cathar, and a few toothless old women with pointy hats) and exiled over a long period of time, culminating in the Holocaust — but every Christian need not share in that moral failing.
Some Christians do seem to be trying to, though — see the thread on “I get email.”
No intelligence is right! Check out the news at one of the Expelled sites – http://www.getexpelled.com/news.php. They must post every review automatically. Most of the reviews are negative and they still post them. Their website sure wasn’t intelligently designed.
God who?
This is just me ranting, but I get so annoyed when I see or hear the term god used so as-matter-of-factly. Puhleaze. The name, the classification of deity, are all manufactured! What would cause anyone in this day and age to assume the reality of such an atrocious, mysterious idea without any data?! More than that though, everything we do know for a fact points to the conclusion that a deity is at the very least, not needed. I’ll go one further and say it’s just not there.
I’m referring to Stanton’s post at #54. No offense Stanton. It’s very common. But this god thing is not real and it just seems a little presumptive when it’s referred to as an actual item of fact.
#55 correction – refers to #53, not #54.
An interesting question, because if junk DNA were comments, that would mean the Designer is not omniscient.
Whatever. I’ll start with the observation that the amount of junk varies a lot, sometimes even between closely related species. Someone please link to the Onion Test. Next, I’ll try to draw some attention to what the junk is. Over half of your genome (in total!) consists of retrovirus corpses in various stages of decay. Most of the rest consists of short sequences that are repeated lots and lots of times, with the exact number of repeats in each place varying between individuals (that’s used in paternity tests). Same genes, different comments? Then there are pseudogenes: genes that have accumulated so many mutations that they don’t work anymore, which doesn’t matter because we don’t need those genes anymore. What for would an intelligent designer comment code out? The phenomenon that this works in the other direction, too, has been mentioned — the icefishes have acquired a start codon and a stop codon in the middle of nowhere, and the protein that the resulting gene codes for happens to be eminently useful. If you take a comment and take the brackets or whatever away, should you ever be left with code?
(I could probably go on for hours, but I’m tired and will now go to bed at long last.)
That would mean “god-destroyer”. Which would imply that there is at least one god that can be destroyed.
What about “rationalist” or “metaphysical naturalist” or something like that?
No. Stalin wanted the people to worship him.
As long as the Lakers lose, I’m happy.
you must not be happy, then.
:p
2:1 says they make it at least through the first round, even odds on the second.
David Marjanović, OM said:
I could probably go on for hours…
We know.
I for one, enjoy it when you do.
Hi Alex. “Delusional idiot”
Were you referring to me, or is that your usual end of comment signature?
God laughs. (Psalm 2)
“`><>“><>`~J“<>< ``<><
Mike #52 wrote:
Darwin’s views did change as he got older, and I think he eventually identified himself as “agnostic.” “Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”
I don’t think Darwin felt this way — he understood the conflict between a benevolent God and natural evolution, and wrote on it.
It is one thing for theists to claim that the amazing discoveries of science allows them to appreciate how truly wonderful God is. They already believe in God for reasons that are not scientific. But it is quite another thing to claim that the Big Bang or evolution somehow “prove” or confirm that God exists — not as an argument towards God as a conclusion, but just by revealing an amazing universe. That seems to imply that, for them, different discoveries would have counted against God’s existence — but fortunately the results were positive, and God is still supported. Whew!
I don’t think they really mean that.
#60
Were you referring to me – Yep
or is that your usual end of comment signature? – Nope
God laughs. (Psalm 2) – Ooooh. Ahhhh. Wow. That’s – compelling.
“`>>“>>`~J“> – was this your moment of orgasm? Better wash that keyboard.
Mike at #52, I would encourage you to check out the Autobiography of Charles Darwin, which goes into some detail as to Darwin’s religious views.
I found it online at this website, starting at page 304.
Whatever else, it does look like Charles Darwin put a lot of thought into what he believed — he did seem to have an awareness of how fallible human beings could be towards ideas, especially ones presented from early in life.
Stushie? Do yourself a simple favor and go read the RationalWiki response: HERE!
Until then, I think it best you are ignored for the shit-sucking, worthless, little troll you truly are.
There is a concise summary (with references) of Darwin’s religious views on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin's_views_on_religion
Not, of course, that they matter particularly. Nobody should accept — or reject — a science theory because of the personal beliefs of one of its discoverers.
Dave @ #57
“What for would an intelligent designer comment code out?”
I have to confess I find myself commenting out code for testing purposes, which I may later forget to completely remove. Though I guess one could argue that I am not an intelligent designer…
I have a radical new theory (new to me) about whats up with the Expelled movie, especially in light of the revelation that the video of “Dicky D” and the Monster Machine was also by the team from Expelled. Perhaps they are actually on our side, got funding secretly from from someone like Charles Simonyi, or Bill Gates, or Trey Parker, et al, and were tasked with putting together the worst pro Intelligent Design film possible. The idea would be to expose the weakness of the ID side with a sort of parody film that was just good enough to get the soft minded Christian right to swallow and endorse it, but to most any other people, it would highlight the weakness of their argument. What makes me think so is that the Dicky “D” video was so outrageously cool and funny, the buffoonery was so over-the-top, that it backfired. Most of us evilutionists loved it. Apparently, the whole movie has backfired on them also, but not if it was never meant to succeed. Its almost excessively bad. And Ben Stein, he’s the guy you get to be the boring establishment stooge. It seems that they were intentionally picking every false argument made against Darwinian Natural Selection, packaged them up in a nice shiny lump of shit, and tossed it out their for us all to smell. In some circles it stuck. This is sort of my reverse conspiracy theory.
Someone above said: “If I am a russian programmer and I comment my code, that doesnt mean an american programmer can read my comments.”
… And not to nitpick, but think about this. No one programs in Cyrillic script. Most programming languages are basically uber-simplified English (if {} then {}, for and while loops etc), using Latin characters. Why on earth would a Russian programmer program in Latin characters and then switch to Cyrillic characters for the comments?… That sounds exhausting.
So basically, I’m willing to bet Russian programmers comment in English.
Though I’m sure there are exceptions.
“ignored for the shit-sucking, worthless, little troll you truly are.”
Now now, let’s not go overboard. This isn’t Salt we’re talking about here.
“programmer program in Latin characters and then switch to Cyrillic characters for the comments?”
Exhausting? … writing in his native tongue? I don’t think you have thought this one through? :)
No offense taken: it was just a suggestion.
#28 —
“We know there’s no substantive difference between Stalin’s communism and any religion you care to name, both are fanatical fundamentalist approaches that lacked a rational foundation, but the god-botherers are incapable of seeing that.”
Well put. In fact, Stalin intentionally endorsed and encouraged the “cult of Lenin” (which Lenin himself always tried to prevent while alive). For more about how Lenin became a quasi-religious figure in Stalin’s USSR, see: http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?action=L2&SubjectID=1924death&Year=1924
He also (as other posters have pointed out) created a “Cult of Stalin” (see that wonderful work of socialist realism, Roses for Stalin). This cult of personality survives even today, with over a quarter of Russians saying that they would definitely or probably vote for Stalin if he were alive and running for president today (poll taking in 2006).
In addition to using quasi-religious cults of personality, Stalin understood the unifying, dogmatic effects of religion and re-instated the Russian Orthodox Church (under the control of the NKVD, of course) during the second world war to arouse nationalism and patriotism.
@36 — Stalin’s religious views were actually quite interesting — contradictory and confusing, probably sometimes sincere and sometimes an intent to manipulate (like most religious beliefs). You can read about them on wikipedia here
I suppose none of this has anything to do with creationism, but I found it somewhat interesting, and hopefully someone else will.
I am the one who started out the “junk DNA = Gods comments that we cant read”. I just put it out there becuase I thought the rational wiki was weak in this spot.
Saying that DNA is computer code is a shitty way to describe what DNA does, what it is comprised of and how it works including how copies of itself get made. Perhaps a better analogy is needed.
I was just trying to point out that we should be ponting out that this analogy is a bad one. I just pointed out that at rational wiki they were asking to see the comments, and I was just proposing that a creationist could simply say they are tere, we just don’t know how to read them.
David and others, thanks for hammering out many of the reasons why the DNA=computer code is stupid.
#57 David Marjanović, OM —
Great post on junk DNA. I think that too often, proponents of evolutionary biology point out junk DNA as evidence against ID (why would a designer put a bunch of worthless code in our DNA) and while this is true to an extent, I think the much more salient point is that junk DNA is in fact further evidence FOR evolutionary theory — the presence of decaying HERV retrotransposons, pseudogenes, conserved “junk” sequences, LINEs, etc all point towards evolution, not simply away from ID.
Junk DNA is actually much more than simply worthless “junk” in our genome. Its name does it a great disservice…
“I just pointed out that at rational wiki they were asking to see the comments, and I was just proposing that a creationist could simply say they are tere, we just don’t know how to read them.”
See, and this is the problem with creationist (il)logic. It assumes the conclusion (that the comments are there) and then tries to find “evidence” for it by looking at it from every angle. When that fails, they say, “Well, we just don’t know *how* to read it. But it’s there, really.” Maybe that’s ok in theology, but in science…not so much.
Also, we are rapidly learning how to “read” junk DNA — finding highly conserved sequences, pseudogenes, LINEs, retrotransposons, etc. So even this non-argument that we “just don’t know how to read the comments” holds no water….
I might try to edit the rationalwiki article to include some of this info. The evolutionary importance of junk DNA is often severely underappreciated…./beats dead horse
@34 and 47, re: Darwinian sweater meaning —
I *think* they were referring to PZ’s comment in Expelled about hoping that religion would become a past-time, like knitting, for people. It’s a horrifically mangled metaphor/allusion, though.
Dan,I appreciate your neanderthal argumentative style. The colorful words that you use really bolster your thoughts. I guess that evolution for you has become a process of enlightenment in how many cuss words you can employ to hide the superficiality of your ability to sustain a dialogue.
It’s far easier to get angry and shout down those with differing views than to actually talk about our differences. Reminds me of the beer halls in 1930s Berlin.
Alex, nice try, but not quite SNL or JSDS material.
Is Stushie honestly not a poe?
Stushie @42 —
If you are indeed trying to recognize the bigotry, hypocrisy, and foibles of people of all philosophical and religious persuasions, I urge you to take a look at some of the dubious morality and outright lying that helped make Expelled the “great film” you thought it was.
Start at http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/background and http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth Of especial interest is the true story about the “expulsion” of Richard Sternberg (the Expelled version is permeated by distortions of the truth and outright lies) and the fact that Premise lied to people like Dawkins and PZ about both the title and the ideological content of the movie.
If you read the facts presented in these links and still believe that Expelled is a “great movie”, please explain to me why, because I really don’t see how you could continue to believe that unless you have already made your mind up to support one ideologically based opinion regardless of the actual facts of the matter — and that is what I would call bigotry.
Oh can I say it please?
Godwin’s law.
Not surprising that someone who just saw that tripe would pull out that complete nonsense.
*golf clap
Re: my #80 —
For some reason my link to the facts on how the interviews with Dawkins, PZ, et al were obtained did not show up properly in the formatted comment. This seems like a recurrent bug. Anyway, here is the URL, stushie:
http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/background/interview-tactics
Wow, he sure spent a lot of time on this.
He must be very convicted.
There’s a great essay about Hitler and his religious views here: http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/Hitler.xhtml
Yes, it’s from an anti-creationism website, so you can accuse me of choosing a biased essay. But it’s clear, comprehensive, and cites its sources. If you can find a similarly well referenced essay explaining how it was actually atheism and Darwinism that informed Hitler’s philosophy, I would love to see it.
I leave you with this lovely quote from V1, Ch 10 of Mein Kampf:
“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. The great masses of a nation are not composed of philosophers. For the masses of the people, especially faith is absolutely the only basis of a moral outlook on life.”
Sound familiar? Anyone? Anyone?
I’ve read through the bullshit in that “Leader’s Guide”.
http://www.getexpelled.com/downloads.php
“Explore Evolution” is linked to from the PDF.
It tells us it explores the arguments for and against Neo-Darwinism, and it calls us to join in the debate.
The ‘controversy’ over Darwin is wonderfully illustrated by the courageous and dynamic debate there. Check it out.
http://exploreevolution.com/debate.php
stushie:
“Reminds me of the beer halls in 1930s Berlin”
The “beer halls” were in Munich… Furthermore, the Nazi Party took power in 1933.
If you heard some jerks talking shit in beer halls in 1930 it was probably the catholic central party.
/back into lurking
A question for Stushie or any other Creationist who wants to answer:
How did the ancient Spartans know about Darwin? It is well known that the Spartans practiced a very harsh and systematic form of eugenics, abandoning weak or deformed infants to die of exposure and forcing the children (especially the boys) they did keep to grow up in a harsh, “survival-of-the-fittest,” “Darwinian” environment. They had an aggressive, regimented, militaristic society that would arguably be what we now call “fascist.”
Now, we also “know” that eugenics and fascism originated with Darwin’s theory of evolution, right? It follows then, that the Spartans must have known about Darwin and evolution by natural selection. How did they know? Did the Oracle of Delphi tell them?
Bonus question: How many of you watched the movie “300,” cheering for the uber-macho Spartans as stand-ins for heroic, uber-macho Americans fighting against the swarthy, turban-wrapped hordes of Persia/Iran?
@85 Tim Wilson:
That was HILARIOUS. Thank you. I sat, staring at the rigorous debate for several minutes, laughing my @$$ off.
On another note, I poked around their site a bit and watched the promotional video for their textbook. They advertise that teaching “both sides” is a good idea in part because it “respects public opinion”. Quite possibly the WORST reason I’ve ever heard to teach something as science….
Yes, exhausting, ShemAndShaun… Not because it is Russian, that’s just an idiotic way of reading what I said, but rather, because switching between character sets is annoying, and I know programmers (I am one), and unnecessary elements would certainly annoy me.
I guess it depends… obviously any textual content in the program is going to be written with Cyrillic characters… So it really depends on the kind of programming being done. If it is modern game programming, then I doubt they would use Cyrillic at all. If it is web-programming (imho this is barely programming at all), then sure, they might.
But anyway, my point is that programming languages are all latin-character based, so it’s not like a Russian programmer programs “in Russian”.
I saw 300 at the movies. I thought it was hilarious. I preferred the comic book.
As for eugenics; you make an interesting point, but didn’t Darwin call for the same principles to be employed in the modern world?
Anyway, this all began with the knitting & religion allusion that the blog host referred to in Expelled. I guess then that Darwinism is like making a patchwork quilt, except that some of the pieces are missing, the thread keeps breaking, and the pattern doesn’t fit.
Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, the stupid notion that Hitler and Stalin, and the rest were atheist and did what they did because they were atheist, one secular scientist, Dr. Norman Borlaug, using Darwinian principles, saved the lives of a billion people.
What’s the name of that Pope who saved a billion lives? Oh yeah, that’s right, there isn’t one.
@91 Denis Loubet —
Yeah, but all the popes have saved millions of *souls*. Don’t you see that really, it isn’t important to make a difference in *this* world? All that really matters is our eternal afterlife.
((Disclaimer required under Poe’s Law: I’m being sarcastic.))
“As for eugenics; you make an interesting point, but didn’t Darwin call for the same principles to be employed in the modern world?”
No, why would you think that he did?
Ill correct the last sentence you typed for you so that it makes more sense:
I guess then that making my religious beliefs and reality agree is like making a patchwork quilt, except that some of the pieces are missing, the thread keeps breaking, and the pattern doesn’t fit.
Your welcome.
Moron
Watch out Mattmc, he’s going to say you’re using ‘moron’ as your signature and it will be funny.
As funny his comics he linked earlier, at any rate.
Stushie:
Any citations for this? Links? But more to the point, is any evolutionary biologist/teacher saying this now?
Easy enough to assert. Now, what are these unraveling threads, etc. in evolutionary theory? One example would do fine.
Stushie —
I’d still like to know whether you continue to believe that Expelled was a “great film” after reading the information I linked you to in comments 80 and 82, and if so, what justifies this continued opinion.
So Stushie,
I’ll go ahead and bite, let’s say for the sake of argument that you are here for rational, reasonable debate of the matter at hand. Let’s start by creating a framework for the debate so to speak.
In order for me to debate this subject with you, would you please be so kind as to demonstrate your knowledge of Scientific method and terminionlogy.
Specifically, can you please explain (in your own words) what exactly a Scientific Theory is and how it differs from the common use of the word “theory” or from a hypothesis.
Then please describe how Intelligent Design can be considered a theory.
Then we’ll have a nice little debate, deal?
Folks,
You forget that Stushie arrived here all fired up after having watched Stein’s propaganda film. Like all good creationists, Stein quote-mined Darwin. He quoted Darwin writing this:
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
And then neglected, of course, to quote the next paragraph:
“The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.”
In other words, Darwin is saying we should NOT practice eugenics: that our sympathy for the weak is the noblest part our our nature.
Stushie–do you think it is fair for Ben Stein to misrepresent Darwin in this manner?
A hypothesis is constructed by making a predetermined guess of the processes regarding an observable event. The hypothesis stands or falls on whether or not observable actions continue regularly to follow a pattern that has been scientifically predicted.
Scientific theory follows on from the successful experimentation of a proven hypothesis, which has to be verified by neutral researchers and other scientists in different places, before it can be accepted by the scientific community.
Intelligent Design is a hypothesis based upon the work of both scientists and theologians, but can never be verified multiple times because there is only one act of creation. The scientific community will never accept it because it does not conform to accepted scientific practices. However, present scientific practices are not absolute either and in every generation, challenges are made to what we think we know.
Darwinism is a historically accepted theory in the scientific community and yet, despite the rule of scientific hypothesis, theory, and law, no one has yet observed an ape turn into a man. It seems that the verifications required by the standards of scientific law do not apply here because of prejudicial tendencies of post-Darwin theorists. Until there are multiple verifications all over the planet, in detached laboratories by different groups of researchers and scientists who actually see a monkey become a man, Darwinism should be treated like ID as a hypothesis that does not live up to the standards required of a scientific theory.
As for Ben Stein, he quoted both quotes in the movie…one after the other.
“no one has yet observed an ape turn into a man.”
Would you go on to explain what, exactly, you think evolution does? Because apparently you don’t have it right.
Additionally, “As for Ben Stein, he quoted both quotes in the movie…one after the other.”
If you had proof that Darwin was against such things, why would you state he promoted them? Did you ‘forget’ and just filled the gap with whatever was at hand?
stushi –
“actually see a monkey become a man”
So what it really comes down to is you’re confused about man’s evolutionary history, is that it? You’re afraid that Darwinian evolution means you’re only once removed from the chimps coming over for dinner? I would suggest you spend less time watching propaganda and more time hitting the books.
Stushie,
Evolution makes and has made one itsy bitsy thing that ID has not. Predictions. It has also verified them. The first scientist to show that evolution is wrong and presents a better hypothesis doesn’t get “Expelled”, he wins the nobel prize.
So either ID makes predictions or it doesn’t. It either has testable evidence or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t it isn’t science. If it isn’t science then the implied foundation of the entire ID enterprise is flawed. Namely, that it is a snubbed scientific theory.
You will either now provide predictions that can be empirically tested, followed by evidence supporting those predictions, or you should tuck tail and run. Sadly, what I expect you to do is continue to beat around the bush.
Junk DNA as Comments? Why would god, sorry “the designer” need to write comments? Whom are the comments for? When code is compiled all comments are removed anyway, does that mean we (life on earth) exists in a pre-compiled state? (head,desk,head,desk)
Each day I’m more gob-smacked at the ridiculous lengths creationists go to to try and shore up their crumbling belief system. I’m not sure how they are able to function on any sort of normal level with the lack of critical thinking that they display.
Good point. God must be getting Alzheimers and need to remind himself of what he has done. Or as Behe claimed, maybe he is dead now.
Why would an omniscient, all powerful deity need to write notes to himself? Especially in junk DNA which is rapidly evolving. By now, even he couldn’t figure out what he wrote.
I like how creos come up with flattering models of god. The Alzheimer victim god who is dumb enough to write comments in a rapidly changing medium. Even pencil and paper would have worked better.
I’d guess compilation = translation. The genome is the source code, the proteins are the actually working routines etc of the complied program.
Very possibly, I’m overthinking a questionably helpful metaphor.
…Why would god, sorry “the designer” need to write comments?….Each day I’m more gob-smacked at the ridiculous lengths creationists go to to try and shore up their crumbling belief system
Aw cripes, I thought I made myself clear on this. I thought it up, not a damn creationist. I was remarking on this part of the rational wiki entry
One RationalWikian’s challenge to ID has always been: Show me the comments in the DNA before you claim someone (or thing) wrote it.
I simply gave an answer I could expect a creationist to give. I’m glad some people here were able to give relatively short responses to that sort of nonsensical claim. It was a dumb challenge that should be removed.
Hypothesis:
If a dumb Christian visits a godless liberal scientific website and throws in a cyber-grenade in the comments with regard to Darwinism, will it create a Pavlovian response from the atheists and make most of them visit the Christian’s website?
Answer: Yes…at least 100 of you in 16 hours.
Goodbye, God bless, and thanks for all the fish!
Answer: No.
This hotbed of atheism receives about 60,000 visits per day (praise God!), which means that we had about 40,000 visits in your 16 hours. That means your trolling netted you about 0.25% of my traffic, which (and this is just the scientific way of thinking, perhaps the religious way of not thinking gets different results) is not anywhere near “most”.
But do go ahead and keep deluding yourself — I’m sure you’re well practiced at it. And thank you for confirming once again the stupidity of many religious believers, and reinforcing my message.
In addition to failing on the “most” claim, stushie has failed to show evidence that the 100 visits (even assuming they genuinely all referred from here) were those of atheists. Non-atheists are known to read pharyngula, eg self-professed Christians. So some of those might have been among the 100 if that was merely a total hit count.
You are mistaken! Stushie is a master of the No True Christian argument, so any purported “Christian” viewing this site is actually a confused atheist.
Hmmm…since Stushie has confessed to trolling to draw traffic to his Christianist web site, maybe I should ban his url as spam…
But that would then have to include himself (even if he does qualify that membership by characterising himself as “a dumb Christian”)!
I picked the Guide apart in detail at my site, http://www.wheatdogg.com, too. I discovered the RationalWiki critique halfway through my eight-part series. Our critiques are complementary, so I continued with mine anyway. I needed the mental exercise.
The Guide is as much a piece of trash as the movie. It promises its readers “new scientific research” that disproves evolution, but fails to deliver any. (Of course, it would be hard to deliver, since there isn’t any available.) It uses the same old tired quotes and misquotes that every other ID/creationist site has. It hypocritically avoids giving its readers any legitimate references to pro-evolution sources, preferring to stack the deck in favor of pro-ID citations.
The authors of the Guide further have the gall to suggest a single inane sermon topic to pastors, and recommend that teachers stage “student debates” about evolution and ID, using the Guide (of course) as the main reference.
Anyway, I invite you all to stop by my blog and check out my handiwork.
Stushie (comment #99):
Not quite, but better than the usual creationist misunderstandings. A scientific theory isn’t just a well-confirmed hypothesis; typically, it’s also a broader explanatory framework which unites a wide range of observations, and which also gives rise to a research programme involving the testing of subsidiary hypotheses.
First up, evolutionary theory does not predict that we should expect to observe an ape turn into a human. It entails that modern apes and humans share a common ancestor, and on the basis of that, makes numerous predictions about observable phenomena such as physiology, gene sequences, the fossil record etc etc. These observations bear out the idea that human and other apes are related by genealogical descent. Furthermore, the current theory predicts that such descent typically occurs by the accumulation of changes over many, many generations within the diverging lineages, and hence that it would be extremely unlikely for us to observe large-scale changes within the course of a human life-time. So if anything, if we observed an ape changing into a human or (to put the question in more sensible terms) a population of apes giving rise to a population of some other species as different from apes as humans are in just a handful of generations, it would actually be a reason for us to rethink the theory.
On which note, the evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors was an historical event. Complaining that we can’t observe it is rather like complaining that we can’t observe the Battle of Waterloo, or the signing of the Magna Carta. It’s a done deal, a one-off event that we would not expect to be replicated.
Secondly, the “standards of scientific law” do not require that a phenomenon must be observed directly in order for it to be tested. For example, no-one expects the formation of super-continents to be observed directly, but the formation and break-up of super-continents in the geological past is nevertheless well established, because the formation and break-up of super-continents leaves numerous observable signs in the geological record.
Thirdly, making the observation of a single instance of a predicted outcome the litmus test of an entire theory is both foolish and disingenuous. So we can’t observe apes evolving from humans? Well, we can’t observe the planetary dynamics of Planet Zogg on the far side of the universe. Does that mean that the laws of planetary motion are unverified? No, because we have other instances which we can observe. Specifically, we can observe the stages of speciation in other organisms, especially those with short generational spans. We can observe speciation taking place, so we don’t need to observe it in every instance to know that it occurs.
Careful, at any moment he/it’ll arrive, wringing its little paws, and crying, “But what about the bay-bees!”
Not me. I was too busy ogling all those nice abs. Mmmm. Pretty men in black, leather diapers.
Re Stalin:
All the contributions concerning “Stalin” here are based on a profound misapprehension! The man history knows as “Stalin” was, in fact, Lord Kitchener. Kitchener was supposedly drowned while en route to Russia in 1916 for a “diplomatic mission”. This mission was to prevent or contain the approaching revolution, Lloyd George having recognised the danger posed by the Bolshevik Party, and Kitchener’s “death” was part of the plot. Arriving in Russia, he met and murdered Stalin, whom he closely resembled (check the photos), and took his place. Most of his subsequent activities up to the Hitler-Stalin pact are easily explained as attempts to destroy Bolshevism from within, but the slavish stupidity of Stalinists thwarted him repeatedly. When Hitler invaded the USSR he realised Nazism had become the greater threat, and worked tirelessly to defeat him. In the course of this struggle, he finally became converted to Bolshevism – the face finally grew to match the mask – spent his last years rebuilding the USSR, and died at the age of 103. ;-)
@78:
I agree, Stushie. Dan had no reason to call you “the shit-sucking, worthless, little troll you truly are.” We don’t know for a fact that you’re little.
Thank you Etha Williams #73.
I didn’t know any of that. As I said, I just happened to be watching the telly (which I do rather rarely these days) when they had a Russia theme. Only caught the Kremlin bit, so these details about Stalin were new to me. Very interesting.
Although indeed considerably better than the usual creationist misunderstandings, stushie’s ideas about science and its technical terms are still gibberish:
What do you mean by “predetermined”?
And if I simply take that word out, I arrive at a workable definition of “speculation”, not of “hypothesis”.
Go here for good definitions of “fact”, “speculation”, “hypothesis” and “theory” (not so much of “law”, though).
There is no such thing as a proven hypothesis. That’s because nothing is ever proven outside of math and formal logics. Science cannot prove — only disprove.
This sounds like acceptance were some kind of formal event, with votes or something. That’s not at all the case. Every scientist accepts it separately (or rejects it separately).
Because there is no such thing as verification anyway (in the strict sense at least), historical sciences and astrophysics can still be sciences. To wit: The theory of evolution in combination with our knowledge of the fossil record predicts that there were no rabbits in the Silurian. Find a single rabbit skeleton in a Silurian rock, and the theory is in deep trouble.
ID also makes predictions. Most notably, it predicts that we will only find intelligent design and never stupid design. We find stupid design all over the living world — and therefore, ID is falsified.
The only response I ever got to this was that we can’t really know if design is stupid because we don’t know what the Designer was thinking. In other words, the Designer is ineffable — the idea that there is a designer is untestable — it is not falsifiable even in principle. This takes ID out of science. You see, as long as you can answer the question “if I were wrong, how would I know?”, you’re doing science; as soon as you stop being able to answer that, you’ve stopped doing science.
If you don’t make the argument from ineffability, it has been successfully falsified, and will therefore never be accepted. If you do make it, it does not conform to the scientific method (singular) and will therefore always be ignored by — by definition — all scientists.
The scientific method is fixed: falsification and parsimony. What changes are which ideas have not yet been falsified, not the method itself.
In fact, the theory of evolution predicts that this simply cannot happen. Populations evolve, not individuals, and mutation and selection take more time than a single generation. Observe another ape turning into a man, and the theory of evolution is falsified.
It seems you still have a lot to learn… and it’s not just that there are no “standards of scientific law”.
“You can’t teach a Sneech”…
Behe and his ilk have their minds made up, and the facts will not lead them astray. I think this immunity to logic and inability to perceive reality is as dangerous as any topic they could espouse.
No.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions (h/t Atrios).