No Intelligence Allowed, indeed.

April 20, 2008 1:57 PM

Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a pro-Intelligent Design, anti-evolution polemic, arrived in theaters Friday to overwhelmingly negative reviews and anemic ticket sales. In response to the claims made in the film comes Expelled Exposed, a website which seeks to "show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none."
posted by Pope Guilty (359 comments total)

There were only two positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. One of them was from Christianity Today. And even it was kinda mixed.
posted by grouse at 2:00 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

I mean really, what was Ben Stein thinking? Objectivity? How do you equal a playing field by letting geese shit all over it?
posted by auralcoral at 2:02 PM on April 20

Previous discussion.
posted by homunculus at 2:06 PM on April 20

If we must pay attention to this farce, let us do so in a proper spirit of mockery:

Ben Stein is a grandiose moron.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:07 PM on April 20

See also: Reason.com
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:07 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

As bad as it (deservedly) did at the box office, it still left "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" in the dust.
posted by Class Goat at 2:08 PM on April 20

"I mean really, what was Ben Stein thinking?"

Bueller ... Bueller ... Buelller
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:09 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]

Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know... ...about intelligent design and evolution
posted by homunculus at 2:11 PM on April 20 [8 favorites]

I sort of thought Ben Stein was smarter than this. Too much time spent in the echo chamber I guess.
posted by Spacelegoman at 2:11 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]

auralcoral: "I mean really, what was Ben Stein thinking? "

As I understand it, Stein wanted to do this because he is "not a fan" of Darwinism because it was used by Nazis to justify the holocaust. Plus lets not forget he is still a huge conservative at heart, and about the biggest Nixon apologist this side of Charles Colson.

I almost want to see this movie as a sort of "see what the other side thinks" opportunity. I also enjoy the irony of the director excluding PZ Meyers from an early screening of the film.
posted by grandsham at 2:12 PM on April 20

It would be fun to visit some of the rabid conservative bloggers that 1) delighted in the poor ticket sales of the recent spate of Iraq war movies and 2) claimed anemic sales was evidence the US public disagreed with the ideology of those movies.

Ok, maybe not fun, but you know.
posted by mediareport at 2:14 PM on April 20

Scientific groups should hire Jimmy Kimmel to make a film rebutting Expelled's arguments, mainly taking the form of Kimmel repeatedly zinging Stein's unhipness.
posted by Bromius at 2:16 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]

Still, it was marginally better than Battlefield Earth.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:16 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]

It would be fun to visit some of the rabid conservative bloggers that 1) delighted in the poor ticket sales of the recent spate of Iraq war movies and 2) claimed anemic sales was evidence the US public disagreed with the ideology of those movies.

That's quite true, and should serve a reminder to everyone, regardless of their views, that the content's profit margin never dictates the right- or wrongness of said content.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:19 PM on April 20

From this interview, it seems like Stein is claiming that Darwinism supposes to explain the origins of life. Does Darwin ever make claims to the origins of life? I always thought the theory of evolution was about how species change over time not where they came from. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
posted by auralcoral at 2:20 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

It was very, very hard not to editorialise in this post.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:20 PM on April 20

auralcoral: First, Darwin ≠ modern evolutionary biology. Second, you are right, the theory of evolution is separate from abiogenesis.
posted by grouse at 2:22 PM on April 20

it seems like Stein is claiming that Darwinism supposes to explain the origins of life. Does Darwin ever make claims to the origins of life? I always thought the theory of evolution was about how species change over time not where they came from. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're absolutely correct. While the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments, it has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is, if I remember Stephen Jay Gould correctly, "the nonrandom survival of randomly varying replicators". It's not origins, though creationists will probably still be attacking it on that front for the rest of time.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:23 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

I was wondering if anyone would take the stone-looking guy from the Clear Eyes commercials seriously.
posted by mullingitover at 2:24 PM on April 20

Lots of subliminal sex in their design. Note the juxtapositions of "s" and "ex".
Then there's the lame attempt to portray followers as rebels. Some serious ad agency work here.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 2:27 PM on April 20

"Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?"

That is the only worthwhile thing that Ben Stein has ever uttered (and he didn't even write it).
posted by HyperBlue at 2:28 PM on April 20

I once saw Ben Stein in an airport, wearing a suit and some kind of hipster foot apparel. There weren't very many people around, and as a journalist who has met my share of very famous people, I generally know how not to behave around them. But as I'd been amused by Ben Stein's Money -- the game show that turned anti-Semitism into a laff ryot -- I gave him a little nod and smile when I walked past him. He whipped his head away with an absolutely exasperated look, as if I'd been a paparazzo from TMZ. Puh-leeze.
posted by digaman at 2:29 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

While the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments,

This is not so. Not even close. Mankind has never even MADE life from non-living matter, though they're getting closer every day.

You're probably thinking of the Miller-Urey experiment, which simulated the chemistry of early Earth and demonstrated more complex organic molecules resulting naturally from less complex ones and a lot of energy. A very important result but not at all what you've said.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:30 PM on April 20 [8 favorites]

To take a completely different road toward pissing all over this, does it seem strange to anybody else that this actually got a theatrical release? I know it can't get nominated for an Oscar without one (stop laughing!), said nomination being the only way most documentaries ever get any kind of attention whatsoever, but still. The solution is to dump it in three or four theaters for a week, just so it qualifies, then pull it. They've actually advertised this on television (during Colbert, no less), which is just a stupid waste of money: Who in the fucking world is going to spend ten bucks to watch a movie -- any movie -- starring Ben Stein? Did he put up all the money for this himself?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:33 PM on April 20

Pope Guilty: "
You're absolutely correct. While the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments"

I don't actually think scientists have produced any sort of abiogenesis in a lab. if you want to point me to an article about this, I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but I am almost positive what you've said here isn't true

But it is true that evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis, but that creationist/ID types love to conflate the two issues since we know so little about abiogenesis.
posted by grandsham at 2:34 PM on April 20

kittens for breakfast: presumably the same people who packed theaters to watch the Mel Gibson Jesus movie, and the penguin documentary.
posted by grouse at 2:36 PM on April 20

lupus_yonderboy, grandsham, you're right. Sorry about that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:36 PM on April 20

Please everybody stop saying "Darwinism". We're letting people who by rights shouldn't even be involved in the conversation control the discourse. It's like saying "the Democrat party". On one side there is creationism. On the other side there is the scientific method.
posted by penduluum at 2:37 PM on April 20 [50 favorites]

I sort of thought Ben Stein was smarter than this. Too much time spent in the echo chamber I guess.

Smarter then this? What do you mean? He's going to make a ton of money off moronic right-wingers, and elevate his stature in the conservative movement of which he is a part. Sometimes you really can attribute things like this to malice, even when they are adequately explained by incompetence.

From this interview, it seems like Stein is claiming that Darwinism supposes to explain the origins of life. Does Darwin ever make claims to the origins of life? I always thought the theory of evolution was about how species change over time not where they came from. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, Darwinian evolution explains where species come from, namely, from other species. It doesn't try to explain how life started.

This is not so. Not even close. Mankind has never even MADE life from non-living matter, though they're getting closer every day.

Well, humans have created life from pre-existing information using non-living matter, that is, generating DNA strands and creating new cells, but that's using what evolution provided. No one has ever created self-replicating molecules in a lab, as far as I know, although some people think that there are some simple self-replicating RNA strands which could have been created randomly pretty easily (If I'm remembering correctly)
posted by delmoi at 2:37 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

I hate that disgusting worm.
posted by puke & cry at 2:39 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Why isn't it okay to question evolution? For the record I can believe in MICRO evolution, just not macro evolution....granted many "creationists" kinda come off sounding stupid, but then over the years many supposedly scientific theories eventually got blown out of the water by later facts...anyhow I thought this movie was about that rather than evolution/creationism itself-was I wrong?
posted by konolia at 2:41 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

I think the fact that humans (our only empircally controllable example of intelligent agents) have not been able to design living systems in the lab is pretty strong evidence that life cannot be created using design techniques and principles.

If these ID proponents think life can be intelligently designed, let's see them intelligently design some life de novo, without using any evolutionary techniques.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:43 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

It would be fun to visit some of the rabid conservative bloggers that 1) delighted in the poor ticket sales of the recent spate of Iraq war movies and 2) claimed anemic sales was evidence the US public disagreed with the ideology of those movies.

The ticket sales seem pretty good all things considered. A $3 million open weekend for a documentary is amazing. Michael Moore and penguin movies aside, documentaries barely make a dent at the box office. It also pulled in more money per theatre than 3 of the movies that did better overall.

I don't want to defend the movie's content, but the numbers can easily be seen as a positive.
posted by Gary at 2:44 PM on April 20

Thank you Lupus_yonderboy and grandsham. I had quite a "wait, what?" moment at that. The general point PG was searching for I think (and forgive me if I'm putting the wrong words in your mouth here) is that Darwin's particular work and evolutionary theory in general, in now way rules out the existence of a God or his creation of life. It might rule out certain Biblical conjectures about the early history of the world, but that's a different matter entirely.

(or at least it would be if fundamentalists weren't so insistent that every comma in the King James version must be literal truth or else there's no concept of right and wrong in the world and we may well all just start raping our daughters and killing anyone who gets in our way. another idea I disagree with)
posted by Naberius at 2:46 PM on April 20

You can question anything you want, konolia. That's the scientific method. But first you have to deal with the fact that the overwhelming mass of evidence from the archeological record, as well as processes we can observe happening right now, suggest that evolution is a solid theory. Then you can point to the evidence in the archeological record that the theory of evolution can't explain. After doing that minimal amount of homework, fire away.
posted by digaman at 2:49 PM on April 20 [7 favorites]

The movie looks like a funhouse version of "Indoctrinate U" which is a real effort to demonstrate real bias in the academy.

However, it's rather hard to call Ben Stein a conservative these days, insofar as he is using his Sunday New York Times column week after week to campaign for higher taxes and higher regulations.
posted by MattD at 2:49 PM on April 20

konolia For the record I can believe in MICRO evolution, just not macro evolution

That's like believing in rain, but not in rivers.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 2:50 PM on April 20 [55 favorites]

Konolia, it's okay to question evolution when you have actual scientific proof to question it, not some silly 2000-year-old book written by someone who had no idea about biology.
posted by kldickson at 2:51 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

Why isn't it okay to question evolution?

That's a dishonest question. Intelligent Design does not "question" evolution; it simply seeks to replace it with religion. Nobody is punished for "questioning" evolution.

For the record I can believe in MICRO evolution, just not macro evolution

There is no difference, and neither of those terms are used by non-creationists.

granted many "creationists" kinda come off sounding stupid, but then over the years many supposedly scientific theories eventually got blown out of the water by later facts

The difference is that when new evidence contradicts a scientific theory, the theory gets revised and changed. That's a STRENGTH of science, not the weakness that people who seek to raise other, correction-lacking epistemologies above science want it to be.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:51 PM on April 20 [34 favorites]

Life seems like an obvious corollary to the second law of thermodynamics. Take a system and pump energy into it for N years and its complexity will build over time, limited only by the limitations of physics and the available energy. I don't understand how this isn't obvious.
posted by mullingitover at 2:53 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

I think the fact that humans (our only empircally controllable example of intelligent agents) have not been able to design living systems in the lab is pretty strong evidence that life cannot be created using design techniques and principles.

As lupus_yonderboy notes, we're getting closer. Certainly there's no reason to believe that intelligently designing life is impossible; that life on earth was the product of said design, however, is absurd.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:54 PM on April 20

granted many "creationists" kinda come off sounding stupid

There's a reason for that.
posted by Optamystic at 2:54 PM on April 20 [17 favorites]

...but then over the years many supposedly scientific theories eventually got blown out of the water by later facts...

This is as strong an argument for evolution and/or the scientific method as one could hope for. Contrast the "intelligent design" movement, which not only hasn't advanced past its original "theories", but has no evidence with which to test those theories in the first place.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:55 PM on April 20 [8 favorites]

Stein, who was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, lives at the Watergate in Washington DC which boasts a Safeway grocery store. He was in line behind my roommate and I shortly after he released the trailer for his 'documentary.' We started talking loudly about Nixon's speeches and anti-intellectualism and Stein put down his groceries, gave us the stink eye, and walked out.
posted by The White Hat at 2:58 PM on April 20 [34 favorites]

konolia: It's just fine to question evolution. Question it all you like.

There are quite heated debates about different aspects of evolutionary theory in many disciplines and sub-disciplines of biology. Authentic questioning happens all the time.

This film, however, questions a straw man and poorly. Additionally interviews for the film were made under false pretenses, equates "darwinism" with Nazi Socialism, used copyrighted materials without permission, among other things. It's not an honest attempt at open discussion.

Evolution is a set of concepts and theory and observation that has stood the test of academic rigor for over 150 years. If (giant huge pulsating "if" from Mars) strong, well corroborated evidence comes along that shows that macro-evolution is wrong - we have to accept that it's wrong and move on.

Why is it wrong to question this (shoddy) film?
posted by device55 at 2:59 PM on April 20

delmoi, I don't think anyone has actually created a cell from scratch.

The closest I can think of is creating genomes, especially for viruses, from random 6bp strands. To actually express the genome requires protein machinery, which must come from a pre-existing cell, since you can't build a replicative system without one already (ie. to open the box and get the key inside you have to already have the key).
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 3:01 PM on April 20

The wild frenzy of hatred unleashed in this post actually justifies one of Ben Stein's assertions, which is that -- for some reason -- creationism triggers irrational emotionalism among those who oppose it, which eventually leads to persecution of believers. I mean, digaman taking offense at Ben Stein's not returning his smile and glance, and being offended enough by it to mention it here on this post, as if it were some kind of damning evidence of Stein's perfidy is the silliest thing I've ever read. (Especially since there's plenty of evidence of Stein's intellectual perfidy among his copious writings.

For my part, I consider "creationism" a charming fantasy, and see no reason why someone who believes the earth was created in six days by God couldn't do science and biology as well as someone who believes there are fairies at the bottom of his or her garden. In fact, I know a very hard-nosed physician at a major medical center who is a creationist, and saves quite a few more lives on a daily basis than Richard Dawkins, for all the latter's scientific laurels.

Stein's film is a troll, but you don't have to rise to the bait.
posted by Faze at 3:03 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]

...the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments...

Sorry about that.

hey, an honest mistake. it's easy to see how you could have gotten confused there. ya know, like saying "...the tracks of fish on bicycles have been repeatedly observed in the stratosphere..."
posted by quonsar at 3:04 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Please everybody stop saying "Darwinism".

Thank you. The term is an attempt to reduce a field of science to a cultist ideology like Maoism. Anyone who contrasts "Creation Science" vs. "Darwinism" has done a switcheroo on you -- an unsubtle bit of sleight of hand to invert the labels religion and science.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:05 PM on April 20 [15 favorites]

mullingitover: You might like the book Into the Cool.
posted by adamdschneider at 3:06 PM on April 20

konolia writes "Why isn't it okay to question evolution?"

Questioning evolution doesn't put it in doubt scientifically. For that, you need to come up with a better scientific explanation for all the things that evolution explains. Questioning it doesn't really do anything to the way it's currently understood and utilized scientifically; it only creates political controversy. But that still doesn't affect the science itself. ID can't really replace evolution, because it doesn't explain anything, nor can it be falsified. You can't really get around that part, and it's unfortunate that the ID/creation movement complains about it, but it's not something you can just skip and call it OK.
posted by krinklyfig at 3:09 PM on April 20

If you define macroevolution as the arising of new species as a result of natural selection (speciation), and two organisms as being members in the same species by the ability to produce fertile offspring, "macroevolution" has already been demonstrated in a lab.

I suspect that some use the term "macroevolution" as a shorthand for "the form of evolution that I reject", and not in a scientific sense.
posted by zixyer at 3:11 PM on April 20 [4 favorites]

Faze, I think the strong reaction is actually from all the lying and willful attempts to tell other people's kids what to think without permission.

If I went to see a physician who believes the earth was created in six days, I'd get a second opinion. He's not qualified to do the job.

I'm perfectly fine letting folks believe what they want to believe, but when they try to rewrite science guidelines in public schools (that I pay taxes for) and push completely dishonest propaganda in order to shore up their political position - in order to gain more power over the electorate, it ceases to be a 'charming fantasy'.
posted by device55 at 3:12 PM on April 20 [15 favorites]

The ticket sales seem pretty good all things considered. A $3 million open weekend for a documentary is amazing. Michael Moore and penguin movies aside, documentaries barely make a dent at the box office. It also pulled in more money per theatre than 3 of the movies that did better overall.

I don't want to defend the movie's content, but the numbers can easily be seen as a positive.

It depends on how much they've funneled into advertising. From anecdotal evidence, I can say it appears they've spent a lot. Certainly more than makes sense, being that the prospects for this movie cleaning up at the box office could never have gotten much better than grim. The subject matter is, I think, the best thing going for it -- it's a documentary, which is up there with "musical" and "western" in terms of movies Americans generally avoid like the plague, and it stars a two hundred year old man best known for a bit part in a movie from twenty years ago, and second best known for working for Richard Nixon. Goatse: The Movie has more mainstream appeal. Will it do well on DVD and definitely on TV? When it's free and you don't have to put in any effort to see it, you bet. But the big theatrical push strikes me as vanity.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:12 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Why isn't it okay to question evolution?

Huh? It is.

That's what scientists do.
posted by Flunkie at 3:13 PM on April 20 [11 favorites]

You know, I see evolution compared with gravity a lot, as both are considered 'certain facts'. This is a better analogy than many people realize, because both are theories (ideas) about observations in the physical world, and, interestingly, neither is certain.

Now, it's obviously true that if you drop an apple, it's going to fall down, barring some intervention. The apple will always fall if unsupported, 100 times out of 100. This part is absolute fact. But we still don't really understand why. We have many guesses about how the gravitic force is transferred, from bent spacetime to fundamental particles to something from string theory that I don't really remember.... but we definitely are not sure why things fall down. That does not change the fact that they do.

Evolution is quite similar. The observation is that creatures change over time. This is absolutely true; it's one of the best-supported facts in all of science. There is no doubt whatsoever that this happens; we can see it in the fossil record, we can see it in genetics, we can see it with short-lived organisms in the laboratory.

But the explanation for WHY they change over time is less certain. "Survival of the fittest" is a very, very likely explanation, but it's not absolute fact in the same way. Just like with gravity, however, our uncertainty over WHY creatures change does not alter the fact that they do.

What the creationists are proposing is simple nonsense. It's literally wild flights of fancy, purely imaginary bullshit that they're trying to substitute for real physical observations of the world around us. Evolution is weak only in one area; the explanation of WHY creatures change. That's the part we added to the fundamental evidence, and that's the part we could have wrong. (I don't think we do, but if any part of that theory can be attacked, it's there.)

Anyone who tells you that God created the Earth, in whole, 6000 years ago, is telling you something that flat, absolutely, is not true. If you were to print all the evidence against 6k earth and pile it in a nice stack, it would almost certainly reach the Moon.

Hell, we can tell this from very simple genetics; if you accept that CSI can determine who committed a crime from a hair left at the scene, or that we can reliably determine paternity from genetic testing, then you really can't accept 6,000 year old Earth. We can easily trace family genes back much farther than that. You can have one or the other... you can believe in paternity testing, or you can believe in 6k Earth. One or the other, but not both.

So, should you get into this argument with someone in real life, try that angle on them. If they accept paternity testing and crime-scene DNA analysis, how do they deal with the fact that we can clearly trace many thousands of human generations through our genes? If we can assure you who your parents were, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents... where is the magic line where genetics suddenly stops working?
posted by Malor at 3:14 PM on April 20 [85 favorites]

The wild frenzy of hatred unleashed in this post

There's a difference between mocking idiots and "hating" them.

For my part, I consider "creationism" a charming fantasy, and see no reason why someone who believes the earth was created in six days by God couldn't do science and biology as well as someone who believes there are fairies at the bottom of his or her garden.

When said people insist that their fantasies are real and science is not, they're not doing science and biology well.

In fact, I know a very hard-nosed physician at a major medical center who is a creationist, and saves quite a few more lives on a daily basis than Richard Dawkins, for all the latter's scientific laurels.

What the hell kind of ad hominem nonsense is this? Who cares how many lives your physician saves? That has nothing to do with the fact that his ideas about where the various species of life came from are wrong.

hey, an honest mistake. it's easy to see how you could have gotten confused there. ya know, like saying "...the tracks of fish on bicycles have been repeatedly observed in the stratosphere..."

Oh good, another thread related to theism where quonsar shits everywhere.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:16 PM on April 20 [4 favorites]

I love Conservatives. They defend genetic modification with the claim that nature does the same thing, and oppose the teaching of evolution with the claim it doesn't.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:16 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]

Does anyone else feel like Scientific American fucked up the entailment in this counter-argument?

By those standards, design-based explanations rapidly lose their rigor without independent scientific proof that validates and defines the nature of the designer. Without it, design-based explanations rapidly become unhelpful and tautological: "This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this looks designed."

For the argument to be circular (it's not strictly speaking tautological no matter how you interpret it) it would have to read "This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer, so it must be designed."

Konolia: it's ok to question evolutionary theory, just know that if you do so you are basically barging into the middle of a conversation that the community of the science-educated has been having for more than a hundred years and that we've basically come to a couple of solid conclusions in the meantime. It might sound ridiculous that we evolved from apes, but that occurred to us back in the 19th century, it occurred to Darwin, and that concern has been put to rest. There were other serious objections to the theory that have been put to rest, and the remaining objections still voiced by the ID movement are almost exclusively mischaracterizations of the theory or mischaracterizations of the evidence, and we've been through all that too. We don't have the energy to recap the entire process everytime someone walks into the room and says "hey, that sounds crazy -- I can't possibly believe that." You can probably find the history of the whole thing on wikipedia, and that will explain our ridicule and contempt in this thread. Anyway, the strength of a theory doesn't really depend on whether or not laypeople find it believable. I find the theory of relativity almost impossible to believe, but physicists don't let my disbelief disturb them because who am I? Not a physicist, that's who.

On preview: wow, I'm like the 15th person saying exactly this.
posted by creasy boy at 3:16 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]

Evolution is weak only in one area; the explanation of WHY creatures change.

Creatures change because a) changes in their environment cause different genetic patterns to become better at self-replicating and b) sometimes, genetic mutations are beneficial. Simple as that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:19 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

The wild frenzy of hatred unleashed in this post actually justifies one of Ben Stein's assertions, which is that -- for some reason -- creationism triggers irrational emotionalism among those who oppose it, which eventually leads to persecution of believers. I mean, digaman taking offense at Ben Stein's not returning his smile and glance, and being offended enough by it to mention it here on this post, as if it were some kind of damning evidence of Stein's perfidy is the silliest thing I've ever read.

I don't take it as evidence that Stein is evil, but I do think it points to Stein as a dick with some serious delusions of grandeur, which seems...evident?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:20 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

What bothers me is that I'm directing a documentary myself and know it'll never get the same kind of press as Ben Stein's turd.
posted by BrianBoyko at 3:20 PM on April 20

Stein's film is a troll, but you don't have to rise to the bait.

Better, perhaps, to rise to a troll's bait now, than to one day be thrown into ovens by his disciples.

If digaman's criticism is the "worst" we'll see, consider that there is a wealth of legitimate and damning criticism to follow it.

Anyway, just as bad as Stein being anti-science, Stein has been outed as a plagiarist, having lifted others' work for his own, without permission, compensation or credit.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:24 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Biologists question the theory of evolution all the time; that is how it has become so refined, and is so fundamentally proven in its essential claims.

There's a difference between questioning something seriously and shouting real loud to drown out the truth you don't like.

What I love, though, is that the "explanation" of the ID wackos is "god made it." This is neither provable nor disprovable, because it has no basis in factual observations of nature. No one has ever been able to isolate and demonstrate the existence of "god," so you have to "believe" in him/her/it. There is simply no evidence for which "God" is a reasonable explanation because there has never been any evidence that "God" is anything other than a figment of the imagination of one particular species that has not been on the earth for very long at all relative to the history of life on this planet.

Now the latest trick of the ID loons is to argue what is essentially a syllogism: the world is too complex to have been made by an "unintelligent" force, therefore it must have been made by an "intelligent" agent whose mind is similar to ours.

The one big, gaping, fucking problem with that is that whatever made the finch's beak and the strata of the Grand Canyon and the fly's eye *also* made our "intelligence." Our concept of intelligence as somehow supernatural or metaphysical is an obvious illusion, since the only intelligence we know for sure -- our own -- is made up of the same material as makes up the brain of a fly or the stem of a plant.

We flatter ourselves so foolishly.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:28 PM on April 20 [10 favorites]

Better, perhaps, to rise to a troll's bait now, than to one day be thrown into ovens by his disciples.

That seems a little over the top to me.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:30 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

Why isn't it okay to question evolution?

It is. Has anybody seriously suggested that it isn't?

There is a biological theory out there that is sometimes protected by law, and in those cases some people can be legally punished for questioning it in some venues. That theory is creationism or intelligent design.

For the record I can believe in MICRO evolution, just not macro evolution

The latter is the former iterated over tens of millions of years.

creationism triggers irrational emotionalism among those who oppose it

Not so. The heartfelt response many have against creationism is entirely rational. Creationism does not exist in a vacuum. At best, it is part of a movement towards traditionalism that anybody who is not traditionally favored, or whose relationships are not traditionally favored, would very reasonably oppose. At worst, it is a small, early part of a plan to fully theocratize the U.S.

Nobody really gives a fuck about evolution. Even the authors of creationist textbooks by and large couldn't give a rat's ass about how we explain biological changes over geologic time. For them, creationism is just the thin end of a wedge of forcing public schools, and later other public entities, to espouse their religious doctrines. Likewise, the people here reacting strongly against it probably aren't deeply invested in academic biology.

Instead, both sides are invested in other questions: can homosexuals kiss in public, or can we keep those faggots in their place? Can mixed-race couples marry and conduct themselves in public, or can we stop this mongrelizing? Can women make a career outside the home without social or legal reprisal, or can we make them be housewives like the lord intended? Should young single women be able to get contraceptives, or is that for little whores? People react strongly because this is yet another push from a group that has been on the wrong side of every social issue of significance for the past 50 years.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:30 PM on April 20 [102 favorites]

That seems a little over the top to me.

It can't happen here.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:32 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Also, there does not need to be a "why?" explanation for anything that does not entail our limited understanding of causality as agency. Why do tornadoes form? Why do suns burn out? Why do people die? Why are the innocent so often killed and the evil spared? Why are rocks heavier than wood per square inch?

We're like a bunch of little children when we cry "why, why, why?" and cannot accept the answer "because that is how things are." We want so badly for a big daddy god to be planning it all so it isn't as scary to die.

To the believers, just once I suggest you try to free your mind of the fiction that humans are at the center of all things. We're specks of sand, nothing in the universe, a blink of the eye in geologic time. The idea that we would be able to comprehend, scientifically, as much as we *do* after 100-200 years of finally casting of the yoke of religious superstition is amazing, and a testament to our intelligence, not "god's." But we still know almost nothing about the universe, and it's very comforting to cry out for help, to make up stories that make it all alright. If it gets you through the night, fine. But please don't get in the way of real science, please? Our children will need to take the material, natural conditions in which they live much more seriously than we have done so in recent generations. We've got a serious ecological crisis coming right at us like a bullet and there is no time to be daydreaming of a rescue from "god."
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:36 PM on April 20 [14 favorites]

You can't really compare evolution to gravity the way Malor does. In fact, evolution is in a way more true then gravity.

Here is what I mean. Some truths are mathematically provable truths. 2 + 2 will always equal four, but the force of gravity doesn't come from any fundamental mathematical that we know of. We have no idea how gravity works, it's just 'there'. We can observe it, and measure it, but we have no idea what causes it.

On the other hand, mathematical truths can be proven. We know 2+ 2 = 4, and we know the fundamental theorem of calculus. But here's the the thing, evolution through natural selection is a fundamental mathematical truth. If you build a simulation complex enough to have self-replicating populations with mutations Evolution will happen. Evolution through natural selection is a fundamental property of any universe (with enough complexity), while gravity is just an observed effect.

So my view is that evolution is a fundamental incontrovertible fact, while gravity is just an observed effect.
posted by delmoi at 3:37 PM on April 20 [9 favorites]

I've been watching these quite a bit lately. The "Why Do People Laugh At Creationsists" videos are nice because they do things in a lovely point-by-point manner and with a good deal of mocking while keeping it at an acceptable level. I like them because they make it clear how ridiculous most (if not all) Creationst ideas are.

My grandfather sent me an email once-- a forward about something Ben Stein had said about how stupid the idea of evolution was or some such tripe-- and I emailed back with a point-by-point return and rebuttal of each point made. I put a lot of time into that email. The response I got back was this: "There are not very many Liberals in the world I could say I loved, but you are one of them. XOXO"

I wanted to be upset that the email had basically been ignored, but after a few moments of thinking about it I was glad he hadn't decided to disown me.
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 3:39 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

You can question it all you like, konolia, but if you want to be listened to you had better have alternative explanations and observations, not just "I don't believe in macro-evolution".

Science sees something it doesn't understand and says "let's think about that, let's study that, let's perform experiments and see if we can understand it".

"Intelligent design" sees something it doesn't understand and says "Oh well...must have been God!".

Two different things. Difficult to compare.
posted by Jimbob at 3:43 PM on April 20

Ben Stein: America's Most Smartest Creationist
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:45 PM on April 20

win ben stein's monkey
posted by pyramid termite at 3:51 PM on April 20 [17 favorites]

I don't know which group I find more narrow-minded and intolerable, those evolutionists who insist that anyone who believes in an unmoved mover is an anti-science, anti-intellectual rube or those Christians who hold that no one can profess Christ and recite the The Nicene Creed with conviction while believing that God could have used evolution to create. That is, that one can't be both, as if they were somehow mutually exclusive. I like Andrew Sullivan's remarks on this:

I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth. So I am perfectly happy to believe in evolution, for example, as the most powerful theory yet devised explaining human history and pre-history. I have no fear of what science will tell us about the universe - since God is definitionally the Creator of such a universe; and the meaning of the universe cannot be in conflict with its Creator. I do not, in other words, see reason as somehow in conflict with faith - since both are reconciled by a Truth that may yet be beyond our understanding

posted by dawson at 3:51 PM on April 20 [6 favorites]

Designer... designer... designer...
posted by fleetmouse at 3:51 PM on April 20

This week in New Scientist magazine (and online):
Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions
posted by DarkForest at 3:52 PM on April 20

Anyway, just as bad as Stein being anti-science, Stein has been outed as a plagiarist, having lifted others' work for his own, without permission, compensation or credit.

That's hilarious! He's not even the first to plagiarize that animation, the Discovery Institute did the same thing last year.
posted by homunculus at 3:53 PM on April 20

Designer... designer... designer...

What is "What does Michael Behe cry out during sex?"

woo! I retain control of the board AND get the Daily Double!
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:56 PM on April 20 [4 favorites]

To all Stein's detractors: Don't feed the trolls.

It's possible to believe that the reductionistic empiricism which dominates MeFi and the scientific community is flawed--"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy"--but that doesn't mean Stein's stunt is worth the time it would take to refute it. I believe that the scientific method is most emphatically not the only way in which we learn truth. But I also believe Stein's project to be profoundly silly.
posted by valkyryn at 3:57 PM on April 20

Actually I'm not asking to be listened to here... I have my own opinions and thoughts but I also know I am no scientist. I have heard of prejudice directed at folks who ARE scientists who for whatever reason do question certain tenets of evolution.

What I do think is this-sometimes a person can look at a piece of evidence, and determine it must mean one thing, while another person from another mindset might look at that same evidence and draw a differing conclusion. The only thing I can say for certain to this crowd, here, on this thread is that none of us was around when life actually began. So I think it should be okay to question it all, every whit. Even stuff that seems to be set in stone. If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.

Who knows what people will believe and be taught on this subject in 500 years, assuming an asteroid doesn't plug us all before then?
posted by konolia at 3:57 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

Evolution is no less consistent with the Bible than the Bible is consistent with Itself.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:58 PM on April 20

another thread related to theism where quonsar shits everywhere.

"the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments"

another thread related to theism where quonsar shits everywhere.

"the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments"

another thread related to theism where quonsar shits everywhere.

"the arising of life from non-living matter has been repeatedly demonstrated in laboratory experiments"

*cough*

say what now?
posted by quonsar at 4:01 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

I don't know which group I find more narrow-minded and intolerable, those evolutionists who insist that anyone who believes in an unmoved mover is an anti-science, anti-intellectual rube or those Christians who hold that no one can profess Christ and recite the The Nicene Creed with conviction while believing that God could have used evolution to create.

Like who?

Specifically.
posted by Flunkie at 4:04 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

One thing all my science courses have tried to instill in me is that a scientific theory has to do two things: it must predict, and it must explain. Especially in chemistry, the models tend to abstract themselves away from the physical reality of what's "actually" going on. Here's an example.

A model called hybrid orbital theory has proven itself extremely useful in organic chemistry as a way to rationalize bonding between atoms in organic molecules. There's one problem, though: hybrid orbital theory does not hold up for most of the periodic table. Hybrid orbital theory, in a strict sense, is false. Atoms don't actually do what hybrid orbital theory says they do.

Why, then, does hybrid orbital theory continue to be used by chemists**? The reason is that, for a known subset of observed behavior, hybrid orbital theory is true. For that subset, the theory is a useful predictor for how atoms will bond.

Scientific theories in general do not make claims about absolute truths in the universe. All a scientist is doing when he or she devises a new model is attempting to rationalize experimental data with the existing body of knowledge in that field. The more experimental observation that fits within the theory, the more accepted it becomes.

Going back to chemistry, one could say that the reason why atoms bond the way they do is that God made it that way. That very well may be true, but as a scientific theory it's pretty useless because it gives us no insight into how to predict behavior for situations that have not yet been observed empirically.

Perhaps paradoxically, scientific truth and absolute truth are not the same thing. The scientific veracity of a theory depends entirely on its ability to fit experimental data and predict the outcome of future experiments. Absolute truth is an intrinsic quality that can't really be measured. These two truths do not correspond on a one-to-one basis.

Intelligent Design (or whatever you choose to call it) could very well be true in an absolute sense. It will never be scientifically true because, while it explains life on Earth, it can't be used to predict future outcomes.

**Before any real chemists jump on me, though hybrid orbital theory is still used as a simplified way of describing C, N, and O bonding, it has been phased out, in large part, in favor of the more comprehensive molecular orbital theory.
posted by anifinder at 4:05 PM on April 20 [9 favorites]

Why isn't it okay to question evolution? For the record I can believe in MICRO evolution, just not macro evolution

They are one and the same. "Micro" and "macro" are terms used by ID proponents to appear like they are ceding ground and being reasonable . They say " evolutionary processes" can happen within species, but not across species.

That those processes occur within species is not debatable; it is easily demonstrated.

The across-species concept comes from the boneheads still trying to argue that man did not evolve from monkeys. Evolutionists have never made that argument. The theory is, and always has been, that man and apes share a common ancestor. We are the result of micro-evolution, if you will (or must).
posted by Benny Andajetz at 4:06 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

The only thing I can say for certain to this crowd, here, on this thread is that none of us was around when life actually began. So I think it should be okay to question it all, every whit. Even stuff that seems to be set in stone. If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.

It's not a matter of whether evolutionary science can handle the scrutiny of people who find it to be lacking as an explanation. It's a matter of whether it's a good idea to condone people who feel that no one should give them crap about ignoring evidence because it doesn't fit in with what they've already decided. That's the kind of thinking that gets juries to convict innocent people. It's dangerous.
posted by 23skidoo at 4:21 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

I have heard of prejudice directed at folks who ARE scientists who for whatever reason do question certain tenets of evolution.

You say that as if saying it makes it so. Please, point to an example of somebody who is a scientist who has faced prejudice for "questioning" evolution.

Or don't, because honestly, I think you're being dishonest in how you speak. By saying "questioning certain tenets of evolution" you make it sound as though people are losing their jobs for saying "Gee, fellows, I don't know if that theory is complete." That's not happening, I'm pretty sure that you know it's not happening, and it's dishonest to suggest that it is.

What I do think is this-sometimes a person can look at a piece of evidence, and determine it must mean one thing, while another person from another mindset might look at that same evidence and draw a differing conclusion.

When one of them can provide actual chains of logic and evidence for his/her conclusion and the other cannot, suggesting as you are that somehow the two conclusions are equal is dishonest.

The only thing I can say for certain to this crowd, here, on this thread is that none of us was around when life actually began. So I think it should be okay to question it all, every whit.

Again, you are dishonest; questioning is exactly what you are not doing. Your position is the position dictated, as you understand it, by the Bible; yours is a thoroughly unquestioning position.

If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.

Again with the dishonesty. We do not object to Intelligent Design because of some ludicrous fear that evolution won't "handle the scrutiny". We object to dishonest attempts to replace scientific investigation with religious dogma. As long as you are a defender of those attempts- and the dishonest one that you have repeatedly shown yourself to be- expect opprobrium and resistance.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:22 PM on April 20 [13 favorites]

Pope Guilty, I was not bringing religion into it at all. You are assuming that the only folks who might think of a different take on a theory would have to be theists. It would be best if you simply took my statements at face value.

As to the micro and macro-okay, I know I don't know the terminology, so let me explain what I do think. I think natural selection can account for different types of birds, or differing breeds of dogs, stuff like that. I do not think, however, that if you went back far enough, that I am the eventual result of an amoeba or something sliding out of the goo. That is just too big a leap for me.

For one thing, I really and truly do wonder how in the crap something like sex could possibly evolve into what it is today? I mean, I do understand there are primitive mechanisms that involve two organisms swapping dna, but I am talking about sex as it is commonly practiced. Sorry, that's quite a leap of faith for me to take. And for that matter, why would organisms "evolve" to swap dna to begin with? If we assume there is no Overseer, what would be the chances of it happening at all, or the "benefit" to it? Why would an uncaring universe give a flying crap? Just saying.
posted by konolia at 4:34 PM on April 20

"win ben stein's monkey"

Literal laugh-out-loud here. Gold star for you.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:35 PM on April 20

If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.
Oooh...boy.
Konolia, with all due respect, neither you nor the Creationists are offering it any. If you don't understand what it means to be a scientist, it is unlikely that your "questioning" of the Theory of Evolution will make an impact on it. Why? Because any question you can come up with (do you have any? Maybe someone here can answer it.) has been gone over, compared with reams of evidence, and DISCARDED as unfit as a possible, rational explanation for OBSERVABLE facts.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 4:39 PM on April 20

"In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points....Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies -- which was neither planned nor sought -- constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."^ (OMG, I have used that carrot to cite to a wikipedia article, shame, but I won't restrict myself to wikipedia alone. sure hope faux pas this doesn't derail this wonderful thread.)
posted by caddis at 4:39 PM on April 20

Funny, I just now got back from watching "Expelled" to review for our local alt-weekly, and saw this right at the top of the page.

Jesus wept. It started out intellectually dishonest and evasive, but took a hard right to moral repugnance about 2/3 of the way through. I didn't think Stein could do any worse than when he called the torture and rape at Abu Ghraib a bunch of fraternity hazing, but this movie's a contender.
posted by middleclasstool at 4:39 PM on April 20

konolia writes "Pope Guilty, I was not bringing religion into it at all. You are assuming that the only folks who might think of a different take on a theory would have to be theists. It would be best if you simply took my statements at face value."

Well then, what scientific questions are being asked about evolution that are not being answered?
posted by krinklyfig at 4:48 PM on April 20

Pope Guilty, I was not bringing religion into it at all. You are assuming that the only folks who might think of a different take on a theory would have to be theists. It would be best if you simply took my statements at face value.

You are, however, a creationist, and your statements are made by a creationist; to insist that your statements be taken at face value is to insist that your meaning be ignored, which I will not do. The words you use, like "micro evolution" and "macro evolution" are the language of creationism.

I think natural selection can account for different types of birds, or differing breeds of dogs, stuff like that. I do not think, however, that if you went back far enough, that I am the eventual result of an amoeba or something sliding out of the goo. That is just too big a leap for me.

There is no "leap" for you to make. The only gap is between the current state of scientific knowledge and your current knowledge, and you have declined to pursue anything like building a bridge across that gap; you, like all creationists, simply make the same arguments over and over again no matter how many times it is explained to you. The argument you are making has a name: Argument From Personal Incredulity. It does not mean that the evolutionary process is false; it means that your imagination is weak and you are depending on your imagination for argumentation.

For one thing, I really and truly do wonder how in the crap something like sex could possibly evolve into what it is today? I mean, I do understand there are primitive mechanisms that involve two organisms swapping dna, but I am talking about sex as it is commonly practiced. Sorry, that's quite a leap of faith for me to take. And for that matter, why would organisms "evolve" to swap dna to begin with?

The most immediate reason that springs to mind is that a species whose members are genetically nonidentical is far hardier than one whose members are genetically identical. Further, reproduction through meiosis is, as I understand it, necessary for genetic nonidentity within species.

If we assume there is no Overseer, what would be the chances of it happening at all, or the "benefit" to it?

I don't know what you mean by "benefit" here. If you mean what is the advantage to meiosis over mitosis, then I've already outlined it.

Why would an uncaring universe give a flying crap?

What does that have to do with anything?
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:51 PM on April 20 [17 favorites]

You're right, konolia. You and a surgeon might look at a microscope slide of your blood and see two completely different things -- where he might see signs of disease, you might see a lot of red splotches and stuff. Or, 300,000 surgeons might look at the same slide and see decisive signs of something, while two -- who got correspondence-course degrees in another country -- disagree. Multiply that by an order of magnitude or so and you'll have a sense of how many trained biologists believe the theory of evolution is correct versus those who don't. You've heard so much about the alleged controversy, though, for reasons having very little to do with biology or science, and a lot to do with elections.

Myself, I would probably trust the surgeon, while possibly getting a second opinion. But I wouldn't need 300,000 opinions.
posted by digaman at 4:51 PM on April 20 [8 favorites]

For my part, I consider "creationism" a charming fantasy

the problem as I see it is that we've got something approaching half this country caught into bullshit beliefs in fairytales of one sort or another..

ID/Creationism is just another front of the conservative right's war on the reality-based community.

IMV it's a very, very important front, because when you can disarm a populace's ability to reason you can control them more easily.

This is part of the whole Straussian enchilada that we need not get into here, but this angle of the issue is why I consider creationism something much more pernicious than a charming fantasy.
posted by tachikaze at 4:56 PM on April 20

quonsar, I was mistaken about that, and when it was pointed out to me, I corrected myself.

...er, you're just here to shit on the thread in hopes of provoking people to pay attention to you, aren't you?
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:56 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Multiply that by an order of magnitude or so and you'll have a sense of how many trained biologists believe the theory of evolution is correct versus those who don't.

Except you've already limited "biologists" to "those who think evolution is correct." If you take anybody who considers themself to be a biologist--including people who self-identify as "creation scientists"--you get a very different picture.

Your survey is like saying "9 of 10 trained yogis believe in the fourth chakra" and using it as proof that there is a fourth chakra. You've defined your survey so that you automatically win.
posted by Leon-arto at 4:58 PM on April 20

Actually, konolia, I think the most succinct way to put it is from the Reason article: "Neither the producers nor Stein understand that offering critiques of a theory with which they disagree is not the same as proving their own theory."

Once you've done that, you're there. Until then, not so much.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:00 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

The difference is that yoga provides health benefits whether or not there is a fourth chakra, whereas nearly all of our modern understanding of biology is built upon evolution. You cannot claim to be a biologist and not believe in evolution; you might as well call yourself a physicist and not believe in math.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:01 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

The only thing I can say for certain to this crowd, here, on this thread is that none of us was around when life actually began.

This is the first and largest mistake. Darwinian evolution, in the modern sense, isn't a theory about biological origins. It doesn't say anything about how life started. It only says that once life started and mutations appeared, disfavorable mutations are selected against. That is all.

So I think it should be okay to question it all, every whit. Even stuff that seems to be set in stone. If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.

Except that creationism, in its most prominent form, isn't honest questioning or scrutiny. It's the mere insistence on a point about biology for broader political purposes, and its lack of honesty is patent when its proponents swear to tell the truth and then lie to judges.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:01 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Anyone who tells you that God created the Earth, in whole, 6000 years ago, is telling you something that flat, absolutely, is not true.

OK, that's not creationism. That's Young Earth creationism. And only a minority of creationists hold that view. In fact, few Intelligent Design folk are Young Earth.

You're conflating one specific set of beliefs into the beliefs of every Creationist, just as this documentary does in conflating the Darwinian origins of Nazi thought into the beliefs of anyone who believes in Darwinian evolution.

And that's the problem with this debate -- somewhere up the line someone took Darwin out of context (Social Darwinism anyone?) And now we're in this mudslinging mess. Clarity is just about impossible, save the Catholics, who have mostly been able to strike a balance between evolution and creationism and mostly stay out of this mess. Mostly.
posted by dw at 5:02 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

So I think it should be okay to question it all, every whit. Even stuff that seems to be set in stone. If something is really true, it can handle the scrutiny.

I whole-heartedly 1000% agree with this statement. Now apply it to your religious beliefs.
posted by anansi at 5:02 PM on April 20 [23 favorites]

Leon-arto writes "Your survey is like saying '9 of 10 trained yogis believe in the fourth chakra' and using it as proof that there is a fourth chakra. You've defined your survey so that you automatically win."

The discipline of science is practiced by scientists. We could also ask laypeople and attorneys about the law. Which group do you think would be better informed?
posted by krinklyfig at 5:03 PM on April 20

Except you've already limited "biologists" to "those who think evolution is correct." If you take anybody who considers themself to be a biologist--including people who self-identify as "creation scientists"--you get a very different picture.

Dude: there are probably less than 100 people on the face of the earth who self-identify as "creation scientists". Go ahead and include them. Creationism will go from a 99% minority to a 98.8% minority.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:03 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Nazi Socialism

And while I'm at it, that is redundant. Nazi = Nationalsozialismus, or "National socialism."

It also repeats itself. And you know who else repeated himself?
posted by dw at 5:04 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

I do not think, however, that if you went back far enough, that I am the eventual result of an amoeba or something sliding out of the goo. That is just too big a leap for me.

That's the beauty of evolution that you refuse to understand because it threatens your religious indoctrination.

Where do you draw the line between your micro and macro evolution? This process has apparently been operating for BILLIONS of years and TRILLIONS of generations and there IS no discontinuity in the process that you can point to to refute it.

When you fully understand the evidence, eg. the degree of commonality that YOUR DNA shares with a tomato plant, the apparent fact that that which "was created in the image of God" shares common ancestry, more or less, among everything else living on this planet you will see your God's Creation in a whole new, unflitered, light.

One of the "teachings" of Darwinian Evolution that I found intelllectually fascinating is that ALL of my ancestors, from Mom back to my poo-flinging ape ancestors, back to the rodents cowering in fear, back to the reptiles with the egg clutch, back to the fish, etc etc. were SUCCESSFUL parents.

The only developed nation on this planet that disbelieves evolution more than the US is Turkey. They too, have caught a nasty case of religious Fundamentalism. It saddens me.
posted by tachikaze at 5:05 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]

dw writes "And that's the problem with this debate"

The problem with this "debate" is that it's purely political. There is no scientific debate, because the anti-evolution side is not arguing from a scientific basis.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:05 PM on April 20

You cannot claim to be a biologist and not believe in evolution; you might as well call yourself a physicist and not believe in math.

Then you're still making a circular definition: "Evolution is true because all biologists believe it. Anybody who does not believe it cannot be a biologist."

It's an interesting problem of definitions, but it hardly proves that evolution is true.

The fact that yoga has health benefits has nothing to do with whether the fact that 9 of 10 yogis believe in a fourth chakra means that there is such a thing. I submit that the fact that 9 of 10 yogis believe in a fourth chakra doesn't make it any more true than the fact that 10 of 10 "biologists" (using the quotes to signify the fact that you only count those who believe in evolution to be "real" biologists) believe in evolution.

The fact that biology is predictive doesn't guarantee that it's right -- solar and lunar eclipses could be predicted with geo-centric (world goes around the earth) models for centuries before we realized that the world actually went around the sun. The fact that a model (evolution) is predictive is a good hint that we're onto something, but it's far from conclusive.

The point is this: You can get where you're going without slaughtering logical reasoning. Do so.
posted by Leon-arto at 5:06 PM on April 20 [3 favorites]

I just have two things to add to the shitstorm. Firstly, There IS a difference between "Creationism" and "Intelligent Design". It is a lot like the difference between "Darwinism" and "Evolutionary Science", where one is the proper scientific term and one is the term you use to make it sound stupid. So please, don't whine about people saying "Darwinism" when you go around saying "Creationism" in any other context than "Young-Earth Creationism" which is a whole different kettle of fish and more or less completely unrelated to Intelligent Design.

Secondly, like a few have commented before me I find that even as people here call Stein's documentary a bunch of lies and whatnot, they fall into the same seething outrage that Stein exemplified in the documentary. There are plenty of (otherwise?) intelligent people and scientists that have concluded that evolution isn't the only answer. That doesn't mean they're going to trade their brains in for Bibles, unless you're operating with the straw man that intelligent design = Christianity.

If nothing else, Expelled did a pretty good job of demonstrating what a lousy philosopher Richard Dawkins is.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:07 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Mr.Encyclopedia writes "Firstly, There IS a difference between 'Creationism' and 'Intelligent Design'. It is a lot like the difference between 'Darwinism' and 'Evolutionary Science', where one is the proper scientific term and one is the term you use to make it sound stupid"

"Intelligent design" is not a scientific term. It is a wedge issue invented by a religious political movement. Seriously.

"If nothing else, Expelled did a pretty good job of demonstrating what a lousy philosopher Richard Dawkins is."

So what?
posted by krinklyfig at 5:10 PM on April 20

There is no scientific debate, because the anti-evolution side is not arguing from a scientific basis.

And that might be the point. You lock a philosopher and a scientist in a room and ask them to decide whether we're "real" or not (the first question to many philosophers is "do we exist?", which has been popularized and bastardized through the Matrix) and they'll never find a common ground. The methods of inquiry are fundamentally different. The scientist will take measurements and run experiments, and the philosopher will gaze at his navel. Neither can talk the other out of their positions because they each have different starting assumptions.

In the evolution/creationism debate, we have the same problem. Science can't disprove religion on religion's terms, and religion can't disprove science on science's terms.
posted by Leon-arto at 5:12 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Re. microevolution and macroevolution: for whatever reason, the book Prentice Hall Biology used in CA public schools uses the term macroevolution (though not microevolution).
posted by alexei at 5:12 PM on April 20

Then you're still making a circular definition: "Evolution is true because all biologists believe it. Anybody who does not believe it cannot be a biologist."

Okay, let me rephrase: You cannot be an Erector-set user who does not believe in metal". Plain enough? The whole of biology rests upon evolution. You cannot deny evolution and practice biology any more than you could be a lawyer who denies the existence of the law, or a doctor who denies the existence of germs.

And Mr. Encyclopedia, you're completely, fantastically wrong.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:12 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

There are plenty of (otherwise?) intelligent people and scientists that have concluded that evolution isn't the only answer. That doesn't mean they're going to trade their brains in for Bibles, unless you're operating with the straw man that intelligent design = Christianity.

Strangely, then, that almost all of them are Christian and many of those work for explicitly Christian (or possibly Judeo-Christian) organizations like the Discovery Institute.
posted by deanc at 5:12 PM on April 20

I hate that disgusting worm.

Wait long enough, he'll evolve.

Also, quonsar, you're not doing yourself any favours harping on that phrase of his. You know as well as the rest of us that he was clumsily referring to this. Try harder, buddy.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:14 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

"Anyone who tells you that God created the Earth, in whole, 6000 years ago, is telling you something that flat, absolutely, is not true.

There is no way to prove this empirically. The claim that the earth is only 6000 years old is perfectly compatible with any all observable phenomena. We do have to assume that said phenomena are illusory or misleading in some way, granted. But nevertheless strictly speaking scientific investigation and young theory are not mutually exclusive, if you are willing to interpret scientific evidence in a counter-intuitive way. (Two caveats: I do not believe in young earth theory; science if chock full of counterintuitive interpretations of evidence. So, the latter can't be good grounds for objecting to young earth creationism.)
posted by oddman at 5:15 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

And for that matter, why would organisms "evolve" to swap dna to begin with?

It randomizes your offspring faster than mutation does, but also only does so over a limited domain of the genome -- the parts that are different between you and your mate. For the parts that are the same, having two copies of the genes is a safety against random mutation.

More basically, there is no why. Darwinian evolution doesn't have any goals or reasoning. The right answer is just that dna-swapping happened, and after it did dna-swappers outbred dna-non-swappers.

If we assume there is no Overseer, what would be the chances of it happening at all, or the "benefit" to it?

There would be no way to know this except to conclusively demonstrate that there is no God or gods and then to do a census of the entire universe. If you put yourself in the mind of an atheist, their answer is that the chances of it happening are 100% -- it happened, here on Earth.

Asking what the benefit to it would be doesn't make any sense from a scientific viewpoint. More broadly, this sort of question bothers me. It smacks of the idea that if humans hadn't been directly zapped into existence from dirt, God wouldn't love us. That the same Christ who died on the cross to save the children of murderers and thieves and child-rapists and torturers and every other sort of sinner wouldn't have died to save the great^N-children of homo erectus, as if there were more dignity in being a murderous, raping thief than being a simple prehuman.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:16 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]

Leon-arto writes "You lock a philosopher and a scientist in a room and ask them to decide whether we're 'real' or not (the first question to many philosophers is 'do we exist?', which has been popularized and bastardized through the Matrix) and they'll never find a common ground."

And therefore that means they're both correct, just because the philosopher has questions about the nature of reality?

Well then, how about I hit you on the head with this hammer and see if that feels real to you?

Solipsism isn't really germane or relevant to these sorts of scientific questions.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:16 PM on April 20

You lock a philosopher and a scientist in a room and ask them to decide whether we're "real" or not (the first question to many philosophers is "do we exist?", which has been popularized and bastardized through the Matrix) and they'll never find a common ground.

There is an incredibly large range of epistemologies employed by and advocated by philosophers; many philosophers are, in fact, empiricists.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:17 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

You cannot be an Erector-set user who does not believe in metal

You don't have to know a single thing about the properties of metal to use an Erector Set. I can use an Erector Set without knowing or caring what kinds of bonds hold the metal together, or how magnetism works.

I can think that magnetism is the work of little gnomes, and you can think that it's a universal force transmitted over distances, and we can both put magnets together.

You can think that ID/Creationism/non-Darwinism is wrong without slaughtering logic to get there. When you use circular statements about "evolution is true because all biologists believe in it, and anyone who doesn't believe in it is not a biologist" you become the very thing that you decry in others.
posted by Leon-arto at 5:17 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

I love Conservatives. They defend genetic modification...

For the life of me, I can't figure out what this refers to. Help please?
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 5:18 PM on April 20

f you take anybody who considers themself to be a biologist

Is that how we decided who gets to be called a biologist these days? In that, case, I am one, too.
posted by adamdschneider at 5:18 PM on April 20