Ben Stein Expelled

[James]

Millie, OK. Civilization started from intense matchups of Thumb Wars. Don't bring up spirituality bullshit, please. No one likes a religious nutjob.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by James

Millie, OK. Civilization started from intense matchups of Thumb Wars. Don't bring up spirituality bullshit, please. No one likes a religious nutjob.

Wrong. It started from intense matchups of Battleship. The actual battleship was invented 20,000 years after the game of Battleship was invented, and was named after the concepts presented in the game.

[Angerz]

Originally Posted by Millie

Jesus Christ (no pun intended). I wish people would stop and take a second to read what they're responding to before firing off their responses.

That would take all the damned fun out of it.

[James]

Originally Posted by Millie

Wrong. It started from intense matchups of Battleship. The actual battleship was invented 20,000 years after the game of Battleship was invented, and was named after the concepts presented in the game.

Don't forget the great Persian battle of Connect Four on the rivers of Babylon.

[SalaciousTunare]

Well fighting with Millie aside... I think there is a problem when practicing the scientific method puts tenure or grants in jeopardy. Hopefully Ben is arguing this for the scientist's sake and not the fundies. The ousting of any intelligent scientists because of the scrutiny over an archaic theory, is a personal affront to science itself. To clarify, I am not saying darwinism is off, it is just a very basic theory lacking twenty first century research, experimentation, and evidence.

This is the type of shit the church was doing to Galileo when he was finding astronomical evidence to prove heliocentrism. Hopefully this time it will not put science back another hundred years.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by SalaciousTunare

Well fighting with Millie aside... I think there is a problem when practicing the scientific method puts tenure or grants in jeopardy.

The problem, though, is that there's no scientific method in creationism. If I were a professor of biology at a university, and one day I came in and announced that I was challenging evolution on the grounds that -- in my personal opinion -- Batman created the Earth and fashioned organisms out of hairs he plucked from his head, wouldn't the university have a right to drop my tenure? There is no scientific basis for my Batman claim, just as there is no scientific basis for creationism. It's not science. It's religion.

Now, if a creationist proponent wanted to be a professor of theology, or a professor of comparative religion, or even a professor of philosophy, then fine. Wonderful. So be it. But religion is not science, and attacking science on religious grounds does not constitute a valid use of the "scientific method."

[Grumath]

Im all for teaching ID in schools alongside science if they mandate that science and evolution has to be taught in Sunday Schools (which they can't). A little competition to the biast indoctrination kids receive at impressionable ages, for even just one generation, would break the cycle in my opinion.

If you want your kids to learn ID, send them to a private school that teaches whatever you want them to learn. They can set up ID schools and communities right next to Amish schools where they teach about the evils of cars and anything with batteries and by the cult communities that are watching for comets with goblets full of poison, and across the street from the Scientologists with their Xenu bunker. That way our nutters are all in one area for easy supression of a nutter revolution.

[Tea on tuesday]

Originally Posted by SalaciousTunare

Wait what?

Your definition of civilization is off I think... The first civilization was in Mesopotamia or modern day Iraq. The civilization arose as a direct result of agriculture not religion. It was the first time primitive man was able to work a fertile land which allowed man to shed his nomadic ways.

We've had this debate before, but Millie is correct. Religion played a key role in humanity's move to civilization. Mesopotamia wasn't home to the first civilizations, just the first ones that lasted. The turks were a couple thousand years ahead of their time, but eventually faded away.

The misconception that abounds is that hunter-gatherer societies moved to agricultural based life because it lead to a better food supply. However, the opposite actually appears to be true. Early agricultural communities were extremely susceptible to wide ranging natural disasters (drought, flood, pests) that could wipe out most of society. Indeed HG groups had actually been cultivating with shifting agricultural for 20,000 years or so before the first cities began to take root. A small, highly mobile, HG gatherer group with a dozen or so cultivated areas were much better suited to handle the elements (actually a very popular theory is that the wide ranging HGs never really left to join the early societies, and essentially became the warrior elite caste, as they were better nourished and skilled in fighting. So they basically subjugated the populations of early civilizations.).

Food supply wasn't the only problem with early agriculture either. The work was seasonal, brutal, and large populations living in close proximity brought out new diseases that had previously been suppressed by a migratory way of life. Early farmers were in absolutely awful shape. So, anthropologists naturally wondered why we even made the move in the first place, and a fairly convincing answer comes in the form of religion. Many anthropologists think that, essentially, early cities were built for the express purposes of collecting offerings to the gods/spirits, and only after this did the manifest benefits of civilization become clear.

[SalaciousTunare]

Originally Posted by Millie

But religion is not science, and attacking science on religious grounds does not constitute a valid use of the "scientific method."

I agree entirely Millie. What I'm wondering is... are these professors and scientists hitting roadblocks in their research and just attributing shit that doesn't make sense to God, or are they just challenging Darwin in a traditional scientific manner. If it is the former, how the fuck did these people acquire their positions in the first place.

[Asmadai]

Would anyone oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools if it were approached as a theory just as the Theory of Evolution is? I mean, just because one does not support it, does it mean teaching it is so terrible?

One is based on something not entirely explainable as is the other. Are the cries for 'teach this' and 'don't teach that' nothing more than personal preference?

Communism is something I don't agree with, yet I was taught what it's about in school. It wasn't taught with the meaning of enforcing it's view upon the students, but for an educational outlook on how other cultures think, etc. If the idea of Intelligent Design is proposed as the theory that it is, is there that much harm in it being taught to students?

[Tea on tuesday]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

Would anyone oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools if it were approached as a theory just as the Theory of Evolution is? I mean, just because one does not support it, does it mean teaching it is so terrible?

One is based on something not entirely explainable as is the other. Are the cries for 'teach this' and 'don't teach that' nothing more than personal preference?

Communism is something I don't agree with, yet I was taught what it's about in school. It wasn't taught with the meaning of enforcing it's view upon the students, but for an educational outlook on how other cultures think, etc. If the idea of Intelligent Design is proposed as the theory that it is, is there that much harm in it being taught to students?

Yes, because it still isn't science. They can teach it in religious studies if they want.

[Asmadai]

Edit: Nevermind

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

Would anyone oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools if it were approached as a theory just as the Theory of Evolution is? I mean, just because one does not support it, does it mean teaching it is so terrible?

I don't oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design if it's presented as what it really is: religion. It is not science and should not be passed off as science in the science classroom. If we want to teach ID to kids, we should teach it as religion, or failing that, as philosophy. It's not a scientific theory; it's a belief system with no basis whatsoever in scientific methodology or principles of rational inquiry.

Science is not a religion, and religion is not a science. The sooner everyone agrees to keep the two in separate buckets, the better off everyone will be.

[Asmadai]

Originally Posted by Millie

I don't oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design if it's presented as what it really is: religion. It is not science and should not be passed off as science in the science classroom. If we want to teach ID to kids, we should teach it as religion, or failing that, as philosophy. It's not a scientific theory; it's a belief system with no basis whatsoever in scientific methodology or principles of rational inquiry.

Science is not a religion, and religion is not a science. The sooner everyone agrees to keep the two in separate buckets, the better off everyone will be.

So have teachers in the science classrooms say "It's not a scientific theory; it's a belief system with no basis whatsoever in scientific methodology or principles of rational inquiry." after the lecture on Intelligent Design. Problem solved.

I only say this, as the Science class seems to be the only real fitting place in the current curriculum of elementary/middle/high school classes to actually introduce the theory in (given it already is discussing 'how the earth was created' and what not). Maybe the public schools in your area currently have religion/philosophy classes that the presentation of said theory would be more fitting in, but here in the Bible Belt our public schools (ironically) don't.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

So have teachers in the science classrooms say "It's not a scientific theory; it's a belief system with no basis whatsoever in scientific methodology or principles of rational inquiry." after the lecture on Intelligent Design. Problem solved.

This is akin to history teachers spending a few lectures exploring Middle-Earth and then adding this isn't actual history. Problem solved?

Or an easier solution would be not to put religion in science classes or fiction in history.