Ben Stein Expelled

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Millie

Once again I'm going to step in and ask people politely not to attack each other on this thread. Please attack each other's arguments, not each other personally.

Thanks.

The linguistics involved pretty much make that impossible as grammatical confusions are the bread and butter of science/religion debates.

[Arakkis]

Originally Posted by voodoochile78

I hope you mean Astronomy. It would be pretty fucked up if any school had an astrology department.

ugh, should not post when overtired. Then again, if it was an astrology department I would understand them not giving him tenure if he was a creationist.

[Eomer]

Heh, I'm trying to figure out which area of study would be more useless: creationism or astrology. Or I was until my brain seized. I always get that shit confused, too.

But Arakkis, I've asked this of you, and I've asked it of many other people on these boards and others in similar arguments, so please do me a favor and provide an answer:

If evolution through natural selection is not the answer to the question of the variety of life on our planet, what do you think is? What's the alternate hypothesis or theory? You've commented, begrudingly, that you actually DON'T disbelieve in evolution, but I honestly question that statement given your history of posts on the subject.

So if evolution is so fraught with holes and problems, then what is it that you believe to be a better alternative?

[aychamo_aycono]

My parents called me today after watching this movie to "discuss" it. They are both Christians. I am not. It amazes me how intelligent people can believe this garbage. My dad is a well known surgeon that has techniques named after him, etc. Here is the conversation with him today:

dad: "oh but how does evolution explain the origin of life on earth"
me: "evolution does not make any claims for how life came to be on earth, it only explains the change of life over time on earth."
dad: "so you are saying science can't explain how life was created on earth. so ID is equally likely as anything science has"
me: "no it isn't. ID isn't a scientific theory. and if ID says that since we have intelligent life on earth that there has to be an intelligent creator, then who created the creator?"
dad: "it doesn't need a creator. it just always existed"
me: *SIGH*

[Tea on tuesday]

I think those kinds of conversations with your parents/siblings are really interesting. I firmly believe that because of the family dynamic that it's one of those rare situations where minds can be changed. I think there's a level of mutual respect that allows everyone to listen to the arguments without dismissing them out of hand. You may be making the same arguments that a dozen other people have made to them (or maybe not, depending on how homogeneous their acquaintances are), but because it comes from someone close there's added weight.

Through a series of very long conversations over the years I think I've shifted my mom's thoughts a bit away from the new age stuff that's she's always been big into. She can't really understand my rigidly logical viewpoint on life nor does she understand many of the more philosophical arguments I've made, but I think there's progress. She buys less garbage anyway.

I've started a series of conversations with my dad. I'm hoping by Christmas I can debunk his ideas on climate change. It's slow going but it's an interesting and revealing conversation for everyone, I think.

The big thing is that you begin to recognize why it is smart people believe stupid things.

[Arakkis]

Originally Posted by Eomer

Heh, I'm trying to figure out which area of study would be more useless: creationism or astrology. Or I was until my brain seized. I always get that shit confused, too.

But Arakkis, I've asked this of you, and I've asked it of many other people on these boards and others in similar arguments, so please do me a favor and provide an answer:

If evolution through natural selection is not the answer to the question of the variety of life on our planet, what do you think is? What's the alternate hypothesis or theory? You've commented, begrudingly, that you actually DON'T disbelieve in evolution, but I honestly question that statement given your history of posts on the subject.

So if evolution is so fraught with holes and problems, then what is it that you believe to be a better alternative?

I believe descent with modification coupled with natural selection is the best explaination for the diversity of life we have on the planet. No really, I do believe that evolution is the only valid scientific theory to date that can adequately explain what we see in the natural world. I have also read much of the empirical data that proves that animals will adapt to their environment in sometimes wondrous and innovative ways.

Now here is my dilemma. Look at the pictures below. Both of them are praying mantes. The first one looks like a leaf. OK, I can believe that through millions of years mutation has adapted a great form of camouflage which is relatively simple: flat body, green coloring. The other one... looks like a fucking flower.

As I got more and more educated on genetics and molecular biology, I discovered there are only so many different mechanisms that mutate DNA that evolution can act through: insertion, deletion, and recombination. I don't want this post to take me hours to write, so I will leave it up to you to go and look these up. Suffice to say, mutation is a pretty random process. So this random process designed proteins, oligosaccharides, and pigments to look just like a flower. And not just any flower. Camouflage does no good unless you look like your environment. So that means that a series of random mutations led to a mantis that looks exactly like some other completely unrelated organism that was close at hand. Not like another bug, no that would be kind of easy. We are talking about random mutation creating a replica of a complex plant breeding structure out of an insect. That kind of luck just doesn't make logical sense to me no matter how many millions of years it had.

THAT is why I still have faith that there is something more to the puzzle of evolution that we haven't found yet. Now whether that is some sort of intelligence... well, none of you atheists want to hear that so let's just say this kind of directed perfection has to have more to the story.

[Eomer]

Yeah, I've been wanting to raise this topic with my mom for quite some time. I don't think my dad's all that big of a believer, it's just tradition for him and he goes along with my mom. They're Roman Catholic, and fairly lax at that, so it's not like I'm up against hardcore fundies or anything. But my mom reads at church occasionally, is really involved in some charities through church, and it's really a fairly big part of her social sphere.

So it's debateable whether or not there's really any need or point in me trying to change her mind about religion. She does believe in evolution (but perhaps not human evolution), she is pro choice, she is okay with euthanasia in the right situations, isn't against birth control (and more or less understands kids are gonna fuck), doesn't force her religion on others nor disrespect others' religion instinctually, so on and so forth. So what would be the point of her suddenly, at nearly 60, deciding to ditch Roman Catholicism?

But as you said, I think she would listen and read a book like the God Delusion with an open mind if it came from me. But I don't know what I would accomplish by giving it to her.

[Goltana_R-Zek]

Originally Posted by Eomer

Yeah, I've been wanting to raise this topic with my mom for quite some time. I don't think my dad's all that big of a believer, it's just tradition for him and he goes along with my mom. They're Roman Catholic, and fairly lax at that, so it's not like I'm up against hardcore fundies or anything. But my mom reads at church occasionally, is really involved in some charities through church, and it's really a fairly big part of her social sphere.

So it's debateable whether or not there's really any need or point in me trying to change her mind about religion. She does believe in evolution (but perhaps not human evolution), she is pro choice, she is okay with euthanasia in the right situations, isn't against birth control (and more or less understands kids are gonna fuck), doesn't force her religion on others nor disrespect others' religion instinctually, so on and so forth. So what would be the point of her suddenly, at nearly 60, deciding to ditch Roman Catholicism?

But as you said, I think she would listen and read a book like the God Delusion with an open mind if it came from me. But I don't know what I would accomplish by giving it to her.

Far be it from me to tell you how to interact within your own family, but from your description your mother sounds like a pretty intelligent and nice individual. I don't really see the value in some how persuading her away from religion (don't get me wrong, I'm not religious at all myself), it sounds like she's content with the way things are. If she's not getting overly upset by evolution and whatnot, if it were my mother I would just allow her to be happy with what she's comfortable with. /shrug.

As for your example Arakkis - my own views on how that came to occur would be that, random mutations happened within that praying mantis, some of them involving its color. Random times, maybe some were orange, purple, yellow - IDK, and some randomized pink. The pink ones survived, and from there those traits were carried on more often. I'm no scientist, but that's the simplest answer I could come up with. I could most definitely be wrong here, but I don't necessarily see that as evidence of some kind of higher direction? I guess. I will definitely concede that there's plenty science can't answer for, which will most likely always be the case about things.

[Kaio]

Yeah, my parent's are what I like to call born again muslims. They weren't that hardcore before but since moving to Ohio they've gone crazy on me. I pretty much see my life being like 10x easier if they were at least christians or something.

I remember a few years back in high school I kinda brought a girl home with me strictly to finish a project. My mother was a bit disturbed at first but later on after she left my mother broke down in complete tears.

Since then I've not figured out how to deal with my parents . I've attempted to have a discussion with them but they firmly believe that if I don't wholeheartedly believe in the religion and follow the islamic path (which includes a praying 5 times a day, not eating during the day for a month, among lots of other things) I'm going to fucking hell and i'm totally lost to them. I can't imagine breaking things off completely but I don't see them accepting me EVER if they knew how I felt about it completely.

Islam doesn't leave much out. You are either fully immersed in it as a way of life and you have no doubts...or you go to hell. I've seen some slightly more new and liberal interpretation of it but thats both rare and not really accepted.

[Ronne]

Nickelback is proof that god does not exist. Refute that, I dare you.

[Azrayne]

Originally Posted by Ronne

Nickelback is proof that god does not exist. Refute that, I dare you.

[Kaio]

Originally Posted by Arakkis

THAT is why I still have faith that there is something more to the puzzle of evolution that we haven't found yet. Now whether that is some sort of intelligence... well, none of you atheists want to hear that so let's just say this kind of directed perfection has to have more to the story.

How does evolutionary dead ends make you feel? Or useless baggages we have in our own body (useless organ like an appendix) from evolving to the point where it's useless. Shouldn't things that evoke emotion be removed when talking about fields like this?

Also it's not exactly directed perfection it's more like the fact that it's directed to creating species that have a higher chance of survival by increasing the chances of those with worse traits die before reproducing.

Green insects of course aren't rare but is it that hard to swallow that after millions of years and potentially billions of reproductive cycles mantis' won't go through sufficient opportunities to mutate it's color slowly to the point of resembling the color of something else in it's environment. If we were talking about thousands of reproductive cycles i might have agreed but we are talking about millions -> billions of reproductions here. The more flowerlike pink lines of the species simply had a higher survival rate until it resulted in what we have today.

[CyrusReij]

The thing is (I really don't want to get involved in this thread) in the case of bugs, or rats or other small creatures with SHORT life spans and FAST reproductive cycles, evolution goes way the fuck faster, due to any changes in the parent spreading to the child faster. Thus why we evolve slow as fuck... as do turtles, our life spans are huge compared to a lot of the creatures on this planet, which is why you have such HUGE diversity among insects/mice and other small creatures where you can easily see the similarity but at the same time they fit 100 different niches some as small as an island or a few square kilometers depending on the species. I find that all really fascinating..... ok I'm done with this thread.




P.S. Prehistoric life kicks ass~

[Schatze]

Originally Posted by Arakkis

Bullshit. I clicked on all the links Screamfeeder posted and most of them were just pics with no explaination. The ones that did have text sounded silly to me so I pointed out a few examples. Immediately, people started questioning my intelligence. Clearly if I dare to point out some creationist arguments I must be a moron. Or maybe the people that are calling me stupid don't know enough to rebut those arguments and should just let the educated people talk.



It's ok, I got my armor, lol.

I've figured it out guys. Arakkis is a Knight Templar. We all know the Templars have been fighting for centuries against the illuminati (scientists) for world dominance. Of course the Bilderberg group, based not on science and philosophy, nor religious zeal, but corporatism and politics, are new comers on the scene.

So we've got one Templar in here, the question is, how many builderbergs do we have masquerading in here to derail the grand goals of the grand order of the illuminati and our conspiracy to push evolution in our 800 year war against the Templars?

I think the only rational thing is to have a show of hands who belongs to which order, that should clear things up!

[Eomer]

Far be it from me to tell you how to interact within your own family, but from your description your mother sounds like a pretty intelligent and nice individual. I don't really see the value in some how persuading her away from religion (don't get me wrong, I'm not religious at all myself), it sounds like she's content with the way things are. If she's not getting overly upset by evolution and whatnot, if it were my mother I would just allow her to be happy with what she's comfortable with. /shrug.

Yeah, that's the opinion I have as well. She's very intelligent, she was a math major in Uni before taking pharmacy. She's not dogmatic at all, in any way. The only "pushing" she does is asking me every year to go to Christmas Eve mass (I used to agree but have lately outright refused any church services except for weddings and funerals). Not cause she's trying to indoctrinate me, but just because it makes her happy to have the whole family together at mass on Christmas. For her religion is very much a tradition thing, and she's most definitely not a literalist (which is the case with most RC's, at least in Canada).

But it's her intelligence and open mindedness that make me kind of want to broach the subject with her after giving her a chance to read the God Delusion or something similar. She wouldn't be offended or put off by it, I don't think, and she might well be swayed by some of the arguments.