Ben Stein Expelled

[Arbitrary]

Passing around texts to people in an attempt to convert them? You people are all alike.

[Eomer]

fuck it

[Arakkis]

This thread has degenerated into win.

[Screamfeeder]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Passing around texts to people in an attempt to convert them? You people are all alike.

Yup. Today I converted my 6 year old nephew on the ancient secret of mathematics and how to tell time.

I think he needs a bit more indoctrination before he is fully ingrained with the dogma of addition.

[Eomer]

Whoops, missed Arakkis' last post.

Originally Posted by Arakkis

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.

I'm no expert, but I know enough about genetics that I don't need to look it up thanks.

Suffice to say, mutation is a pretty random process.

Very true.

So this random process designed proteins, oligosaccharides, and pigments to look just like a flower.

Completely untrue. Evolution through natural selection is not a random process. Mutation is very much random, agreed. However when you introduce selection of some sort (in this case survivability), then it becomes very much a non-random process.

Have you read the Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins? You really should if you haven't, it's a fantastic read.

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.

Again, evolution through natural selection is not a random process. People that claim it is either do not understand it very well, or they're intentionally being intellectually dishonest.

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.

Again, you're basing your entire argument on your assumption that evolution is random, and that's a false assumption. And then based on that false assumption, you find problems with evolution, and fill those holes that you imagine to be there with some sort of "intelligence", which to anyone who is not religious sounds an awful lot like god. That's a problem.

[Arbitrary]

I'm sorry if you got switched around Eomer. A couple of us are having a completely different discussion~

[Eomer]

It seemed like you were commenting on me contemplating given my mother a book by Dawkins, in an attempt to "convert" her and that subsequently I'm no different than a Jehovah or something. If that's not the case, fine. If that is, Screamfeeder covered it.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Eomer

But it's her good nature and spirituality that make me kind of want to broach the subject with her after giving her a chance to read Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 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 for accepting Jesus Christ as her personal savior.

.

[Screamfeeder]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

.

Right, except totally 100% wrong.

What Eomer is suggesting is grounded in logic, reason and observed empirical evidence.

What you quoted and "fixed" is based on superstition and bronze age mythos.

If you in any shape way or form feel that logic, reason and observed empirical evidence are the exact same as superstition and bronze age myth I would really like to know why and how.

[Arbitrary]

(I'm still kidding)

There are two moves in the world of arguments between Science and Religion that I absolutely fucking hate.

1. Agnostics are just weak Aetheists. You really belong in our corner and are just being sissies who want to hold onto a card that says "just in case."

2. Science is system of beliefs in the exact same way religion is so you are being an intolerant hippocrit who cannot see you are just like us.

That's why I made such a big deal about the "scientists make theories to fit their dogma" bullshit because it was such argument number 2, which, as I said, I absolutely fucking hate. The runnings gags were quite funny though.

[Screamfeeder]

So what your saying is I got sarcastically trolled by you and fell into your trap hook line and sinker?

Your triple layer sarcasm and vagueness is throwing me for a loop.

[Eomer]

I feel like someone slipped me a roofie, I have no idea what just happened.

[Tbird]

copied from The American Spectator
Special Report
Florida's Darwinian Interlude
By Ben Stein
Published 2/20/2008 12:08:44 AM

Just a few tiny, insignificant little questions.

* How did the universe start?

* Where did matter come from?

* Where did energy come from?

* Where did the laws of motion, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, come from?

* Where did gravity come from?

* How did inorganic matter, that is, lifeless matter such as dirt and rocks, become living beings?

* Has anyone ever observed beyond doubt the evolution of a new mammalian or aviary species, as opposed to changes within a species?

These teeny weeny little questions are just some of the issues as to which Darwin and Darwinism have absolutely no verifiable answers. Hypotheses.

Yes. Guesses. Yes. Proof? None.

To my little pea brain, these are some pretty big issues about evolution, the origins of life, and genetics that Darwinism cannot answer. Now, to be fair, does anyone else have verifiable answers either? Not as far as I know.

But if there are no answers that can be reproduced in the laboratory, isn't any theory about them a hypothesis or a guess? Isn't any hypothesis worth thinking about? And aren't these immense questions?

Yet the state of Florida, the glorious Sunshine State, was (I am told), until recently, considering legislation that would make it illegal to allow teachers or students in public schools to discuss any hypothesis about origins of life or the universe except that it all happened by accident without any prime mover or first cause or designer -- allowing only, again, the hypothesis, which is considered Darwinian, that it all started by, well, by, something that Darwin never even mentioned.

That is, the state of Florida was considering mandating that only Darwinian-type suppositions can be allowed about scientific subjects that Darwin never studied. (This is not to mention that we know now that Darwin was wildly wrong about some subjects such as genetics, and, again, although he wrote about the evolution of species, never observed an entirely new species evolve.)

This was beyond Stalinism. Stalinism decreed that only Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin knew all the answers, but it did not say that subjects they never mentioned could only be studied if the student guessed at what they might have said. The proposed law in the state of Florida was an anti-knowledge, anti-freedom of inquiry law on a scale such as has rarely been encountered. Maybe in Pol Pot's Kampuchea there were such laws, but they have been unknown in the USA until now.

By an incredible miracle of good sense, at the last minute, the state of Florida changed the proposed regulations. They backed off powerfully saying that only Darwinism could possibly make sense and said they would allow discussion of differing theories about the origins of life. That's the current proposal as I write this on the afternoon of the 19th of February.

I suspect the now omitted proposals would have been unconstitutional in any event (although this always depends on the court you ask). Freedom of inquiry is part of freedom of speech. That is basic. That is what America is all about. Whatever the proposed -- now discarded -- regulations were, they have nothing to do with freedom, very little to do with science, and not even much to do with Darwin, who had a lot more respect for freedom of thought than his henchmen in Florida apparently do.

[Tbird]

This thread is about Darwinism NOT evolution. Ben Stein is trolling us I think

[Asmadai]

I bet it's only 5 minutes until someone claim's Ben Stein's argument is a 'logical fallacy'.