NGCHunter,

1) I didn't think you went to far.

2) In the past, I have reported posts I felt crossed the line AND appeared to agree with the BA's politics. The Mods handled my concern professionally and impartially. I recommed that if you dissapprove (politly) report the post.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

The trouble comes whan it's what the noisy minority wants that gets implemented.



No need to apologize. We've both said about as much as the rules allow, I guess it's time to drop this one. From here on out my comments will be limited to the NOVA episode in question, and that only. And since I haven't seen it yet,

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The parameters and unknown edges of any scientific theory can be touched on in classrooms without introducing magic, superstitions or religions. ID is not an alternative scientific theory. Evolution is an observable fact of which there are theories including Darwin.

The psychological essence of spontaneous ID origins as an explanation for life is not science but the acceptance of authority. The essence of scientific inquiry is continuous questioning. Authority hates inquiry.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

You can listen to Judge Jones comment on exactly this point at the end of this interview from the NewsHour. Every time I hear the man speak, I am impressed with his intelligence.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

That, of course, is by design.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

See! The mods do have a sense of humor. I take back what I said about them.

Whether or not Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him is largely immaterial: the literature stands by itself and is rightly regarded as one of the high points of expression in the English language.

The equivalent "what if?" for evolution would be if Wallace had published his theory of Natural Selection before Darwin: the differences would have been similarly trivial.

Comparing the theory of evolution by means of natural selection to "intelligent design" is more like comparing Shakespeare with the scrawlings of an illiterate five year-old.

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If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be so simple we couldn't

QQR

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

It wasn't really relevant to the story they were telling, however.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Along those lines, was there really any point to have Darwin's great-grandson as a contributor to the show? He came off (to me, at least) as anti-evolution, and his contributions were less than rational.

It depends on the story they were telling. For me it told of the legal application of the church and state separation article as it applies to the science classroom. But the show also depicted the struggle that exists today between a specific religious view (ie creationism) and science. The two are intertwined, of course.

Nevertheless, this struggle between a few religious factions and science is the greater story and Dover was a major battle ground. How evolution has advanced due to the pioneering efforts of some religious individuals is quite relevant to the idea that this is not an anti-religion battle, though many of the anti-evolution folks often project that image. Some of the bioloigical science I saw used to favor evolutionary theory I recently read about in the recent book authored by Francis Collins, who headed the genome project and is an active Christian.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

I may have misunderstood, but I thought the relivance was the Great-Grandson was not particularly convinced going into the trial about the correctness of the Theory of Evolution, but after he had heard the plantiff's case he understood his ancestor's theory and was wowed by it.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

I thought the program was excellent and presented the issue quite fairly. I had only two criticisms where I think NOVA showed bias. One was trotting out a relative of Darwin, which makes the issue about celebrity. That isn't necessary.

The other was that they mentioned death threats three times - in each case, they said that threats had been sent to people on the evolution side. I find it very hard to believe that none of the IDers were ever threatened. There is clearly quite a lot of anger, animosity, and yes even hatred toward people who push ID. I promise you, they get threats. I assume that NOVA made the conscious choice not to report on that, for fear that it would engender sympathy for them. It's troubling that NOVA would do that.

I find it very easy to believe that the IDers involved in this case never received any death threats. There just isn't the same sort of fervent passion on the pro-evolution side as the anti-evolution side.

I'd be curious about any examples of death threats on IDers or creationists, if any exist. Certainly there are a lot of crazy people out there, so it's plausible that at least one of them threatened at least one IDer/Creationist in the past.

Matherly's point above is correct: before the trial, he didn't really know anything about his great-great grandfather's theory, and had his doubts. I believe he was the one who, during the evolutionary biology lesson part of the trial, said something to the effect of, "This is amazing! Why didn't we learn it in biology class?"

Do you have any evidence that any of the cdesign proponentsists actually received death threats, or are you just guessing? Did you miss the part where the (conservative) judge received death threats after the ruling? Or where Pat Robertson warned Dover that they should be expecting some kind of flood or plague?

If you have actual evidence that the members of the school board who were pushing ID received death threats, please point them out. I have heard of no such events, and I'm quite sure that NOVA would have mentioned them, had they occurred. As IsaacKuo said, the fervor of creationists knows no bounds.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

I frequently notice that the people on opposite sides of an issue don't seem to be arguing about the same thing. My best example is abortion. When pro-choice people say "abortion" the image they have in their head is of a blastocyst, a microscopic lump of cells. In fact, you often hear them say, "it's just a lump of cells." But when pro-lifers say "abortion" the image they have in their head is of an 8.5 month old fetus that sucks its thumb and recoils from the doctor's instrument.

And the reason I bring this up is that:

honestly, you have to understand two things: 1) IDers really do not see this as a religious issue. They really, honestly see problems with evolution that they don't feel they are getting reasonable answers for. They are shown things like a flagellum, and they recognize it as this beautiful, elegant machine, and they are absolutely right that it doesn't work if any part of it is missing.

None of what I just said has anything to do with religion. What I just said is a criticism of evolutionary theory. When you respond to that criticism, if you chose to just label it and then say, "no no, we aren't going to allow you to say this because we've placed this label on it" all that you're doing is confirming the suspicion of the IDers that you're against *them* regardless of what evidence they have.

I've noticed that a lot of apollo hoax believers are from Europe or Russia and that their motivation for believing that apollo was a hoax is a general hatred of the USA. So imagine how it would look if, every time someone came along and said, "hey I have a question about this" if we labeled them "US-hater" and cut them off. That would be counter productive. We could do it. There is no discussion of politics on this forum. We could interpret that rule to mean that there's no discussion of the apollo hoax. We could do that using the exact same logic that people use against ID.

Instead, what we do is educate them. If 1000 hoax believers come along and they all ask why there are no stars in the photos, Jay Utah will post 1000 replies explaining why there are no stars in the photos. I really respect that. That's the right way.

Getting back to evolution vs. ID. The correct response is not to attack the messenger, it's not to label them religious. The correct response is along the lines of what NOVA did with the flagellum. They answered the criticism. That's far more useful, and more powerful, than just waving your hand and saying, "no no, you're motivated by religion so we aren't going to discuss it."