Ben Stein's "Expelled" flunks big time

Martin Brown wrote:
On Apr 21, 3:54 am, starburst wrote:

ATM wrote:


Yes there is

Oh, for heaven's sake. You're making a statement on philosophy and
metaphysics, and you don't get to make up the rules as you go along, any
more than creationists get to ignore what is evidently objective fact.
Read Aquinas, for starters, or Plato in Timaeus, and actually spend some
time thinking about what it is that they're saying. Then report back on
what is required of the first cause.


But you are only delaying the problem by initiating the universe and
spacetime at the behest of some eternal deity.

Um, I don't think that's how Aquinas would look at it, because he's
discussing the initiation of our universe, and noting that everything in
it has a causation. So the thing that causes the initial creation would
be beyond our laws, and thus conceivably without a creator. And anyway,
I was simply noting that the person who posted the comment on the
necessity of God creating himself was apparantly unfamiliar with the big
minds (and don't kid yourself - they were some smart mother***kers) who
had considered these questions systematically.

An omnipotent deity
could in principle create the universe at any point in time with a
suitably faked prehistory by setting appropriate boundary conditions.
You are then in YEC theology faced with a deity that is little more
than a dodgy antique dealer distressing a piece of furniture to make
it look older, more interesting and more expensive than it really is.

That's certainly possible.


It may make you feel better to believe that there is a God that
created this universe but it doesn't help to explain how things work.

I couldn't agree more, and have posted nothing to the contrary.

And I might add that it might make *you* feel better to believe that
there is no God, but it doesn't help to explain how things work, either.

It's metaphysics, not science or engineering.

And believing in the exact literal truth of some ancient book
translated and transcribed many times before it ever reached a
canonical printed English version will get you into all sorts of
difficulties.

I agree with this, too. There can be no "literal truth" in a book that
so frequently contradicts itself. Though you might be surprised at how
careful translators actually have been, especially after around the year
1500, with critical editions based on extremely old texts.

The anthropic coincidence stuff in ID is intriguing. And weird.


Not particularly. We would not be here to think about such things if
the universe was significantly different. Modern cosmology has several
ways around the fine tuning of the universe problem and they each make
testable predictions that can be verified experimentally. One day soon
the observations will constrain the theoreticians.

You have your opinion on this and I have mine. In any event, I applaud
and envy your certainty on something that has yet to occur.


This is considerably different to answering every question with
"because God made it so".

I don't tend to hang around with boobs or idiots, so I have yet to
personally hear any of my friends or colleagues answer every question
with "because God made it so."


ID has no predictive power. And if He was a truly intelligent designer
you might reasonably expect he would have done something about eg
wisdom teeth and the appendix in humans (which were extremely painful
defects and could easily be fatal in pre-antiseptic and antibiotic
days). Evolution fits the observable facts much better than ID.

I more than believe in evolution. Evolution simply *is*. Its existence
doesn't mean that I can't believe in a creator or God, or even that I
shouldn't. It also doesn't necessarily mean that God must be omnipotent
or omniscient in a way that I would understand it. And it doesn't mean
that I need to place myself at the center of everything and demand
assinine conditions for his existence that are related to my dumb ass.
Or yours.


And as far as I can tell entirely outside of conventional science. So I
don't want it taught in science classrooms in public schools.


I think that the requirement that all scientific theories must be
capable of being experimentally verified and validated should be
taught very carefully in science classes. It would help considerably
if more people had a better grounding in science. It would be much
harder for the smoking tobacco doesn't cause cancer and CO2 doesn't
cause AGW brigade to peddle their wares if more people could
understand the scientific method.


Well, yeah. But at the same time you don't need to accuse everyone whose
opinion on metaphysics differs from yours of being stupid, illogical or
uninformed. You do *not* have a monopoly on opinion along these lines.
There are intelligent, educated theists out there. If you jump to attack
them in a reactionary fashion, you damage your own credibility.

Regards,
Martin Brown

And to you.

C

starburst wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
On Apr 21, 3:54 am, starburst wrote:

ATM wrote:

Yes there is

Oh, for heaven's sake. You're making a statement on philosophy and
metaphysics, and you don't get to make up the rules as you go along, any
more than creationists get to ignore what is evidently objective fact.
Read Aquinas, for starters, or Plato in Timaeus, and actually spend some
time thinking about what it is that they're saying. Then report back on
what is required of the first cause.

But you are only delaying the problem by initiating the universe and
spacetime at the behest of some eternal deity.

Um, I don't think that's how Aquinas would look at it, because he's
discussing the initiation of our universe, and noting that everything in
it has a causation. So the thing that causes the initial creation would
be beyond our laws, and thus conceivably without a creator. And anyway,
I was simply noting that the person who posted the comment on the
necessity of God creating himself was apparantly unfamiliar with the big
minds (and don't kid yourself - they were some smart mother***kers) who
had considered these questions systematically.

And in the context of a medieval mindset they did extremely well. But
you are still left with a creation problem but just one layer deeper.

An omnipotent deity
could in principle create the universe at any point in time with a
suitably faked prehistory by setting appropriate boundary conditions.
You are then in YEC theology faced with a deity that is little more
than a dodgy antique dealer distressing a piece of furniture to make
it look older, more interesting and more expensive than it really is.

That's certainly possible.

If there is a deity I would like to think He made the genuine article
and not a knock off copy intended to satisfy Bishop Users crude guesses.

It may make you feel better to believe that there is a God that
created this universe but it doesn't help to explain how things work.

I couldn't agree more, and have posted nothing to the contrary.

And I might add that it might make *you* feel better to believe that
there is no God, but it doesn't help to explain how things work, either.

What makes you think I believe there is no God? I am a hard line
Agnostic. I honestly don't know if there is a God or Gods or if there is
none. I can write down an equation that describes my state of belief and
it is unnormalised and symmetric about 1/2
p(God exists = x) = 1/(x(1-x))

This accurately describes my personal state of belief and also the
global population state of belief in the abscence of evidence. Note that
it is strongly clumped at the extremes God exists=0, and God exists=1.

I do know that a hell of a lot of damage has been done in the name of
religion. "Ours is the one true God", "All unbelievers will burn
eternally in hellfire" and you quickly get to the Spanish Inquisition,
the Crusades or its modern equivalent at Gitmo bay. The ends justifies
the means.

It's metaphysics, not science or engineering.

And believing in the exact literal truth of some ancient book
translated and transcribed many times before it ever reached a
canonical printed English version will get you into all sorts of
difficulties.

I agree with this, too. There can be no "literal truth" in a book that
so frequently contradicts itself. Though you might be surprised at how
careful translators actually have been, especially after around the year
1500, with critical editions based on extremely old texts.

They still cannot preserve the ambiguities and double meanings that the
original language contained. Something that is lost in a monolingual
culture.

The anthropic coincidence stuff in ID is intriguing. And weird.

Not particularly. We would not be here to think about such things if
the universe was significantly different. Modern cosmology has several
ways around the fine tuning of the universe problem and they each make
testable predictions that can be verified experimentally. One day soon
the observations will constrain the theoreticians.

You have your opinion on this and I have mine. In any event, I applaud
and envy your certainty on something that has yet to occur.

Experimental evidence will always constrain theoreticians from their
wilder flights of fancy. Science progresses by testing its ideas against
nature to see what happens and discarding those that fail.

This is considerably different to answering every question with
"because God made it so".

I don't tend to hang around with boobs or idiots, so I have yet to
personally hear any of my friends or colleagues answer every question
with "because God made it so."

About 40% of the US population as I recall - if they ever think about
the question at all. How else would Ben Steins film get made?

It is rather good to see that it is a monumental flop despite having a
captive audience.

ID has no predictive power. And if He was a truly intelligent designer
you might reasonably expect he would have done something about eg
wisdom teeth and the appendix in humans (which were extremely painful
defects and could easily be fatal in pre-antiseptic and antibiotic
days). Evolution fits the observable facts much better than ID.

I more than believe in evolution. Evolution simply *is*. Its existence
doesn't mean that I can't believe in a creator or God, or even that I
shouldn't.

Can't argue with that.
Science is neutral on the existance or non-existance of deities.

It also doesn't necessarily mean that God must be omnipotent
or omniscient in a way that I would understand it. And it doesn't mean
that I need to place myself at the center of everything and demand
assinine conditions for his existence that are related to my dumb ass.
Or yours.

My objection is directed strictly toward YEC and the newest brand of US
religious idiocy Intelligent Design.

And as far as I can tell entirely outside of conventional science. So I
don't want it taught in science classrooms in public schools.

I think that the requirement that all scientific theories must be
capable of being experimentally verified and validated should be
taught very carefully in science classes. It would help considerably
if more people had a better grounding in science. It would be much
harder for the smoking tobacco doesn't cause cancer and CO2 doesn't
cause AGW brigade to peddle their wares if more people could
understand the scientific method.

Well, yeah. But at the same time you don't need to accuse everyone whose
opinion on metaphysics differs from yours of being stupid, illogical or
uninformed. You do *not* have a monopoly on opinion along these lines.

Unfortunately in a country which has YEC theme parks with Adam & Eve
posing with dinosaurs it is difficult not to mock the afflicted.

There are intelligent, educated theists out there. If you jump to attack
them in a reactionary fashion, you damage your own credibility.

Actually it may surprise you to know that I agree with this latter
statement. I object to Richard Dawkins position on the grounds that he
is making a claim to know that the number of deities is exactly ZERO -
something for which he does not have any scientific evidence.

OTOH Something has to be done to prevent the teaching of antiscience in
state schools. We have a small problem with it in my neighbourhood (UK)
- a local businessman has a Creationist school set up using *state*
funding. Thanks to the Bliar government.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Apr 22, 3:07 am, Martin Brown
wrote:
OTOH Something has to be done to prevent the teaching of antiscience in
state schools. We have a small problem with it in my neighbourhood (UK)
- a local businessman has a Creationist school set up using *state*
funding. Thanks to the Bliar government.

I'm opposed to that, but on the other hand, since some people have
religious beliefs which make YEC a tenet of their faith, I believe
that respect for religious belief requries that anti-YEC
indoctrination is also violative of the First Amendment.

The way to permit evolution to be taught, without dishonest
disclaimers that allege there is any genuine scientific doubt about
the truth of evolution and natural selection, is simply to treat
evolution as an allegation without making any statements on how likely
it is to be true.

John Savard

On Apr 21, 5:17 pm, starburst wrote:

I more than believe in evolution. Evolution simply *is*. Its existence
doesn't mean that I can't believe in a creator or God, or even that I
shouldn't.

True. After all, science hasn't answered the question of "why there is
something rather than nothing".

But living creatures are remarkably complex. If it wasn't for Darwin,
their complexity might appear to be *obvious proof* of a God, just
like the delicate mechanism of a wris****ch is proof that it was made
by people.

Those who would like it to be impossible to even *think* that there is
not necessarily a God, those who would like the Bible to be taken as
the literal truth - as *they* interpret its meaning to people -
naturally feel threatened by evolution. In reaction to all the
historical attempts at mind control by means of religion, it's not
surprising that many have felt that rejecting the idea of God out of
hand is an important defense against this.

And there is also the problem of evil. It is reasonable to expect that
a personal God would be concerned about the sufferings of innocent
people to an even greater extent than a normal healthy human would be.
Omnipotence and omniscience being inherent in the definition of God -
anything without these attributes is simply a creature, even if it is
bigger and smarter and more powerful than a man - it isn't as if any
particular effort would have been required of Him to prevent the
Holocaust, strike rapists with lightning on a dependable basis, and so
on.

Rather than trying to come up with a God that could exist, instead I
simply reject what I see as the attempt by some atheists to throw out
the baby with the bathwater.

One does not need to believe in God to believe that right and wrong
have a real existence, independent of social agreement, in the same
way that mathematics exists even if people don't know about it, or
have wrong ideas about it.

John Savard

Quadibloc wrote:
On Apr 21, 5:17 pm, starburst wrote:

I more than believe in evolution. Evolution simply *is*. Its existence
doesn't mean that I can't believe in a creator or God, or even that I
shouldn't.

True. After all, science hasn't answered the question of "why there is
something rather than nothing".

Actually it has.

Charge-Parity symmetry violations in the early Big Bang universe leads
to an excess of baryonic matter over anti-matter. Andrei Sakharov first
proposed this explanation of why we have matter in the universe. Now
confirmed experimentally in various HEP labs around the world.

Short introductory article at:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...er_040831.html

What cannot be answered by science is why the Big Bang happened (at
least not yet) or what if anything existed before it. Various string
theoreticians think they have an answer based on analysis in higher
dimensional spaces, but it has proved less than convincing so far.

Those who would like it to be impossible to even *think* that there is
not necessarily a God, those who would like the Bible to be taken as
the literal truth - as *they* interpret its meaning to people -
naturally feel threatened by evolution. In reaction to all the
historical attempts at mind control by means of religion, it's not
surprising that many have felt that rejecting the idea of God out of
hand is an important defense against this.

I don't see any need to reject God out of hand. And the description of
the creation in Genesis is pretty good for the time it was written
provided that you don't take it too literally.

But I do see a need to stop the YECs and now the IDs peddling their lies
to children and using state funding to do it.

One does not need to believe in God to believe that right and wrong
have a real existence, independent of social agreement, in the same
way that mathematics exists even if people don't know about it, or
have wrong ideas about it.

Agreed.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Apr 22, 9:44*am, Martin Brown
wrote:
Quadibloc wrote:

True. After all, science hasn't answered the question of "why there is
something rather than nothing".

Actually it has.

Charge-Parity symmetry violations in the early Big Bang universe leads
to an excess of baryonic matter over anti-matter. Andrei Sakharov first
proposed this explanation of why we have matter in the universe. Now
confirmed experimentally in various HEP labs around the world.

Short introductory article at:http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...er_040831.html

What cannot be answered by science is why the Big Bang happened (at
least not yet) or what if anything existed before it.

I wasn't talking Higgs bosons; I was talking about why there is even
any *energy*, not just why some of that energy became matter.

Of course, I suppose you *could* cite vacuum fluctuations as an
explanation for _that_...

John Savard