If you’re curious about the public response to PBS’s Judgment Day, the PBS ombudsman has an article up on it. It had above average viewership; there were a lot of complaints that it was “one sided”, but that’s just too bad, since the science is decidedly one sided.
The letters are the best part. Here are a couple of my favorites:
It doesn’t take a “Rocket Scientist” to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys??? We were “Created” by God!!! Pull up AOL now and you’ll notice the Gov. of Georgia praying for rain, (No Doubt to GOD). When 9/11 happened what did every good neighbor do? PRAY. Not to monkeys . . . To our “Creator”!!! It shouldn’t take tragic and desperate circumstances for people to realize this fact!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! In GOD We Trust!!!
Yeah, you can tell which side had the geniuses. That’s just pathetic.
It was fascinating to see those dipstick high school teachers, bolstered by the heir to the Darwin fortune explain the impossible and to the great lengths that these . . . will go to deny that there is a greater power than some . . . that passed teacher’s college in some backwater . . . state.
“Heir to the Darwin fortune”? Like Darwin got rich off of his science. I don’t think Chapman is a wealthy heir, either. And insulting the teachers is a nice touch.
Runaway italics!!!
It probably would have been more useful to pray to monkeys on 9/11. It seems God was using His timeshare at Crawford that day.
Gotta love the hysterical viewer from Tampa, FL who wrote: “I am watching your series on intelligent design and can’t believe how biased and unprofessional it is!”
I feel the same way. ID is the most biased and unprofessional excuse for science I’ve ever seen.
I love the criticism that the program presented all the “advocates for Intelligent design as stammering idiots and barbaric criminals”.
Once again- truth has a liberal elite bias.
Hooray for me that I’m leaving the shithole that is the Tampa area.
Runaway italics?
Doesn’t anybody know about /i?
I haven’t watch it yet but I’m pretty sure the show isn’t one-sided enough. Or does it end with one of these clowns being wrapped in a burlap sack and beaten with an axe handle?
Hmm…no, that didn’t do the trick.
“THAT”!!!”WAS”!!!”AWESOME”!!!
wow.
Why is it always “Man from Monkeys!” Are there no apes in the Bible-thumpers’ worldview? Or is the alliteration simply too precious?
Maybe this:
Did it help?
[i]Nope[/i], didn’t help.
[/i] Italics, catch them all!
Argh, that where the wrong ones
Oh well, one can not always win. :D
It doesn’t take a “Rocket Scientist” to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys???
I’m once again debating Creationists in the local paper. It amazes me that these fools think they can offer opinions on evolution when they know nothing about it. Why don’t they think to themselves, ‘There are many very intelligent people involved in this area of science, & if there were glaring errors such as what I think I’ve found, some of them would’ve noticed them too’?
Reading some of the responses on there I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at teh stoopid. Then again, after reading some of the responses on there, perhaps it is no surprise that it was the science teachers, the plaintiffs and the judge receiving threats of various kind, as usual. Fundamentalist xtianity, a truly loving, peaceful and tolerant religion, NOT.
Darwin certainly did not get rich off of science; he was already rich, his wife was an heir to the Wedgwood fortune.
As a racist Victorian eliticist, he had plenty of time to do “science” (write one long essay essentially) which was colored by his elitism: you know, “savage races”, women intellecually inferior, vaccination weakens the race, praise for his cousin Galton’s Eugenics theories, etc. etc.
However, PZ’s continual use of science as a front for atheism (after all, he mentions that he is a “godless liberal” in his intro as if the two go together, assures me that his side will not be able to declare total victory over the “savage” masses any time soon.
Look at the ignorant fundie stupidicist! I bet it’s the Kansas Troll again.
maybe that’s the code to close the italics.
[/em] one last try to close the italics
Did Behe actually lie on the witness stand? If so, why wasn’t he charged with perjury?
The letters are indeed hilarious. The way those people behave, you’d think that ID was a scientific theory.
Fairly sad that the ID support letters on the Ombudsman’s page far outnumber those who enjoyed the program.
To the IDiots I have a proposal:
Teach the controversy! You fools can have ID in public schools if all tax exempt religious schools and churches agree to include the Greek, Norse, Vedic, Gaelic, FSM, a few American Indian, Hindu, Aztec, and Shinto creation myths in their classrooms and sundayschools, along with evolution and abiogenesis. TEACH THE CONTROVERSY! LET THE CHILDREN DECIDE!
PZ and others (Panda’s Thumb, et al) are among the few who don’t allow the creationists to frame this “debate” (if you can actually call it a debate) in their terms. All people who value evidence over empty assertions need to step up and follow their example. Write angry and strident letters to editors, spend a few minutes a week to respond to creationists and other nonsense in your local papers. Write to your politicians (yeah, that one may be futile, but as Dawkins says, some of them have to be rationalists, just based on probability, maybe they will suprise you). Get involved!
/rant off
Damned redneck knuckledragging italicists!
This is how to close the runaway italics.
The tag has to be used from within the post itself, I believe. Once PZ wakes up from his beauty sleep I’m sure he’ll tend to it.
I was a little confused by the message sent with the use of celebrity stand-ins to play some of the characters. OK, Billy-Bob Thornton (Bad Santa etc) as one of the parents was OK, but Dwight Schrute from ‘The Office’ playing Nick Matze? What was that all about? ;)
It’s funny how all the creationist viewers assume that if one side “wins”, the presenter was biased. It might be that, you know, the IDers actually don’t have any arguments against most of evolutionary theory, and all the arguments they do present are badly made and easily refuted.
Oh yeah, and: IF EVOLUTION IS TRUE WHY ARE THERE STILL MONKEYS????
I also like this comment:
What a curious view at a time when the government is openly pushing creationism!
Man, those cdesign propnentsists are sore losers.
Why are there still monkeys?
I had a conversation with a creationist on this very issue and got enlightened with the actual reason why a lot of them have problems with this very point. He made it clear to me that he believed that evolutionary theory was basically exactly as portrayed be the various fish morphing to humans type animations. However he actually believed that the theory held that the change happened in real time – fish actually physically shape shifted in a matter of seconds through various stages (amphibian, reptile, mammal) until they reached human shape and then they stopped changing shape and were able to start to breed. He thought ‘darwinists’ were stupid for believing in such a ridiculous notion.
The answer about why there are still monkeys that the IDiots just can’t get their heads around is that we’re not descended from monkeys in the first place. We have *common ancestors* with the monkeys (and the lemurs, and any other critter with a DNA genome, for that matter).
What they just can’t grasp is that evolution doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion. Species branch off, some last, some don’t.
-jcr
Hell, religionists in general are sore winners. Here they are in the most religiose of all developed countries, one in which it’s almost impossible to win high office without ostentatious displays of piety, yet any time they are even mildly restrained from imposing their whims on others we hear them whining “help, help. I’m being oppressed”!
A student once asked me the “Why are there still monkeys” question, and I replied, “If the American colonists came from England, why are there still Englishmen?”
Seriously though, MartinC hit the nail on the head. It is the straw-man argument that evolution means a whole species morphs into another one that they are arguing against. They seem to think there is some mystical force that causes an entire species to say “Hey, lets change into something else.” When I explained to one of my students that after the Great Rift Valley changed the climate in East Africa the apes there were subject to a very different environment than their ancestors to the West, she seemed to get it.
Sometimes, when I really want to shake them up, I tell them that strictly speaking, humans are apes. At least according to some, the family Hominidae includes chimps, gorilas, and orangutans right? Linnaeus lamented that he could not find a valid family-level difference between apes and humans, but also knew that if he put the apes in the Hominidae he would be strung up.
BTW, I am puzzled by the insistence that the common ancestor of, say anthropoids and monkeys wasn’t a monkey, or that the common ancestor of humans and chimps wasn’t a chimp. Isn’t it possible that the ancestral population has lived in a stable environment, and really hasn’t changed? I mean, the common ancestor of fish and amphibians was certainly a fish, wasn’t it? This curious view would seem to require than none of the taxa above the species level can be valid in the past if they diversified into more than one species or other group in the present.
Behe doesn’t understand evolution well enough to lie about it.
BTW, I am puzzled by the insistence that the common ancestor of, say anthropoids and monkeys wasn’t a monkey, or that the common ancestor of humans and chimps wasn’t a chimp. Isn’t it possible that the ancestral population has lived in a stable environment, and really hasn’t changed? I mean, the common ancestor of fish and amphibians was certainly a fish, wasn’t it?
Well, the thing is that the assumption that goes with it is that it was a modern fish, a modern monkey, etc. This is not true, and it’s pretty important.
Our common ancestor may have been more chimp-like than human-like, but it was certainly not a chimp.
The Ancestor’s Tale does a great job explaining common ancestors (not surprisingly), as Dawkins points out how long ago we shared an ancestor with a given group, and also explains what this common ancestor likely looked like. The common ancestor between monkeys and apes probably was monkey-like (but an early monkey, because monkeys have evolved since the split too, they didn’t say the same while our ancestors alone “advanced”).
On the other hand, the common ancestor between, say, us and bears, wouldn’t look anything like either an ape or a bear. We split from them long enough ago that our common ancestor may have been shrew-like. Dawkins makes the point that, though separate lineages of early mammals had already split by the time of the K-T extinction event, all these separate populations still looked pretty much the same, small and shrew-like, for a while after the initial splits. It was only when the dinosaurs died out and we were able to branch out and fill niches that all these new morphological forms developed.
We need to be aware that, depending on how far back a common ancestor is, it may not look anything like any of the species it eventually gave birth to. Sometimes you can take a pair of animals and the common ancestor will look more like one of them than the other, but sometimes both descendants are radically different from it; for example, birds and mammals both evolved from reptile groups.
JB,
Are you feeling like a neglected troll yet?
The myth of progress can be a source of confusion, where we think of evolution as a ladder and imagine that other modern animals are on a lower rung, and therefore just stopped evolving whenever we split off from them, i.e., humans and monkeys. It’s true that sometimes you can take a pair of animals and the common ancestor will look more like one of them than the other. There are existing groups of primitive animals, i.e., groups that have undergone comparably little morphological change (like sharks), and can give us some idea of how our ancestors behaved.
But sometimes both descendants are radically different from a common ancestor as well as each other, for example, birds and mammals both evolved from reptile groups. Early mammals had already speciated into many major groups by the time of the K-T extinction event, but these separate populations still looked pretty much the same. It was only when the dinosaurs died out and new niches opened up that all these new morphological forms developed.
The myth of progress can be a source of confusion, where we think of evolution as a ladder and imagine that other modern animals are on a lower rung, and therefore just stopped evolving whenever we split off from them, i.e., humans and monkeys. It’s true that sometimes you can take a pair of animals and the common ancestor will look more like one of them than the other. There are existing groups of primitive animals, i.e., groups that have undergone comparably little morphological change (like sharks), and can give us some idea of how our ancestors behaved.
But sometimes both descendants are radically different from a common ancestor as well as each other, for example, birds and mammals both evolved from reptile groups. Early mammals had already speciated into many major groups by the time of the K-T extinction event, but these separate populations still looked pretty much the same. It was only when the dinosaurs died out and new niches opened up that all these new morphological forms developed.
It’s sad that the IDiots can’t think that a fair, objective reporting of the situation would have it that the Dover affair was an attempt to insert religion into science classes. Talk about narrow minded.
You ought to read Darwin someday, JB. I’m not holding my breath that you will, but you should. Darwin was no racist, but instead far advanced for his time, arguing for the mental acuity of Africans, arguing for the rights of aboriginals to be left alone, arguing (successfully, with the help of his fortune) for the end of slavery in the English empire, etc., etc.
Your abuse of the English language, including your attempt to twist what “savage” meant in early science writing, only demonstrates the paucity of arguments and evidence against evolution. If you had any data, if you had any workable ideas, why would you insult a gentle, kind and generous man, whose work makes your life better everyday?
There’s a parable in the NT about Jesus curing several blind men, only one of whom had the good manners to return to thank the healer. You’re not that one.
You might benefit from reading the scripture you worry about so much, too.
Pet peeve alert.
Note that we were not really created. We were only sorta kinda “created”, but not really.
Freudian typo? Or are we once again looking at someone who was too stupid to figure out what quotation marks are for?
————
One word: barnacles.
————
<shock>
Well…
“Creationists are not just more stupid than we suppose, they are more stupid than we can suppose.”
— chuko
———–
Right.
(Note that I didn’t restore the italics; only genus and species names are put in italics, in zoology at least.)
Not quite. Linnaeus actually did put the poorly known and somewhat misunderstood chimpanzees into the genus Homo, as Homo troglodytes. Families were not yet invented. If I remember correctly, he lamented he couldn’t find a genus-level difference* between any monkeys or apes, us included.
* He really believed that you could look at a difference and tell if it was significant at the genus level or elsewhere…
That’s all a matter of definition. If you go by what they looked like, the MRCA of apes and Old World monkeys* was a monkey, the MRCA of all fish groups and the amphibians was a fish, and the MRCA of humans and chimps was on balance more similar to chimps and bonobos than to us. If instead you only want to recognize monophyletic groups — an ancestor and all its descendants –, then the term “monkey” is misleading unless you include us*, the term “chimp” is better restricted to the chimp side of the divergence, and the term “fish” has to be abandoned altogether (unless you prefer it over “vertebrate”).
* The Old World monkeys are more closely related to us than to the New World monkeys.
Pet peeve alert.
Note that we were not really created. We were only sorta kinda “created”, but not really.
Freudian typo? Or are we once again looking at someone who was too stupid to figure out what quotation marks are for?
————
One word: barnacles.
————
<shock>
Well…
“Creationists are not just more stupid than we suppose, they are more stupid than we can suppose.”
— chuko
———–
Right.
(Note that I didn’t restore the italics; only genus and species names are put in italics, in zoology at least.)
Not quite. Linnaeus actually did put the poorly known and somewhat misunderstood chimpanzees into the genus Homo, as Homo troglodytes. Families were not yet invented. If I remember correctly, he lamented he couldn’t find a genus-level difference* between any monkeys or apes, us included.
* He really believed that you could look at a difference and tell if it was significant at the genus level or elsewhere…
That’s all a matter of definition. If you go by what they looked like, the MRCA of apes and Old World monkeys* was a monkey, the MRCA of all fish groups and the amphibians was a fish, and the MRCA of humans and chimps was on balance more similar to chimps and bonobos than to us. If instead you only want to recognize monophyletic groups — an ancestor and all its descendants –, then the term “monkey” is misleading unless you include us*, the term “chimp” is better restricted to the chimp side of the divergence, and the term “fish” has to be abandoned altogether (unless you prefer it over “vertebrate”).
* The Old World monkeys are more closely related to us than to the New World monkeys.
The only kind of objective reporting that the IDiots and the literal fundamentalists would accept as valid and praiseworthy is if Judgment Day had reversed the court’s decision, presented a Biblical world view while strongly repudiating Darwin and evolution and non-supernatural science, and declared Jesus as the show’s personal savior.
And even then they’d deluge PBS with angry and righteous responses quibbling over proper Biblical interpretation and indignantly whining about PBS’s notorious liberal bias in using 10,000 years as the age of creation instead of 4004 years (or vice versa ad naseum). And then there’s the heretical problem of the old earthers. Then would come the calls to stone the producers and burn PBS as the earthly representatives of the antichrist.
… ah, the HTML tag thing pulled out the name rec. The above was indeed a well-circulated chat log, and not me. In the future, I’ll use brackets instead.
Why has PBS never broadcast any of the very fine and well-produced films featuring critiques of the theory of Evolution and presenting the case for Intelligent Design? A couple of these are “The Icons of Evolution” and “The Privileged Planet.”
Because, unlike you, they can recognize crap when they see it?
Actually that’s 6010 by now.
I never saw this NOVA episode as being billed as a balanced comparison of ID and Evolution. It was billed as a documentary of a trial, and that’s what it was. Is it PBS’s fault that Evolution “won” this trial? I don’t understand how PBS was supposed to give equal time to ID supporters when most of them declined to even be interviewed? And how did PBS portray the ID supporters in Dover as bumbling rednecks? This was a TRUE story, these people actually WERE bumbling rednecks, that’s not PBS’s fault. Get over the fact that PBS struck a nice blow to ID, if you want your “theory” to have equal time, then you’ve got to be willing to accept a blow to the logic of that theory. ID supporters take pot shots at Evolution all the time, how is it fair that we can’t take shots at you? I want fair and balanced abilities to attack illogical theories.
I sent this:
I would like to thank PBS for some responsible journalism in the form of the documentary about the Kitzmiller trial in Pennsylvania. Too often, even our best news organizations attempt to present a false “balance” to controversial stories. But there is no equivalence between scientific theory (such as evolution) and cynical or wishful speculation (such as intelligent design). While I think the sociological and psychological study of pseudoscience is enlightening, and while I think that people deserve respect, I do not think that all ideas deserve respect. I think this piece went a little way toward demonstrating that while everyone is entitled to their own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts.
The theory of evolution by natural selection is remarkably robust, and the more we learn, the more tightly the web of facts shows that. That some folks take reality as personal insult only shows that we have evolved with a tendency to animism, to thinking that unconscious things and processes are, like us, deliberate agents. The more we learn about the world, the more we can be humbled and exalted by our vary natural place in it. Perhaps as a side effect of traits that we have (via evolution), we have been able to create amazing artifacts and civilizations. Intelligent design is lazy thinking masquerading as humilty, invariably wedded to ossified bias. At best it is a hijacking of the awe which drives science, at worst, it is the refuge of scroundrels who would denigrate hard-won human knowledge, and do so in service of unproven and wildly unlikely theism.
Thanks, PBS, for this show. Now it is time to treat homeopathy, HIV-denialisn and anti-vaccination to strong critiques. Whaddya say?
No, it takes anyone with a basic amount of science literacy to explain that you’re spewing out a strawman that has been explained over and over again.
He’s been at it for a while. Still dry down there, innit? Also, which god is this kook praying to?
I donated blood. That’s about all I could do, given that I was nowhere near NYC at the time.
Praying is for people who want to say they did something without really doing anything.
I like James Healton’s response. “Why was there no interview with any one of a considerable number of well-qualified scientists and legal experts who consider Judge Jones’ opinion and ruling faulty?” Apparently someone wasn’t really watching the program, because nova explained why in the show.
“Why has PBS never broadcast any of the very fine and well-produced films featuring critiques of the theory of Evolution and presenting the case for Intelligent Design?”
Well they presented the two very common arguments ID always puts forth the Flagellum and the immune system, and showed the science behind both. Yea someone really wasn’t watching this program.
“Or, if broadcasting these ID programs is too much for you to stomach, why not at least allow qualified spokespersons from the ID movement to debate and rebut the arguments put forward in the attack pieces and films you regularly air on PBS?”
They rebuted two of the ID’s arguments. Debates are spectacle’s and not really scientific. You can’t condense all the science on evolution in a 90 minute debate. Hence why the dover trial took weeks and not a day.
Let’s hear if for the Quaker with a keen interest in science.
Mama says, every time a creationist talks, brain cells go to heaven.
The guy talking about “backwater teacher colleges” might just be establishing his age (he may just be proof of biblical ancients). I don’t know that there are any more “teacher colleges” otherwise known as Normal Schools. I believe they all were incorporated in to state university systems.
These people remind me of this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZpDnXYIFjo
The fool has said in his heart, “My superstition is fact! It says so right here in the Bible!”
If only they would leave it in their damned hearts.
If I recall, wasn’t evolution the scientific theory that won out in the Dover Trial? Wasn’t ID declared religious? Why is it these people think there should be a shared respect to both sides of the argument when only one side won? Do they want a consolatory prize for showing up and getting their ass kicked? How the religious right always try to rewrite history.
I can understand how someone not familiar with the history of Intelligent Design would think this documentary was “one-sided”. Anyone who is even mildly religious would sympathize with the general idea.
The problem is the difficulty in portraying the antics of Intelligent Design proponents. Over the last decade, their activities have been so outrageous that it is hard to take them seriously. A truthful account of their behavior is too ridiculous to believe.
I think the producers did what was appropriate with this program. If this was a documentary on a criminal case and a person was found guilt, no one would accuse them of being “one-sided” for portraying the person as a criminal. If the proponents of Intelligent Design relied on fraud and perjury to further their cause, they deserve the portrayal they got.
Did you notice all the death threats and violence coming from the ID’ists? For people who claim they are christians and want to live in the image of Jesus, they are a bunch of hypocrites. The reason I have become anti-religious!
You doubt PYGMIES + DWARFS?! Pull up AOL now and type in keywords “PYGMIES + DWARFS!!11eleventyone!” and see what you get!
/the AOL thing was the funniest bit, of course creationists would still use AOL
No way. The Kansas troll can’t write sentences that are more than a few words long. Nor can he write a complete coherent paragraph. He usually ends by calling Darwinists mass murderers and then threatening to kill them.
I bet JB believes the sun goes around the earth. Like 20% of the population and 26% of the other fundies.
“Pull up AOL” ?? Creationists are still using AOL? That actually makes perfect sense, given what I remember about AOL users circa 1997.
When 9/11 happened what did every good neighbor do?
Helped with the rescue effort, donated blood, attended to the wounded, helped people out of downtown, stood by their Islamic or Arabic neighbors, donated money or goods to help those who were displaced by the attacks, or just hugged their neighbors. People did all those things and they all helped. Prayer? What did that do for anyone? Well, public prayers from Islamic, Christian, and Jewish leaders all standing together to demonstrate unity between sects during the emergency might help reduce the risk of vigilantism, but other than that, I don’t see the point.
Maybe it’s because I’m a lawyer, but this statement about the Establishment clause has to take the prize as the most unintentionally truthful:
Thank you, Ellany Collins, for that insight into your motives.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the judge in the Dover trial a Bush appointee? More likely biased towards ID than evolution.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the judge in the Dover trial a Bush appointee? More likely biased towards ID than evolution.
That was the assumption the IDists made… that somehow judges were suppposed to put political affiliation before the law.
Boy, were they wrong in this case. Judge Jones is one of that endangered breed, the honest conservative.
Yes, alliteration and rhyming are the two best proofs of the validity of an argument. Everything that rhymes or alliterates is true.
What’s spooky, the creos are part of the Xian Dominionist movement, Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, and the other cultists. Their goal is to control the US government and set up a theocracy.
They did, in fact, control the federal government from 2000 to 2006. Bush is one of them. They own the theocratic party.
I wonder how long the US could survive in anything resembling its present form if they could grab power and keep it. We may well find out.
I suspect in a generation or two, our children would be sneaking across the border into Mexico in search of low paying, manual labor jobs. Some Mexicans would be complaining about all the illegal gringos taking all the bottom rung jobs. A few defenders would point out that the Norte Americanos do work that Mexicans just won’t do.
Dianne (#63):
Not only are you not wrong, the Nova program prominently mentioned the fact in question twice.
From the IDiot responses to the show I’ve read, I don’t see folks coming to terms with that point at all.
Good grief. These people are born in ignorance, raised in ignorance, live in ignorance, wallow in ignorance, celebrate ignorance, and will most likely die in ignorance. It’s hard to have the least bit of patience with them anymore.
Two things: the positive endorsement by Rodney Smith, Colorado Springs, CO, gives me great hope that some pocket of reality-based thinking exists in Dobsonville.
Second, what is this about the Memphis station pulling the program at the last minute? The ombudsman’s report was the first I heard of this.
The Monkey’s prayer:
Our Monkey, who art in the Jungle, hallowed be thy taxon. Thy foraging territory come, Thy will be done, in the city as it is in the Jungle. Forgive us for chasing the omegas away from the receptive females, as we forgive the alphas for chasing us away from the receptive females. Give us this day our daily breadfruit, and lead us not into crocodiles, for Thine is the troupe, and the grooming, and the incessant chattering, amen.
There’s a pretty well defined and militant pocket there, actually. I expect that to change, though. That pocket is made up of the old guard — the Colorado Springs natives who were there before the fundagelicals and megachurches decided to turn it into a mecca for warehouse church Christianity. Colorado Springs was, for a very long time, a bastion of secular conservatism (and if not a bastion, then it had at least a plurality of Christian conservatism and secular conservatism). Colorado Springs used to be run mostly by tech and aerospace, and those were spillover from all of the military bases.
Now, that influx of godbots has caused some immense sprawl problems, the whole city is beginning to look like one big Homeowner’s Association. If you want to have a good time, you can run around applying for jobs and counting how many of them want you to sign a “statement of faith” as part of the terms of employment. Since several of these massive corporations are classified as churches, they can get away with that.
Honestly, I’d look for that pocket to continue to shrink.
You doubt PYGMIES + DWARFS?! Pull up AOL now and type in keywords “PYGMIES + DWARFS!!11eleventyone!” and see what you get!
Ok, Jesus Christ, people. “eleventyone” wasn’t, isn’t, and never will be funny. You’re fucking pushing too hard.
For comparison:
You doubt PYGMIES + DWARFS?! Pull up AOL now and type in keywords “PYGMIES + DWARFS!!11!” and see what you get!
Same idea, same shit, but doesn’t look as pretentious, and is still funny. Try to keep a sense of style, man.
From #15: Why don’t they think to themselves, ‘There are many very intelligent people involved in this area of science, & if there were glaring errors such as what I think I’ve found, some of them would’ve noticed them too’?
I can answer that. The creationists believe God knows more about science than any human scientist. God said He created people out of nothing. A creationist could never deny anything from the most intelligent being in the universe, so they are not even interested in what the inferior scientists say. This is why the only possible way to rid the world of stupidity is by getting rid of God first.
BobC, yeah, that’s quite plausible. My question was really rhetorical. I imagine that there are lots of reasons why they don’t question their cockamamie theories.
Stephen B: They may well be hypocrites, but not that way. As I just noted at Skepchick, Christian goodwill has always been specific to “fellow Christians”, they just vary in who gets accepted as such. “Goodwill towards all men” is the promise of the “Kingdom of Heaven”, after all non-Christians have been either converted or sent to Hell.
I liked the letter suggesting that Daffy Duck be elected president. I would certainly support that candidate, as not only does he indeed as the writer says, have “a better vocabulary than most of the people who advocate for intelligent design,” he would be the only one capable of looking our enemies straight in the eye (figuratively speaking) and saying: “You’re dethpicable!”
Most of the other letters, not so much.
The ‘why are there still monkeys’ argument is like saying that if five people go to the beach, every human on the planet gets a tan.
Funny letter but sadly mistaken in one fact. Daffy Duck could not be behind any form of creation. In fact, Daffy is the victim of a very warped creator. Just watch ‘Duck Amuck’. Who is the one tormenting Daffy by changing Daffy’s environment as well as Daffy’s being. Non other then the stinker himself, Bugs Bunny.
We all live in fear of this malicious rabbit’s whims.
Creationists use AOHell? Are you really, really sure?
Yes, appointed by Captain Unelected, on the suggestion of… <drum roll>… Santorum.
Wrong. I laughed loud and hard. And now I’m laughing again. I predict irregular bursts of laughter, half a minute long each, to erupt from me over the next few days. :-D
Then why are there so many theists (outside of the USA anyway…) who accept evolution without problems?
Creationists use AOHell? Are you really, really sure?
Yes, appointed by Captain Unelected, on the suggestion of… <drum roll>… Santorum.
Wrong. I laughed loud and hard. And now I’m laughing again. I predict irregular bursts of laughter, half a minute long each, to erupt from me over the next few days. :-D
Then why are there so many theists (outside of the USA anyway…) who accept evolution without problems?
This note in the comments there
should not be left hanging or the IDiots will jump on it as proof of a conspiracy to deny the Discovery Institooters their say. Either the Ombudsman or NOVA should clearly state why they did not give in to the DI’s demands.
Looks like we’ve got a new worst argument now! “If God doesn’t exist, who am I praying to?”
I haven’t read that far, but I had to comment as soon as I saw this:
I can’t understand why they can wrap their minds around fully-formed human beings POOFing into existence, but a single cell organism arising from the right chemistry and conditions is beyond their intellectual abilities.
I watched the show with my 12 year old, and she was just stunned by the assertions of the pro-ID people. They were allowed to talk, to explain their positions, and make it clear to anyone watching the show that they were pulling ideas out of their behinds in order to promote religion. I didn’t need to tell her who was who. I’d wait for it – there’d be a disbelieving snort, or a “WHAT??!”, or just a head shake from her as soon as she heard some ridiculous statement. At her age, she has a better understanding of science than any of the cdesign proponentsists who had their say.
If Neandertals are in our ancestry, then why are there still Neandertals?
Recently when I complained to a creationist about his constant lying, he told me where he was getting all his information. I looked it up and found this. When I got to the last sentence of this paragraph I laughed out loud.
What caused the Dinosaurs to become extinct? An explanation from the Bible
I believe that Dinosaurs were created on Day 6, the same day as Adam. I believe that they lived for a few thousand years, until the flood came. Noah took 2 of every kind of animal onto the ark, including dinosaurs. The harsh post-flood environment made it hard for the dinosaurs to live long after this. Some may have been hunted to extinction, and others were unable to survive as they degenerated (part of the curse God placed on the earth when Adam sinned), and lost some of their original abilities (the T-rex lost use of its arms for instance, as they shriveled and became useless).
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/
Something I’ve always wondered about the people who pull out the “why are there still monkeys?” argument: Since the theory of evolution posits that ALL life evolved from a common ancestor why don’t these people ask “why are there still non-human species?”
miller wins teh intartoobz.
ROTFL!!!
On another note, let me mention that the arms of Tyrannosaurus are neither shriveled nor useless. The upper arm bone is as long as mine, but as thick as my entire upper arm. The muscle attachment sites, from the shoulders (including the wishbone) to the fingers, are humongous. The arms are “reduced to the max”: speed, and range, of movement entirely sacrificed to sheer unrestricted power. The Force was with Tyrannosaurus.
(BTW, I just laughed another
threefourfive times at “eleventyone”.)miller wins teh intartoobz.
ROTFL!!!
On another note, let me mention that the arms of Tyrannosaurus are neither shriveled nor useless. The upper arm bone is as long as mine, but as thick as my entire upper arm. The muscle attachment sites, from the shoulders (including the wishbone) to the fingers, are humongous. The arms are “reduced to the max”: speed, and range, of movement entirely sacrificed to sheer unrestricted power. The Force was with Tyrannosaurus.
(BTW, I just laughed another
threefourfive times at “eleventyone”.)David Marjanović, thanks for that information which I will pass on to the creationist liar who told me about that jesus website. It was “the T-rex lost use of its arms for instance, as they shriveled and became useless” that made me laugh out loud. Sometimes I am still surprised by how stupid the creationists can be.
Wrong. I laughed loud and hard. And now I’m laughing again. I predict irregular bursts of laughter, half a minute long each, to erupt from me over the next few days. :-D
So you must not get out much, eh?
Because, frankly, they’re not really thinking it through. The creationists are right about one thing: Evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of the Bible. “Liberal” Christians deal with this by not being literalists. Only… if Genesis isn’t literally true, then what about the Gospels? Where do you draw the line? Why, ultimately, believe any of it?
Creationists recognize this slippery slope for what it is, and refuse to set foot upon it. In a way, I respect them for that, more than I do the liberal Christians, who don’t really take their own religion seriously. If religion is true, then it’s the most important thing in the world; you should take it seriously, and be prepared to follow it to its logical conclusion, no matter where there leads.
Now, I happen to believe that religion isn’t true; in fact, that it’s madness. But liberal Christians try to be only half-mad — to draw solace from the empty promises of eternal life and “meaning”, without really accepting the consequences or letting religion interfere with their daily lives. In short, they’re hypocrites.
David #86 “On another note, let me mention that the arms of Tyrannosaurus are neither shriveled nor useless. “
Everyone knows that God made the T-Rex’s arms like that so they would be good at playing the piano.
Chutzpah Alert!!
The Discovery Institute accuses WGBH of injecting religion into public schools!!!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626303.600-evolution-wars-take-a-bizarre-twist.html
No. Though here in Paris I wouldn’t come across “eleventyone” that way either.
At most the accordeon, though with two fingers per hand… :-/
(Like all saurischians to the present day, except the sauropods, Big T was unable to make its palms face the ground or otherwise rotate its forearms. They faced each other throughout life.)
Because they want to.
Which is, of course, the exact same reason as for why cre_ti_nists believe.
No. Though here in Paris I wouldn’t come across “eleventyone” that way either.
At most the accordeon, though with two fingers per hand… :-/
(Like all saurischians to the present day, except the sauropods, Big T was unable to make its palms face the ground or otherwise rotate its forearms. They faced each other throughout life.)
Because they want to.
Which is, of course, the exact same reason as for why cre_ti_nists believe.
I thought the program was great!
BAC
Sorry to say … but US of A is a pathetic country. So many deluded idiots who believe in this creationism crap. In the 21st century !?!?!?!
I would never want to live there … I would be depressed every day.
If we, as humans, were created by God from the dust of the earth . . . THEN WHY? . . . Is there STILL Dust of the Earth???
If you’re a creationist, all your cousins immediately die when you’re born. Didn’t you guys know that? I mean, you share a common ancestor, therefore it follows you can’t both exist at the same time. I mean, duh.
I live in the USA and when I look around and see the rampant religious fanaticism and idiocy, believe me, I am depressed every day.
Cheers,
Ray
Really? I’d respect the liberal Christians more, as at least they dare to take a look outside of their papyrus-cloistered cave. Creationists never bother to look outside, and if they do, they choose superstition over evidence every time, except for when they stop being creationists.
Perhaps, but I thought I would add that if religion is true and there is a god, that doesn’t mean the logical conclusion would be to follow him. If a god like Yahweh reigned supreme, it would be moral cowardice not to defy him.
That’s an argument that atheists commonly make, and one that I can empathize with, but this ex-Catholic thinks it misunderstands the notion of God, at least in the Judeo-Christian sense. From that theological perspective, God defines morality — he/she/it created the entire notion of Good and Evil, and there is no notion of morality separate from God. Under this account, if your human reason causes you to think that God is acting immorally, you’re simply wrong. It would be like saying that it is cowardice not to oppose electrons being negatively charged.
That said, the OT God sure seems like a right bastard.
Tulse, the argument is older for atheists than Christianity. As an apostate, you must have encountered the Euthyphro dilemma, contending with the morality of gods in one of Plato’s dialogues, long before Xtianity punted the issue.
The dilemma asks, is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?
Theists should work this out. Had I been in Abraham’s position out on Highway 61, the commandment to make a bloody sacrifice of my son would have convinced me that I was dealing either with an immoral monster, or an issue with my medications that would need to be addressed stat, but that’s just me.
That seems like one of those very tenuous inferences about God from one or two statements in the Bible, which, like God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence, has no other explicit evidence in either the Bible itself or in reality.
I was surprised to read in the Catholic Encyclopedia how tenuous, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity is. Yeah, Jesus speaks of “his father” and “our father”, but the “holy spirit” is just something vaguely referred to which is not, in the text, defined as being something wholly separate from God the father.
I guess some early theologian just liked the number three better. There does seem to be an overlap between theology and numerology, now I think of it.
Re: 99
Exactly!
It’s obvious, then, that the account as constructed, is wrong, as its logically inconsistent with the other Christian idea of absolute morality!
Excelsior!
Or, more accurately, cowardice in not opposing electrons destroying amino acids……if amino acids had intelligence….and emotions……and didn’t deserve destruction.
I should not have forgotten that Christianity was strongly influenced by Neo-Platonism, and other extant philosophical works and movements.
I wonder if Philadelphia Eagles fans send hate mail to NFL films over the Super Bowl XXXIX highlights
Owlmirror (103)…
Very good point.
There’s an easy way to remember the connection, though.
It’s basically Plato vs. Aristotle, Fantasy vs. Reality.
– S
The notion of trinities and gods was muddled for a long time in Christianity. Scroll down to the bottom of this page on murals in 4th century Ravenna for an image of a river god looking on at a famous baptism.
Ken.aizawa #40 “It’s sad that the IDiots can’t think that a fair, objective reporting of the situation would have it that the Dover affair was an attempt to insert religion into science classes. Talk about narrow minded.”
It’s also extremely dishonest – it’s rather like a team that whines because it has been disqualified after being caught cheating. These are the types who claim that whatever form of cheating was perfectly reasonable because it was being done out of concern for others, in this case someone else’s children. These folk can brainwash their own kids at home, especially if they homeschool them.
It doesn’t take a “Rocket Scientist” to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys???
When confronted by such blistering stupidity, you want to reach out and give that poor knucklehead the mental tools he/she so obviously lacks, but you can’t. Reason has met its match here. You might as well just laugh, because crying hurts.
“wealthy heir” haha. I have met Mr. Chapman at a book signing for his detailed book on the Dover trial (Forty Days and Forty nights) and I assure that he will find that comment hilarious ( I plan on emailing it to him). By the way I highly recommend his book which fleshes out all of the characters in this episode is an extremely respectful and thoughtful manner. HI book serves as an excellent companion to the Nova special allowing me to understand and in some way sympathize with the people whose actual opinions on this matter I disagree so strongly.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/071118/cx_bday_umedia/20071811
(Bill Day)
I find it moderately interesting that only Zeph has pointed out the real crux of the matter berfore us. Virtually everybody else is treating the NOVA episode as though it were about the differences between ID and Evolution, instead of a documentary on a court case.
Sure, ID is stupidly wrong, but that’s not what the show was about. – and few of the posted letters indicated awareness of that fract.
However, even as an Athiest (with a capital A), I have faith in some things. But then, I rather think there is a LITTLE evidence for my leanings. For example, I’m pretty darn sure the reason DI didn’t push to appeal the Dover case is that it WOULD put it in front of a Federal Judge, who would – more than likely – have utterly smacked them with a bat and told them to return to their caves. That very fact, in my mind, shows just exactly how strongly they believe their nonsense. That is, not at all. I have my faith in that assessment.
In a past life, DI was a haven for used-car salesmen and snake-oil hawkers.
Damn! I thought I came up with that one. :P
The short but powerful forelegs of T. rex were probably used as support when rising from a prone belly down position. Just ‘scooting’ with hind legs only pushes your snout along in the dirt.
Great PBS program. Loved it. I found it refreshing that the judge couldn’t be labeled some “liberal loon”; he was appointed by Bush and is a Republican. Therefore he must have found the evidence and testimony from the scientific community (ID’s are not part of the scientific community) so overwhelming that he had no choice but to rule as he did. That says a lot.
If I decended from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?
RE: #101: Father, son and holy spook!
If you check out the viewer emails in that article, you’ll see a number of people complaining about PBS’s refusal to meet the DI’s bizarre demands about their interviews, spiced with “what are you afraid of?” taunts. The Creo/IDists go on and on about how all they want is to be given fair treatment, the same chance as everywhere one else, etc. etc. But they’re really all about being given special treatment and being exempted from the same standards everyone else is expected to meet – in journalism as well as in science.
Ok look im a Catholic and sure that has it’s own problems, but please let’s get into that. But the first thing people have to understand is the bible is a book of paribles, not undisputed facts, it has been revised so many times by so many people, and I stress people, that it cannot be even remotely be seen otherwise. anyway When it comes to ID i think that it’s like this in the book it says god said the word and the universe came into being(not direct quotation)
hence big bang, and then he made the earth and whatnot, and it happend in 6 days and blah, blah, but that was written in a time that people did not have the greatest time sence and probibly could not even fathom 1000’s of years of evolution and so it was just easer to say it was 6 days, plus even saying stuff like that back then was crazy back then, people got killed for less.
so im rambling. anyway it’s ok to beleve in god or whatever, but keep you religon out of my science and keep your science out of my religon, and that goes double for politics, i really hate that im so holy give me your vote crap.
Ok blast way, but its just my opinon and spelling errors