tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post5122068243030603545..comments2023-12-31T03:18:37.403-06:00Comments on "E pur si muove!": Ben Stein Should Stop Whining About ThisLester Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-26389682594265641492008-05-01T10:26:00.000-05:002008-05-01T10:26:00.000-05:00Ann, Thanks! You are a dear.Jason, Good point abo...Ann, Thanks! You are a dear.<BR/><BR/>Jason, Good point about Ben's potential consistency problem. I used to like him too. He had a sort of diary-column in the American Spectator (maybe he still does) that was always a fun read. He also wrote a funny and wise little book called "How to Ruin Your Life." I wonder what happened to him.Lester Hunthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-54244877635332056512008-04-29T05:34:00.000-05:002008-04-29T05:34:00.000-05:00Lester,Nice post! I used to really like Ben Stein,...Lester,<BR/>Nice post! I used to really like Ben Stein, in large part because of "Win Ben Stein's Money." But his involvement in this whole affair has spoiled him for me. Also, for what it's worth, I understand that the documentary is supposed to be extremely deceptive, and you can read online accounts of how the skeptics interviewed, like Dawkins and Shermer, were lied to and subsequently had their interviews mangled to make them look bad. <BR/><BR/>And naturally, there's the biggest Godwin violation I've ever seen, an extended discussion of how Darwinism is responsible for Naziism. Apart from being distasteful in itself, it's a bizarre claim for other reasons. For one, that's not a scientific criticism, but a moral/political/social one. (Of course, the fact that ID itself is grounded in those concerns, rather than scientific concerns, may have something to do with that.) For another, it undercuts what the film's main message is, that ID deserves to be taught on an equal basis with Darwinism as a competing theory. Well, but if Darwinism leads to Naziism, wouldn't we prefer to simply "expel" the Darwinians in favor of ID? You can't say that you just want your side to be treated on a equal basis if, at the same time, you're claiming that the other side is irredeemably corrupting and evil. Why would you want to be treated on an equal basis with proto-Nazis? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I certainly note that there isn't much of a history of the religious conservatives being all that active in the realm of intellectual freedom, which suggests to me that there's something disingenuous about the claim that this is just about academic freedom.<BR/><BR/>- Jason, http://kraorh.livejournal.com/<BR/>Beijing, ChinaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-61394943867731222592008-04-28T14:31:00.000-05:002008-04-28T14:31:00.000-05:00Brilliant, pithy assessment of this whole issue -b...Brilliant, pithy assessment of this whole issue -bravo, Lester!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-68104482531666529642008-04-23T07:58:00.000-05:002008-04-23T07:58:00.000-05:00Nat, Good point. That's one of the reasons why w...Nat, Good point. That's one of the reasons why what they are doing is not science. They give no mechanism <I>by which</I> their hypothetical cause would bring about its intended effect. It would be like Darwin saying, "all these species exist and have the traits that they have because <I>evolution</I> somehow brought them about," but never developing the theory of natural selection and never even explaining, except in the most general terms, what "evolution" is supposed to mean. There have been times and places where such an empty abstraction would be regarded as "a theory," but not in modern biology.Lester Hunthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14746157071827337723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657443.post-76465781304568974872008-04-23T00:29:00.000-05:002008-04-23T00:29:00.000-05:00One thing that you didn't point out that seems pre...One thing that you didn't point out that seems pretty important to the issue is that IDers bring nothing scientific to the table. They say that the eye was designed, but they never actually explain how that would physically pan out - which is what a biologist would be looking for. Did an intelligence just pop an eye into a fish-like creature one day? In fact, it's pretty hard to think of anything that could come out of ID which could be seen as a scientific discovery.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com