SPREAD THE HOLY MESSAGE! GOD EVOLVES! DRIVE THE WEDGE THROUGH THE CREATIONISTS BEFORE THEY LEAD OUR CHILDREN DOWN THE ROAD TO HELLFIRE!!

That is an unprovoked attack! How dare you! Another sure sign that you are firmly in the grip of Satan!

OK, I posted your comments. I delayed posting them for the following reasons:

(1) The comments were pretty stupid and were abusive. They made no worthwhile contribution to the discussion.

(2) One of the comments had an error of fact, and I wanted to delay posting that comment until I feel like spending the time to correct the error.

(3) The comments dared me to censor them. Accusing me of a desire to arbitrarily censor comments is a good way to get censored.

The comments are under the following post:
http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2008/08/state-of-evolution-education-in-usa-and.html

“Censorship will be avoided in my blogs — there will be no deletion of comments, no closing of comment threads, no holding up of comments for moderation, and no commenter registration hassles.”

yeah sure, if you agree with them…

I posted comments & he does not post them, a lack of integrity to go along with your multitude of sins… Pray Larry Pray. St. Darwin will greet you at the Holy gates!

Ben Says (March 28, 2009 at 1:40 pm) —
–Larry, like a lot of people here, I simply scroll over your remarks. The problem is, all that scrolling is giving me cramps in my hand. Could you please write shorter comments so I won’t have to scroll so much?–

Ben, you lousy troll, look at how much dtitle posted and you said nothing about that. And my stuff is mostly on-topic — dtitle hijacked this comment thread with off-topic comments.

OBTW Fafarman; the male prostate gland is positive proof that there is no intelligent design.

On molecular level genetics… gene mutations are not just additional, they are synergistic. They are not one for one. People who use straight linear statistical models for an argument against evolution, (this one has been made for a least the 30 years I’ve dealt with it) just don’t get the big picture. Yes the model is different mathematically, and if you’d bother to look at the recent postings out of genetics the last ten years, you’d know this. Instead I just get rehashed arguments from the Evolution Crusher so I’ll just have to school your lazy butt. Genes control other genes. One gene can cascade to turn on or off whole sets of genes. If you get a mutation in a Hox gene your in for big changes in body plan. So it ain’t an additive process. You sound smart, but once people realize your using a math model that does not fit this evidence you are revealed to be just a parroting buffoon. Do you know about psuedogenes? Transposons? Look these up and see how there are muliple copies of genes being experimented with while the good ones keep working…. Paying attention? This simple mined 1+1 = 2 argument over gene mutations is shot down! God I love killing the horrible logic these people use.

On the fossil record. I love these people. They will say you can’t cut string. If you cut it, then they say yeah, but you can’t cut it there or there. Cut it in those places and they point to others spots between the cuts with the same statement. It’s an endless game and it shows that you can not make demands on evidence! Even worse, with each new claim for an uncuttable string these claims just look stupider and stupider. This backwards and quite false logic has been used on evolution. Darwin moaned over the lack of intermediate fossils and predicted they would be found! Hey, how about that… a good scientific theory makes a prediction that is testable… guess what? We found those fossils. The Cambrian explosion was a testament to fact that hard body parts that fossilize well. But now, with electron microscopes, soft bodied life forms are now found in rock before the Cambrian … why would people even look for them? Because evolution predicted they’d be there and oh my gosh, they were! But these people keep asking for transitions between transitions between transitions. How many times do we have to cut the freaking string before people stop making ridiculous demands of perfectly good paleontological records! ! I’ll save the best for last here, the real fossil record is in our DNA! In the vast stretches between active genes lie the unused genes from every form of life that lead to us, even bacteria. What the hell are those genes doing there? They represent how the entire genome changed over time. With the genome project continuing to sequence all species, I predict a DNA fossil record that will be the final blow for this now quite repetitively stupid argument of “Where are the transitions?”.

Did you catch that? All of you who say evolution is the same as creationism? Evolution makes predictions… testable ones. Creationism does not. There is a difference to anyone who makes this ridiculous argument. In fact, Creationists go out of their way to not predict anything. I’ll make a simple prediction for you Creationists out there. Plant pollen is ubiquitous. It is in all sedimentary rock where flowers were. If Creationism is right there should be plant pollen in Devonian rock. Just find it and you put a dagger through the heart of evolution! What? Your not doing things like this to support your argument? That’s right, because it’s not there! That’s why your not science and evolution is. If you keep on insisting on this argument after such a lucid explanation, then you are simply think you lying for God. All Creationism does is try to prove evolution wrong. Any middle school debater knows you don’t prove A by disproving B. This is really crappy logic. Yet this is all these people have. And God bless them for it, because that’s how science works. Evolution has been challenged for 150 years and is now stronger than ever because of it. Let me repeat this for you Creationists. You don’t prove Creationism by looking for flaws in evolution, you just make evolution stronger. Find proof (proof is not an argument, that is philosophy, bring evidence to the table) for ID and publish… Hah! Like that will EVER happen!

For those of with “teach both sides” argument. Please note once again that the theory of evolution makes testable predictions. It always has, and has done so successfully. This is why it is Science No one argues about evolution, it is a fact. Go ahead an argue theory vs law all you want. I don’t say theory, I don’t say law, but I do say, as do the huge majority of biologists, evolution is a fact. Listen carefully now… it is the mechanism that is a theory, or actually many theories. Are you too simple to get this very real distinction? Sure there’s debate here… IT’S SCIENCE! Theories for mechanisms for evolution have abounded for 150 years: Natural Selection, Punctuated, Lamarkian, Neo-Darwiniam… and on and on. All of these are various interpretations of the evidence on how evolution works. No one in biology argues evolution did not occur It is a fact that it did happen. The debate is and always will be how.

On top of this, ID is as anti-science as I can imagine. ID says ” No, it is too complicated, we’ll never understand this, God must have done it”… Spare me!! You people would of kept ringing bells and burning incense during the black plague! None of the above mentioned theories (natural selection, punctuated evolution) of the mechanism for evolution say God did it. However, that is what ID says. ID is Creationism and don’t let anyone tell you differently. These Charlatans were caught red handed in court. They have taken the sheep’s skin of Creation Science off the wolf of Creationism and traded it in for a shiny new polyester suit called ID. It’s still a wolf and it’s still religion and it does not belong in public schools. I will not teach Creationism/God/ID in a science class, not ever! Not until a new inquisition burns me at the stake! God help us all as the religious zealots think they lie for their gods to get them into our public schools.

Why don’t we teach alchemy with chemistry? Astrology with astrogeophysics? Why not Intelligent Falling vs Gravity (which has never been proved just measured) Why don’t we teach these controversies? Because they aren’t sciences either, but I will tell you astrology and alchemy have more going for them than ID!

Lastly.
GOD EVOLVES!

I have PROOF from the BIBLE, GOD OWN WORDS OF TRUTH, that He has evolved! Lo and Behold as the eye for an eye god of the Old Testament EVOLVES into the turn the other cheek of the New.. Yes God evolves! Open your eyes! Satan has cast a shadow over the eyes of all creationist sinners. Open yourselves at the TRUTH. God Evolves! Darwin should be sainted for showing us the true path to heaven and divine inspiration! Blessed are the evolutionists who believe that we, made in God’s image, must evolve as He does. Damn to all Creationists, they are the agents of Satan and will be damned to eternal hell fire.

GOD EVOLVES! GOD BLESS ST DARWIN!

Summary

Expelled’s main theme is that intelligent design is under systematic attack by “Big Science” – the scientific establishment – which refuses to recognize its scientific validity because of a previous commitment to atheism and materialism. In truth, the arguments of intelligent design have been examined by the scientific community and found to be lacking in both utility and accuracy. If mainstream science declines to accept intelligent design, it is the fault of the intelligent design advocates, who have not performed the research and theory-building demanded of everyone in the scientific enterprise.
The Claim

“Intelligent design was being suppressed in a systematic and ruthless fashion” (Ben Stein, Expelled).
The Facts

Intelligent design has not produced any research to suppress. When prominent ID proponent Michael Behe was asked about his research, and why “you don’t do those tests?” he responded, “I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.” If even proponents of ID do not think it is a fruitful enterprise, why should the scientific community take any interest in it?

As shown elsewhere on this site, the supposed cases of suppression offered in Expelled are dishonest attempts to make mountains out of molehills and to create martyrs where martyrdom does not exist.

Intelligent design is scientifically unproductive, and this perhaps explains why scientists like Guillermo Gonzalez and Michael Behe publish far fewer papers after they become attracted to intelligent design. Ultimately, intelligent design’s lack of success in science departments is the fault of the flawed and unscientific nature of intelligent design itself, not the result of bias in the scientific community.

The issue is not the suppression of ID, but the lack of warrant for its scientific claims. And ultimately, ID has an uphill struggle to demonstrate that it is, indeed, science. The fundamental problem with intelligent design as science is that intelligent design claims cannot be tested. Scientific testing requires that there be some set of phenomena which are incompatible with your idea. No observation could possibly be incompatible with a claim that an “intelligent agent” (whom everyone recognizes as God) acted to, say, introduce information into a system. Untestable claims are not scientific claims. Regardless of their attractiveness as religious ideas (although many people of faith strongly reject intelligent design) intelligent design has not passed muster as science.
The Claim

Referring to evolution, scientists “say the debate has been settled, that the issues are settled.” (Bruce Chapman, Expelled)
The Facts

Scientists have been researching evolution for 150 years, and it continues to be well supported by new research. Modern evidence for evolution derives from fossils, from genetics, from the development of organisms, and from many other fields unimaginable to Darwin or even to early 20th-century evolutionary biologists.

The nature of the scientific enterprise is for scientists to debate different explanations vigorously until research changes people’s minds, and a consensus gradually emerges. But even a consensus view is capable of being modified and in rare instances, even replaced. That living things descended with modification from common ancestors – the big idea of evolution – has been part of the scientific consensus now for over 100 years. It is conceivable, of course, that any well-founded theory could be overturned (as evolution itself overturned earlier ideas), but the more confirmatory evidence accumulates, the less likely this is to happen. Expelled expresses the opinion that the universal support of evolution in the scientific community is the product of some sort of bias or ideological inflexibility. It is, on the contrary, the result of decades of hard scientific work, building theory and conducting research. Similarly, the failure of intelligent design can readily be laid at the feet of its advocates, whose main activity appears to be to carp about the success of evolution.
The Claim

“Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor is already taking a design approach to his study of the human brain. […] Jonathan Wells is also making progress using Intelligent Design theory in his research on cancer.” (Ben Stein, Expelled)
The Facts

These claims to be applying “design” in science rest on a weak foundation, since the term “design” is used in inconsistent and in confusing ways throughout the movie. The Discovery Institute’s Paul Nelson describes “design theory” as “the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a result of intelligence,” though that definition presupposes that we know when something is or isn’t the result of intelligence. Walter Bradley, however, seems to think that the question central to design is how to distinguish whether life and other phenomena “arise by some type of intelligent guidance or design,” while Ben Stein and several of his interviewees seem to think that ID is about determining whether God intervenes directly in the world around us.

Egnor’s and Wells’s examples of “design” research, though, fit none of these three disparate definitions. Instead, Wells and Egnor use a tortured and discredited analogy in which cellular and anatomical structures composed of many interacting parts are compared to a machine which a human made from many interacting parts. Because a machine requires an intelligent human to assemble these parts to make a functioning product, Egnor and Wells assume that their structures require an intelligent agent to plan them and put them together. “Design” in this sense refers to a “purposeful assemblage of parts,” implying both function and origin.

But scientists commonly speak of the “design” of structures in an informal sense of “parts working together to produce a function,” as the “design” of the elongated wrist bones of a deer, which produces a leg capable of fast running. The study of structure and function is common in medical and other biological research; there is much utility in finding out how something works. This work can be done – and ordinarily is done – without making any assumptions of “design” in the intelligent design sense: that there needs to be a guiding hand purposefully assembling those parts.

Wells claims that “the underlying cause of cancer is ‘chromosomal instability,’ or damage to extra-genic structures – not mutations to individual genes.” As biomedical researcher Ian Musgrave points out, though, “this knowledge seems to have eluded most researchers in the field (see this review and this comprehensive review [link removed; broken] as typical examples).” Musgrave then cites numerous examples of successful cancer medicines which specifically target “mutations to individual genes,” concluding, “I hardly need to make the point that researchers were guided by experimental and observational evidence (such as experimental evidence of mutations, generation of tumours by transferring mutant genes, mouse transgenic models etc. etc.) rather than blind allegiance to Darwinist dogma.”

Based on his incorrect beliefs about the basic biology of cancer, Wells speculates that chromosomal instability must result from problems in the functioning of a cellular organelle called the centriole. He proposed, supposedly on the basis of “intelligent design,” that centrioles operate like turbines, which spin and produce something called the “polar ejection force,” which drives chromosomes apart when a cell divides. Wells made certain predictions on that basis, as a scientist should do, and as it happens, the predictions of this model turn out to be wrong. The polar ejection force does not depend upon the centriole, since the force still exists when centrioles are absent, or when they are not configured the way Wells describes. Even before Wells published his speculation, a research group had submitted a paper which went beyond speculation, actually showing that a molecule called a chromokinesin generates the polar ejection force.

How Wells responded to this refutation of his hypothesis concerning the link between centriole structure and cancer is revealing. Even though refutations of his hypothesis have been known to Wells for over a year, he continues to repeat the disproven claim in Expelled and in publications. Intelligent design advocates are anxious to promote Wells’s work as an example of how intelligent design can function as real science. Unfortunately, Wells’s work fails on three accounts as an example of this desire. First, the hypothesis is wrong: it reflects a misunderstanding of how cancer works and it makes incorrect predictions about how cells operate. Second, it is unclear what role (if any) “design” plays in the claims, since an investigator might have come to the same erroneous conclusions without the overlay of a design inference. Third, by not incorporating criticisms and corrections into his model or, if necessary, abandoning his model and moving on to another research area, Wells illustrates that intelligent design is not as interested in actual scientific discovery as it is in clinging for propaganda purposes to a scientific-sounding example of “intelligent design in action”.

Egnor also proceeds from a strained analogy between a machine and a naturally occurring object, in this case the brain and a device to reduce vibrations, a “pulsation absorber”. He believes that looking at engineering solutions to structural problems (in his field, protecting the brain against too-strong flows of blood from the arteries) provides unique insight. Perhaps, but it remains unclear why a link between an engineered solution to a mechanical problem and a structural solution to a biological condition is evidence of “design.” Recognizing similarities between a machine and a biological structure does not prove that both structures are designed, only that there is a successful solution to a shared problem; there may be multiple solutions to a problem, from either an engineering or a biological perspective.

While it is not clear how the assumption of design advances the claims by Wells or Egnor, evolution – common ancestry – is of considerable assistance when researchers are investigating biological structure and function. Comparing the same structure across several related species, scientists can discover similarities and differences that help organisms deal with different environmental challenges. With that knowledge, pharmaceutical researchers can develop more effective drugs to block infectious diseases, and can trace the lineage of medicinal plants, identifying relatives which may contain life-saving compounds. Agricultural scientists can see which traits help wild species in difficult environments and genetically engineer the traits into crops, allowing them to thrive in harsh environments. Other researchers use knowledge of the traits shared within a family of insects to refine pesticides and target only harmful families, leaving others unharmed. The evolutionary perspective has been much more fruitful than the intelligent design alternative that suggests an intelligent agent produced complex biological structures for reasons unknown and by means unknown (see Nesse, R, and GC Williams, Why We Get Sick, 1994, Times Books).
The Claim

Intelligent Design deserves a place in academia: “What about academic freedom? I mean, can’t we just talk about this?” – Ben Stein, Expelled
The Facts

Actually, intelligent design is talked about in academia. Teaching about intelligent design in higher education institutions is not forbidden, or censured, and in fact, new courses are added every year. Indeed, the intelligent design-promoting web site ResearchIntelligentDesign.org proudly lists “100+ universities and colleges” that officially include “intelligent design in their lesson plans”. These courses generally examine intelligent design objectively and in an appropriate context, and their instructors do so openly. So intelligent design has, in fact, entered academia, although not quite in the fashion its advocates might prefer. What they seek, of course, is for intelligent design to be accepted as a valid scientific alternative to evolution. They have failed to make a convincing case for it, yet they seem to believe that they have an entitlement to a place in academia.

On the contrary, new ideas are not automatically installed in universities and classrooms: they must earn their place. The intelligent design movement diligently promotes the idea that intelligent design belongs in science classes, even while acknowledging that progress in the laboratory is lagging. In 1998, Discovery Institute personnel drafted a strategy document, commonly called the Wedge Document. The authors laid out a multi-phase plan, beginning with research, building up to a wholesale cultural renewal, including inclusion of intelligent design into public school classrooms. The promises of this document, compared to the actual accomplishments of the movement, are telling

The Wedge Document proposed that by 2003 they would have “Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion)” and “One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows.” They are nowhere near that benchmark even five years past their deadline, especially in the critically important “academic and technical articles” category. And yet, they described this first phase, “Research, Writing and Publication” as “the essential component of everything that comes afterward. Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade.” They lack solid scholarship, research, and argument; yet the project is continuing.

The second, indoctrination, phase, has been far more successful. This phase was to include:

…production of a … documentary on intelligent design and its implications…. Alongside a focus on influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Christians. We will do this primarily through apologetics seminars. We intend these to encourage and equip believers with new scientific evidences that support the faith, as well as to “popularize” our ideas in the broader culture.

Expelled is clearly a part of that agenda, and the fact that they have released this film before completing, or even making a serious effort at “the essential component of everything that comes afterward” is a sign where their priorities lie.

You Creationists think your lying for God but your doing the Devil’s work.