Comments on: To Hell With Expelled! … https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/ Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:17:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Stephanie Z https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6864 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:17:48 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6864 Oh, I do love how the “Big Science” parrots squawk about ad hominem attacks. It’s almost as nice as the way Roland declares something substantial only when he doesn’t think anyone can refute him. But then, I like my irony in big doses.

]]> By: Roland https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6863 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:48:37 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6863 Ok folks, the weekend’s over I enjoyed the debate but I gotta get back to my day job, so this will be my last post. As far as I can tell most refuting posts to me are ad-hominens or red-herrings, which don’t merit response. But two comments by Richard and Serena merit refutation. They imply that I don’t really understand evolution. The implication being that my proposition of “mere chance” has nothing to do with the process of natural selection, unpurposely directed by environmental pressure or stressors, acting upon an organism to transform it from one species to another. In other words once the organism exists (which is an impossible hurdle in itself for evolution), the environment, and natural selection remove the element of chance. PERPOSTEROUS! Evolution is fundamentally defined by random activity (chance) occuring within an environment, without direction, without purpose, to create and transform organisms. Once you remove the elements of randomness, purposelessness, and directionlessness, what do you have: INTELLIGENT DESIGN!Oh, some are theistic evolutionists but this is a cop out and dishonesty. And I agree with atheists in that theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms. It’s like saying God created 15 billion years ago without the intention of creating life, then came back 11 billion years later and said “Geeeeez look what happened! Guess I gotta go in now and control everything”.

]]> By: Richard Simons https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6862 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:47:49 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6862

And as Ben Stein called them, “replicating joy riding crystals” as one of the best evidences is p-r-e-t-t-y weak evidence.

Have you any idea of what hypothesis is being misrepresented here?

transformation of fish to amphibians, to a land mammals, back to a sea mammals, by mere chance in four billion years,

Not by mere chance. You really don’t have a clue about the theory of evolution, do you?BTW Roland, as far as I can make out, not one of the poor, persecuted victims in ‘Expelled’ was actually expelled from anything, unless they mentioned the guy who lost his new job because he refused to do what was clearly laid out in the advert.

]]> By: Elizabeth https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6861 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:10:10 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6861 Roland, I am not a biologist but I think you are, as S.Z. suggests, tilting at windmills.

]]> By: Stephanie Z https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6860 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:51:21 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6860 So you came here to sing, “Nyah, nyah,” at people who are working harder than you are to understand the world as it is? How very playground. It might have more impact if you could use words as they’re defined in the dictionary to do it instead of having to make up your own definitions. Or did someone make them up for you, like your “arguments” against evolution?Go away, child. We’re neither your monkeys nor your windmills.

]]> By: Serena https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6859 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:39:34 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6859 Roland,You should try taking some biology classes at a respectable University where you live. You’ll see that what you just described is quite the opposite of what’s really going on.

]]> By: Roland https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6858 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:00:50 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6858 Stephanie, if you think I’m trying play the role of the Evangelical Christian and win souls, then you’ve totally missed my message in this thread. I AM an Evangelical Christian, but my purpose in this thread is definitely NOT evangelism to “win hearts and souls”. There are many more platforms to do that. What I am doing here is to show that the bankruptcy and falsity of macro evolution is now becoming more and more evident to the main stream where it’s consensual rejection is becoming more and more prevalent. The monolithic wall of protection in academia for Macro Evolution is now being chipped away, just as Stein portrayed in his film Expelled. Again like MH, you are simply presenting a “red herring”.

]]> By: Stephanie Z https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6857 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:51:59 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6857 Roland, does popping in and smugly lecturing people on your semantic stylings make you fell better? ‘Cause it ain’t winning hearts or souls, you know. If there was a wavering mind reading this thread, I think you’ve made your faith look less appealing than Greg usually manages.The phrase you’re looking for to describe what we do is “weighing the evidence.” It’s a lot more work than faith, but unlike faith, it produces results that are useful in the real world.And next time you want to convince an atheist of something, you might consider that they’ve been weighing the evidence for a while. An atheist isn’t an atheist solely because s/he’s never met anyone who thought they just needed a little more information. The word for the idea that you’ll be the one to waltz in and supply that miraculous piece of data they’ve lacked is “pride.” I think your bible has something to say about it if you need a reference on the topic.

]]> By: Roland https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6856 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:50:51 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6856 Guess it goes right over your head, eh Skemono? Oh there’s a typo, “he term” should be “the term” at the beginning. Read it slowly again, and try to not let all the “F-words” floating around in your head, cloud up your thinking.

]]> By: Skemono https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6855 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:13:36 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/04/18/to-hell-with-expelled/#comment-6855

I guess you have thought it through, you just don’t like it. You fit he term “faith” the way you want it (so I guess if you don’t want 2 + 2 = 4, you change it to 2 + 2 = 5). Faith is “belief in” without giving it an object of the preposition “in”. You both define faith as “belief in God”. OK so what is your term for “belief in” regardless of the object of the preposition? So let me term it another way: whether you believe that God exists, or belive that God does not exists, you are not eliminating or negating belief. So whether you are a theist or an atheist, belief persists (you can say the sky is red but it doesn’t change the fact that the sky is blue).

What the fuck are you talking about?

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