Expelled!

[Phi for All]

Since I can't readily find the other threads discussing the movie

Expelled discussions here and here.

 

Well? Could I be an IDer? I think with a little work...

 

Oh yeah, I need to remember to throw in some drivel about being brave enough to question the scientific establishment.

The controversy, don't forget to mention that there's a controversy. Mention controversy every chance you get because people take sides in a controversy and it seems like a good idea to teach both sides of a controversy to children.

 

And you only mention Darwin once. Darwin is the official strawman of the ID movement.

[CharonY]

Ah, but Darwin's work was called "Origin of Species". Species are living things - thus origin of life.

 

Wrong. He is asking how species arose (that is, were they always there or did they develop into the form the are now), not how life in general began.

[HappyCoder]

Let me second Paralith. No, evolution and ID cannot both be true. ID postulates a particular method of the origin of species: direct manufacture by deity. God somehow ("miracle") manufactures either whole species or at least parts of them (IC or CSI). Thus, the new species has no historical connection to the species that went before. It is a manufactured artifact.

 

The data unequivocally shows that this is not the case.

 

Now, can creation by deity and evolution both be true? YES. Darwin thought so and there has been no data since that overturns that.

 

 

 

HOW did "God created simple life billions of years ago"? Did God directly manufacture the first cell or the first several species? Darwin left open that possibility. However, today we think the first life came about by chemistry, not direct manufacture.

 

Does this mean deity is absent? No. It simply means, for theists, that chemistry is the "secondary cause" that deity used to create. That's a theological position, but it's one that is consistent with science.

 

Yeah I got my terms mixed up. I think somebody already pointed that out.

 

I think when God creates something he doesn't just *poof* it into existance. I think he takes existing substances that are available and combines them together to form life. It is kinda like what you said about it came about by chemistry only it has somebody to give it more direction. Once God was able to engineer the first cell he could then direct them through evolution either by setting eviorments to influence natural selection and guide evolution or he could have even made some direct changes to some DNA sequences.

 

These are just some of my ideas, I have nothing to back them up with scripturally I just try to fit my religious views with scientific ones. Keep in mind that these ideas can and will most likely change as I learn more about the world around me from both religious and scientific sources. There are something in religion that are doctrine that don't change but my ideas are definately not doctrinal ideas.

[Phi for All]

I think when God creates something he doesn't just *poof* it into existance. I think he takes existing substances that are available and combines them together to form life.

This doesn't sound like an omnipotent god. If you're all-powerful, why not just poof?

 

On the other hand, if there is a higher power, I believe you are absolutely right. A god who works within the framework of physics He created is not scientifically incompatible. Now if only we could get Him to agree to be observable....

[HappyCoder]

2) Abiogenesis is chemistry. And yes, there are experiments getting life from non-life. What is lacking is knowledge of how directed protein synthesis started.

 

Yeah, controlled experiments to generate specific results. Maybe at the same time life was being created a microhip was also being fabricated. Of course this chip had no way of replicating itself so it was eventually destroyed and organic life took over because it could replicate itself.

 

This doesn't sound like an omnipotent god. If you're all-powerful, why not just poof?

 

On the other hand, if there is a higher power, I believe you are absolutely right. A god who works within the framework of physics He created is not scientifically incompatible. Now if only we could get Him to agree to be observable....

 

There are many things that I don't understand about God. Religion doesn't really focus on what we really don't need to know. It would be nice to know how God created everything and many other things about God but that doesn't fit into why we are here.

[Phi for All]

If you look at the Google ad at the top of the page, it's almost always for the movie when you're viewing this thread. How appropriate that the ad reads, "Ben Stein is EXPELLED, no intelligence allowed".

 

Truth in advertising at its finest.

[Mr Skeptic]

This doesn't sound like an omnipotent god. If you're all-powerful, why not just poof?

 

On the other hand, if there is a higher power, I believe you are absolutely right. A god who works within the framework of physics He created is not scientifically incompatible. Now if only we could get Him to agree to be observable....

 

Yeah, maybe God designed us with an evolutionary algorithm, so we just look evolved.

And maybe He's not done yet!

[lucaspa]

Yeah I hate to derail the thread as well, but can someone tell me what that bit about the lightning and the mud puddle is supposed to be about?

 

The Miller experiments and abiogenesis. They have mangled the Miller-Urey experiments to think that they were supposed to show origin of life when they showed abiotic synthesis of amino acids, sugars, and bases. Then they "combine" that with Darwin's "warm little pond" (= mudpuddle) and throw in a little of Frankenstein and you have an electric discharge into a mud puddle making life.

 

Also, I want to test my skills at creating ID arguments...tell me how I do here:

Ah, but Darwin's work was called "Origin of Species". Species are living things - thus origin of life.

 

Bad even for IDers. Altho they do like to use misapplied rhetoric like this. "Species" per se are not "living things". Rather, they are a group of living things. So it's not the origin of life, but the origin of new types or groups of living things. Of course, the real counter is Darwin in that book:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.

 

What is lacking is the divinity required for life. You can sift through God's cabinets and identify some of his ingredients, but you can't cook in his kitchen.

 

That is even more off topic than most ID arguments. The standard ID argument against abiogenesis experiment is that the experimenter is using "intelligence".

 

A bit more work. But you are somewhat on the right track.

 

This doesn't sound like an omnipotent god. If you're all-powerful, why not just poof?

 

This is more a theological argument, not a scientific one. Kenneth Miller gives a satisfactory theological response in Chapters 7 and 8 of Finding Darwin's God.

 

On the other hand, if there is a higher power, I believe you are absolutely right. A god who works within the framework of physics He created is not scientifically incompatible. Now if only we could get Him to agree to be observable....

 

The observable problem is on science's side, not deity's. Methodological Materialism hobbles science in that we can't directly observe the supernatural. We're limited to material causes without being able to see if those are all the causes.

 

So science has to smuggle deity by the back door. What science has to do is propose a material method by which deity works and then tests the method. For instance, saying deity instantaneously creates entities (planets, stars, life, species) in their present form ("poof") is a material mechanism. We can test for that and say this isn't the method deity uses. Similarly, Flood Geology says that a world-wide Flood is the method deity used to make all geological strata. Again, that method isn't the method.

 

However, if you say that deity created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution, then you have lots of evidence for those material methods.

 

Yeah, controlled experiments to generate specific results.

 

Nope. Instead, the experiments were set up to simulate natural conditions and then those conditions make life. The "control" is only to make sure the simulation is accurate.

 

For instance, to have a "controlled" experiment like you mean it for the protocell experiment would have Fox and colleagues using a protein synthesizer to put the amino acids together to make specific proteins. But that isn't what they did. They simply heated a mixture of amino acids in the conditions of an underwater thermal vent (where observations have shown dissolved amino acids are present) and let the chemical reactions make the proteins and the proteins spontaneously make cells. Those cells are then tested to see whether they have the characteristics that define life. They do.

[SkepticLance]

lucaspa said

 

"However, if you say that deity created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution, then you have lots of evidence for those material methods."

 

Everybody has the wrong idea about God. The Big Guy is actually just a big kid. He clapped his (metaphorical) hands together to make the Big Bang, and then just sat back to see what happened. Wheeeee!

[lucaspa]

Everybody has the wrong idea about God. The Big Guy is actually just a big kid. He clapped his (metaphorical) hands together to make the Big Bang, and then just sat back to see what happened. Wheeeee!

 

That's deism, not theism. The reason Judeo-Christians won't accept that, of course, is they have accounts of where deity intervened in human history. That negates the "just sat back".

 

Other theists won't accept it because they have personal experience of deity. That also negates the "just sat back".

 

Now, if you reject the accounts and have never had personal experience of deity, then you can go with this.

[SkepticLance]

An excerpt from the latest eSkeptic

 

"Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the ivory towers of academia, as the explanation for how new babies are created. Proponents of Stork Theory claim that “Big Sex” has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks. Furthermore, Stork Theory proponents warn of the serious moral dangers posed by teaching children that sex has a function. They point out that evil dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao all believed in Sex Theory, and they may have even had sex themselves. "

 

What does Richard Dawkins have to say?

 

http://richarddawkins.net:80/article,2488,Open-Letter-to-a-victim-of-Ben-Steins-lying-propaganda,Richard-Dawkins

[lucaspa]

An excerpt from the latest eSkeptic

 

"Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the ivory towers of academia, as the explanation for how new babies are created. Proponents of Stork Theory claim that “Big Sex” has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks.

 

Nice sarcasm. Yes, you can make up the Expelled arguments for any situation where one theory has been overwhelmingly supported and all the others falsified. You can do the same arguments for heliocentrism vs geocentrism. Look at the "suppression" of the geocentric point of view in academia!

[Sparky]

Does all life come from one common ancestor?

[ecoli]

Does all life come from one common ancestor?

 

at least a population of common ancestors. There's nothing to suggest that life didn't arise independently in different locations, and 'merge' so to speak... two 'compatible' life forms, perhaps.

 

that's some heavy speculation on my part, though.

[Mr Skeptic]

Does all life come from one common ancestor?

 

That's the general consensus; however, eukaryotes are thought to be a merger of some more primitive species, giving rise to some of the organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts or even the nucleus. However, the merged species are also thought to be descendants of a common ancestor.

[CDarwin]

Does all life come from one common ancestor?

 

We all have DNA/RNA, so that would seem to suggest that we all descended from a common ancestor with that particular method of information transmission.

[swansont]

http://www.flickfilosopher.com/blog/2008/04/expelled_no_intelligence_allow.html

 

In a parallel universe even crazier than our own, Ben Stein is making a documentary about how the Nazis utilized the controversial theory of gravity to make bombs that fall from the sky to the earth, and so the theory of gravity must be wrong.

[SkepticLance]

The American Skeptics have a full (and sceptical) report on Expelled. View it on

 

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/

[Pangloss]

Not sure if this got posted yet or not, but below is a link to SciAm's podcast on Expelled which was recorded following a screening of the movie at their offices. The editors are asking questions about the film of one of the producers, who brought the film to the office for review.

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-conversation-with-mark-mathis

[iNow]

For those who don't like to download, it's on YouTube also:

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sciam+interview+with+mark+mathis+%22of+8%22&search_type=

 

 

(btw: Thanks Pangloss).

[lucaspa]

Does all life come from one common ancestor?

 

 

As Ecoli suggests, evolution is about populations, so technically all contemporary species seem to have arisen from a common ancestral population. Doesn't mean there weren't other species around at that time, just that they did not give rise to the rest of species.

 

However, as it turns out, it is impossible to identify that ancestral population. Unicellular organisms share genes not only be ancestor-descent, but by a process called "lateral gene transfer". Bacteria and archea, especially, have DNA not only in their chromosome but also in plasmids -- independent stretches of DNA that contain regions that code for proteins and RNA used in ribosomes. Quite unrelated bacteria and archaea can exchange plasmids and then later incorporate the plasmid into their chromosome -- or take part of the chromosome and make it a plasmid.

 

So, since genes are shared -- via plasmids and other mechanisms -- between unrelated bacterial, archaea, and eukaryotic cells, it becomes very difficult (probably impossible) to trace the phylogenetic tree back to the original common ancestor. All those early species swapped genes with one another.

[iNow]

However, as it turns out, it is impossible to identify that ancestral population. Unicellular organisms share genes not only be ancestor-descent, but by a process called "lateral gene transfer". Bacteria and archea, especially, have DNA not only in their chromosome but also in plasmids -- independent stretches of DNA that contain regions that code for proteins and RNA used in ribosomes. Quite unrelated bacteria and archaea can exchange plasmids and then later incorporate the plasmid into their chromosome -- or take part of the chromosome and make it a plasmid.

 

So, since genes are shared -- via plasmids and other mechanisms -- between unrelated bacterial, archaea, and eukaryotic cells, it becomes very difficult (probably impossible) to trace the phylogenetic tree back to the original common ancestor. All those early species swapped genes with one another.

 

I saw an article earlier this week which shows a very similar "sharing" which is occuring in bacteria in the present. In my mind, it lends further credence to the idea that bacterial merging and/or sharing happened in the past as well.

 

 

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_releases_for_journalists/080411.html

Two species of bacteria that are estimated to cause 400,000 cases of food poisoning in the UK (and about five times that number in the USA) every year are merging,...

[cre8ivmind]

My condolences, SkepticLance.

 

It's hard to imagine someone who lives in NZ that thinks it's more awesome that God just poofed your country into existence, rather than possibly arranging for the mechanics of the universe to sculpt it over billions of years. Having a fairly religious extended family myself, I feel your pain.

 

Just about my entire family are creationists. I used to be one, but I evolved.

[lucaspa]

Sparky

 

I have a sister who is a creationist.

 

It's ironic that New Zealand provided Darwin and others one of their most potent arguments against Special Creation. All over the world we have mice occupying the ecological niche they do. However, in NZ it is an insect that occupies that ecological niche. Why? Because mice never made the sea journey to the islands, but insects did. If Special Creation were true, there is no reason deity would not put mice in NZ as it did in every other location on earth.

[SkepticLance]

To lucaspa

 

We also have a bat in New Zealand that, before people arrived, was well on the way to evolving into the niche occupied by mice. It was losing its power of flight, and spending its time like a mouse scuttling around the forest floor going through leaf litter eating insects.

 

Alas, the change in environment, brought about by humans, has made those adaptations maladaptive in the new environment, and that bat is well on the road to extinction.