Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism's Manufactroversy

Wow, indeed. Also cowabunga.

Funny how the 'design inference' may be finally successfully applied to a case involving copyright infringement by ID creationist...

Of course, pattern matching is a trivial example but still fascinating...

Mr Wallace? Mr Wallace? Keith? Keith? Anyone? Anyone?

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/little_richard.html Dawkins Outraged at Exposure of Link Between Darwinism and Nazi Ideology Richard Dawkins has been ranting that he's outraged (I'll just bet he is) that Expelled exposes for all to clearly see the connection between Darwinism and Nazi ideology. According to Dawkins:

The alleged association between Darwinism and Nazism is harped on for what seems like hours, and it is quite simply an outrage. We are supposed to believe that Hitler was influenced by Darwin.

Actually the discussion of the influence of Darwinism on the Nazis in Expelled lasts only about ten minutes, and outside that segment of the film there's no references at all to the Nazis. Dawkins of course has said he would hate to live in a Darwinian society. Jerusalem Post columnist Jonathan Roseblum explained back in December that maybe we already do. He wrote about Richard Weikart's meticulously researched book From Darwin To Hitler, which proves the point and then some.

As Professor Richard Weikart chillingly details in From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Mengele's experiments on "inferior" Jewish children for the benefit of the Master Race have to be viewed in the context of German Social Darwinism in the seven decades leading up to the Nazi takeover. In Weikart's estimate, a majority of German physicians and scientists subscribed to the naturalistic Darwinian world view and ideas that constituted a sustained assault on the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of the sanctity of life. Among those ideas are the claim that there is no fundamental distinction between humans and animals; human beings do not possess a soul that endows them with any rights or superiority to any other species; within the species homo sapiens, there are "inferior" and "superior" individuals, and inferior and superior races; and it is the iron will of nature that the species should evolve through the survival of the superior members and the death of the inferior. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton founded the modern eugenics movement on the basis of Darwinian arguments, and nowhere did eugenics catch on with greater enthusiasm than in Germany (though many prominent intellectuals in the United States, England and France were also enthusiastic supporters.) In Germany, many took the next step - from eugenics to involuntary euthanasia for the mentally ill and other defectives.

Read it all here. http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/article/1166/

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/Jews_NonJews/NJ_Attitudes_TO/NJ_Christianity/NJ_PostHol_Porton.htm Jews & Non-Jews ATTITUDES TOWARD NON-JEWS | CHRISTIANITY | AFTER THE HOLOCAUST Judaism and Christianity: After the Holocaust In the wake of the Holocaust, Jewish theologians have challenged Christian thinkers to rework Christianity's traditional pictures of the Jews. By Gary G. Porton This article suggests that Christians must confront their complicity in the Holocaust before Jewish-Christian relations can be normalized. Such reflection has taken place in the work of many Christian, especially Catholic, theologians. The declaration Nostra Aetate, often referred to as Vatican II, called for "fraternal dialogue" between Jews and Christians. The Church explained that this document, "finds its historical setting in circumstances deeply affected by the memory of the persecution and massacre of Jews which took place in Europe just before and during the Second World War." Reprinted with permission of The Continuum International Publishing Group from The Encyclopedia of Judaism, edited by Jacob Neusner, Alan Avery-Peck, and William Scott Green. The events of the twentieth century dramatically changed the relationship between Jews and Christians. Christian Sins The Holocaust forever altered the way in which Jews of the second half of this century would view non-Jews. While Christianity did not cause the Holocaust, many of its myths and images supported European anti‑Judaism and justified the Nazis' murder of Europe's Jews. There were many Christians and Church leaders who endangered themselves in order to protect Jews. But many more supported and executed the Nazis' plans, and many did so in the name of Jesus and Christianity. While the Nazis also killed many Christians, many, even most, of the murderers of the Jews were baptized followers of Christ. Contemporary Christians struggle with this truth, as do current Jewish thinkers. Two other events have proven important for Jews attempting to comprehend the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 challenged medieval and modern Christian doctrine concerning the superiority of Christianity and the divine rejection of Jews and Judaism. From the Jewish point of view, the failure of the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and other international Christian organizations to support Israel in the Six Day War was also significant. continues

Dawkins.

That was funny on the Evo News site.

They had "Dawinks" for several days. I'm amazed how poor their spelling is. Don't they use computers?

I thought "Dawinks" was an intentional slam, but realized it was just Crowther being his usual careless self. Pitiful.

Panic has set in among the evo commmunity and I am laughing so hard I may have to stop reading this stuff for a day or
two.

Looks like the pimp lawyer and the xvivo crowd tell them to chill out as their compliant gave frivolous a bad name in legal terms.

Poor evos... the rope to the dock is still available.

re Keith: There's stupid, and then there's BLIND stupid.

And then there's Keith.

Meds. Take 'em.

keith wrote:

"their compliant (sic) gave frivolous a bad name in legal terms."

Maybe he took spelling lessons from Crowther or he is merely just as careless.

Sorry if this is a repeat post, but I don't know if this went through...

PvM:

I know this is off topic, but I didn't see any live threads discussing this issue surrounding Expelled, so I wanted to get your take on this (perhaps you post another thread where comments can be made). My question is this:

Do you think that Darwinism, and the spirit of the science that it embraces, has any logical connection with Nazism, eugenics, or anything of that nature that the movie Expelled claims it does?

I can guess what you will say--no. Darwin didn't make anyone bad, the person is to be held accountable. It was a perversion of Darwin's theory and a shame that Stein would try to pin such a horrible act on a perfectly legitimate theory instead of an evil man.

Close enough?

Well, quite frankly, you, and PZ, and Richard, and Wesley, and everyone else promoting this opinion is wrong. It is Richard Dawkins who has argued that evolutionary biology whitewashes all of this wickedness. Don't believe me? Who do you think made this statement:

"As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software....But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment....Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment."

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html

This is evolutionary biology at its finest. Hitler was not bad--just broken. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION has imbibed us with the sense of right and wrong--it is not something grand an external and Platonic and real but simply a changeable convention that was useful for surviving--if not, we would be at each others throats. You and the whordes of internet atheist are going to try and say that it is the producers of Expelled who are 'sinister' in trivializing Hitler--here Dawkins justifies Hitler with evolutionary biology.

Look, everyone like to say that the spirit of methodological naturalism is essential for science, and science is compatible with religious thought. It's just learning about math, or engineering, or baking. But do you really think WORKING WITH THE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL EXPLANATIONS SHOULD BE MATERIAL--OUR ORIGINS, OUR THOUGHT LIFE, OUR PRAYER LIFE, OUR SENSE OF MORALITY, ETC.--has no effect on religious thought or lends a person to atheism? Look, there are evolutionary biologists out there who try to justify all sorts of things by pinning it on evolution--racism, rape, etc. If you learn in a neurophysiology class that you do not have a free will--as Will Provine has argued for--then you are going to look at the world through a different lens and it is certainly not going to be one very helpful to religion. Methodological Naturalism, the spirit which is infused with Darwinism, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for atheism...but it does have a logical path towards atheism. And if atheism is the case, and everything (including our sense of right and wrong, decency, respect, free will, etc) is just an outgrowth matter in motion, then Hume may be right. There are not ought's, only is's. And if someone--say Hitler--feels that Darwinian principles are at work and that his race needs to suceed at the expense of others, who are you to say that he ought not do that? Or that his behavior is not Darwinian? After all, he is using a competitive advantage (his mind, speaking skills, etc) to propogate his genes and the similar genes of a race that is very much like him, rather like kin selection.

So no, evolution by itself does not get you to the place of killing 6 million Jews, but the spirit of evolution--Darwinism, methodological naturalism--says that we are not special and that the hardy survive and that we, our lives, our morals, are nothing more than a material process that might not have happened or could have gone the other way. That in itself is a factor, among many others, that could have been necessary for the extermination of the Jews at that time and place in history (it might have been impossible without rallying the scientists under some banner--and darwinism served that purpose).

Ideas have implications, and I think it is a shame that you and everyone else think that it is okay for us to openly talk about faith being a wicked virtue leading to travesty and ignorance and a necessary component in the slaughter of many, but not a theory belying an ideology that treats all morals as relative and all life as nothing more than matter and energy.

I think the producers of Expelled may have gotten it right...

Looks like Keith's perceptual difficulties aren't limited to just science. They also apparently apply to our emotional states. I wonder what color the sky is in his world.

Personally I am absolutely salivating at the potential for disaster here for the lying dipshits in the ID movement. No one, NO ONE, with an ounce of intelligence who is anywhere near the fence on this issue is buying their bullshit this time. The Fox pan was the ultimate indication of that. You can only fool so many people with the same script a finite number of times before everyone will catch on, and thanks to the internet, and sites like this, that number is getting smaller by the day.

Panic my dear delusional man? I am so giddy I am having a hard time sleeping, as I anxiously wait to see what new idiotic way the IDers will have found to shoot themselves in the foot today. Their sloppiness and dishonesty shows more and more, and to more and more, every day, and it just couldn't have happened to a nicer group of intellectual pussies.

wikipedia: Luther and antisemitism: Influence on modern antisemitism The prevailing view[31] among historians is that his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany,[32] and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the National Socialist's attacks on Jews.[33] Reinhold Lewin writes that "whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of his writings and sermons on the Jews in 1940.[34] The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published.[35] It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks.[36] On December 17, 1941, seven Lutheran regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had already suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory."

So no, evolution by itself does not get you to the place of killing 6 million Jews, but the spirit of evolution–Darwinism, methodological naturalism–says that we are not special and that the hardy survive and that we, our lives, our morals, are nothing more than a material process that might not have happened or could have gone the other way. That in itself is a factor, among many others, that could have been necessary for the extermination of the Jews at that time and place in history (it might have been impossible without rallying the scientists under some banner–and darwinism served that purpose).

And Martin Luther's view of Jews as sub-human Christ-killers had nothing to do with it? Perhaps you should find the moral courage to face up to your own church's sordid history of Jewish persecution before you try to blame modern science with your own moral failings.

Person said: Do you think that Darwinism, and the spirit of the science that it embraces, has any logical connection with Nazism, eugenics, or anything of that nature that the movie Expelled claims it does?

No, person: the producers of Expelled got it very wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Among other things, the idea, the essence of Evolutionary Biology is that because organisms tend to be imperfect copies of their parents, changes accumulate with each passing generation. If these accumulated changes help those populations of organisms possess them survive better, these populations survive: if these changes do not benefit those populations that possess them, these populations tend to die off.

Hence the gist of "On the Origin of Species" being "descent with modification."

Secondly, the gist of Nazism, and the madness that Adolf Hitler embraced was that "The Aryans are the pinnacles of God's creations: all other peoples are flawed monsters that ultimately deserve to be scoured from the Earth."

Learn how to read. If you did, you would realize that Hitler's speeches never touched on "Evoluton" or even "Darwinism," save once when he briefly lambasted it as being a false science. Furthermore, Hitler's speeches made use of more medical metaphor, such as "removing tumors," and that Hitler's anti-Semitic speeches tended to read as plagiarisms of Martin Luther's "Of the Jews and Their Lies." Unless, of course, you have evidence that Charles Darwin was able to travel through time in order to influence Martin Luther, too. Speaking of Hitler and medical metaphors, he was responsible for shutting down the bloodbanks of Germany because he was afraid that his beloved Nazi soldiers may run the risk of becoming "Jewish by injection," in that he believed that inheritance was through blood, rather than gametes or chromosomes.

Thirdly, the producers of Expelled are shameless liars and shameless hypocrites, given as how they lied to the scientists they interviewed, given as how they never bother to describe what sort of positive benefits Intelligent Design "theory" would make if the so-called "persecuted" were allowed to engage in research, given as how the producers never bother explain exactly how "Darwinism" gave rise to Nazism when there exists no evidence whatsoever among Hitler's notes, memoirs, speeches, or the notes, memoirs or speeches of his aides, staff or servants of Hitler ever so much as coming within 15 feet of any of Charles Darwin's books, and given as how the producers never bother to explain why the noted German Jewish paleontologist and "evolutionist" Rudolf Kaufman was murdered by Nazi guards.

So, in other words, person, grow up, go study Biology for Dummies, or go away.

Person is another creo spambot, a meat robot. They've been crawling the web for days posting their Goebbels spam wherever they can.

Let me ask everyone, what do you think about the Richard Dawkins comment that absolves Hitler of personal responsibility? No one seems to want to bite on that bit. And no one wants to bite on the bit about our morals--you know, the ones that say we shouldn't kill Jews--are outgrowths of a mindless evolutionary process and that in Hitler's case "...assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction" (Richard Dawkins words)?

Is Darwin in this case not justifying Hitler and trivializing his evil?

I don't know how much Darwin influenced Hitler. He may not have bought into common descent--he made comments both ways. He certainly bought into the part about species and races clawing for survival, and this in a BIOLOGICAL context--the rights to live and reproduce (so don't give me this business about Adam Smith being equally to blame). I do know that Darwin was used as a rallying banner for German scientists to justify themselves...we are material species, we are using our wits to oust other less related genes for competing for our resources...as detailed by Weikart. This much is clear from his writing.

So, for those of you tuning into my comments, here is my questions:

1. For proponents of atheism and evolution, what is wrong with Richard Dawkins sentiments, and is he using evolution to absolve Hitler of moral responsibility?

2. If he is, why aren't you jumping down his throat like you are Mark Mathis?

3. Are you aware that there are books and articles promoting our morality as an outgrowth of a material process...if so, via Hume, how do you get an is from an ought? How do you tell Hitler he 'ought' not have done what he did?

4. Finally, be honest here, can't you look at this situation and explain it like you do any other biological issue...this was just a case of an organism trying to oust the competition and propogate his genes? Morality is just like a nose or a feather or a tooth...a convenient adaptation that can be useful in one context but is not permanent and certainly not transcendentally fixed or warranted...what is right today may be wrong tomorrow, etc.? If you accept this reasoning, how is Hitler any different from a tiger or a mole or a slug trying to use their adaptations for their own ends? Tell me evolution doesn't justify that...

I concur with Science Avenger that science consists of tools that are value neutral and can only be made good or bad by the decision (values beliefs) of the person or persons who use them. Theories are not good or evil but the people who use them choose good or evil.

This again shows a basic misunderstanding of the nature of science by ID proponents. Evolution becomes evilution when you use it to produce a biological weapon or to justify genocide. It can also be used to save lives. A friend who works to cure cancer in children has told me that he sees more of his patients survive every year because of the designer drugs and therapies of biotechnology whose practices rest on the theory of evolution.

How has the debate gotten so far away from discussion of how to use the tools of science in a n ethical, positive way? In this endeavor the religious community should be our allies not our enemies. How sad!

wikipedia: Luther advocated an eight-point plan to get rid of the Jews either by religious conversion or by expulsion: "First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. ..." "Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. ..." "Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. ..." "Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. ..." "Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. ..." "Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them. ... Such money should now be used in ... the following [way]... Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed [a certain amount]..." "Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow... For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants." "If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country" and "we must drive them out like mad dogs." [31]

Person (who shall apparently remain nameless) wrote: This is evolutionary biology at its finest. Hitler was not bad–just broken. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION has imbibed us with the sense of right and wrong–it is not something grand an external and Platonic and real but simply a changeable convention that was useful for surviving–if not, we would be at each others throats. You and the whordes of internet atheist are going to try and say that it is the producers of Expelled who are ‘sinister’ in trivializing Hitler–here Dawkins justifies Hitler with evolutionary biology.

Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?... My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

Richard Dawkins never once attempted to absolve Adolf Hitler of anything.

Adolf Hitler was a lunatic, and he did not understand Biology, and he did not accept Evolutionary Theory.

And as such, I beseech the Administration to purge person's comments from this thread, as he is doing nothing but spamming the thread in order to to squeeze an erroneous connection between Evolutionary Biology and Nazism, and is not at all interested in reading any counter-arguments.

Kmlisle- Good points. And the evils that "person" ascribes to a scientific theory would also apply perfectly well to just about any religious belief. Not that religion has ever been used to justify evil acts. Oh no.

Tell us, "person"- is it the religion, or the individuals?

As any scientists here know, the truth of a scientific theory is independent of what anyone thinks of it or how it is used.

Gravity kills countless people every year and is a nuisance requiring people to buy cars to move around.

Believing that gravity is evil and costing us big bucks in oil imports won't make it go away. Reality doesn't care what anyone thinks.

"person" brings up my favorite logical fallacy of the creotards- "Evolution leads to 'moral relativism'".
The punchline is that moral relativism is at the heart of all the 'teach all viewpoints as equal' Academic Freedom Bills were seeing of late.

For creationists, 'good' and 'bad' are only absolutes when they need them to be.

Person,

Evolution doesn't justify that.

There I told you.

And you can't say you asked me not to tell you that.

Why in the world would anyone ever think that any scientific theory would ever justify any moral decision? Has this defense ever been used successfully in court? That is like saying:

Your honor, I heard that nature abhors a vacuum and I really abhor this guy, so I put him in a vacuum. See, I'm innocent!

Person just bundled up a bunch of lies, and the big one, Darwin killed the Jews. Demonstrably false.

Evolutionary biology is common and commonly accepted in both the USA and Israel and has been for many decades. Acceptance in the general US population runs around 40%, it is I believe higher in Israel. Among the scientific communities it runs over 99%. Same is true for Western Europe.

Seen any death camps in either Western Europe, the USA, or Israel lately? Anyone rounding up Jews here. The fact is the USA has been one of the few countries where Jews have assimilated and are just normal citizens pursuing their lives. And BTW, some of the US evolutionary biologists are Jewish and probably the vast majority of Israeli evolutionary biologists as well.

Evolutionary biology is irrelevant to rascism and antisemitism. What is relevant, are Xian Death Cult fanatics such as "person" who lie and are sometimes violent. These are religious bigots and we all know what religious bigots did for Germany in the mid 20th century.

I don’t know how much Darwin influenced Hitler.

I strongly disagree with Stanton. Whoever person is, and however fallacious his arguments - and they are fallacious - they were expressed politely and cogently. They were a contribution, allowing thought about the subject. They have been adequately refuted, however.

Nazism owed far more to Wager and Luther, and a generalised cultural antisemitism in Europe that predates even the latter, than to Darwin, but it owed most of all to Hitler's personal psychopathology. As Robert Waite demonstrated in his definitive psychological biography of Hitler, "The Psychopathic God", (Basic Books, New York, 1977, ISBN 0-465-06743-3) the inspiration of the rabid hatred of Jews that was the most salient of Hitler's many pathological traits are the tawdry pamphlets of Lanz von Liebenfels and others that he read in Vienna before World War 1; but even these are not the actual "fons et origo". Hitler needed to believe in some such construct, as a psychological defence. Other circumstances conspired to produce a situation in which the psychopathology of an individual could produce the Nazi state and ignite what we all hope (and pray, if we pray) was the last great European war and all the hideous, barbarous crimes that were part and parcel of it.

Waite chased down the references in "Mein Kampf", the "Tabletalk" documents and all the recorded speeches to specific ideas. (Better him than me.) He went through Hitler's own library, which was captured intact. (Hitler went in far more for yellowback westerns, the product of a minor German writer named Karl May, than for philosophy. He had no copy of Darwin's works.) Waite documented all the identifiable sources of these ideas, and concluded that they consisted entirely of intellectually despicable works by racist polemicists - there is a long list of these - plus Luther, Wagner, snippets from Nietzsche (found only in abstracts), and the long-exploded "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Darwin doesn't get a look-in. There is no evidence - none - that Hitler was ever influenced by Darwin's works. There is no evidence that he ever read Darwin, or even heard of his ideas except in the most casual anecdotal way.

Hitler was a lapsed Catholic who never, so far as can be known, attached any importance to his nominal religion, except insofar as it was sometimes useful to his politics. He was interested in Wagnerian paganism, but only really in its symbols and potential for political use. He used Christianity, sure, and there were, to the shame of the Church and its enduring guilt, many so-called Christians who were only too willing to be used. The Church did little to abjure, prevent and correct them, as it was obviously called to do. For that fact alone, it should be ashamed and remorseful. Some evidence of that shame and remorse has surfaced in fairly recent times. Let us hope that it will long be remembered.

Nevertheless, the monster that was Nazi Germany was not the creation of Christianity any more than it was the creation of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, the motto on German soldiers' belt buckles notwithstanding. Nothing is that simple.

But you guys are biologists. Of course you already know that nothing is that simple.

The Darwindidit theory isn’t what most Jews accept as the cause of the Holocaust. Below is one Jewish view from a website called myjewsishlearning.

Berkovits focuses on the previous centuries of Christian anti‑Jewish teachings: "Without the contempt and hatred for the Jews planted by Christianity in the hearts of the multitude of its followers, Nazism's crime against the Jewish people could never have been conceived, much less executed."

I was watching one of those evolution shows on cable the other night. It portrayed the history of the species leading up to the dinosaurs. It occurred to me that a theme that comes up in evolution is repeated mass extinctions. Sounds pretty bad like Hitler maybe?

But wait! It seems like every time there is a mass extinction who survives? Not the bullies, not the T. Rexes not the baddest guys. It is the cute little guys hiding out in their dens.

This seems very biblical to me. There is definitely a precedent of the meek inheriting, over and over again.

The Hitler theme just does not fit.

person: ... (Richard Dawkins words)? Is Darwin in this case not justifying Hitler and trivializing his evil?

"You have injured my eye; now, therefore, I shall come unto you and put you (slowly) to death, I shall sell your wife and children into slavery, I shall burn your crops, seize your cattle and make your house a dunghill forever. Thus shall I be righteously avenged."

Richard Weikart’s meticulously researched book From Darwin To Hitler,

Examples of neo-creationist polemics include the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document,[31] the book Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson, and the book From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart.[32] Research for Weikart's book was funded by the Discovery Institute, and is promoted through the institute.[33] Both Johnson and Weikart are affiliated with the Discovery Institute; Johnson is program advisor, and Weikart is a fellow.

“The Haeckel-to-Hitler (and Haeckel-to-Fascism) thesis is pursued relentlessly by Daniel Gasman in The Scientific Origins of National Socialism (London, 1971), and Haeckel’s Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology (New York, 1998). Gasman’s work is not highly regarded by most historians, and with good cause.” Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p. 235, Endnote 4 of the Introduction

To quote Jon Stewart, “Whaaaaa?” Weikart says that Haeckel-to-Hitler is bogus, but then writes a whole book devoted to From Darwin to Hitler?

Dave Luckett: many so-called Christians who were only too willing to be used. The Church did little to abjure, prevent and correct them, as it was obviously called to do.

Person, you seem to be awfully confused. Science cannot be blamed for the facts of nature anymore than history can blamed for our understanding of past bloodshed. If something is true (in the loose sense of the word), then we are going to have to find ways of dealing with it.

Personally, I have no problem with what Dawkins said. We do not have a sufficient understanding of the origins of altruism or the workings of the brain, as yet, but it is true that it is now considered likely that free will is more illusory than real, and yes, there are ethical consequences. So what? Should we lie about it? If it is confirmed beyond reasonable doubt, it will likely have always been true, anyway.

Our understanding of this may cause us to reconsider how we deal with criminality, which is actually happening in much of western Europe as we speak. Many people now believe, and I happen to agree with them, that it is far better to concentrate on the cause of behavior, rather than simply punishing it once it has already happened. I suggest that you look at the crime figures for the countries that have started down this road in comparison to the United States. You might be surprised. By the way, I am not suggesting that this is a direct consequence of the findings of brain science.

We will simply have to recognize that we are all inescapably tied to past events, and that we should attempt to understand how we can prevent bad outcomes by creating the right conditions so that they are minimized. Again, this is a scientific question and in the long run it will be positive for us to understand (and hopefully prevent) the conditions that create behavior that we find destructive. That is not to say that we will be able to prevent all heinous acts, but then, that will never be possible.

I happen to believe that morality is rooted in our evolutionary past, but even that doesn't fully explain the complex system that we see in modern western societies. Just because we cannot call upon a morality that is imbued by a creator, it does not mean that morality has to be relative. There are more secular accounts of objective morality than there are religious. You are going to have to show that they are all false, first and foremost, before you can argue that an absolute standard is necessary.

I couldn't care less if you don't think that I have a right to claim that what Hitler did was wrong. That changes nothing. It always seems to escape the person that makes this argument that morality has itself evolved. Not so long ago it was considered acceptable to murder other people, in certain circumstances. That is, thankfully, no longer the case.

What do you consider to be the purpose of moral philosophy, a system of laws, and best practice as far as raising children? These are all attempts to create an ethical society and they apply equally well to believers and non-believers alike. In any case, believers are in no better position than non-believers. Not unless you have an answer to the Eurythro dilemma*, that is?

*(Is what is good because it is part of God's nature, or is God's nature that way because it is good? The first interpretation means that morality is entirely arbitrary, and the second interpretation suggests that there is an independent standard of good)

Apart from the fact that a morality imbued by God is entirely arbitrary, how do you you objectively decide which of the accounts (various religions) to follow? And how do you objectively decide between the differing accounts of the same religion? Also, what do you do about the thousands of modern moral concerns that are not mentioned in a religious context?

Menorah Review: Anti-Semitism, The Holocaust and Christianity Robert Michael The Holocaust seems inexplicable. Scholars, especially, understand the inadequacy of historical explanation. And yet, just as historians try to explain the decline and fall of Rome and the causes of the First World War, they struggle to understand why the Holocaust happened. Christianity’s precise influence on the Holocaust is impossible to determine and the Christian churches did not themselves perpetrate the Final Solution. But as a historian, I believe that Christian anti-Semitism is not only the source but also the major ideological basis of Nazi anti-Semitism. This conclusion appears impossible. The churches’ moral principles, so antithetical to the genocidal morality of Nazi Germany, should preclude any connection between Christian precepts and the Final Solution. Some Nazis explicitly ridiculed Christian ideals, though many more attacked the Christian churches but not Christianity itself. Moreover, a small minority of Christians helped the Jews during the Holocaust and a few thousand of them risked their lives to help Jews just as, for two millennia, some Christians had always treated Jews decently. This latter group consisted mostly of authentic Christians acting on Jesus’ moral teachings, although some may have had more pragmatic, and less ethical, reasons. My book, Holy Hatred (Mellen 2005), argues that during the Holocaust, people — almost all of them born as Christians, baptized and married in a church, coming from a Christian environment, and absorbing a form of Christian culture that condemned Jews — attempted to murder all the Jews of Europe. Most other ...continues

'Person' should spend more time researching available resources and less time regurgitating creationist double-speak. There were a lot of factors involved with Hitlers rise to political power. Hitler abused anything and anyone if it meant he would gain and maintain control of this power. 'Person' thinks he knows the Darwin connection but is 'Person' familiar with a few of the other associations that exist? Perhaps, just to start, 'person' may wish to investigate:

Mein Kampff - numerous religious citations:
http://www.archive.org/details/MyStruggle

Holocaust-genocide: god vs Darwin
http://primordial-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03/whos-to-blame-for-holocaust-god-or.html

pogrom - Jewish persecutions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom

Martin Luther's "On the Jews and their lies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

Ratlines - how did so many of the WWII criminals get away?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_lines

Eugenics - an excellent resource:
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list3.pl

I dismiss 'person' based on his overwhelming ignorance of so many facts that his creationist sources failed to spoon-feed him! Digest some of these tidbits and elevate yourself above the ignorant person you are!

My my my...it seems I have many admirers.

Just so that no one is confused, because after all this subject can branch off in a number of different directions, I am not interested at all in how much relative influence Darwin, as opposed to Luther, had on Hitler's thinking. I believe it is more than well substantiated the Ernst Haeckel and the entire German scientific establishments looked to Darwin for justification, and this convenient justification was a necessary component to rally a large portion of society, but that is all beside the point.

Here is the heart of the issue I want everyone to address. I want you to say something about Richard Dawkins words. Richard Dawkins says:

"But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?... Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment."

That's right. Saying Hitler was "Evil" or "Responsible" for his actions is like blaming a car for breaking down. Some enlightenment. Punishing Hitler for his actions, rebuking him for them is like spanking your car...it doesn't make sense. Remember, it was Dawkins who said "ANY CRIME, HOWEVER HEINOUS,is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment." This IS evolutionary rationale. We are material beings and there is no room for free will--we are hard-wired, and how can you blame Hitler for faulty wiring? His genetics did that. Dawkins claims that our morality is an adaptation--something that was contingent on a number of circumstances and could have been different had the initial conditions changed. Right today, wrong tomorrow, it's all contingent. He claims that Hitler was not responsible for his actions--his actions were the result of his physiology, and who would wish to blame someone for that? Dawkins makes it sound like killing six million Jews was as natural and as justified for Hitler as a cheetah killing an antelope. Both are following their genes, the cheetah isn't wicked, and neither is Hitler.

Anyone who says that science has NO bearing on morality and ethics is either blind or kidding themselves. If we accept that morality is a contingent adaptation, and that is it--like a fang, or a claw or an eye (and remember, this is just what evolution says)--then there is imperative to exercise it or follow it. If amoral actions prove to be a better way to go, then morality can be tossed in the dust bin since it is no longer useful. Good and evil are in your brain and nowhere else. This is pure acid to a Christian view who say that good and evil are transcendent and necessary. This is also conducive for an atheist willing to slaughter millions. One says, 'hey, moral rules are an accident of evolution and relative, so I'm justified in killing. Even if there were moral standards, I'm hardwired to do what I'm doing, so I can't be blamed.'

*****Now to me, and this is the big, bright, pie-in-the-sky point that I desire to make--Darwinism is imbibed with this prescription to limit explanations to the material. Once that is made, you CAN use Darwinism to retrospectively remove the blame from Hitler for his personal choices and actions. You can say, jeez, it wasn't his fault, it was evolution in action. Just as a cheetah obeys his genes to use its exquisite adaptations to kill antelope and propogate, so Hitler was obeying his genes and using his adaptations (his intelligence and rallying skills) to oust competing groups (Jews) and promote the propogation of genes similar to his (the Aryans).

This is how an evolutionist could describe the material causes of Hitler's actions. This is how the German scientists justified it. What is wrong with the above account, since, as per Dawkins, morality is an adaptation just as all others? When this admission is made, Hitler is absolved of his responsibility, because Hitler was not freely making decisions...his physiology, shaped by evolution, did that for him.

Yes, Dawkins does argue that Darwinism shaped the physiology that made Hitler disposed to do what he was doing. Blame nature for the Holocaust, not Hitler. For Dawkins, 'blame' itself is a 'useful fiction.'

Atheism flows naturally from the methodolgical naturalism that underpins Darwinism. And once an atheist, as per Hume, you can no longer say that Hitler 'ought' not have done what he did. In fact, as a Biologist you can determine how physics and chemistry 'made' him doing it, rather than his free choice to do these wicked things. Hitler is a material organism like a cheetah. Stories about adaptation and success are identical. If the cheetah is not evil, then neither is Hitler, as per atheists.

Atheism flows naturally from the methodolgical naturalism that underpins Darwinism. And once an atheist, as per Hume, you can no longer say that Hitler ‘ought’ not have done what he did.

Valerie Tarico seems to be a very smart woman. We might invite her here for some discussion.

My my my…it seems I have many admirers.

Just so that the point is not missed, Darwinism can serve to justify, retrospectively, the Holocaust, or at very least provide enough of an excuse to get Hitler off the hook. This is just what Richard Dawkins says--there is no such thing as good and evil and responsibility. It is just fiction. The blame is thrown on Hitler's physiology and environment but not on Hitler himself. Three important facts: 1. Evolution implies no free will 2. Evolution implies morality is an evolved characteristic and is malleable 3. Seeing themselves as material objects operating in the same way as cheetahs, German scientists said that the Holocaust was perfectly natural and in sync with Darwin's conception of nature. I have discussed all three points above. No one seems to want to take them head on. This is because, I think, Dawkins has stated himself so clearly that there is no room to squirm. Tough potatoes. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for poking Ben Stein's eyes out for making a point that Richard Dawkins makes without repremand--that Darwinism and atheism provide excuses for actions that would otherwise put guilt and blame on the individual. Many of you don't seem to recognize the subtle differences between my argument and the argument that 'Hitler was an evilutionist!' You are blinded by your own arrogance, and if you can't see the truth, the wickedness in Dawkins words and the two-faced treatment of Stein, then I truly feel sorry for you.

And by the way, Mike Elizinga, you are fighting Hume, not me, so take it up with him. Atheists can do any action that a Christian can do. But atheist's have no epistemic warrant for issuing moral prescriptions. There is no way that atheists can say that judging from how the world is they can say how it ought to be. Fight him and Western philosophy. Not me.

I believe I have run my course here. Goodbye to the few genuinely insightful commenters, and good riddance to the rest of you masochistic, self-inflated, Atheodarwin mongering two faces. One of you even wanted me 'Expelled' when I was stating politely an argument and did not offer a cross word. Ben Stein was right to hit this issue on the head. Cigars all around to those who agree, you say. Death and embarassment for those who don't. Pitiful.

But atheist’s have no epistemic warrant for issuing moral prescriptions.

The bigots always depart in a triumphant huff.

Lord, if only they STAYED gone.

Richard Dawkins is a mighty biologist and science educator. He has strong ideas and intelligent opinions on moral philosophy, but in that area he has no more claim to authority than I, and I believe he would agree with that. He is, I believe, a strict materialist, in that he seeks only material explanations for all observations. When he attempts to do this with his observations of human behaviour and morality, I am not personally convinced that his explanations are exhaustive. But the point is this: person's criticism of Dawkins is misplaced. It attacks Dawkins' materialism, not science in general or the theory of evolution in particular.

It is science, not "Darwinism" (whatever is meant by that misleading and long-obsolete term), that limits explanations to reasoning from the material evidence. To be more precise, science restricts evidence to what can be reliably experienced through the senses that relay information to human beings about the physical world, including by accurate analogue.

Now, some believe, perhaps implicitly, that this material constitutes the whole of what exists, but others do not. Neither position logically follows. Science is by definition the study of the material, and therefore cannot speak to anything else, certainly not to the question of whether anything else exists. Because neither position follows, person's criticism of what he calls "Darwinism" falls to the ground. It is materialism that he has in his sights, not science, and not evolution.

So we are here engaged in a discussion of moral philosophy, not science, but let us follow both Dawkins and person a little further. Dawkins implies that the response to evil deeds is look to the material causes of them and ameliorate these, wherever possible. He thus implies, strongly, that meeting evil with pains and penalties is futile and irrelevant. He might be wrong in this, of course. I've already said that he has no more authority on such questions than I.

But person's idea - which he calls "a Christian view" - is that evil is the personal responsibility of the evil-doer, the outcome of a free-will decision to do evil. This view naturally implies that the just response to evil deeds (however they are defined) is to visit retribution and punishment upon the evil-doer. It does not imply (as does Dawkins' view) that there is any need to investigate and ameliorate the causes of the act, beyond simply to attribute them all to the evil of the person who is held responsible.

I know which view I prefer, simply from my own standpoint, for I know which one conduces more to mercy and true justice.

Fundamentalists and creationists can't seem to grasp the idea that the rest of the world isn't blindly following a leader of some sort, spiritual or otherwise. "Person" constantly equates Richard Dawkins with atheism (the two are synonymous for him), and "Darwinism" with evolutionary biology. You see this logical fallacy time and time again. (And please, will someone define "Darwinism" for us at last? What the hell does that even mean?)
The fact is, whatever Richard Dawkins may say (I really haven't read much of his writing as I only recently learned who he is) I know this much: Richard Dawkins speaks only for himself. He no more speaks for "all atheists" than Pat Robertson (or the street preacher on the corner) speaks for "all christians".

"Person" lives in a very small world.

I found People's point interesting, but he failed to develop the 'evolutionary view of life' properly. Yes, Richard Dawkins words suggest that our actions are the result of a mechanistic (no soul or free will allowed) brain. However that same mechanistic view also leads to the "useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains".

Useful fiction? This sounds to me that mechanistic brains have resulted in processes that allow "is" to be treated or elevated into "ought" for the purposes of continuing our successful lives. This is just as much part of our evolutionary adaptation to living in the world as our legs or lungs or immune system - or our differing cultures.

Do you drive on the same side of the road as your fellow countrymen? Yes, I thought so. You want to get to your destination in a timely way, without crashing into other road users. Other countries drive on the other side of the road. So what? The only requirement is that you exercise the appropriate useful fiction for your locality.

Do you play games? The rules are useful fictions - which make the gameplay worthwhile. "Cheats never prosper" - another useful fiction (not always the outcome though).

"Thou shalt not kill" - great useful fiction (apart from when your God or Country tell you to kill the enemy, when a different useful fiction comes into play).

"Evil" and "Good" - useful fictions again. They help your mechanistic brain deal with the complexities of life. This does not preclude us from living as if "Evil" and "Good" do not exist, it is just that these values are a human construct, not a Divine Truth, not a fundamental parameter of the universe.

Is this a grim view of fleshbot automata breeding and dying? Not when the useful fictions produce "values" and "morals" we can use to guide our lives, and be happy (chemicals in the mechanistic brain again I'm afraid).

DiscoveredJoys, person refuses, not fails to, develop his "evolutionary view of life." He refuses to understand it, otherwise, his whole premise of "Darwinism = Atheism => Genocide" falls through.

And like I said before, he refuses to read or understand anyone's posts until he can wring an agreement to his moronic arguments from us.

person: I believe I have run my course here. Goodbye to the few genuinely insightful commenters, and good riddance to the rest of you masochistic, self-inflated, Atheodarwin mongering two faces. One of you even wanted me 'Expelled' when I was stating politely an argument and did not offer a cross word. Ben Stein was right to hit this issue on the head. Cigars all around to those who agree, you say. Death and embarassment for those who don't. Pitiful.

Dave Luckett: ...Hitler's own library, which was captured intact. (Hitler went in far more for yellowback westerns, the product of a minor German writer named Karl May, than for philosophy. He had no copy of Darwin’s works.)

Person the lying troll: Atheism flows naturally from the methodolgical naturalism that underpins Darwinism. And once an atheist, as per Hume, you can no longer say that Hitler ‘ought’ not have done what he did.

Person asserted: And once an atheist, as per Hume, you can no longer say that Hitler ‘ought’ not have done what he did.

Might I suggest that "someone" (perhaps a group effort) work up a brief flyer to hand out to people going to see Expelled. It should be non-snarky, non-confrontational, with some simple points and web addresses to go to for more information:
e.g.

"Intelligent design is not science. It is a political movement, and is in fact anti-science. It can not be tested scientifically, and as a result has not made any contributions to scientific progress or understanding. See talkorigins, etc. for more information"

and of course some clarifications on the false martyrhood of Crocker, Sternberg and Gonzalez

"Crocker taught long discredited, non-scientific ideas in a science classroom as if they were true, and her contract was thus justly not renewed"
"Sternberg was never actually employed by the SMithsonian, and did not lose any of his research privileges, despite allowing, while he was the editor, a junk science article to be published in a scientific journal with close ties to the Smithsonian."
"Gonzalez was denied tenure for standard reasons: his publication record trailed off soon after he was hired, he did not secure any significant grant money, he did not produce any graduate students and he conducted very little new research. Assistant professors are denied tenure every day all over the country for these same reasons."

anyone care to add?

Incidentally, a study of history reveals that the so-called absolute moral law people like Person want to flout has changed far more than science has. Look at all the moral edicts in the Bible no one pays attention to any more: eating shellfish, working on Sunday, cutting your hair in certain places, saying certain words, and a whole host of irrelevant nonsense. And you know what? We ignore those rules, and yet life goes on, and better than ever, compared to when people worried about such things. Try ignoring gravity, or electromagnistism, and see how long you last.

I want to thank 'Person'. His/her posts weren't well written or insightful, but they were framed in a way that elicited thoughtful responses. The contrast between the two world views is instructive.

Well, now that person has checked out, back to the OP.

Can I point out that Tarico's article is not a review? She nowhere says that she has seen the movie, or even the trailer. With her use of the "not expelled, flunked" meme, I'm afraid that people praising her article are getting caught in a bit of an echo chamber.

raven: 3. Methodological naturalism is science, a method. "Person" is out of luck if he doesn't like science. Science is the basis of our civilization and most people aren't going to trade a 21st century lifestyle for a medieval theocratic hellhole.

"I disagree with you, raven. Methodological naturalism is not required for science. It is merely a practical choice."

Could you clarify? Are there any specific instances of scientific reasoning that do not involve methodological naturalism?

Just to make sure there is an agreed upon defintion, by methodological naturalism, I mean the reduction of observable phenomena to natural mechanisms which accurately predict their behavior and properties. If you use a different defintion, elaboration would be appreciated.

Person asked,
Do you think that Darwinism, and the spirit of the science that it embraces, has any logical connection with Nazism, eugenics, or anything of that nature that the movie Expelled claims it does?

Person, do you think that belief in the God of Abraham has any connection with the September 11 attacks, and the intense desire and plan of certain people to burn, maim, irradiate, and poison to death every American man, woman and child on this entire planet?

Science is by definition the study of the material, and therefore cannot speak to anything else,

Eric Finn:

raven: 3. Methodological naturalism is science, a method. "Person" is out of luck if he doesn't like science. Science is the basis of our civilization and most people aren't going to trade a 21st century lifestyle for a medieval theocratic hellhole.

I disagree with you, raven. Methodological naturalism is not required for science. It is merely a practical choice. Regards Eric

Since it's only a few days util the movie opens on some 1,000 screens, I prefer to see how long it takes until the American people press their legislators to enact laws enabling a more open view of scientific understanding and a less dogmatic evolutionary based view.

I expect many will insist on curtailing the neo-nazi tactics of the evo establishment and permit people of faith to participate fully in academic disciplines without fear of persecution.

I expect the excellent research, intellectual honesty, careful documentation, accurate scientific depictions, case studies of neo-nazi attacks on scientists questioning darwinism, and the factual historical research linking evolutionary dogma to the worst sorts of human behaviors, will shock the American people into action against this parasite on real science.

April 18th , 2008 the day of the great awakening.

I expect the excellent research, intellectual honesty, careful documentation, accurate scientific depictions, case studies of neo-nazi attacks on scientists questioning darwinism, and the factual historical research linking evolutionary dogma to the worst sorts of human behaviors, will shock the American people into action against this parasite on real science.

— Keith Eaton

If dark matter and dark energy can ever be detected by the senses through some analogue, as the behaviour of atomic particles can be detected and studied by observing the tracks in a cloud chamber, then they are material. If they are never anything more than what they are now, that is, accounting values plugged into an otherwise excellently predictive theory in order to make the theory consistent with all observations, then I suspect that they are one with phlogiston and the aether, and we will someday know better. But I do know that for them to be the subject of science, the former must be true.

Are dark matter and dark energy “material”? ;)

Tyler DiPietro: "I disagree with you, raven. Methodological naturalism is not required for science. It is merely a practical choice." Could you clarify? Are there any specific instances of scientific reasoning that do not involve methodological naturalism? Just to make sure there is an agreed upon defintion, by methodological naturalism, I mean the reduction of observable phenomena to natural mechanisms which accurately predict their behavior and properties. If you use a different defintion, elaboration would be appreciated.

Eric Finn: A scientific theory, e.g. the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution, unites a class of observations and allows one to anticipate, what is going to happen under given circumstances. Scientific theories do make predictions, as you said. Naturally, we are interested in finding out how accurate those predictions are. We make experiments using very materialistic equipment and do not rely on intuition or revelation (well, intuition may help on occasions). I presume you agree with me this far.

My claim is that there is no reason a priori to limit the concepts used in the hypotheses to only materialistic explanations. If a hypothesis makes good predictions (verified materialistically), then it is a good hypothesis and it might become a scientific theory.

Thus, we are fully allowed to use concepts such as "dark energy", while building our hypotheses, even though all we know about that concept is that it is something very different from all we know of. In the end, we do expect to get predictions that we can understand using the concepts that we are already familiar with.

I further claim that if I managed to get gods in my equations, and those equations predicted consistently experimental outcomes, then scientists would consider my hypothesis very seriously.

The problem with e.g. Intelligent Design is that it does not make any predictions, whatsoever. The use of concepts that some might find dubious is not a problem of any kind, in my opinnion.

Stanton: And so, until you stop boasting, and actually produce a repeatable experiment that involves supernatural forces and or entities, you are wasting all of our time.

Eric Finn: We would be able to detect angles, quite the same way we think we are able to detect dark energy.

Seeing as Person seems so keen on John Cleese's Basil Fawlty, I think his whole case merely echoes another of his creations. When faced with the Spanish Inquisition the ultimate response was "It's a fair cop but society is to blame." Whilst this answer, might, in that fairy-tale world, have led to an escape from the Comfy Chair, I doubt Dawkin's musings would absolve anyone (such as Hitler) of personal responsibility for their own acts, let alone damn Evolution with ultimate responsibility for the whole of the Nazi edifice. Except in creoland maybe.

Rather it seems likely that in desperation some are quote-mining for anything containing "Darwin" or "evolution" and "Nazi" or "Hitler" and hoping that this will do the trick. Dream on.

Dang. That was the Dead Bishop sketch, Not the spanish inquisition! Nobody expects that!

This is evolutionary biology at its finest. Hitler was not bad–just broken.

Dang. That was the Dead Bishop sketch, Not the spanish inquisition! Nobody expects that!

Keith said: Since it’s only a few days util the movie opens on some 1,000 screens, I prefer to see how long it takes until the American people press their legislators to enact laws enabling a more open view of scientific understanding and a less dogmatic evolutionary based view.

keith: April 18th ...the Great Awakening.

Eric Finn:

Stanton: And so, until you stop boasting, and actually produce a repeatable experiment that involves supernatural forces and or entities, you are wasting all of our time.

I am very sorry having wasted your time. Please, ignore this reply, if you have better things to do.

You state that “the Natural world” does not contain anything supernatural. I agree with you that one of the definitions for supernatural is that it is not limited by any laws or patterns, and thus it is impossible to predict its behaviour.

As a whole, I find your comment supporting ontological naturalism (philosophical naturalism), which is a religious or a philosophical belief not derivable from science.

I tried to be explicit in stating that the predictions are always verified in experiments using natural (materialistic) means. Your example of counting angles on a pinhead does not meet the criteria. However, if an angel theory predicted e.g. a change in the resonant frequency of the pin, then it would be a perfectly valid theory. We would be able to detect angles, quite the same way we think we are able to detect dark energy.

Stanton, very well said.

dpr

Eric said: You state that “the Natural world” does not contain anything supernatural. I agree with you that one of the definitions for supernatural is that it is not limited by any laws or patterns, and thus it is impossible to predict its behaviour.

I tried to be explicit in stating that the predictions are always verified in experiments using natural (materialistic) means. Your example of counting angles on a pinhead does not meet the criteria. However, if an angel theory predicted e.g. a change in the resonant frequency of the pin, then it would be a perfectly valid theory. We would be able to detect angles, quite the same way we think we are able to detect dark energy.

"Supernatural" intervention in a system involves changes to the state of the system that cannot occur as a result of the operation of the laws that govern the system.

For instance, as I noted elsewhere, as the (external, supernatural) operator of a complex ballistic simulation, I can halt the simulator, make arbitrary changes to mass, position, velocity and quantity of objects, and resume the simulation. The result is a new state that has no basis in the previous "natural" history of the system. A new planet with twice the mass of Jupiter suddenly appears between Mercury and Sol, for instance.

This is consistent with the claims of the IDistas: the operation of natural laws cannot produce the new state of the system when some novel complexity (appears to have) popped into existence.

We could detect supernatural events, in the most spectacular cases, but we could not study the cause(s) since they would be, by definition, beyond any natural observer's reach. The only hope for understanding that a natural observer could possess would be if the supernatural perpetrator of the illegality chose, by some means, to reveal such information by some supernatural means. Thus science has no warrant (and in fact no means) to introduce "supernatural" or "non-material" elements.

Thus far, to the best of our ability to observe, measure and experiment, no unambiguously supernatural events have occurred -- observed events and conditions previously believed to be supernatural have proven to be consistent with the rules that govern the system.

This is consistent with the claims of the IDistas: the operation of natural laws cannot produce the new state of the system when some novel complexity (appears to have) popped into existence.

Shebardigan: "Supernatural" intervention in a system involves changes to the state of the system that cannot occur as a result of the operation of the laws that govern the system.

We could detect supernatural events, in the most spectacular cases, but we could not study the cause(s) since they would be, by definition, beyond any natural observer's reach. The only hope for understanding that a natural observer could possess would be if the supernatural perpetrator of the illegality chose, by some means, to reveal such information by some supernatural means. Thus science has no warrant (and in fact no means) to introduce "supernatural" or "non-material" elements.

Thus far, to the best of our ability to observe, measure and experiment, no unambiguously supernatural events have occurred -- observed events and conditions previously believed to be supernatural have proven to be consistent with the rules that govern the system.

PvM:

This is consistent with the claims of the IDistas: the operation of natural laws cannot produce the new state of the system when some novel complexity (appears to have) popped into existence.

The problem is that IDistas have not shown that natural law processes cannot explain the new state of the system. Since ID creationists also focus mostly on Darwinian theory, they can at best argue that Darwinian theory cannot explain 'X' but evolutionary theory has evolved beyond just natural selection, almost from the day Darwin himself proposed natural selection as one of various mechanism.

person: Just so that the point is not missed, Darwinism can serve to justify, retrospectively, the Holocaust, or at very least provide enough of an excuse to get Hitler off the hook. Death and embarassment for those who don't. Pitiful.

person: Just so that the point is not missed, Darwinism can serve to justify, retrospectively, the Holocaust, or at very least provide enough of an excuse to get Hitler off the hook. (snippage) Death and embarassment for those who don't. Pitiful.

Eric Finn: While it is perfectly all right to try to point out weaknesses in scientific theories, ID has failed to do so. Moreover, they claim to have an alternative theory that would explain some observations better. Nothing of the sort, they have failed to make any predictions, whatsoever. ID does not fail because it uses a concept of an unnamed intelligent agent, but because it fails the most important task of any scientific hypothesis, i.e. to make verifiable predictions.

Stanton: And having said that, so, when are you going to produce your fabulous, testable hypothesis that posits supernatural causes?

Eric Finn:

Stanton: And having said that, so, when are you going to produce your fabulous, testable hypothesis that posits supernatural causes?

You are misinterpreting my position quite intentionally. My claim was that it is not necessary to reject non-material explanations in hyphoteses a priori. Hyphotheses are judged based on their predictive power only. I never claimed claimed I have an example of a testable hypothesis that posits supernatural causes.

My claim is that there is no reason a priori to limit the concepts used in the hypotheses to only materialistic explanations. If a hypothesis makes good predictions (verified materialistically), then it is a good hypothesis and it might become a scientific theory.

Stanton, listen to PvM. Eric is 100% right on this, and I'd say you missed his point by a country mile. Science doesn't reject supernatural claims a priori, which would be what every ID-creationist accuses "big science" of doing. No, science looks at supernatural claims, finds they fail every conceivable test thrown at them, and so reject the claims a posteriori after careful consideration.

Supernatural claims fail to be science not because of some bias on the part of scientists, but because of shortcomings inherent in the individual supernatural claims themselves. Each one is examined and rejected separately. There is no conspiracy to exclude god.

Perhaps you would benefit from reading this TalkReason article: "Does Science Unfairly Rule Out Supernatural Processes."
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/unfair.cfm

person: Just so that the point is not missed, Darwinism can serve to justify, retrospectively, the Holocaust, or at very least provide enough of an excuse to get Hitler off the hook. (snippage) Death and embarassment for those who don't. Pitiful.

It seems to me that the natural/supernatural distinction is redundant and ambiguous in a defintion of scientific method. The important criteria are testability and consistency of results; once that's been stated adding "natural" doesn't add anything to the meaning even if a non-circular definition of "natural" vs. "supernatural" is also given.

If "natural" is defined as anything having consistent testable consequences, then it's meaning changes as the limits of technology change, which makes the concept of "natural" ambiguous.

Henry