Win Ben Stein's Smoke and Mirrors: Part 6

nobody@vox.com(dox^2) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:34:08 -0600

Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 22)

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Win Ben Stein's Smoke and Mirrors: Part 5

nobody@vox.com(dox^2) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:51:16 -0600

Looks like one of the interviews in the movie Expelled was made with a person who has made anti-semitic comments in the past. But don't worry -- you should just look past that in the argument they are making against Darwinism.

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Win Ben Stein's Smoke and Mirrors: Part 4

nobody@vox.com(dox^2) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:13:21 -0600

Part of the premise of the movie Expelled is this thought of linking evolution and the Nazi Holocaust. PZ Myers had an outstanding post on this today. Here is an excerpt:

Darwin's real contribution, the one that had everyone smacking themselves in the forehead and wondering why they didn't think of it first, was the realization that the natural environment does the killing — that natural selection shapes heredity. The idea of culling populations is not only so easy that a hate-mongering cretin can think of it, but that weather, bacteria, viruses, parasites, predators, etc. have been doing it for eons, with no intelligence required, and that mindless microorganisms have been far greater agents of hereditary change than the worst the Nazis ever accomplished; does Charles Darwin also get the blame for that? Darwin realized that the environment has consequences and can shape the generation-by-generation passage of hereditary traits in populations, and that examination of the natural world reveals that it has been doing exactly that. He realized that ubiquitous forces that are so simple we take them for granted have been quietly and slowly sculpting our heredity since the beginning of life on earth.

When clueless creationists argue that Darwin led to Hitler, or worse, throw away buckets of money making elaborate propaganda films arguing such nonsense, it's worse than inane. It's as if they have completely missed the point of the idea they are damning.

Myers hits the nail straight on the head -- they have completely missed the point.

The argument of Hitler and the Holocaust is a deflection of the true merits of the theory of natural selection and evolution. It does not argue against the biological theory and mechanisms of evolution; it only serves to demean Darwinism somehow associating it with one of the greatest human tragedies in some sort of twisted religious perversion.

If this is all they have to show up "big science" -- excuse me while I upregulate my humor pathways. Here comes the chuckle...

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