Gotta love Ben Stein. He didn’t hold back on the all too common calls to deny the opposing views of someone they don’t agree with to be aired in a University setting. Always the same with this crowd:
Ben Stein described the brouhaha over his selection as commencement speaker at the University of Vermont as “laughable” on Tuesday called the whole episode “pathetic.”…
“I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists,” Stein said later in an e-mail. “I want all scientific inquiry to happen — not just what the ruling clique calls science.”
Stein’s comments came a day after UVM President Dan Fogel announced that Stein, whom Fogel had invited to address UVM’s commencement in May, would not be coming after all. Fogel said that his selection of Stein generated an intense protest, that he received hundreds of angry e-mails over the weekend, and that after he shared these “profound concerns” with Stein, Stein “immediately and most graciously declined our commencement invitation.”…
Stein called the university’s response to the furor “chicken sh**, and you can quote me on that.”
“I like Dr. Fogel,” Stein wrote, “and feel sorry he is caught in the meat grinder of political correctness. My heart goes out to him. He’s a great guy trying to do his best in difficult circumstances.”
Don’t you love the free exchange of ideas in a country run by liberals? Oh, wait a second. They didn’t let it happen when conservatives ran it either. You don’t agree with them, it’s time to get pies thrown at you, shouted down, or have the stage where your speaking bullrushed by idiots…..
But that isn’t censorship eh?
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Sorry, but I am not down with creationism or the assertion that
darwinism led to the Holocaust.
He wants to go before scientists and then wonders why they
don’t want to hear wildly unscientific claims. Just wow.
BTW, I’m not an atheist.
Don’t always agree with Ben… but there’s never a moment that he doesn’t give me a grin.
It’s simple. I may not agree with the guys stands, but disrespect is disrespect. Imagine if the students had shown the same disrespect to Ahmadinejad. Ben Stein is proposing an alternate view. If those students had been in Iran, many would have been rounded up and thrown in prison.. “What do you mean, Iran has gay people?” That’s a crime against the State.
Hard Right:
Are you down with listening to what someone has to say, and then disagreeing?
Scientists love to hear wildly unscientific claims about AGW.
The basis of science used to be listening to claims and trying to prove or disprove them.
BTW, who cares if you’re an atheist. Your mind is closed.
Poor fools just did themselves out of an entertaining talk. But sometimes sacrifice is necessary when you just have to control the speech and thought of others.
I doubt that, if he gave the speech, Ben would be in front of many scientists. And science isn’t at issue here: I read a peer reviewed article that said that commencement addresses have been found to be virtually lacking in scientific content.
Problem as I see it is that the commencement speaker’s job isn’t really one where you’re normally expected to debate the conventional wisdom. You can invite just about anyone to speak or debate in the interest of intellectual freedom (like Ahmadinejad at Columbia), but commencement speaker generally implies some endorsement by the university itself. Been a while since I was at university but I can think of lots of people that I think would have been fine to invite to speak, but that would have gotten an angry email (to the uni) from me if they’d wanted them to be commencement speaker. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.
As for being ‘chicken shit’, who was the one who decided to back out here? I’m guessing Stein decided he could make more hay out of the issue by acting like he was forced out than by actually taking the stage.
BTW Stein is not that smart – here he is touting Merrill Lynch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYX1AgEV0vo
My mind is closed to that which is scientifically proven to be BS.
Creationsim is absolutely, positively, one of those things.
Holistic healing is another one.
@Hard Right:
On the contrary, evolution would quickly fall away as unscientific if more scientists looked at it from a scientific standpoint instead of as a fact that needs no proving.
Darwin himself admitted that the biggest problem with his theory was the lack of “missing links” or transitional forms. He believed that excavation would soon prove his theory correct. However, since his day, All evolutionists have come up with are a few dubious specimens.
As for how the universe came to be without Creation, There is absolutely no scientific base for it.
Every theory requires some preexisting matter.
Creationism cannot be scientifically dis proven, It goes beyond science into the spiritual.
Evolution can, and has been, but those who have done the disproving are being ignored.
scientifically proven to be BS.
Creationsim is absolutely, positively, one of those things.
Science doesn’t really deal in proving stuff. It deals in disproving stuff. Creationism is not regarded as scientific because it’s set up to not be disprovable. For example, some young earth creationists (those who think the Earth really was created just 6000-odd years ago) will say that the light from seemingly distant stars was created ‘in flight’ to create the illusion of an older cosmos. Faced with that kind of argument, Science doesn’t so much answer as agree to a parting of the ways.
I knew the creationists would rear their deluded heads. Unlike
creationism, Evolution has mountains of solid scientific supporting evidence.
The Earth is NOT only 6000 years old and we did NOT run around
at the same time the dinosaurs did. These are facts and yet they
want to tell us otherwise. They have a right to their opinion, but
not to force it on others which is what they are trying to do.
I have seen fossils with Dinosaur and Human footprints in the same one. The Earth is most likely around 6,000 years old, but the flood made it look older.
Evolution does not have “mountains of solid scientific supporting evidence.” That’s only what the evolutionists want you to believe. If you were to take a look at real science from an untainted viewpoint, you would see that evolution is just a huge fraud used by atheists to escape the need of a Creator, and thus to escape any need to obey him. Anyone who believes in it is just buying into a Atheistic, Satanic lie.
Yes, you have a right to your opinion, but I also have the right to try to persuade you to believe mine.
Creationism is taking the Bible’s account of creation and fitting science into it. Intelligent Design is a system of formalizing the method we all use to determine if some object or action was caused by intelligence or not. Was she pushed, did she jump, or fall accidently? Is that an arrowhead or just a rock?
I know of two distinct but related attempts to do this:
Dembski: Something is probably intelligently designed if it is:
– contingent (wouldn’t happen naturally)
– complex
– specified (conforms to independent specification, like the shape of an arrowhead, letters, words, meaningful sentances, etc.)
The higher the complexity and the conformation to an independant spec, the higher the chance that it’s designed. Dembski calls this test “Specified Complexity” for short. This test attempts to measure information content.
Behe: If a complex mechanism requires many/all its parts to be useful, and if multiple crucial parts are useless for anything else, the mechanism was designed (e. g., a mousetrap). Behe calls this “Irreducible Complexity”.
There is nothing controversial about these methods (especially Dembski’s) when applied to things other than origins. Also, there is probably room for improvement — after all, these are first attempts — but I don’t see anything unscientific or irrational about either one.
ID is controversial because it has been applied (including by Dembski and Behe) to the question of design in nature. However, Dembski (and Behe also, I think) explicitly refused to link design in nature with God. ID is consistent with panspermia (aliens planted life on our planet). Anaxagoras (ca. 450 BC) developed a theory of the universe’s origin, constitution, and cause/effect mechanisms that was both devoid of religious elements and inclusive of intelligent design. ID compatible with evolution as well; just not Darwinism and his tree of life.
I’m not a fan of the Michael Moore tactics used in “Expelled”. Also, I have no interest in defending creationism. However, I agree with Stein’s message: I really have a problem with ID being disparaged and dismissed out of hand because it might disprove Darwinistic evolution and support the possibility of a creator. Unless you have an atheistic axe to grind, why not take ID seriously, try to develop and apply it, and see if it’s accurate and useful? Let the metaphysical chips fall where they may.
I paint creationists and anti-ID bigots with the same brush: They both bring a predetermined agenda to science. That’s bad science.
@shoebear:
Well, I believe the Bible first, before any man’s theory, and I believe it to be true. Science dos not in any case disagree with the Bible, it fits. The Bible isn’t a science textbook, but it’s 100% true.
Marbleblaster:
Oh, I agree completely, I believe the Bible is 100% true as well.
If you say that God created the earth in 7 literal 24-hour days (how did that work before He created time?) and that the earth is about 7000 years old, you are having faith not only in the Bible, but also in your interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. But this isn’t science.
Creation scientists have lots of interesting evidence to support a young earth, but the evidence is usually not vetted through peer review; or else the peers who review it aren’t really qualified. This isn’t really the fault of the creation scientists, because they are shut out of the mainstream academic process by close-minded Darwinists. Also, along with smart, well-qualified creation scientists, there are well-meaning but unqualified folks putting forth theories, as well as assorted snake-oil salesmen. These factors make creation science impossible to defend to mainstream scientists.
Look what happened in a much simpler situation — remember back in 1989 when Fleischmann and Pons said they’d figured out cold fusion and were so excited they skipped the peer-review process? When their work was discredited, cold fusion research pretty much died out because nobody wanted to be associated with a fraud. The snake oil and sloppy research is a lot more widespread with creation science, giving credibility to any Darwinist who, for ideological reasons, wants to discredit creationism.
Good science happens when researchers approach a topic with an open mind, are willing to investigate unexpected results, and then allow their qualified peers to scrutenize the work. My point above is that neither the Darwinsts or the creationists are doing this. Both take an “answers first, evidence later” approach to origins.
ID is great because, unlike creationism, it is very simple, and it’s also ideologically neutral (even though Darwinists, sensing that ID has the potential to upset their applecart, say otherwise). Because it’s simple, it should be possible to prove or disprove it. Also, if proven, it might have the potential to give creation scientists access to mainstream peer review and grant money.
Since God did indeed create the heavens and the earth, then all real truth is God’s truth. Because I have faith that the Bible is 100% true, I have confidence that honest science will eventually come up with an answer which agrees 100% with the Bible. I’m patient and don’t mind waiting, and I especially don’t want to upset the integrity of the scientific process by forcing an answer.
@shoebear:
I however believe that the Bible very clearly states the individual days- For example, in Genesis 1:5:
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
It says And the evening, and the morning- Clearly denoting a 24 hour period
Were the first- Giving a number to indicate the 6 days were equal lengths
day – The other two clarify that we’re talking about a real day here.
I believe the Bible literally- I take it at what it says. This isn’t an interpretation at all, It’s looking at God’s word at face value.
HardRight, Marbleblaster….Dr. Hugh Ross has written, as an OLD EARTH creationist, many books on the subject.
“Creation as Science ” poses a testable theory of origin. His website ,for the genuinely interested, is Reasons.org.
A further GREAT source is GodandScience.org by Richard Deem.
Any self respecting atheist who cannot expose himself to cross-examination from hostile sources needs to rethink what they claim they know.
@boonies:
I would prefer a more credible source:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0823ross_full.asp
This is not exactly a right/left issue, and though I suspect many ID proponents would probable skew right of center, LGF just took up this issue and the folks there were falling over themselves with glee at evil ol’ Ben Stein getting his comeuppance. I think this is a worldview issue as much as anything. The folks that line up against ID are a motley crew, but as a Christian the folks that make me the saddest are moderate Christians trying to maintain their intellectual standing in the academy who rush to distance themselves from an ideology that gets laughed at at the right parties.