Intelligent design tools should be banished from public discourse. They bring nothing to the table.

Fristing for Jeebus!

BillO is proof that the "design" ain't always "intelligent".

BILL O'REILLY , like the rest of these phony rightwing zealot patriots is a disgusting piece of humanity. He is an ignorant individual who suffers from VERY LOW self-esteem.

poor Bildo he needs to feel the noodley appendage...

You have a right to an opinion, Republican dipshits, but not a right to having it matter. It's called peer review. If your idea is so great, have it stand up against peer review. Oh and when it doesn't, maybe discard it as crap, rather than whining and running off to create an alternate universe of bullshit Christofascist universities and pseudo-scientific experts that actually have no subject matter training.

Fuck you, and unlike Pete Stark, I'm not apologizing.

Intelligent Design is an effort to try to fill in some of those gaps. It might be totally wrong, but at least it's an effort to try to fill in some very obvious gaps.

So I.D. is like spackle or bondo?.

I wish Ben Stein would stick to Clear Eyes commercials. When he starts with politics, it makes my teeth ache.

Thing Fish @ 11:

Intelligent Design is an effort to try to fill in some of those gaps. It might be totally wrong, but at least it's an effort to try to fill in some very obvious gaps.

So I.D. is like spackle or bondo?.

Duct Tape

What a load of crap. Ugh!

Simple : The folks who say that God designed this stuff we call "the Universe" point to it as proof of "His" (of course) existence. The creation itself shows there is a perfect, loving God.

If one then confronts them with all the imperfection in nature and the fact that even the grasses struggle one against another, humanity becomes the scapegoat. "It was perfect before we disobeyed." You know the drill.

Therefore, the creation is not the reflection of the perfect creator, but the reflection of the imperfect us. The concrete proof of the Perfect God (the creation) is thus dependent on a belief in Paradise Lost. (Myth)

My father was a mason contractor, and would have sent that concrete back to the vendor.

Because he was intelligent.

The various "priesthoods" of the world have been babbling their bullshit for thousands of years, and "whosoever is deceived thereby IS NOT WISE", as the saying goes, and just WHO in their right mind with an IQ of 75 or more pays any attention to Wild Willie O'Liely in the first damn where?......Let alone the mentally challenged who go with him on his journeys into BARFLAND!

That's why they got churches on every block and television show on Sunday mornings. Yes, very much persecuted. ha! Baloney!!!!!

fwacbar @ 22:

Ben Stain is 'crossing over' to support Al Franken, or so I have read. If this proves to be right, and Al gets photoged with Ben the Idiot, then Franken is a stealth repuke.... And here I thought maybe, just maybe, I would vote for Al....

He is? Seriously????

Roy Zimmerman can give you a comic view of this. Please watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs

By who, what, when and where?

Do we want to see, do we want to know, even if seeing the truth and knowing what it means changes our comfortable context and puts us into a kind of hell, or seems to? Toward the middle of Sinister Barrier, the title phrase occurs in an almost throwaway sense, as Professor Beach tells Graham:

"The scale of electro-magnetic vibrations extends over sixty octaves, of which the human eye can see but one. Beyond that sinister barrier of our limitations, outside that poor, ineffective range of vision, bossing every man-jack of us from the cradle to the grave, invisibly preying on us as ruthlessly as any parasite, are our malicious, all-powerful lords and masters — the creatures who really own the Earth!"

Yet another God-of-the-gaps argument with a little argument-from-authority too boot.
"secular pinheads"? You mean that only secularist suffer from MICROCEPHALY?
Darwinism? Rather than Evolution?
Sheesh! Thats the best that you can do Ben Stein?
This reeks of "Republicanism"!

A non-issue with endless mental masturbation.

"War On Christmas" in 3...2...1...

Kevin @ 32:

You know, in order to call it a scientific "theory," it needs to have some sort of work to back it up. Otherwise, it's a "hypothesis." And if the "hypothesis" has nothing to do with anything remotely resembling science, it's not a "hypothesis." It's a "misfiled idea."

The theory of intelligent design cannot be currently tested, challenged or verified. Instead of "filling the holes" of evolutionary theory, as Dr. Stein claims, it aims to replace with unscientific blather an already tested and true scientific phrase: "we don't know"

I think the definition of "scientific" was recently changed by the legislature in Kansas. The new definition now supports "creationism or intelligent design".

If there is such a thing as "intelligent design", then why was someone as stupid as Bush appointed president? If you ask me, George W Bush is proof that there is no such thing as intelligent design.

Question Blog @ 30:

religion is evil!!

I second that.

I will teach "intelligent design" in my classes when the fundies let me preach marxist anthropology in their churches.

I wish Bill and Ben would deny gravity and float away. THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER REIGNS OVER ALL!

I love this -- just what I was thinking.

Thing Fish @ 11:

Intelligent Design is an effort to try to fill in some of those gaps. It might be totally wrong, but at least it's an effort to try to fill in some very obvious gaps.

So I.D. is like spackle or bondo?.

dothehop @ 15:

Thing Fish @ 11:

Intelligent Design is an effort to try to fill in some of those gaps. It might be totally wrong, but at least it's an effort to try to fill in some very obvious gaps.

So I.D. is like spackle or bondo?.

Duct Tape

Why not. It has a light side, dark side, and holds the universe together.

Then who is responsible for the fact that the Cleveland Browns have never won a superbowl. God or the family of apes they descended from.

As a Science Teacher, I'm looking forward to teaching Astrology and Alchemy along side Astronomy and Chemistry. They might be wrong, they might be right, but so what! Let's put "all cards on the achedemic table!"

I'm dumber for having watched that.

How come Stein kept mentioning the gaps in Darwinist theory but never gave a single example? I've heard people repeat that crap everywhere, "There are gaps in Darwinian theory!" Really? Name one. Seriously. What are these gaps in Darwinian theory?

And he does the same thing with all the people who are being "persecuted" for wanting to teach creationism. "There are many scientists we've interviewed - many - who have been expelled form their jobs..." Really? Name one. If you come up with anyone at all, I bet its someone who was told to stop proselytizing in their classroom and they refused.

I don't ask for much, but I think if you want to share the planet, you should contribute. Give me something I can use, not this warmed over "invisible sky fairies" crap.

And, honestly, how can they even let those words leave their lips? "Religious people are being persecuted by scientists." This from the people defending the creators of the iron maiden and the rack.

Childish.

This whole episode is barely watchable. First, Ben Stein may be smart but he is woefully ignorant of evolution. His statements are completely false in so many ways. Second, Billo states that the only folks believing in science are secular progressives. Has he talked to the fucking Pope lately? Lastly, no one can stop them from saying whatever they want but not in a science class moron, not in a science class. As the old lady said: its turtles all the way down baby, all the way down

Let me get this straight. The jesus-junkies are whining because their explanation for the existence of humans isn't being respected as a valid scientific theory?

Well duh.

"My imaginary friend, god, conjured us out of dust" is exactly as plausible a scientific theory as "Hilda the magic purple hippo pulled us out of her ass."

Christianity is when intellectually lazy people get exploited by power-hungry zealots. It must be kept out of the schools. It's a joke at best, a serious threat to civilization at worst.

There are times when I do hope there is a God then these clowns will get what they deserve.

Necadawg @ 53:

Then who is responsible for the fact that the Cleveland Browns have never won a superbowl. God or the family of apes they descended from.

Art Modell?

Sounds like Bill O'Reilly and Stein agree with Iran's Ahmadinejad that scientific method is not sufficient and that true knowledge comes from "illumination".

Thing Fish @ 67:

Sounds like Bill O'Reilly and Stein agree with Iran's Ahmadinejad that scientific method is not sufficient and that true knowledge comes from "illumination".

Its strange how much they have in common.

I'm not sure who annoys me more, the supercilious Stein or the stupid Billo. Both are proof that bad gene plus bad gene = bad gene.

Christianity is a philosophy based in persecution. It's the entire idea.

Did Christ come down here and have a tea party? Well, maybe yes, then he was...PERSECUTED. Persecuted worse than any human ever had been or will be.

Why? So we can be forgiven. For what? Original sin. But I didn't commit original sin. Doesn't matter, God has no choice but to PERSECUTE you for things Adam and Eve did. But Adam and Eve didn't really exist. Yes they did. No they didn't. Okay, not LITERALLY, but they're SYMBOLIC. Of what? Man's fall. From where? Purity. When were we ever "pure?" Well, never historically, it's a spiritual thing. Okay, so God wants to punish me for something that symbolic, fictional characters didn't really do? Is he gonna get on my ass for anything the shit Gandalf pulled? Very funny, but yes, you need to be forgiven for being born, but luckily God tortured himself to death for you, don't you feel loved by that? Not really...after seeing 'The Passion' I kind of wanted to puke. Can't take it, eh? No, I'm a sucker for a good crucifixion movie, but I just thought that scene where he's building a table with his mom was trite and pretentious.

Anyway...after all that...

Christ's followers were persecuted by the evil Roman Empire.

And then his followers took over the Roman Empire.

And then the Roman Empire fell because people with chronic persecution complexes don't know the first thing about governing a nation.

Christianity is a philosophy based in persecution. It’s the entire idea.

No one wants a war on christianity more than the christians.

Edwin @ 72:

I don't watch Bill O stuff. Just sayin'. He just irks me.

I'm here. The end. I don't really care if I was created, or if I crawled out of the primordial ooze. The only part that bugs me about this, is how it is BIG POLITICS, with an agenda. It should just be an interesting debate/conversation. (In the end, NO ONE has the answer anyway-- not that they can prove.) I'm just trying to put food on my family, or something like that.

If I believe in any higher power, that's a private issue for me alone.

Good point.

Stein is lying when he claims there is no scientific evidence for the beginning of life.

Many experiments have been conducted in which amino acids (the basic building blocks of proteins and cells) have been successfully produced by heating and oxidizing common chemical elements. The generation of amino acids by natural means is a scientific fact. Darwin's theory of evolution is completely consistent with this process.

Since when is Stein a scientist, anyway? He ought to stick to what he knows: one-dimensional acting and PR-whoring for Republicans.

"persecuted" -- this is more cult mind control bullshit. Every good cult leader makes sure his followers believe they are being persecuted. It makes it easier to control them, to feed them lies and tell them they only get the truth from the approved sources - in the case of the cult of conservatism that would be Rush, Savage, Coulter, FOX, and Sun Myung Moon's propaganda outlet which has successfully Moonized America as the conservative's messiah intended.

It's pretty simple, isn't it? They want to teach their Old Testament religion in science class. Just like they want christian prayer in public school and the 10 Commandments posted in courthouses and halls of government.

For good reason secularists (and scientists and teachers of science not to mention many, many reasonable religious folks) don't want some untestable belief system taught as science. To these narrow minded religious types this means they're being "persecuted". Yo, Billo and Ben Stein! Get the hell outta here with that jive. Believe whatever you want, start your own church of the Eternal Loofah for all I care, but your religion(s) are NOT science. End of story.

Did you see this bumper sticker: "Don't preach in my school and I won't think in your church"

Ben Stein has been right about everything else... the Iraq War, Bush economy, immigration... so why not Creationism?

Bill O'Reilly has never been wrong about anything...

Therefore, trillions of stars, planets and other worldly anomalies were birthed by a singular entity of either such gigantic proportion and/or intellect that only these two geniuses can fathom the true meaning of life as hand shaped by what surely is the oldest of all beings.

And to think that this grand creator picked a planet inhabited by the crassest of beings circling the puniest of stars in the ghetto district of a third rate galaxy.

We really are special.

Holy shit! This clip is the epitome of lies and propaganda.

O'Really?: In the unresolved problem segment tonight, how did life begin? Religious people believe a higher power created the universe; Right off the bat, O'Really? will divide everyone into us vs. them, and right off the bat, he's wrong. Not all religious people believe in a higher power. There are non-theistic, non-deistic religions. secular progressives say all kinds of thingsHeh, and here's the "them." Secular Progressives, Bill's propaganda at work. Not all progressive are secular; not all secular people are progressives., but god [smiles to indicate ridicule] is not in the equation. And some believe FUX News' favorite propaganda phrase -- some people believe/say those who subscribe to intelligent design, that is a deity created life Can't he get anything right? Intelligent Design theory does not necessarily posit a deity (at least in principle...I realize it's a cover for creationism) , are being persecuted in America. Joining us now from Washington, Ben Stein, who has put together a new documentary called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the film, set to open in the theaters this coming February. So, what's the issue in your mind?

Stein: Well, the issue isn't Darwinism, which was a brilliant theory, and a great, great relic of the age of Imperialism in the 19th Century. Lunacy. A relic of the age of Imperialism? Imperialism has nothing to do with it, and establishmentarians of the ruling class felt threatened by Darwinism. Basically said that mankind evolved from apes and monkeys Sheer and utter lie. And Stein has to know it. He's not that stupid. Evolution does not say we evolved from apes and monkeys. and from the cells and so forthAnd from the cells and so forth? He has no grasp of that which he is refuting, and that's the real problem! Those who argue against evolution do not understand it. So they feel persecuted when people try to educate them., and that's a brilliant proposition, Darwin was a brilliant guy, but it didn't say how life beganCorrect. And it DOESN'T CLAIM TO! Though evolutionary theory can lead to some interesting hypotheses about the beginning of life itself, it didn't say how the cell got to have hundreds of thousands of moving parts, each of which has to work perfectlyOh, yes it does!!! And Stein has to know that too!! He just doesn't buy it because he doesn't understand it!. It said maybe life was created by a lightning striking a mud puddle. That has never struck me as convincingAgain, there are some hypotheses about how the original ancestor first came to be. Scientists are continually working on that, and no one is being shut up about devising a working theory for it, and I thought there are a lot of gaps in Darwinism. Intelligent design is an effort to try to fill in some of those gaps.God did it is the oldest attempt to fill in every gap there has ever been in science. It might be totally wrong, but at least it's an effort to try to fill in some very obvious gaps. Science is always correcting itself and filling in its gaps. Intelligent design advocates have NO IDEA how science actually works. Science ALWAYS begins with I don't know, and ALWAYS ends with But I could be wrong. If you don't understand that, you don't understand science.

O'Really?: All right, but you know when you say that, particularly you, being in the show business communityMore us/them enemy creation, you have one foot in there, that Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, who we just saw, are gonna say that you're a primitive, that you're an intellectual deficient Scientifically deficient., that you have no right to intrude on the American secular culture by bringing up there may be a creatorNeither Hitchens nor Maher nor any progressive nor any scientist in America says such a thing. This is a deliberate lie.. And you say what?

Stein: I say there is a First Amendment. I am allowed to say anything I want, and Bill Maher has nothing to say about it. And Christopher Hitchens, an obviously brilliant man, has nothing to say about it. No shit. No one is trying to censor you, you liar. And, in fact, this whole problem, is about a violation of the First Amendment. There are many scientists we interviewed, many, who have been expelled from their jobs, who have had their websites shut down, who have been denied grants, who have been denied tenure, because they want to question the limits, the boundaries of Darwinism and the gaps in Darwinism, I'll be willing to listen, to see whether the politics among scientists have excluded some hypotheses unfairly, but I highly, highly doubt that anyone has been so punished for seeking to question the limits of a scientific theory. That's how science works! and they've been expelled, shut down, that's not how society's progress. Society's progress by asking questions, having freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry.They don't want free inquiry. Don't buy this. What propagandists like O'Really? and Stein do so well is project their own evils onto their opposition. We're not trying to shut anyone up. Bill Maher can say anything he wants. All these Darwinists, all these atheists Not all Darwinists are atheists. More propaganda to lump everyone in an us vs. them world. can say anything they want. We would just like to have freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech. And is this problem important? Is freedom of speech important? Is freedom of inquiry important?

O'Really?: Well, but it's interesting because the state of Kansas -- not a crazy liberal state -- has ordered its people, teachers, not to mention that there might be a creationistic aspect to the universeIn science class, ass hole! It's not scientific.. And you're right, I mean, the academics now have shut down. And I could never understand it. Why can't you just mention, in biology classIt has nothing to do with the study of biology, that's why!, or whatever class you want, that there are theologians who believe a higher power was responsible for the first life Hey, you want to have a comparative religion class in schools? Fine by me!!! But you don't want that! You only want your own version of religion to be taught, and to have your own views posited as 'the alternative' to science. You're a liar, Bill., because whenever I get these atheists on the Factor, and you probably know this, I said, Ok, well, how did it all start? Well, err, uhh, err, we really don't know yet. [Laughs to indicate ridicule] Yes, Bill. Science embraces the power of 'I Don't Know.' Always! Rather than just say God Did It, science says, we don't know, so we look for evidence to solve that puzzle. And THAT is how societies advance, you idiots!

Stein: Well the reason they're so angry about it and so defensive is because the theory has so many holes in it Nonsense! He's either deliberately lying, or he just doesn't understand the theory., and it's such a weak theory that they have to be defensive about it to fight off what are going to be some obvious attacks on it. This was a theory which was a brilliant theory in the middle of the 19th Century. It's the 21st Century. Oh, yeah. It's just stale with age. Like rotten food. That's the problem. Great thinking. There are a lot of questions being about it. Nobody had any idea the cell was so complex. Lie. We would just like to be able to ask the questions. Maybe we're wrong, maybe we're stupid, but we'd like to be able to ask the questions.

O'Really?: Ok, but do you think, though, that people who believe in creationism are being persecuted in America? Lunacy. There is no limit to their victim complex.

Stein: Oh, there's no doubt it, and we have lots and lots of evidence of it in the movie, and you know, Einstein worked within the framework of believing there was a god. Lie. Newton worked within the framework of believing there was a god. True. For gosh sakes, Darwin worked within the framework of believing there was a god. Lie. And yet, somehow, today, you're not allowed to believe it. We've gone from censorship of those who want to question Darwinism at its margins to "You're not allowed to believe in god?" More proof that people are not being censored for questioning, but for INSISTING THAT GOD BE A PART OF THE SCIENTIFIC EQUATIONS WITHOUT EVIDENCE FOR GOD. Why can't we have as much freedom as Darwin had?

O'Really?: I don't know. It's an excellent question. I've never been able to understand why the secular authorities in education, all right, basically persecute people who raise a very legitimate question, 'Hey, you guys haven't figured it out, you secular pinheads! Can't! You haven't figured it out! You've had a lot of time, so, perhaps, we just wanna let the kids know there are two opinions on this.' And they say science is arrogant? Science says, we haven't figured something out yet, and you say, so we have the answer! God. The end. That's not free inquiry. It's religious bullying. But no! You can't have the kids hear that! Separation of church and state [said with disdain and mockery]. I'll give you the last word, Mr. Stein.

Stein: Because there's so much fear out there in the secular community that their position is so precarious. We're not trying to shut them down. We just want to be allowed to talk.

O'Really?: Right.

Stein: And think.

O'Really?: You just want to have all cards put on the academic table. Lie. Lie. Lie. But, hey, if you really believe this, Bill, take Hitchens' challenge! If creationism must be taught in schools just to have all cards on the table, then ANY CHURCH WITH PUBLIC FUNDS UNDER FAITH BASED INITIATIVES MUST TEACH EVOLUTION AND ALL OTHER RELIGIONS! What? You don't like that?

Stein: Exactly.

Glinda @ 70:

The stupidity of this nonsense. You can believe in a higher being and still agree that the current science of evolution is on the right track. Being a believer myself as well as trained in the sciences, I consider evolution, after more than a century of further scientific discovery subject to intense scientific method, a fact.

However when I delved into the "theory" of Intelligent Design I nearly laughed myself to death. The scientific method has been thrown up into the air for a lot of "But what abouts". My biggest question of them is about DNA ... how do those idiots explain the findings from the study of human and various animal genomes? Do they think scientists make it all up?

The higher intelligence I believe in is, for me, only enhanced by evolution: what sheer brilliance that deity must be to set in motion what evolution has shown itself to be. Whatever silly god they believe in is diminished in my eyes by their unimaginative "theory". Animism is a more sophisticated religion than their idol worship.

DNA evidence is Gods cosmic test that a true believer must deny in order to go to heaven

I've never considered creationism and evolution to be mutually exclusive.
But subtlety and allegory don't carry much weight in these very fundamentalist, absolutist times. On either side.

Evolution and Creationism may not be mutually exclusive, but Creationism and the scientific method are mutually exclusive.

Tell me how to messure a God and then perhaps I'll change my mind.

Chris @ 46:

Intelligent design does not comment on who or what the designer was, just that it was intelligent. Sorry we can't say the same for BillO who doesn't even get that right. And oh yea, Evolution doesn't comment on the origins of life, just on the diversity of life. What your thinking about sir is Abiogenesis. Intelligent design sets up more questions then it answers. These people are stupid. Science isn't an area where free speech without evidence is allowed. Support your theory on its own, you can't rely on disproven evolution to prove your theory.

The problem is that most people don't know the difference between "theories" and "hypotheses"

Theory is an explanation of facts, and as such it is not open to subjectivity or untested conjectures. The theory of evolution does not claim that people come from monkeys, for example. What the theory of evolution does is explaining the FACT that organism adapt to their environment, and as such are dynamic and not static entities during time and space. This is the biodiversity we see on earth is due to adaptation of the fittest/most sucessful approaches. Therefore a magical being is not needed to create such biodiversity thank you very much.

Intelligent design on the other hand is not even a hypothesis, it should simply be classified as a conjecture and/or opinion. The reason why is because their basic tenet is that there are things which are just "too complex." Further, there is just no quantitative approach just subjective assumptions on such complexity.

Furthermore, religion has had a batting average of pretty much 0.0 regarding their explanation of facts. It is time to take religions, and esp. the judeo-christian traditions, for what they are: superstitions. As such, they have no place interfering with scientific thought. Science is not democratic, the universe does not give a shit whether you believe or not in gravity. You can yell out loud who you think that gravity is BS before you jump off the 10-story building, and guess what? You will make a nice splash against the curve, because the earth does not give a flying crap and it will make sure that its attraction on your sorry mass accelerates you with a predicted square product against its surface. And it will be the strong attraction forces between atomic elements that will give even less of a shit as they do not let your atoms pass through the concrete's atomic structure as you break every single internal organ in a magnificent exercise in stupidity.

It is time for these charlatans to just shut the f*ck up. They were wrong over 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 500 years ago, and they are still wrong. Seriously, why do people waste time on this shit....

Glinda @ 70:

The stupidity of this nonsense. You can believe in a higher being and still agree that the current science of evolution is on the right track. Being a believer myself as well as trained in the sciences, I consider evolution, after more than a century of further scientific discovery subject to intense scientific method, a fact.

However when I delved into the "theory" of Intelligent Design I nearly laughed myself to death. The scientific method has been thrown up into the air for a lot of "But what abouts". My biggest question of them is about DNA ... how do those idiots explain the findings from the study of human and various animal genomes? Do they think scientists make it all up?

The higher intelligence I believe in is, for me, only enhanced by evolution: what sheer brilliance that deity must be to set in motion what evolution has shown itself to be. Whatever silly god they believe in is diminished in my eyes by their unimaginative "theory". Animism is a more sophisticated religion than their idol worship.

Right. The way the whole argument is framed (God vs. evolution) is nonsense. Ken Miller, the molecular biologist whose expert testimony crushed the arguments of the intelligent design creationism advocates in the Dover case, is a theist.

The scientific term "evolution" has nothing to do with whether God exists or not. Evolution is simply defined as descent with modification, and is as scientifically controversial as gravity. Questioning the fact that life forms evolve is the equivalent of questioning whether or not the earth is flat. You can look in a mirror and see how you are at the same time similar and different than your parents to confirm that life forms evolve.

There is a distinction between the scientific fact of evolution and its mechanics, of which Darwin's theory of natural selection is only one. As far as the theory of evolution by natural selection, recent advances in genetics have provided an overwhelming amount of genetic evidence in support of what was previously deduced by other lines of scientific inquiry (e.g., fossil record, direct observation, etc.). And neither does the theory of natural selection have anything to do with the question of whether or not God exists.

Intelligent design is simply a Creationist end run. As the Dover judge put it, religion dressed up as science.

Bill, you're an idiot and a coward. Malmedy!! What an ass you are....do you have kids? What if they left home to have "fun" with a pedophile for years? Not going any further with that one.
Stein, you're delusional as any religious person is so your credibility is shot from hereon in.

What the hell is Ben Stein complaining about EXACTLY?

It seems to me that he wants one of two things, or worse both:

1. He wants to be listened to, he wants people to listen to Intelligent-Design believers. If this is what he wants, then there IS NO problem because he can do that anytime he wants; or

2. He wants to have intelligent design TOUGHT in publically funded schools. In THAT case, he wants to VIOLATE the basic Constitutional law that SEPARATES church and state, for the state collects taxes and pays for schools. So publically funded schools would fall under STATE jurisdiction, which means RELIGION cannot be tought, it must be separate.

This "intelligent design" is nothing but yet another attempt by these crazy demagogues to bring back religion into our children's upbringing.

LET THE FUCKING PARENTS DECIDE THAT!!!

Man, I would totally expect O'Rielly to be a complete ignoramus in this issue but Ben Stein is into LAW isn't he? I mean, as a person knowledgable of LAW, wouldn't or shouldn't he be aware of this basic separation of church and state that the Constitution guarantees?

See what happens when the Constitution is deemed to be useless in the minds of more and more people? See how no matter how advanced our society is, no matter how smart we all become, if we throw away our basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution that all of a sudden all these snakes and wolves will crawl out from under their rocks ready and willing to put the popular philosophies, mentalites and beliefs into PRACTICE? After all, every single mostrosity that has ever happened in world history be it Nazism, Communism, genocide, barbarism, have all STARTED as monstrous ideas?

Why do so many people take ideas to be completely useless today? The more we just shrug our shoulders and abandon our basic strengths as a nation, the more we'll turn into a backwater republic.

Ben Stein should be ignored for the idiot he is.

Intelligent Design = Not Science.

If you start including ID as a scientific field, you should also include astrology, tea leaf reading, and alchemy.

If your theory includes magic pixie dust and heavenly drawing boards, then you fail.

Design is found in nature...

None that is intelligent though....

Wag @ 100:

Ben Stein should be ignored for the idiot he is.

I still have no idea what a Jew is doing whoring for the Christian extremists.

I guess once a whore, always a whore. Eh Mr. Stein? He was Nixon's butt boy during Watergate, and Nixon was quite paranoid and antisemitic. I guess that Mr. Stein doesn't give a rat's ass as long as the money flows in.

can we, for a second, stop hating on ALL Christians? Just because all these bastards are "claiming" christianity, doesn't mean we are all like that! Give me a fuckin break guys. I feel persecuted by the fact that i'm lumped in with these people.

Dr. Who @ 105:

xoites defends Constitution @ 95:

The Theory of Evolution does not explain how life began so lets make something up off the tops of our heads and call it "science." If fact lets spend gobs of money to back up our story, build utterly absurd museums, spread rumors and lies, develop a persecution complex and maybe sell a few books.

ID does not necessarily claim how life began. What it does is assume that there are structures in nature that are so "complex" that they can not be created on their own. That is what blows any sort of scientific credibility that ID may claim to posses out of the water. They do not benchmark nor define what the complexity threshold is, or what complexity is for that matter. Their examples are silly at best, for example the eye. They claim that the eye is such a complex structure, that its irreducibly complex (whatever that mean) and as such it must have been designed by someone who knew what he/she was doing. Never mind that the fosil and biodiversity records show plenty of approaches and evolution in visual sensors among organisms.

ID is pretty much laughed out on most places around the world, the fact that some states are not only OK with this nonsense but demand it to be taught en par with science is what I find disgusting. We sent a bunch of guys to the moon and now the rednecks are taking over, yeeeehhaaaa indeed motherfuckers.

"Dumb and proud of it" is going to be the new motto for this country. Sad....

The whole argument from irreducible complexity comes from Darwin. Being the good scientist that he was, he described how his theory could be falsified (by say discovering an organ with consituent parts that could not have been assembled via natural selection) and used the eye as an example of an organ that, on its face, would appear to be irreducibly complex... and then went on to explain in detail why it wasn't.

The nut jobs at Faux Nooz (and the radical right in general) are really ratching up the "we are being persecuted" mantra lately. Must be tough be white, rich and Christian in this country.

Glinda @ 108:

So I have a question for you and the rest of C&L:

Do you think that Ben Stein really believes in Intelligent Design? Ben Stein, the lawyer, law professor, and Nixon's White House speechwriter? I'm absolutely convinced that Bill O is as sincere as any poorly educated Irish drunk can be.

But Stein? Isn't this just empty GOP bait for the crazy fundies?

I don't really know all that much about Ben Stein, but the more I hear from him the less impressed I am, and not just on this issue. I have no idea how sincere he is. I don't watch television anymore and could care less about the content. Television is a medium designed for idiots.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of smart people who are scientifically illiterate. The whole 9/11 debate proves that. Otherwise smart people who are literally baffled when it comes to understanding school-boy level fundamental scientific concepts.

hey Bill and Ben and the rest of you ID asshats...two words:Fossil Record.I know what you're gonna say already..."that was god just "practicing" until he got it right around 4000 years ago".OK...so what you're saying is it took god millions of years to set this clusterfuck into motion?
Please...If there really was a god he would have smote you both mightily years ago.

C'mon people. Billo = shtick, Stien = shtick. The shtick that catches an audience = nice paychecks. Pity the synaptic challenged that genuinely buy the act.

shtick = gimmick

Gravity doesn't exist, either, I suppose.

The thing you'll notice about the intelligent design crowd is that they're always claiming that they're being persecuted but never actually explain or defend ID as a theory. Ben Stein's critique of evolution is that it came out of imperialist Great Britain and that this is the 21st and not the 19th century.

Stein: [Intelligent Design] might be totally wrong but at least it's an effort to try and fill in some obvious gaps.

My what intellectual rigor.

The real reason scientists don't want to deal with ID is because, scientifically speaking, ID is blatantly retarded.

And not being able to buffalo this nonsense into a science class is not the same thing as having your free speech repressed.

There's the blind leading the blind. What a couple of empty blowhards.

The only debate on Darwin is if his Origin of the Species is the world's single greatest scientific work against Newton's Principia Mathematica and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis Papers.

I love O'Reilly mocking 'pinhead' scientists for not knowing how life started when his model is "God did it".

What a detailed explanation - and so versatile! It actually answers EVERY scientific question ever posed!

Problem solved....

Thing Fish @ 114:

Screw that. Any real design would've came with emergency shielding. Preferably some sort of transparent titanium. We're talking some sort of supreme being being the designer, right? I'd really expect more protection for the eyes. What we got seems to be just good enough for the job they do.

And frigging laser beams attached to our heads. Honestly, what does one have to do to get some frigging laser beams attached to our heads? Imagine that... titanium coated eyes and frigging laser beams, who would fuck with men? Nobody... we would be frigging invincible. That god is a puss no doubt, no friging laser beams no frigging way....

Frank @ 109:

Dr. Who @ 105:
The whole argument from irreducible complexity comes from Darwin. Being the good scientist that he was, he described how his theory could be falsified (by say discovering an organ with consituent parts that could not have been assembled via natural selection) and used the eye as an example of an organ that, on its face, would appear to be irreducibly complex... and then went on to explain in detail why it wasn't.

Irreducible Complexity does not falsify evolution.

The reality is: the conjectures of "Irreducible Complexity" and Intelligent Design both come from the same intellectual laziness. The conjecture comes from locating something in nature that seems to be so complex that the variables involved must be too many to be anything but "random". In the ID-iot's mind, the evolution of the eye was so "random" and so "very complex" it must have been established by the guiding hand of an invisible sky genie (who you may notice, is never Zeus, Odin or Allah).

Creationist Idiots like Ben Stein whine about how creationists are being unfairly mistreated in the scientific community. What incredible BULLSHIT! The reality is Creationism is treated with the exact same level of scrutiny and criticism that every other scientific notion is treated. Whereas scientific theory is based on the observation of empirical evidence and the application of logic, Creationism (Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity included) is based on that voluntary schizophrenia theists refer to as religious faith and wishing really, really hard to an invisible sky genie. Its not much of a comparison.

Also whereas Evolution keeps passing every examination of its evidence, creationism still can't provide evidence of either it's creator or its creator's willful manipulation in the creation of life. Instead, Creationism has to try and show evolution wrong and pretend its a valid default.

By the way, the Darwinists and Atheists own the "Expelled" message board over at the Internet Movie Database.

My handle there is TheXeroXone.

Dr. Who @ 128:

Frank @ 109:

The whole argument from irreducible complexity comes from Darwin. Being the good scientist that he was, he described how his theory could be falsified (by say discovering an organ with consituent parts that could not have been assembled via natural selection) and used the eye as an example of an organ that, on its face, would appear to be irreducibly complex... and then went on to explain in detail why it wasn't.

Interesting, I saw one of the ID asshats on TeeVee once using the eye as the primo example for the justification for ID. I guess they did not even bother with coming up with their own falsifications...

These sorts of old, worn-out examples of "irreducible complexity" are reserved for the bottom feeders in the movement. The arguments by the upper echelon of the ID movement have gotten more sophisticated.

The recent Dover trial for example centered around these sorts of arguments from irreducible complexity:

The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity"

Answering the Biochemical Argument from Design

Dogma w/o proof in the science classes of america. Let's drive the country over the cliff w/ these two charlatans at the wheel. Silly, stuborn, priviledged and desperate. What they speak for should cause the entire nation to shudder. They know they're wrong, and yet they still peddle this fringe fruitcake fallacy. Shame on them.

If they had just one peer reviewed article on their side, JUST ONE, you'd never hear the end of it. But of course w/ these types, the truth is political. This country's in a steep dive; come on everyone, PULL UP ON THE STICK!

Whoops, the above two links point to the same url. Here is the correct one:

The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity"

Ha ha. Third times a charm (sorry, a wee bit too much to drink tonight):

The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity"

What would a lecture of "intelligent [sic] design" look like?

Teacher: Ok, class, settle down, today we are going to discuss the "theory" of "intelligent design". The "theory" states that God, or some deity, made everything and is responsible for everything on life. Ok, class, that's it...time for recess.

Moose @ 127:

The only debate on Darwin is if his Origin of the Species is the world's single greatest scientific work against Newton's Principia Mathematica and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis Papers.

It is arguable if Principia Mathematica was an original work by Newton, as it came a couple of years after Leibniz published his theories on differential calculus. Newton's quest to marginalize and destroy Leibniz after he published Principia Mathematica point towards that direction. Arguably a great mind none the less, but Calculus is a co-discovery at best, or a theft at worst. And both Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis, itemque tangentibus, quae nec fractas nec irrationales quantitates moratur, et singulare pro ili calculi genus and the Yuktibhasa predate Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In fact the term calculus, and most of the notation comes from Leibniz, he however ignored most of the physics applications that were the focus of Newton's work....

Gauss was probably a better, and more influential mathematician. Pythagoras basically established mathematics and the concept of "proof" and other frameworks on which most science is based. Archimedes developed the foundations for Geometry, Algebra and Calculus, as he introduced the concept of infinitesimals, geometric series, limits, and vectors. All three scientist are arguably far more pivotal than Newton.

The point is that there have been plenty of incredible minds out there, the fact that these asshole ID proponents even have the gall of coming with their bullshit and try to pass it as science is an insult and a spit in the face of the great minds that have preceded us. We are standing on the shoulder of giants, and as such we should ignore the mental midgets that are the ID camp.

REich-wingers like “intelligent design” because that don't really have to think, deduce, analyze, study, memorize, reflect, or use any reasonable tool found in academia.

Evolution or Not. Time has passed on this old earth.

What is really interesting is when you put all the myths together, you can figure out hte foundation for relgiion and mythology.

It has been discovered, and it makes this fight, the whole idea completely laughable.

Bill is espousing beliefs based on beliefs based on beliefs based on interpretations based on visual experiences seen in the sky.

God's are Planets. Electrostatics are more important in the univeserve than first suspected.

www.thunderbolts.info