Ben Stein's Expelled the movie

[Blue Mage]

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

Coming out February, Stein's documentary is about academic suppression of intelligent design.

I think it's great to have possibly someone encourage that people look at ID ideas in a reasonable way, without being coupled in with religious dogma.

[Beekeeper]

That looks interesting, Blue Mage!

[Tom]

Why don't they just admit that it is Creationism under a new name and let it go ... ?

[Beekeeper]

Do you think that's what it is Tom? I thought it might be more complex than that. In that case, not so interesting but my mother-in-law will love it! :lol:

[CFTraveler]

My only problem with ID vs. evolution is that ID is religion, not science. When preachers start teaching science right along creationism, then I'll be ok with the idea of teaching intelligent design along with science. But then we'll be back in the middle ages, even though I'm sure some people would like to see those back. I agree Richard Dawkins comes from a very ignorant paradigm (his kind are smart and we're either stupid or deluded (and by we I mean people who believe in God) but my problem is that Richard Dawkins is portrayed as the representative example of evolutionists, which is completely incorrect. So the situation is more complicated than it seems.

Besides that (*phew- the rant felt good*) The movie seems very funny and promises to be interesting.

[Tom]

The idea is that everything is so perfect and wonderful and precisely the way it had to be to support life, and it couldn't have happened that way by accident ... there had to be someone to make it so. It isn't even that I disagree as that I recognize it as another spin on the Book of Genesis.

[Rhone]

I agree with Tom and CFTraveler.

Creationists failed to defeat the teaching of Evolution in public schools (in the U.S.--I apologize for not being more internationally knowledgable on this subject), since the latter is quite clearly and obviously scientifically sound and the former is quite clearly and obviously a matter of religious belief. Rather than accepting that science belongs in public schools and religion does not and moving on with their lives, a group of creationists have come up with the more sneaky strategy of trying to make creationism sound scientific and then arguing that it must be taught. That strategy is called Intelligent Design.

Don't get me wrong--I myself have, long before ever hearing of ID, been of the opinion that there is nothing inherently incompatible about evolution and believing in God or whatever other higher power you might want to believe in. Believing that your favorite higher power has, in some way, guided evolution seems fairly sensible. But, at this time (and probably for some time to come), the existence or lack of existence of a higher power is not empirically testable; therefore it is not for science (and public schools) to tell people anything about whether or not God exists.

Just for fun, I'll add that (while ID is not far from my own belief), the fundamental assumption of ID is quite flawed. The assumption is that the world is so perfect and complex that it couldn't have happened by accident, and thus must have had an intelligent designer. However, the inherent assumption is that God/Designer is also perfect and complex (you'd have to be very complex yourself to have designed something perfect and complex, right?). Now, based on the fundamental assumption of ID, God itself had to have been designed by something else! And that something else also would have to have been designed by something else! :shock: :o The basic assumption pushed by Intelligent Design proponents logically would require us to believe in an infinite series of Gods/Designers. Not only is the premise not scientific, but the natural result of the premise is not what ID people want us to believe anyway.

[Beekeeper]

Just for fun, I'll add that (while ID is not far from my own belief), the fundamental assumption of ID is quite flawed. The assumption is that the world is so perfect and complex that it couldn't have happened by accident, and thus must have had an intelligent designer. However, the inherent assumption is that God/Designer is also perfect and complex (you'd have to be very complex yourself to have designed something perfect and complex, right?). Now, based on the fundamental assumption of ID, God itself had to have been designed by something else! And that something else also would have to have been designed by something else! The basic assumption pushed by Intelligent Design proponents logically would require us to believe in an infinite series of Gods/Designers. Not only is the premise not scientific, but the natural result of the premise is not what ID people want us to believe anyway.

Robert Monroe's adventures in his second book pretty much suggested there was a creator above our creator. In fact, these ideas are very old and were rejected as heresies a long time ago so we know they're not going to cut it with the majority of Christian groups.

I'm with you, I see evolution as part of intelligent design but the whole thing isn't as contentious in Australia. That's not to say we don't have fundamentalists groups handing out pamphlets on how archeologists fake their findings and how carbon dating doesn't work, we do.

In my opinion, even if you believe in intelligent design, it doesn't mean you can necessarily second guess the nature or motives of the creating entity.

[Korpo]

A lot of the Universe is built on rules that are not overly complex. The complex evolves out of the simple. Questions that arise to me are:

* Where do the rules come from?
* Are the rules applying all the time?

If you stop believing that the physical reality is everything a lot of the paradoxes ease a bit. Not everything has to be observable on this plane, it might just be we lack the extra dimensions of perceptions to actually see what's going on. Not everything loops back unto itself anymore.

We assigned all kinds of traits on the Creator - omnipotence and omniscience, transcendence come to mind. Infinity is not a jump of mind here then...?

Oliver

[Rhone]

We assigned all kinds of traits on the Creator - omnipotence and omniscience, transcendence come to mind. Infinity is not a jump of mind here then...?
Hey Oliver,

I'm not sure if your infinity comment is directed at my criticism of ID's basic assumption or not. If it is, I will say that I do believe the multiverse stretches out infinitely, and that there are quite possibly infinite parallel universes. I'm also quite open to the idea that time stretches back (and will continue) infinitely; it's a bit more difficult to imagine it having a discrete beginning and end, for me anyway.

But I'm personally not quite so keen on the idea that there is an infinite series of Gods/Designers, all existing purely because none could exist without having been intelligently designed by the previous one. Our god created by another god, who was created by another god, who was created by another god, ad infinitum? It's a little easier for me to imagine, that even if there are different layers of divinity (and I do think of the personified gods of polytheistic religions existing as sort of "faces" of a greater divinity), that ultimately there is something that exists without having been "designed" by something else.

I don't mean to put down anyone who might believe the above scenario (though I haven't actually seen anyone profess such a belief). My point was that ID's basic assumption logically leads to a conclusion that is different from the conclusion ID people are trying to bully schools into teaching.