The War on Science
Offline The link will open, in a new window, the first episode of a 2006 documentary on "intelligent design" made by the BBC.
There is a more ominous reason than it simply being false why this monstrous idea needs to be obliterated without mercy by anybody with two brain cells, and that is what kind of sociological consequences the act of teaching irrational concepts to school children is having. One of the things that separate open and informed societies from various alternative reality projects past and present is that it makes no claim to know, much less teach, any variety of "truth" that cannot be proven by the standard scientific method. It is bad enough to have that crap hammered in at home but it becomes a force of tyranny when propagated by the govermental authorities.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
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Ahem, the link failed. I'm not as good at this as I thought, apparently.
Try this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6tdCQMkKgA
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Really interesting. I love the documentaries the BBC does. I'll definitely be watching the rest of that. If anybody is interested in a book on the subject, check out The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. I'd post the link, but I'm not sure I should link to a shopping site here.
After the first 20 minutes or so I found myself madly trying to find disproof of irreducible complexity - that fucken flagellating whip Behe goes on about. Cheerfully, evolutionary processes are more than capable of manufacturing organic structures that apparently could not work with a part missing. Good show, thanks for posting.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Try these:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/03/clotted-rot-for.html
http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/zoolab/Lab-2b/Termite-Flagellates-Stained.htm - this may not be obvious. The neat point is that some of them are clearly TWO celled critters, one with flagella and one without. Is this the way bacteria with flagella evolved? By combing two different bacteria into one? Last I heard, could be.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html - "He writes that in the absence of “almost any” of its parts, the bacterial flagellum “does not work.” But guess what? A small group of proteins from the flagellum does work without the rest of the machine — it’s used by many bacteria as a device for injecting poisons into other cells. Although the function performed by this small part when working alone is different, it nonetheless can be favored by natural selection."
Briefly, that is the response. For every example of so-called irreducible complexity, there are examples of an incomplete "irreducible" system working in other species. For blood clotting, for eyes, for ears, for flagella.
I probably have more links in there somewhere - I really have to better organize my bookmarks some day.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.