Greetings.

This movie will be successful because it attracts three totally different movie going groups that so far probably haven't been brought together in a theater.

- conspiracy theorists who need something new to ramble about since 9/11 and flourine water are getting old
- science junkies who can't help but watch this train wreck
- I FORCE JESUS DOWN UR THROATLE church types who will then start name dropping Ben Stein when talking about how a magician shat the universe out exactly how it is 6,000 years ago

I plan on hanging out in the lobby the first day so I can see arguments/possible slap fights that break out as these people leave the theater.

For many in the humanities, the issue is not about the scientific theory of Darwinism/Evolution it is how that theory has then been used to justify racism, forced sterilization, and even genocide. In fact the modern concept of racism evolved (pardon the pun) with the Scientific Revolution.

Bug fucking deal. Before Darwin, bigots justified their racism with some religious hogwash about the sons of Noah or the Jews being responsible for killing Christ or whatever. After Darwin, they justified it with half-understood, exaggerated science. I actually prefer the latter, because it can, in principle, be demonstrated to be misguided.

Also, as Poop Loops said, evolution is just what happens in reality. Scientists can't help it. It's their job to elucidate what's going on, not to put a spin on it. Would you prefer to close the lid on reality and go "la-la-la, I can't see what's going on" instead?

Ben Stein's a longtime Republican, as in former speechwriter for Nixon and served under Ford.

He's in with the Wedge crowd using his celebrity as a means of furthering the cause.

If you aren't familiar with the Wedge please see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document

He's in with the Wedge crowd using his celebrity as a means of furthering the cause.

If you aren't familiar with the Wedge please see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. Whoring himself for money as a favor to mutual friends is an equally credible possibility.

The idea that "scientists" are actually saying "I can't explain this so it must be God" is ridiculous. If you can't explain it - do more research. That's impossible to prove, but allows you to stop looking for the real reason.

And if by some chance you keep looking and discover that the reason really is God, and you can prove it, then you've justified 10,000 years of religion. Congratulations.

Most of these scientists would rather shock the world with an outstanding theory and make their millions

Sorry, tired time at work brain not working correctly.

Just saying that most of the scientists that I know would like to find some crazy idea in quantum physics that prove all reality is false, than to help Jimmy McPerson get better gas mileage. If that makes any sense. They'd rather do something that is neat than useful in layman's terms.

Keep in mind that this is hyperbole, and when you tone it down it makes more sense.

Sorry, tired time at work brain not working correctly.

Just saying that most of the scientists that I know would like to find some crazy idea in quantum physics that prove all reality is false, than to help Jimmy McPerson get better gas mileage. If that makes any sense. They'd rather do something that is neat than useful in layman's terms.

Keep in mind that this is hyperbole, and when you tone it down it makes more sense.

Scientists are trying to understand how the universe works. Engineers take those understandings and make something useful out of them.

:biblethum

It's nice to think that science is all ideal and perfect, but we all know that scientists are human. As such, they have their nut-riders, their imperfections, and their egos just like anyone else. They all the t3h r34l science, and they know what's best for the furtherment of their field.

A lot of scientists are not as objective as they should be, and I think that Olorin also makes a good point of saying that they facillitate each other too much. A lot of the scientists, in my few years that I've been living, have been very close-minded, more-so than some religious fanatics, and they are twice as egotistical. They very often reaffirm groupthink in their circles, and tend to have a want of spreading confusion and chaos, rather than explaining things. Most of these scientists would rather shock the world with an outstanding theory and make their millions, than explain why the hell diet coca-cola is causing the downfall of our nation.

They're not lab rats, they're people.

This is what I've seen. Salt, grain, etc.

Of course scientists are people. That's why we have a mechanism for weeding out bullshit and making sure new data and ideas keep flowing. Have some controversial hypothesis? Publish it in a smaller journal first or make damn sure your math is right or that your experiment and the procedures were done correctly. Others will follow soon, if only to disprove you. If you were right, they won't. That's how it works. Science is a system, not a person.

Of course scientists are people. That's why we have a mechanism for weeding out bullshit and making sure new data and ideas keep flowing. Have some controversial hypothesis? Publish it in a smaller journal first or make damn sure your math is right or that your experiment and the procedures were done correctly. Others will follow soon, if only to disprove you. If you were right, they won't. That's how it works. Science is a system, not a person.


That's my problem with Intelligent Design, right there. If you use 'God did it' then there is no reason to look further. By it's very nature this arguement is counter intuitive to the scientific process.

Maybe my history is fuzzy.... but didn't the Nazis say that God created the perfect Aryan man, whom He preserved in ice, who was sent to the Earth?

Wait, I must be making this up:


* Himmler's vision had varying gradations of abusrdity and pesudo science. For instance, he was an ardent believer (as were Hitler and Goring) in such expressions of mystical racism as the idea that the lost continent of Atlantis had been the original homeland of the Aryans, and that Aryans had not evolved from monkeys or apes like the rest of mankind but had descended to earth from the heavens where they had been preserved in ice from the beginning of time.

Himmler, in fact, in 1937 established a meteorological division in the Ahnenerbe (see pages 284-87) to "prove" his "cosmic-ice" theory, though publicly the purpose of the new division was announced as developing new techniques for long-range weather preidiction. Sympathetic to nature healing and equally ardent critic of traditionalism and "Christian" prejudices of establishment doctors, he could view human experimentation in oncentration
camps as a form of liberation from these constraints in the name of bold scientific nnovation. (Footnote for page 279, Robert Jay Lipton, "The Nazi Doctors")

And I seem to remember something called the Civil War. Now, my history is very fuzzy on these matters, but I remember many preachers saying that the Book of Genesis said that Africans were meant to be slaves to the White Man.

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/john_ashcroft.html


"With secession and the outbreak of the Civil War, Southern clergymen boldly proclaimed that the Confederacy had replaced the United States as God's chosen nation.". [Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 193f.]

Again, my memory may be fading, age may be upon me, but don't the KKK, the Aryan brotherhood, and every neo-nazi organization say that they believe in God and that God created white men and black men differently, e.g. Frontstorm and Creator Org and the Institute for Historical Review, etc.?

And if you indulge me further, didn't a minor religious figure named Martin Luther write a little book called "On the Jews and their Lies" in which he urged them to be burned and killed? And wasn't there a little known man who wrote a little known book called "Mein Kamph" where he praised Martin Luther for his cleverness in dealing with the Jews? I also forget if this man also spent his time collecting religious relics, researching occult, and praising the Catholic Church for its totality of power and the righteousness of god.

Wasn't there something that the Catholics did? Like the 1227 "Synod of Narbonne" which required Jews to wear an oval badge? And didn't they crowd them into ghettos, execute them, start the Inquisition on them, and routinely butcher them?

http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers3.htm

So, the little conclusion of this is that people who think it was 'science' and teaching evolution that lead to the Jews getting killed in the Holocaust really, really, really, really need to read what Hitler and his goons wrote at the time and see the history of prosecution of Jews prior to the Holocaust. I promise you, the Jews weren't getting burned alive by people shouting, "There is a simple grandeur in the view of life with its powers of growth, assimilation and reproduction, being originally breathed into matter under one or few forms, and that whilst this our planet has gone circling according to fixed laws, and land and water, in a cycle of change, have gone on replacing each other, that from so simple an origin, through the power of gradual selection of influential changes, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved."

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewcolumn.php?id=9

Just listen to the Evolutionary Logic behind the Thule Society:


The Thule society, was formed in 1910 by a German man named Dietrich Eckhart. It had many members including Germanys future facist leader Adolf Hitler, however its agenda for the world is just as sinister as that member. The word thule is greek, it means land (as in Ultima Thule or "Farthest Land") in ancient greece, thule was the name given to the northern most part of the known world near greenland and iceland (another name given was "Tile"). The thule society was responsible for sending expeditions all over the world between 1910-1945, in a effort to find evidence of a "aryan" race. They started basing their bizarre society on this race, which by 1918 had completed most of their research. What they believed in is extrodinary, some might say "kooky" or "crazy". They believed that somewhere near greenland and iceland, was the former nation of atlantis, home to the aryan race. After much research into ancient cultures of eygpt, greece, south american and asia, they came to one solid conclusion: They had found the resting place of the Aryan race.

The Aryan race they believed, were inhabitants from a distant star system called Alderbaran (which is 64 lightyears away). They were described as average human height, with blond hair and blue eyes, women wore their hair long and the tradition was for it not to be cut. It is said that when the aryans exercised "psychic" potential, they glowed white aura. They held a small star empire consisting of four systems or "realms (Reich)". The Four realms were: Capella, Potenkid(not sure on the spelling here), Earth/Sol, and Alderbaran. They called themselves "the Great White Brotherhood", and Earth was their third reich. Their leader or "queen" of alderbaran, was called Isais, she was described as fair and rather attractive. Other known persons/alderbarans included: Ischatar, the supposed leader of their medical branch, Wodin, a engineer/scientist, and Malok, the commander of their military presence on Earth.

Some time before the destruction of atlantis (no date is specified), they were engaged in a massive interstellar war with "The Darkness". They eventually lost Capella and Potenkid, and prepared for the defense of Sol. 4800 "battlecruisers" apparantly took part in earths defense, they were supposedly 1.5km in length each, and boasted a impressive array of weaponry, smaller saucer shaped craft also took part. However, they lost control of the system, and atlantis was destroyed. Those that survived, fled to ancient cultures in the middle east, eastern europe and africa. How did they get this information? This will be explained a little later on.

With that in mind, they somewhat warped this perspective. They maintained that the only superior race was aryan, and all others were contaminated by "darkness", this included everyone who did not possess blonde hair and blue eyes (it is unclear why they choose a brown eyed black haired man as their german dictator). This rather arrogant and deeply disturbing attitude, gave Hitler his ideas. Their agenda was simple, force the onto the world their idealogy, later however the agenda changed to purifying the earth of darkness, in preperation for the Great White Brotherhoods' second coming.

Why do people have a memory span of 12 seconds when it comes to history?

There was racism and crimes commited against those considered inferior before this (The Nazis were just a tad crazier on their beliefs)
Not really. Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran church and thus grandfather of Protestantism in general, wrote a little treatise called On the Jews and their Lies, advocatign an eight-step process of dealing with the Jews, including burning down their synagogues and houses, forbidding rabbis to teach, taking away Jews' rights to safe conduct on highways, taking their money, and driving them out of the country. Anti-semitism has a 'proud' old history.


notice how he used the term "Neo-Darwinian" as a de facto propaganda tool to make it seem like evolution is an old and outdated idea.
For those not familiar with the term, the Darwinian theory evolution refers to the theory of natural and sexual selection acting on natural variation to produce new species. The Neo-Darwinian synthesis is the theory (more modern by half a century and some change) combining the Darwinian theory of evolution with Mendelian particulate genetics. (An old, perceived problem with Darwin's theory was the rather silly idea of blending of traits, to which the two sexes provide a pretty obvious counterexample.)

At this point, it needs to be pointed out that a lot of the stuff about the Thule society has status of urban legend and is mostly talked about on tinfoil hat websites with little to no historical fact to back it up. Also, Hitler wasn't a member.

So, we have to pretend that there's a God, even though we have no evidence that it's true, because pretending that there's a God is what keeps us from butchering each other.

And we have to pretend that evolution didn't happen, because if we evolved then right and wrong cease to exist.

Naw.

At this point, it needs to be pointed out that a lot of the stuff about the Thule society has status of urban legend and is mostly talked about on tinfoil hat websites with little to no historical fact to back it up. Also, Hitler wasn't a member.

I should explain better. You are correct, but the occult ideas it was based off of influenced Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler greatly, and Hitler as well. (Discounting if you will his mad mix of mythology from every hemisphere randomly grabbed, and that he showed a predisposition towards Catholic superstition and occultism rather than other forms of mysticism present at that time.) The SS belts had "God is with Us" for God's sake. The same "Atlantean" myth and Aryan pre-days were also espoused by notables like Blavatsky and the Theosophical society.

The point being that they believed in the Aryan Superman that God had Created, not that life evolved from a single ancestor which migrated to different continents and was affected by genetic drift, random mutations, selection based upon environmental pressure, sexual selection based upon social order, etc. The Aryan Superman theory is not a part of that. My understanding of the social castes in India was also seen as a "God made us superior" mythology. So Ben Stein's point that it goes straight from Darwin, who freed slaves, to Hitler, is pure bullhooky.