From ENV:
As the news hammers home to us, young people are especially vulnerable to poisonous, Internet-mediated messages. That’s one reason Discovery Institute has teamed up with a gifted cinematographer who wanted to create a new video series, Science Uprising, that would be relevant to viewers in their thirties and younger. The series will launch on June 3, with new episodes to be released weekly through July 8.
An Edgier Style
The new series will have an edgier style than anything we have produced in the past. What does that mean? Take a look at the trailer…Science Uprising is premised on the idea that a majority of us share a skepticism about the claims of materialism — the claims that people are just “robots made of meat, with a really sophisticated onboard guidance system,” lacking souls, lacking free will or moral responsibility, having emerged from the ancient mud without purpose or guidance. And yet, however skeptical we may be, the media labor intensively to correct our skepticism. Popular science spokesmen like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson insist that people are anything but designed children of a loving, intelligent creator…
Each episode features a masked narrator. Why? Because much of the burden of resisting materialism falls to scientists and others in the universities who have been made to fear speaking out in favor of the design hypothesis.
Scientists and scholars who have spoken out, pulling the mask off materialist mythology, share the truth with viewers. From episode to episode, they include chemist James Tour, philosopher Jay Richards, neuroscientist Michael Egnor, biochemist Michael Behe, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, physicist Frank Tipler, and others.
Why do you read my comments and even comment on what you are not interested in then?
Is it safe to say that you are contradicting yourself, again?
Maybe thinking “what kind of stupidity is J-mac writing now?”
Being curious about the depths of your stupidity and lack of self-awareness is not the same as being interested in your opinions. But, since you cannot read for comprehension, I should not be surprised that you don’t understand the difference.
I agree, though it seems to me some people use the word “ quantum “ as some sort of magical conjuring word which dispenses with the need to explain how quantum things do what they do.
Thanks , I will look it over.
True. That’s why I often ask for the justification or the mechanism how QM is involved.
If quantum mechanics is at the very foundation of matter and life, do you think DNA is any different?
Hi everyone,
For what it’s worth, I thought the video was pretty slick.
I’ve grown leery of arguments purporting to demonstrate the astronomical improbability of abiogenesis, but I have to say the team of scientists assembled by the Discovery Institute is starting to look more professional, these days. Apparently, the Brazilian wing of the ID movement is injecting it with new vitality. Marcos Eberlin’s new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose had endorsements by three Nobel Prize winners. Evidently the guy knows how to fight. It wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see a North-South split in the scientific world on whether methodological naturalism should be a guiding principle in scientific research.
EricMH
Good point. For what it’s worth, what do people think of J. R. Lucas’s paper, Minds, Machines and Gödel? See also here
The first episode is up at Youtube. With a rather tendentious title:
Well, that was certainly a hatchet job.
Shame on those heartless materialists. They don’t even believe in love and justice.
Same old crap.
Thanks Keiths.
About time something like this was done. Sooo much more compelling than the usual dull preaching I hear on Sunday morning and the pontificating at UD.
Vincent,
For Lucas to be correct, it has to be possible for humans to identify true but unprovable statements in every sufficiently powerful and consistent axiomatic system, no matter how complex.
We can do it for relatively simple systems, but no one (including Lucas) has shown that humans can do it for every possible qualifying axiomatic system.
Without that demonstration, Lucas’s thesis is just a conjecture.
They briefly showed in the video the face of Dr. Caroline Crocker. She and I were at George Mason University in 2005 (GMU). There are two sides of the story as to how she got dismissed from there, but there is no doubt it was a hostile work environment for her.
The way the establishment treated her did something to strengthen my resolve to speak out against theories I think are dead wrong.
There were 3 PhD biologists who are creationists who graduated from GMU, but I guess having an ID-friendly faculty member was waay over the top.
The 3 PhD creationists biologists from GMU:
Timothy Standish
Gordon Wilson
Timothy Brophie
One creationist biology grad went on to get a Dr. of Education,
Charles Jackson
Sal,
Crocker wasn’t merely “ID-friendly”. She was an outright propagandist for ID.
I once saw a video of her in the classroom, and I grabbed screenshots of the slides she used. Alas, the image hosting site on which they were stored has since disappeared, but the slides had the tenor and quality of a Chick tract. I particularly remember Crocker’s efforts at character assassination, directed at Charles Darwin.
She has no one but herself to blame for her troubles.
I don’t ever recall her mentioning Charles beating a puppy, though.
I originally posted links to the slides at AtBC, but those are no longer working.
Fortunately, a blogger named ‘tinyfrog’ did an OP on Crocker and used my slides, so they’ve been preserved on his or her blog.
Here they are:
Slide #1:
Slide #2:
Slide #3:
Slide #4:
Slide #5:
Slide #6:
I commented at the time:
Really? Then I’m happy to oblige. Yay!
For reader’s who don’t know who Keiths is referring to when he says Slimy Sal, that’s me!
Sal:
And in case Sal’s reputation hasn’t preceded him, here is one of the reasons he acquired that moniker.
I had not realized that Crocker chose to quote Werner von Braun as an authority on teaching evolution.
ROFLMAO
Let’s be clear. Did she actually use those slides in a biology class at George Mason University? If so, it’s certainly adequate grounds for firing her. (I’m particularly offended by the Archaeopteryx slide.)
I wonder if Sal would like to defend the use of any of those slides. Or perhaps he’ll just ignore the whole thing, as it doesn’t fit his story.
Nope. I would have advised her not to present like that.
But on the other hand, hardly grounds for firing given the garbage and damage that evolutionary biology has heaped upon the scientific enterprise and human understanding in general. The effects are now becoming more apparent with the crusade against the NIH.
FWIW, her students loved her, and on traditional biology topics she was quite adept. She cobbled together some poor ID arguments, but now that more pro ID biology departments are emerging in Christian universities, hopefully she will be welcomed and equipped with better arguments such as those presented by James Tour and Marco Eberlin and “lesser” names like John Sanford and Joe Deweese.
Ah, you fall back on whataboutism. And fake whataboutism at that. Yes, that was very good grounds for firing.
What arguments does Joe Deweese present for creationism?
stcordova,
What do you think can be demonstrated beyond opinion to be false on her slides?
John:
Yes.
Sal:
Like these students, quoted by tiny frog?
And:
John:
Sal:
Her slide on Charles Darwin was right out of the Sal Cordova “Darwin beat a puppy” playbook.
What do you think?
John Harshman,
Two of the candidates for falsification are:
-her claims on birds
-and horses.
The ad hominem strategy to discredit Darwin is also interesting as micro evolution which we all agree on was not a trivial contribution to science.
Do you think that either or both of those can be demonstrated beyond opinion to be false?
John Harshman,
Yes, if you show contradictory evidence in the fossil record.
I would defer to the evolutionists here. This, for example is the reason I post stuff here. If they have an objection, then I consider whether to include it in my set of slides.
The better argument is origin of life, start with that. James Tour set the example. The next best argument is the Eukaryote/Prokaryote transition. There is no need to invoke Darwin. Speciation examples don’t solve the Eukaryote/Prokaryote divide.
I would have said NOT to discuss ID. Simply give an honest accounting of the mechanistic barriers. Tour laid out the model. He discussed pure mechanical and chemical considerations for the difficulty of forming certain functioning structures. There should be NO objection to that.
So to answer your question, even if I assumed all of what she said was true, it’s not the best line of argumentation in a science class.
Tour laid out the model approach to teaching problems in assuming no design and no intention. Just lay out the facts of what is expected of ordinary chemical processes.
I was asking if you had any knowledge of the subject. Are you completely ignorant of all this?
Science Uprising Episode 2 is available now:
Episode 1 has gotten less than 1,000 views per day so far. That’s got to be a disappointment to the Discovery Institute.
Disappointment.
Also episode 2 is lame.
I posted something of my negative reaction to Episode 2 here (even though I don’t mention episode 2 explicitly):
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/teleology-in-mindless-bibo-stable-cybernetic-machines-compartmentalizing-id-creation-arguments/
Episode 3 is now up at Youtube.
1) No need to be cynical. What’s the most views per day a video by keiths has ever ‘gotten’?
2) Episode 3 has over 12,000 views in under 2 days. Still think they are disappointed?
This is bad for so-called ‘materialists,’ either those self-labelled or those who are ideologically inclined to matter over mind.
Hmm … are there any ‘materialists’ here at TSZ? LoL.
Gregory,
Probably. I get the impression they were hoping for more.
How is it bad for materialists/physicalists?
Way better than episode 2. They could have dispensed with episode 2.
I doubt your impression matters to them at all. However, the fact is that Episode 3 is doing quite well so far (over 13,500 now). What #s did you think they were ‘hoping’ for that you seem disappointed with for 48 hours following release? It sounds like you had really high expectations, much higher apparently than you hold yourself accountable to. Noted that you didn’t answer the 1st question.
It’s bad because vilification is never a healthy solution. The DI is vilifying ‘materialists’ & ‘Darwinists’ with their crude IDist approach. More division at their hands, instead of mutuality or unity.
IDists are more respected than atheists and anti-theists still, of course. And that isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Almost 27,000 views in 5 days. Not too shabby, even for keiths’ ‘Christians don’t make anything positive’ standards.
C’mon, Gregory. I’ve never said that “Christians don’t make anything positive”.
These videos certainly don’t count as “positive”, however. Even Sal admitted that episode 2 was an embarrassment.
Look at you, rooting for the IDM all of a sudden. awww
Do you actually think the argument that DNA is like a code, therefore jeebus, has any merit at all?
There are a couple of conservative sites that have come out recently against evolution, and they may be linking to ID material.
In the past, Republican presidents have openly courted evangelists, and I wouldn’t be surprised if websites aren’t doing a bit of clickbaiting.