jewelisms

jewel August 23rd, 2007

I’ve much more to to elaborate about regarding the upcoming ID documentary that I posted about yesterday that I decided to just get it out of my system.

The press release alone has several ridiculous claims that I would like to address a bit more here.

“Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way,” says Stein.
“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it
may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been
greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science.
It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”

Ok, someone needs to teach Mr. Stein how science is done. Scientists do follow the evidence wherever it leads. It’s called the Scientific Method. Is it perfect? No, but it is the best method we have and it has worked very well for getting to how things really work. It’s especially good at getting rid of the cruft. In fact, it’s a very tough method because you have to have actual evidence to back up your claims. And, no matter what you are trying to get the scientific community to accept, the scientific community scrutinizes your claims. That’s routine.

And the evidence doesn’t lead toward a supernatural explanation. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection explains what we observe and it does it quite well. It is the most thoroughly tested scientific theory out there and the evidence just keeps piling on that it is correct. As new discoveries are made, the details of the theory do occasionally need to be altered a bit, but that’s normal, too. Science is fluid. And even if evolution was eventually proven wrong — it would not make ID correct by default. The ID proponents still have to make their case.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? ID’ists want to be scientists without actually having to do all of that pesky work. They would have us discard hundreds of years of scientific advances in favor of a more Dark Ages approach. They feel their God is being threatened and since God won’t stand up for himself, they feel someone should.

Personally, I don’t get why some people are so frightened of the concept of evolution. I suspect they cannot even define evolution. I know from my own experience in talking with ID supporters that they have a tendency to misrepresent the facts. I doubt most do it intentionally, but there are ID supporters that know better, and purposefully misrepresent evolution in order to try and discredit it.

Expelled uncovers that educators and scientists are being ridiculed,
denied tenure and even fired in some cases for the fact that they believe
there is evidence of “design” in nature, challenging the idea that life is
a result of random chance.

This is laughable. The scientists they mention in the press release as being ridiculed and denied tenure, etc were not ridiculed or denied tenure simply because they believed in ID. It’s tough to get tenure, no matter who you are. And if you’re not bringing in the grant money and you’re not publishing much, you won’t get tenure. To cry out religious discrimination is dishonest. Also, if you are teaching religion in the science class you should get fired, because you are not doing your job, which is to teach science.

They also fail to mention all those successful scientists out there that do believe in God that haven’t been denied tenure, etc. Probably because those scientists don’t help the ID cause. It doesn’t matter to ID supporters, though, because they want special treatment. More than that, they feel entitled to it. And when they don’t get it they whine loudly. And when that doesn’t work, they sue. And when that doesn’t work, they whine some more. It’s embarrassing.

On his journey, Stein meets other scientists such as astrobiologist
Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite
of his extraordinary record of achievement. Gonzalez made the mistake of
documenting the design he has observed in the universe.

Gonzalez was denied tenure. That much is true. However what the ID’ists are claiming as the reasons are not. Gonzalaz was denied tenure because he hasn’t published much since starting his job at Iowa State and he hasn’t brought in much grant money either – both of which disqualified him from tenure before you even get to his unscientific outlook.

The president of Iowa State University issued a statement regarding the denial on June 1st stating

he simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy — one of our strongest academic programs.

He goes on to say:

Because the issue of tenure is a personnel matter, I am not able to share the detailed rationale for the decision, although that has been provided to Dr. Gonzalez. But I can outline the areas of focus of my review where I gave special attention to his overall record of scientific accomplishment while an assistant professor at Iowa State, since that gives the best indication of future achievement. I specifically considered refereed publications, his level of success in attracting research funding and grants, the amount of telescope observing time he had been granted, the number of graduate students he had supervised, and most importantly, the overall evidence of future career promise in the field of astronomy.

Gonzalez just didn’t make the cut. Does that mean he will always be denied tenure? I don’t see why that would have to be the case. Bottom line is – if you want it, you have to work for it. Whining about it and threatening lawsuits doesn’t make your case.

Now back to the drivel from the press release:

…Caroline Crocker, a brilliant biology teacher at George Mason
University who was forced out of the university for briefly discussing
problems with Darwinian theory and for telling the students that some
scientists believe there is evidence of design in the universe.

Hey, she’s brilliant! ID supporters said so, so it must be true.. if she was teaching ID in a science class, I’d hope she would be fired. But she wasn’t fired. George Mason allowed her to finish out her contract and then chose not to renew her contract. Contract employees in any line of work often don’t get their contracts renewed, regardless of how good or bad of a job they do. However, in her case, she didn’t just mention ID in her biology class, she changed the definition of macroevolution in order to attempt to discredit it. In other words, she either lied or was incompetent.

From an article about her in the Washington Post:

She told the students there were two kinds of evolution: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution is easily seen in any microbiology lab. Grow bacteria in a petri dish; destroy half with penicillin; and allow the remainder to repopulate the dish. The new generation of bacteria, descendants of survivors, will better withstand the drug the next time. That’s because they are likely to have the chance mutations that allow some bacteria to defend themselves against penicillin. Over multiple cycles, increasingly resistant strains can become impervious to the drug, and the mutations can become standard issue throughout the bacterial population. A new, resistant strain of bacteria would have evolved. While such small changes are well established, Crocker said, they are quite different from macroevolution. No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory.

Now, I’m no biologist, but I can tell you that her statement regarding macroevolution is bullshit. Not the part where no one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory. That much is true. What’s bullshit is the fact that she said that at all. That statement is a blatant misrepresentation of what macroevolution is and her argument is easily refuted. Macroevolution takes a very long time to happen. And if she can’t even get that right, when there is so much easily found information out there and an amazing amount of research available, then she should probably seek a different line of work.

I could go on about other things she misrepresented in her classroom, but I’m already disgusted.

In short – yeah, I know, too late – “Expelled” seems like it will be nothing but a rehashing of untruths and previously refuted arguments that ID proponents hope to find a new, unsuspecting audience for. They seem to think that science should be done by wishful thinking. They are an embarrassment to the human race.

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