Expelled!
No Intelligence Allowed
I loved this documentary. I had been looking forward to it, and then something came to my attention that made me fear it was just going to be creationist. Way above that!It was profound and thoughtful, and at the same time, it was a skillful piece that kept one's attention. As a documentary, it offered interviews with men who've lost their jobs for mentioning Intelligent Design, and with other men who think that evolution is the central fact of biology. By flipping between contemporary interviews and historical pieces, Stein kept your attention focused on the message, and his choice of clips had me laughing right along.Eventually, though, it got very sober. Only one country has tried Darwinism as a guiding national philosophy: Germany under Hitler, and the relationship was not a nice event. The final interview with Dawkins is priceless. I'd be furious if I were he, but he was not misrepresented. He just looks foolish.From outer space? Then who designed them, duh?If you think this film is too far-fetched to believe, read John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe's book, The Roots of Racism and Abortion. In fact, read it anyway. It's posted, and its discussion of eugenics reads like a handbook for understanding the movie. Stein's work is fast and a little flip; this book is the research, and if there's something you doubt in the movie, such as the quick reference to Planned Parenthood, check this resource. Is ID closet creationism?
Many ID proponents are creationist, but not all, not even all the famous ones. Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box is not, for example. And neither is John Davison, who has such interesting things to say about evolution. He did not figure in the movie, but his work went far enough outsite classical (or neo) Darwinism to cost him his job. He was not even religious at the time of his first publications and holds many opinions that religious people would reject. But the Darwinians can't stand him.The Darwinians don't like to have it said that they are all atheists. How about we make a fair exchange: Let the Darwinians acknowledge that their position provides favorable soil for atheism and that the proportion of atheists in their camp may be well above the national average; in exchange, the ID folks may acknowledge that the ID position provides favorable soil for religious faith and that the proportion of Christian believers in that camp may be well above the national average.Is Ye Hedge School committed to ID?
Design by aliens: a minor note
The universe is not eternal, and aliens, if they exist at all, which is doubtful, since we can't find them, have not had much more time than we've had to build clever things like living cells. The early stars were composed entirely of hydrogen and a little helium with a very minor amount of lithium. The next generation of stars got up to oxygen, but not to anything near uranium or even chromium, which is essential to life. These or the next generation stars had to run through their cycles and then explode in order to produce the elements that make such planets as Earth. Probably nothing much like Earth could have existed much more than 8 billion years ago. Oh, yeah. That's about when Earth began.Why should we expect to find aliens?
Good question.The answer is that, if other intelligent life exists at all, and if it is more advanced than we are, then its people must have found radio waves, since electro-magnetism is a basic property of the universe, not something limited to earth. Anyone using radio waves would be so readily visible to us that we would certainly notice them. If they were too far away to notice, which means in a distant galaxy, they would also be too far away to be sending us bacteria. If they were in our galaxy but invisible because of being directly opposite us across the violent center, you would have to theorize that they seeded life here only, and not in any more visible location between. It won't work. If it's easy: where is it? There does seem to be evidence (I can't remember what) that bacteria may come from elsewhere in the cosmos. Indeed, bacteria may be widespread in the universe. Whoever suggested this to Dawkins as a way out of his dilemma, however, is just without a clue.