“Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus” is a new documentary on the Kansas and Dover, Pa., evolution trials. Filmmaker Randy Olson, a former University of Kansas student and marine biologist, said part of his intention was to explore how ID proponents successfully sold their ideas to the public.
One shrewd move: They hired a public relations firm. Scientists and environmentalists aren’t so media-savvy, he noted. They “don’t understand the fact that we live in a society where the facts alone are not sufficient,” he told the Lawrence Journal-World. “Science absolutely requires two elements — you do the science and then you communicate it. Science really neglects the communications side.”
He’s right about that — scientists have not done a good job of defending evolution theory in language that the lay public can understand.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Rage on Open thread 11/22
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/22
- Chas on Open thread 11/22
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Boxlock20 on Open thread 11/22
- satatom on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
26 Comments
Nor has I.D. for that matter, I still ask, “What is your proof?”. All I get is, “read the Bible” or “Look at the eye”. They might as well be explaining the stop sign on the corner as being proof of God.I can fly like super man, I said it so it must be true. “No I am not going to leap over a tall building just to prove to you I can fly! Moron!”
In defense of my fellow scientists I would point out a couple of facts. We DO try to communicate our findings but in this time of growing illiteracy it is very difficult to get the points across. It is made tremendously more difficult by the fact that the media does not employ scientifically literate reporters and writers.
Much more important that the creationism issue are the issues that effect the here and now – global climate change for example. While those are carefully examined in such publications as Science and Nature their coverage in the mainstream media is woefully inadequate.
Ben,At least part of the problem is that over the past century, scientific knowledge has progressed at such a rate that it’s difficult for people not involved in science to maintain context with it all. Between evolution, recombinant DNA, superstring theory, dynamical systems analysis, cosmology, etc., it’s hard to keep up. It’s so much easier to attribute it all to the old-man-in-the-sky theory.Better reporting would help a little bit, but the problem just keeps growing!
Randy: Once again, thank you, thank you, for your crusade against the horrors of Intelligent Design. If it weren’t for people like you, children might actually be challenged to think for themselves rather than parrot the godless Darwin’s 200 year old theory. (Yes Darwin was an atheist)
Outlander – if it were disclosed that the inventer of a wonder drug were an atheist would you refuse to use the drug? I certainly hope so since you sure wouldn’t want your life saved by a godless medication!
Darwin was NOT an atheist. Who sold you that line of bunkum?
Darwin’s father was an Anglican priest. I believe if memory serves that Charles too studied for the priesthood.
But then Intelligent Design is a bunch of hooey too, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if its backers aren’t interested in real facts.
Religion is big bucks. That’s a part of the reason for meddling with science. They feel they’ll lose customers.
I don’t have a problem with Intelligent design without the silliness of religion. In science, I see an intelligent design, something which religion lacks.
The two are not compatible.
Okay, I did some fact checking on Darwin’s life. His father was not a clergyman–I was wrong about that–he was a doctor.
But Charles DID study theology and apparently graduated in that field.
He also remarked when he saw new species of common animals that “an unbeliever might have thought two different Gods created them” indicating that he WASN’T an unbeliever.
Evolution will be 150 years old in 2009. The _Origin of the Species_ was published in 1859. Actually he had the theory developed years before 1859. Darwin was hesitent to publish for fear of how his devoutly religious wife, Emma, would take the implications of his work.
I wonder if Outlander has any evidence to support his claim that Darwin was an atheist? 200 years ago he wasn’t even born yet! (Maybe that makes him an atheist!) I wonder why they buried an atheist in Westminster Abbey?
Evolved intelligence? There’s a good one. How do you go from inert matter to conscious mind?
Evol experts say things like “DNA just IS.” Where is the science? Can’t you explain a little something for us, please?
Information stored in DNA is language, for instance, a “book of life” for one of us, how-to manuals to make, run and repair one of us from conception to old age.
Language only forms in a conscious mind. Except DNA, the evols say. It just IS, you know.
How long do they get away with it? The complex functional information contained in living things, the software that runs our hardware, has been the big gray elephant standing in Darwin’s parlor for 150 years. When will his disciples answer perfectly good scientific questions and quit calling us religious fanatics for asking?
What is hooey?And why does it ALWAYS come in bunches?
Ian – are you a follower of the Jewish Carpenter? Why do you refuse to answer that simple question?
Ian is the poster child for no intelligent creator existing.
God loves him and negroes though.
Why is it just because science doesn’t have all the answers to the origins of the universe, one must assume there is some supreme being who sat up on a cloud and designed it all according to his own specific plan?It reminds me of when I was in the 5th grade and we would ask the nuns a question they couldn’t answer, they would tell us “it’s a supernatural mystery that we will all understand when we get to heaven”. Just a pat answer for whatever knowledge they lacked.
Oops, Tracy,
We’ve decided that Ian is MEIDUNG or SHUNNED.
Don’t read him, don’t respond to him.
He no longer exists on this weblog.
Actually it’s pretty slick. Religious fantasy captured what science exposed. That fact that a scienctific processes was producing an intelligent design though its evolutionary process but leaving an explanation for that phenomenon unanswered offered religion an opportunity to fill-in their silliness into that scientifically created void, thus laying claim to it. Even though the silliness or ridiculousness of religion is not even closely related to science. Hocus-pocus had found a home.
The crisis:
The religious crackpots were experiencing an ever increasing amount of ridicule as science progressed, especially from young people, for having been drawing conclusions about life’s meanings using the moldy old bazaar reasoning process which had been used to arrive at those conclusions by ancient peoples. It was either going to collapse under its own weight of childishness unless shored-up by something which as least gave the impression of an intelligent progression of reasonable facts and a whole lot less magic. So, it scanned over science to see what it could salvage.
And, low and behold science was producing an unanswered result.
With intelligent design in one hand, and a shaky-wagging finger lectured with the other hand, the salesman of religion offered a scientific explanation for their grumpy old man with a newfound zeal and a bag full of proof.
And a Kansas BOE was ready for a hay-ride.
Sorry Proud, I haven’t had time the last couple of weeks to keep up on the never ending drama in this soap opera here at WE BLOG.There’s a couple of other’s that need to be ‘listed’ too. I think they keep changing their post names to try to keep a foot in the door here. They are so dumb, all you need is to remember the hateful platitudes they recycle and you know who they are. Ian is at least open about being bigoted and racist. Those bloggers who own an angry, vengeful God need to slap him up side the head with him.
Science cannot explain how or why gravity works. So, it must be Intelligent Pushing? Or, maybe it just doesn’t really exist?
Was Newton an atheist? Probably…
Ray – it’s not intelligent Pushing it’s intelligent FALLING.
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2
Check it out.
Good one, Ray! In reality, Newton did believe in God. He thought the intervention of God was necessary to keep the planets in orbit. Even Newton, brilliant as he was, turned out to be wrong.
As for Darwin: “In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.”
The universe is evolving into something. That process is well established. The who, why, and what of that process in unknowable. Wishful or fearful thinking or determination is not an answer. It seems safe to conclude that something reasoned is happening by observable results, which demonstrate organization rather than chaotic nonsense { with the obvious exception of present company }.
That aside: No doubt the universe is continuing to unfold as it should, despite whatever speculation to the contrary or any reasons being offered.
Hopping for the best can be called faith, as some find that more settling, but that needs to fall short of throwing someone into a volcano.
The hard part seems to be waiting for the arrival of an answer.
Bush seems to think his crusade will speed things along.
That needs to stop.
Please, let’s stop all this speculation regarding the religion or lack thereof of various scientists. It has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of their discoveries!Science neither confirms nor denies the existence of a metaphysical presence. It only addresses that which is observable and testable. Anybody that uses it to infer a particular metaphysic, or lack of one is no scientist!
Point taken. But not by the KBOE which needs to be argued into the ground. They’ve made Kansas into a laughingstock.
The best argument to separate ID from religion is by taking it away from religion, which is now claiming they own it.
That’s exactly right, Jed. I get really sick of these clowns who yell “Atheist!” at scientists, like it has any relevance to their fields. Richard Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, but he is also a distinguished biologist.