NOVA’s most recent program is about the Intelligent Design debate over the last few years. They’ve put together an excellent companion website, and as of November 16th, you can watch the entire program online - I highly recommend it. NOVA always does a fantastic job on their programs and this is no exception.
My one criticism is that they neglected to mention the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s role in the Intelligent Design vs Science debate.
The Church is funded entirely by your purchases of FSM merchandise. Thank you for your support.
An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
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Anyone ever think that the story of the flood might have been from a valley that got flooded?
If the only people around to write the story were from that valley, it’d appear to them that the entire world had flooded. It’d also be easier to build a big boat for two of every animal in a valley and your immediate family than two of every species in the world?
Probably just breeding stock for the farm while I’m at it.
@Pluto–I love the “Objective” people’s idea that evolutionists are using dinosaurs to brainwash little kids. I’d say they got a head-start on us. Just look at “The Flintstones.” (BTW, I too love the guy petting the T-Rex. Just like a sweet little puppy dog. And notice the lack of sharp teeth. Another evolutionish plot, no doubt.)
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@storm petrel–good point. If your “world” consists of one valley, and you never leave it, then it would be easy to believe “the world” was flooded. It reminds me of the line from “Dogma” where Alan Rickman is talking to Bethany about saving the world: “Noah was drunk and look what he accomplished. I’m just asking you to go to New Jersey.” (paraphrased) Hmm…if Noah was a drunk, I wonder if he might’ve become a Pastafarian. ;-)
@storm petrel- Archaeologists think it was the formation of the black sea. There is evidence that there use to be woods in the bottom it suggesting it was once a valley below sea level and that over thousands of years the sea eroded its way to the valley, thus the black sea became as it is to day. Of course this must be wrong as the earth isn’t that old, only 6000 year at most, I bet the hidden valley of the dinosaurs is at the bottom some ware!
In a divine air pocket no doubt.
@storm petrel–well, the air pocket would explain why we don’t see them. I’m in Romania, which borders the Black Sea, and with the exception of a few hard-core, old-line communists, no dinosaurs. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the Loch Ness monster–no air bubble. Either that, or it just likes fucking with people.
DUH! I may learn how to operate one of these machines some day, after all. Where do things go when one hits one of those extra keys that clutter up the computer keyboard, and the screen winds up blank white?
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Well, that aside. Over on another line, I found this guy, or gal, “Rylore”. He, or she, makes “OBJECTIVE Ministries” look about half-way literate and intelligent. (Well, maybe not “half-way”, but some fraction by comparison, anyway.)
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@rmw - I do enjoy your reference to “old-line communists”. Out here in the Rocky Mountain West, we have a whole lot of “old-line funnymentalcases” - or “fundies” if you prefer - who give good parallel evidence of the “evolution” of the “dogmatist” among humans. Might this be a potential study? Something along the lines of, “The Equal Congruity and Efficacy of Using Das Kapital and the Bible in Creating Living Fossils Today”, perhaps? A Doctoral Dissertation for . . .AAARRRRAAG! I’ll leave that to you young students. I’ve read, and graded, enough, and too much already!
The “flood” myth is something of a universal in the Collective Unconscious. It is even found among the Austrailian Aboriginies. And our own Native Americans who have the story of the emergence into “new” world(s), through the sipapu, after a form of underwater “limbo”, also illustrate the wide-spread remembrance of a form of natural disaster that seriously affected human kind.
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With today’s knowledge of continental drift, tectonic plates, etc., etc., one might even suggest that human kind has been around a good deal longer than many might think. Which might make Alley Oop a bit more of a possibility than some would concede. (Though I doubt he, or anyone else in Moo, would be making a pet of Tyranosaurus Rex, even a baby one.)
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One might even want to make Shakespeare a kind of Honorary Pastafarian. After all, he did write: “There are more things twixt heaven and earth than all philosophy has ever dreamed of, O Horatio!”
Learning can be fun after all!
@Old Grouch–would the Rocky Mountain West be Colorado perhaps? And maybe Colorado Springs to be more specific? If so, I know all about the “fundementalcases”–I was born and raised in Colorado Springs, so I’m quite familiar with James Dobson and his ilk. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the scandal with Ted Haggard and the gigilo in Denver.
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And you know, I do see this grasping at totalitarianism with both fundies and “former” communists. This desire to bend others to their will, and control them.
Whatever happened to the law suit regarding the snake bite?
@PacificPam–it’s still probably in court. I’d be interested in seeing how it ends–does the hospital settle (since that’s the easiest thing to do), fight it, does the family drop the case…?
great show, enjoyed it very much. Isn’t about time someone sent us a hatemail soon?Are we being forgotten? the whole fundie thing would be much less fun if they started to accept us, which in fact would render them non-fundies, or am I mistaken?
Stupid people
I want to go to Africa and pet one of the dinos.
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the scary part is that in most of the bible belt states evolution is tolerated, but he kids are ’shown’ the truth and thus the ignorance continues. its hard to argue with someone whose answer to everything is ‘because god says its so’, they argue about logic and science but when it comes down to it that is the only ‘proof’ they have of their beliefs, and they refuse to even consider anything else because that would be against gods will. BTW i was told that I would be killed by god if I denied him, that was 20 years ago, and I am still waiting. I love ‘fundies’ they provide much entertainment.
You should all check out this new movie by Ben Stein… it’s called expelled… www.expelledthemovie.com
Yeah–I put it onto a disc when it ran in case they mentioned FSM…kinda bummed that they didn’t.
We’ll miss you on Thursday, Bobby! Gonna be back for Christmas?
Stewart?
Great NOVA video once again. I have even tried to start the debate on facebook’s government + religion = disaster group. And yes it was satisfying to see that the ‘fundies’ were basically pasting over ‘creationism’ with ‘intelligent design’ and it was poetic justice that evolution observed an intermediate ‘cdesign proponentsists’. simply priceless! keep up the great work NOVA.
http://utm.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208192963
@rmw - No. I’m about 60 miles North up the road, out in Aurora. Not quite 50 years ago, I was stuck in the Springs for a couple of years, as it was the District HQ for the job at the time. Things were bad enough back then, let alone now with Dobsonism fouling up the place.
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I go back to the days of Harvey Springer, out in Englewood, and the guy old Walter Winchell used to call Gerald L. KKK Smith - pre-Phelps Kansas “star”, back then - and lived for years just a few blocks up and over from Goff, and the “Soldiers of the Cross” mini-militia outfit - the one that finally managed to attract the attention of Alcohol,Tobacco, & Firearms with a cache of sub-machine guns at its “training camp” up by Evergreen - in Denver. One of the old “Flat Earth Society” (Assembly of God)Preachers and text writers was married to my Mother’s girlhood chum; and I got more than my fair share of “Revivalism” every time he showed up in town. So, I must admit, my view of the Je$u$ Bu$ine$$ is rather skewed, to say the least.
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Ah! Yes! Haggard. Did you follow up on his insistence that he be given more - for tuition, etc., while he “studies to be a counsellor” - after he managed to hook them for over $140,000 to “retire” from the Pastorate? That was hilarious! As was Dobson’s pronouncement about 100% heterosexuality after 2 WEEKS of “counselling”. I shrunk heads for some 45+ years myself; and that was certainly a “miracle”, if ever funnymentalism produced one!
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If you have time, you might want to take a look at - the http:// stuff you’ll have to provide yourself, since this machine doesn’t do hyperlinks - where some other ramblings are gathered. Email to “dickenslaw@myway.com” should get a reply, if I can get them to take the password, that is.
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What’s a good old Colorado boy doing in Romania? Take care there. I’m being - rather literally - dragged off, to lunch.
Holy Crap! This paragraph from the laughable dino-expedition is horrible!
“Not forgetting our greater Mission as Christians, we also stopped at villages along the way to spread the Good News. We relied on Po’s expertise in witnessing to animists (which, he informed us, are still shockingly prevalent in some remote areas of China) and had much success in bringing the light of Christ to that dark land. This tried Stubbingwicke’s patience, as he made a point of letting us know every time we stopped the Land Rovers to go into a village with our Bibles. It was now quite clear that Stubbingwicke was stricken with a stubborn case of the mental disease of Atheism and that he might prove a hinderance to our research. Nevertheless, we witnessed to many natives unfamiliar with Jesus, as well as some whose only contact had been with Catholic Missionaries soft on Evolutionism. After setting them straight, we continued on our journey.”
So now creationists have labeled not only homosexuality as a ‘mental disease’ but also atheism! So atheists are mentally ill! I can only assume that me, as an agnostic is merely going insane! It also strikes me as strange that such a statement seems crazy to me - who is merely just a crazy person.
Guess this site doesn’t like website addresses any more than the Rocky Mountain News does. Wiped out the reference to, “reflections in a jaundiced eye . info”, that should be there. (I;ll try it in quotes, and see if it passes, no spaces, of course; but I’ll “cheat” there too.
The thought of scientists coming forward to try to give credence to ID theory makes me ill. As a scientist and bio-chemist it offends me to no end. There is no legitimate science behind the theory that conjectures with evolution, not matter how they try to mince words and dress it up. The only thing that is worse is that these people are teaching science at Universities. If you can’t use reason to look at the science presented you should not be allowed to teach it.