[Centraal] Creationisme deel 2

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Op dinsdag 22 april 2008 22:16 schreef koningdavid het volgende:

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Mwah. Als wij op de maan vreemde materie tegenkomen met ogenschijnlijke symboliek en gestructureerde patronen, en er geen natuurlijke verklaring is, zou ik toch de conclusie trekken dat die materie 'ontwerp vertoond'. Ook al ken ik de ontwerper niet.

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Op dinsdag 22 april 2008 23:13 schreef koningdavid het volgende:

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Ik begrijp je punt.

Ik blijf echt bij dit standpunt:
Als wij op de maan een soort vreemd ruimteschip-achtig iets zouden vinden met bepaalde symboliek/tekens erop. Als we kunnen uitsluiten dat het werk van mensen geweest is en het geen gevolg is van natuurlijke processen dan is het m.i. rationeel te concluderen dat dit voorwerp ontworpen is, hoewel we de ontwerper niet kennen.

Mijn punt blijft: het is niet per se nodig de ontwerper te kennen om ontwerp te kunnen waarnemen.

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Op dinsdag 29 april 2008 17:05 schreef averty het volgende:

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Was ook een beetje retorisch maar voor de creationistische gedachtegang dat, zelfs als men evolutie voldoende verdacht weet te maken, er automatisch de conclusie kan worden getrokken dat die schepper dan wel de god van bijbehorende creationist moet zijn, bestaat geen enkele houvast. Zelfs dat het dan uberhaupt op basis van een supernatuurlijke oorsprong moet zijn heeft geen enkele steun vanuit iets dat we waarnemen.
Dus is hier nog nooit iets gepost dat creationisme promoot, alleen zaken die evolutie proberen verdacht te maken.

Dit is '[Centraal] anti-evolutie'.

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AMERICAN science is in trouble, and if you wonder why, just go to the movies. Popular culture is gradually turning against science, and Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled," is helping to push it along.

"Intelligent Design," the relabeled, repackaged form of American creationism, has always had a problem. It just can't seem to produce any evidence. To scientists, the reasons for this are obvious. To conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Intelligent Design is nothing more than a "phony theory." No data, no science, no experiments, just an attempt to sneak a narrow set of religious views into US classrooms.

Advocates of Intelligent Design needed a story to explain why the idea has been a nonstarter within the scientific community, and Ben Stein has given it to them. The story line is that Intelligent Design advocates are persecuted and suppressed. "Expelled" tells of this terrible campaign against free expression, and mocks the pretensions of the closed-minded scientific elite supposedly behind it.

There are many things wrong with this movie. One example: Viewers are told that Dr. Richard Sternberg lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution because he edited a paper favorable to Intelligent Design. Wrong.

Sternberg wasn't even employed by the Smithsonian (he had no job to lose), and had resigned as journal editor six months before the paper was published. In fact, the irony is that neither Steinberg nor any of the other people featured as martyrs in "Expelled" lost jobs as a result of their advocacy of Intelligent Design, while many others who supported evolution have. In 2007, Chris Comer, the director of science education for Texas schools, was fired for having done nothing more than forwarding an e-mail announcing a pro-evolution seminar.

The movie also uses interviews with avowed atheists like Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," to argue that scientific establishment is vehemently anti-God. Never mind that 40 percent of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science profess belief in a personal God. Stein, avoiding these 50,000 people, tells viewers that "Darwinists" don't allow scientists to even think of God.

Puzzled, the editors of Scientific American asked Mark Mathis, the film's co-producer, why he and Stein didn't interview such people, like Francis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project), Francisco Ayala, or myself. Mathis cited me by name, saying "Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily." In other words, showing a scientist who accepts both God and evolution would have confused their story line.

Despite these falsehoods, by far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells Stein that the Nazis were practicing "Darwinism," and that's that. Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us), the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, the ghettoes and murderous pogroms in Christian Europe centuries before Darwin's birth. No matter. It's all the fault of evolution.

Why is all this nonsense a threat to science? The reason is Stein's libelous conclusion that science is simply evil. In an April 21 interview on the Trinity Broadcast Network, Stein called the Nazi murder of children "horrifying beyond words." Indeed. But what led to such horrors? Stein explained: "that's where science in my opinion, this is just an opinion, that's where science leads you. Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place. Science leads you to killing people."

According to Stein, science leads you to "killing people." Not to cures and vaccines, not to a deeper understanding of nature, not to wonders like computers and cellphones, and certainly not to a better life. Nope. Science is murder.

"Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended.

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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

A spokeswoman for his Science Research Foundation (BAV) confirmed to Reuters that Oktar had been sentenced but said the judge was influenced by political and religious pressure groups.

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

Oktar, born in 1956, is the driving force behind a richly funded movement based in Turkey that champions creationism, the belief that God literally created the world in six days as told in the Bible and the Koran.

Istanbul-based Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has created waves in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islamic creationism to schools in several European countries.

TENSIONS HIGH

The court decision comes at a time when political tensions in officially secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey are high as the ruling AK Party faces a court case that seeks its closure for alleged Islamist activities, a claim the party denies.

Oktar's teachings echo those of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. He has publicly denounced Darwinism and Freemasonry in high-profile attacks.

Charles Darwin came up with the widely adopted evolutionary theory of natural selection in the 19th century.

Oktar's publishing house has published dozens of books that have been distributed in more than 150 countries and been translated into more than 50 languages. He has a wide following in the Muslim world.

But Turkish commentators say the group's books, numbering more than 200, are probably written by a pool of writers, a charge the author denies.

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Op dinsdag 13 mei 2008 09:24 schreef wijsneus het volgende:
Tsja, beetje dubbel natuurlijk. Wat heeft ie nou eigenlijk misdaan dan? Ik kan in het persbericht niet iets vinden wat in nederland strafbaar is, behalve een eerdere bijna veroordeling voor bedreiging.

Volgens mij is hij veroordeeld voor 'thoughtcrime', het hebben van gedachten die niet in overeenstemming zijn met de wensen van het regime.