Re: Expelled...not bad....anyone?

On Apr 20, 4:19=A0pm, Tyler Trafford <ttrafford+use...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Ken McElhaney wrote:
> > Gee guys...if you admit you don't know...And yet the theories they
> > propose (such as the combination of the necessary elements forming on
> > the back of a crystal...I'm not making this up) make "Intelligent
> > Design" look pretty darn sane.
>
> <quote>
> Stein asked Ruse how life originated. Ruse's immediate impulse (as mine
> would have been) was to launch into an honest effort to explain a
> difficult scientific idea. He began by saying that he doesn't know how
> life originated, and nor does anybody else.

He should've stopped there, he would've looked a lot better...

> At this point in his
> interview, Ruse probably had no notion that his interlocuter had a
> completely different agenda to promote, with no hint of sincerity to
> balance his own.

I guess Ben Stein has that honest face, one you can trust...

> Ruse patiently explained that the origin of life
> (nothing to do with the Darwinian theory itself but the necessary
> precursor of Darwinian evolution) is an interesting and unsolved
> mystery, one that scientists are actively working on.

I don't know if I would use the word "patient", he seemed a bit
befuddled that Stein would actually press him for at least one theory.

> By way of example,
> Ruse could have chosen any of a number of current theories. He chose
> just one (it would have taken too long to explain them all) purely as an
> illustration of the kind of properties such a theory must have.

And you know his intentions...how?

> He
> happened to choose the theory proposed by the Scottish chemist Graham
> Cairns-Smith, that organic life was preceded by a strange and intriguing
> world of replicating patterns on the surfaces of crystals in inorganic
> clays.

So he chose a bad one, is that it?

> At no time did Ruse say he believed the Cairns-Smith theory, only
> that it was the KIND of theory that scientists are actively examining,
> as a CANDIDATE for the origin of evolution.

That's reaching for a techincality as Ruse did promote the theory as
valid at first, though he did never state he "believed" it.

> Stein just loved it. Mud!
> MUD! The sarcasm in his grating, nasal voice was palpable. Maybe this
> was when Ruse realised that he had been had.

Stein had the same reaction I would've had, he laughed a bit then
tried to press him to explain more about the theory when Ruse
retreated from it.

Ken