1. Comment #72125 by JemyM on September 20, 2007 at 11:52 am

If Lee Strobel is critical he should read the history of the bible.

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2. Comment #72135 by discipline on September 20, 2007 at 12:11 pm

A bit repetetive at first but picks up steam later on and presents some sound refutations of this slick, frightening movie from the notorious Discovery Institute.

Why is it that many Christian apologists claim to once have been atheists? (Francis Collins also comes to mind.) Might it be that it is an effective but dishonest rhetorical trick?

I'm reminded of the sorry case of Bjorn Lomborg, the Norwegian professor of statistics, who claimed to once be an environmentalist, but then "saw the light" -- through impartial inquiry, of course -- and published a error-filled polemic against environmentalism.

Perhaps I should start trying this technique as well: "I was once a young earth creationist, but now I believe..."

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3. Comment #72157 by alexmzk on September 20, 2007 at 12:46 pm

my personal favourite part is Strobel's anecdote about him smashing the toy train against the floor in an effort to find out how it worked. such an elegant analogy for his approach to science.

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4. Comment #72180 by pewkatchoo on September 20, 2007 at 1:47 pm

alexmzk
That is precisely the same thing that I thought. God must have put the thoughts in our heads at the same time.

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5. Comment #72196 by thirdchimpanzee on September 20, 2007 at 2:08 pm

This video is a great example of why science and religion don't mix, and ironically that Strobel was correct in his assertions at the beginning of the video that an understanding of science does lead to atheism - at least an agnosticism that renders god(s) irrelevant.

Giving Strobel the benefit of the doubt here that he was genuinely trying to make a personal discovery - the numerous errors he makes are consistently in one direction: that the Universe is finely balanced environment to a precision that strongly implies a supernatural origin.

The problem, as pointed out in the comments, is that the Universe is far from balanced, and we're scrambling on almost every level to rethink our understanding of the forces at work, with multiple theories in contention regarding the nature of matter, energy and forces connecting them. Therefore this "ultra-fine balance" is not coming from the data, but from the observers prejudice. Its similar to earlier biases that wanted to see all planetary orbits as circle to fit a notion of celestial perfection. Its this kind of intrinsic bias that makes me question to what extent Francis Collins can really be trusted as a scientist.

Which brings me to one very big criticism of this critique - the oft repeated phrase that "science cannot make statements about the supernatural". This is a variation of "non-overlapping magesteria" and is plain wrong. What the scientific approach does say is that the supernatural is irrelevant. There can simply be no connection between the natural and supernatural. Take a concept like an "afterlife" - if this is an entirely supernatural concept, with no impact upon the natural world, then what happens is simply unknowable. There can, by definition, be no way of finding out and any speculation on it would be a complete and utter waste of the only life you do know anything about. If, however, you believe in ghosts, or resurrection, reincarnation etc., then the "afterlife" has violated the separation of natural and supernatural, and science can make statements about the concept. So the "supernatural" is either totally irrelevant to our natural existence, or its not "super"-natural after all.

It seems to me that this critique was made for an American audience still unprepared to accept what a younger Strobel clearly and correctly comprehended - scientific understanding is antithetical to theism in any form. Final note - his conversion moment was not based on any new evidence (I'm utterly discounting his time wasting on the "finely balanced universe"), but on a psychological transformation in his wife. Funny how that goes isn't it - the conversions come about through psychology, the deconversions through reality. "The God Delusion" at work.

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6. Comment #72212 by Quine on September 20, 2007 at 2:30 pm

Michael Behe continues to try to infect others with his personal case of Irrefutable Perplexity, the condition that prevents him from using his brain to develop any actual knowledge.

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7. Comment #72270 by Arcturus on September 20, 2007 at 3:39 pm

He set out to find about science by talking to ID-ers? Now that's funny ...

Oh, but when you hear them, you'd rather prefer the ladies from "the view".

The argument that they are making is on the same lines with: "Newton was wrong about gravity, so there is no gravity".

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8. Comment #72277 by tieInterceptor on September 20, 2007 at 4:06 pm

amazing videos, I loved it

favourites material oooh yes.

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9. Comment #72278 by Crazymalc on September 20, 2007 at 4:10 pm

Things I like about evolution:
1. It's simple to understand.

Given the primordial soup, it's easy to see how decent with modification leads to complex life.

Things I don't like about cosmology:
1. It raises a lot of "what the?" type answers, like:


"There is no moment of time in the big bang."

I just plain old don't get or understand statements like that.

My gap in scientific understanding starts from the Big Bang and ends with the primordial soup. (A tad overstated obviously, but you get the idea).

So, my question is: Can anyone point me to some good books that do a good job of explaining that gap and phrases like "there is no moment of time in the big bang".

Thank you kindly.

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10. Comment #72286 by robert s on September 20, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Have you read A Brief History of Time? Maybe a little old now, but it gives you a feel for the issues involved.

Of course, no-one's understanding goes right back to the Big Bang itself. In addition to the time dilation effect you referred to, beyond a certain point (eg, when the whole universe is much smaller than the nucleus of an atom) conditions are so extreme that current physical models make no sense.

A theory of quantum gravity would push that horizon back, but given our current understanding, it does seem likely that the Big Bang is an insuperable obstacle to observation. It is neither possible for us to make observations of the cause of the Big Bang, nor for that cause to make observations or changes to our universe.

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11. Comment #72294 by Inferno on September 20, 2007 at 5:03 pm

Interesting that Mr Well's acknowledges that individual species (the blades of grass analogy) can separate into different species. He just doesn't accept that all species themselves had the same origin. So he does believe in evolution! The only difference is that he would have many starting points/many simple organisms, rather than the traiditional single common ancestor.

I'm looking forward to watching Part 2 to see how they leap from the idea for a creator to the very specific nature of the chrisitian god (and also why the first cause argument does not apply to their god).

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12. Comment #72296 by BigJohn on September 20, 2007 at 5:23 pm

335? Is that all you could find?

Do these guys really believe this crap or do they have an agenda?

At least, I now understand The Origin of Feces.

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13. Comment #72300 by Yorker on September 20, 2007 at 5:31 pm

9. Comment #72278 by Crazymalc

The Big Bang created time, therefore "moments of time" can only happen after the Bang. "Before" did not exist.

Edit (forgot you asked)
Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne and many others have written about the BB in depth in an easily understood way. Books too numerous to mention.

But the gist of it is that the BB brought space and time into being, the common lay person's mistake is to think of a pre-existing void for space to expand into.

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14. Comment #72308 by Yorker on September 20, 2007 at 5:50 pm

"Life adapts to it's environment. The Universe does not adapt in response to life."

This is Victor Stenger's argument and one that seems more likely to me than any other, it renders the "fine-tuning" argument unnecessary and has the virtue of being simple. Although some physicists don't like it, they never give a convincing argument why it can't be so, perhaps jealousy they never thought of such a simple and beautiful answer is the reason. I've seen scientific jealousy first-hand, it's actually a good thing - makes everyone double check and re-verify.

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15. Comment #72346 by USA_Limey on September 20, 2007 at 7:26 pm

I found the arguments of the Discovery Institute compelling, therefore I am going to become a Muslim.

That's ok, isn't it Discovery Institute?

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16. Comment #72361 by Quine on September 20, 2007 at 8:17 pm

If you haven't seen it, catch this BBC program on the ID Dover Trial (on youtube in 5 pieces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAnIoXPLMdo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajcKn-qO3g8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsrmlST5sP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTAC3h6gbKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSgr-Jladk

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17. Comment #72382 by miaka on September 20, 2007 at 11:06 pm

The "critical analysis" provided in this video is so poorly put together, it almost makes a case for the other side. I don't think anyone in this video, be it Lee Strobel, or the person providing the commentary, knows beans about physics. For example, the commentator repeatedly insists that the universe is infinite. Last time I checked, the verdict was still out on that one. In fact, a few years ago, there was an article in Notices of the Amer. Math. Soc. discussing the possibility a spherically shaped (hence bounded) spatial universe. He also seems to suggest that there's no meaningful notion of a beginning with regard to the universe. Certainly some physicists, such as Stephen Hawking, have proposed boundary-less models of the universe, but I'm not aware that this issue has been settled to any degree.

But what really irked me was the commentator's suggestion that random chance was a viable explanation for the values taken on by physical constants. If that's the case, then I guess we should just give up on looking for a unified field theory to explain the relative values of these constants.

The religious arguments in this video are certainly refutable, but some of the arguments are a little subtle and require more than glib dismissal. There was a moment when the commentator just completely misunderstood the point someone was trying to make. The person in the video was essentially asking: how are we so good at discovering remote properties of the universe since there's presumably no evolutionary benefit to this skill? It's not that dumb a question, though I'm sure Prof Dawkins or any other evolutionary biologist would have a good answer. My only point here is that the commentator didn't even recognize the question being posed, and this was a source of embarrassment for me.

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18. Comment #72384 by Quine on September 20, 2007 at 11:29 pm

how are we so good at discovering remote properties of the universe since there's presumably no evolutionary benefit to this skill?

I find this argument very weak. It is possible that the evolutionary pressure to larger brain for language and tool making came mainly from competition with each other. In that case, the capabilities that arise would be applicable to a wide range of problem solving. So called "rocket science" came from a long history of weapons technology in which populations with more advanced weapons passed on more of the same.

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19. Comment #72412 by _J_ on September 21, 2007 at 2:35 am

Well, I saw the show subtitle:

A journalist investigates scientific evidence that points towards God

...and assumed that the programme would be slightly shorter than its own intro sequence. So spotting the video length in the bottom corner was a nasty surprise. Sounds from the other comments like there's no need to watch it, though.

Quine - I agree, that's a very weak argument. 'How come we're so good at playing the piano if there's no evolutionary benefit? At skiing? At making excruciating insurance adverts?' Doesn't take too much imagination to see how this can work.

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20. Comment #72417 by steve99 on September 21, 2007 at 2:49 am

"Life adapts to it's environment. The Universe does not adapt in response to life."

This is Victor Stenger's argument and one that seems more likely to me than any other, it renders the "fine-tuning" argument unnecessary and has the virtue of being simple. Although some physicists don't like it, they never give a convincing argument why it can't be so, perhaps jealousy they never thought of such a simple and beautiful answer is the reason.

No, they don't like it because they think it is simplistic and wrong. They don't like it because their model of the constants of the universe differs from Stenger's, and Stenger is in a small minority in this area.

For a universe to contain life, it must at least be capable of containing complexity. For the universe to contain complexity it must be something other than spacetime accelerating incredibly fast or a black hole. The view of most physicists as I understand it is that these are the states of the universe for the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of the physical constants (especially the cosmological constant).

I am not claiming you are doing this, but I do sometimes sense an unhealthy attitude, which is to decide the answer you want to get (no fine tuning needed) and then pick the scientist who agrees (Stenger).


Other Comments by steve99

21. Comment #72419 by steve99 on September 21, 2007 at 2:52 am

I find this argument very weak. It is possible that the evolutionary pressure to larger brain for language and tool making came mainly from competition with each other.

It is indeed very week. Another possibility which I rather like is that larger brain size became subject to sexual selection... like the peacock's tail.

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22. Comment #72421 by Goldy on September 21, 2007 at 3:00 am

I read that larger brain is a development of bipedalism. Of course, must be something to make larger brains more useful, but it's cooler standing up and that means the brain doesn't fry as bad....ergo, more scope for growth :-)

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23. Comment #72428 by Ole on September 21, 2007 at 3:32 am

discipline said (quote):

I'm reminded of the sorry case of Bjorn Lomborg, the Norwegian professor of statistics

He is Danish ;-)

http://www.lomborg.com/about/

Ole (from Norway)

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24. Comment #72452 by Yeti on September 21, 2007 at 6:26 am

Crazymalc,

I'd recommend:

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson - very interesting book which gives a good introduction to cosmology and much else.

"Big Bang" by Simon Singh. Singh's books are always highly readable and this one is no exception.

Have fun learning!

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25. Comment #72505 by tieInterceptor on September 21, 2007 at 10:23 am

Have fun learning!

on the same topic of learning, I recommend this interesting videos I found on youtube that explain basic science for the ones like me, who need a memory refreshing.

History of the Universe Made Easy
God and DNA made Easy
The Story of the Earth Made Easy

credit goes to: potholer54

here my youtube playlist with all of them,

www.youtube.com/my_playlists/scienceMadeEasy


totally recommend them, they are easy to follow and have a few Creationist debunking cheeky bits to them.

Other Comments by tieInterceptor

26. Comment #72516 by Quine on September 21, 2007 at 12:00 pm

Steve99: Another possibility which I rather like is that larger brain size became subject to sexual selection... like the peacock's tail.

Yes, this is a subset of "competition with each other" as well spelled out by Susan Blackmore in The Meme Machine.

Also, to explore your universe, you need a big organized population in order to have enough extra resources to devote to science, and the idea that competing with each other to do it is desirable. All reasonable without recourse to the supernatural.

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27. Comment #72523 by Ewan D on September 21, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Can anyone provide a link to information on abiogenisis experiments which have produced self replicating molecules?

Thanks

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28. Comment #72532 by stephenray on September 21, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Of course science can comment on the supernatural. What are they talking about?
You can't simply say (although believers do) 'it's outside nature, therefore science cannot comment on it'.
Science can say 'nyaah, rubbish, statistically as likely as a change in the melting point of ice'.

Other Comments by stephenray

29. Comment #72535 by zarcus on September 21, 2007 at 1:24 pm

Quine on September 20, 2007 at 8:17 pm

If you haven't seen it, catch this BBC program on the ID Dover Trial (on youtube in 5 pieces):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAnIoXPLMdo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajcKn-qO3g8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsrmlST5sP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTAC3h6gbKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSgr-Jladk

Thanks Quine. Something that I think people in the U.S. may find surprising I found while looking into the Horizon: A War on Science was broadcast on BBC Two special the youtube links are from, was from the BBC special web site:

A quote from the page:

Just under half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life, according to an opinion poll.

Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design (ID) should be taught in school science lessons.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos MORI for the BBC's Horizon series.

Its latest programme, A War on Science, looks into the attempt to introduce ID into science classes in the US.

Over 2,000 participants took part in the survey, and were asked what best described their view of the origin and development of life:

* 22% chose creationism
* 17% opted for intelligent design
* 48% selected evolution theory
* and the rest did not know.

These statistics are similar to others in Briton.

.

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30. Comment #72539 by Klaatu barada nikto on September 21, 2007 at 1:45 pm

Comment #72278 by Crazymalc:

I've been reading Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil Degrasse Tyson. I would highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393327582?tag=buiupthawalch-20&camp=15041&creative=373501&link_code=as3

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31. Comment #72557 by LeeLeeOne on September 21, 2007 at 4:21 pm

This "video" representation for or against any argument has probably been the WORST! ever!

This is pathetic, it is choppy, fully of euphemisms and colloquialisms that have NOTHING to do with science!

I could not withstand completing the first video offered much less the second.

This type of "discussion", which obviously was based on reactionary juvenile emotionalism versus hard-hitting scientific information, is useless.

Other Comments by LeeLeeOne

32. Comment #72569 by scrub on September 21, 2007 at 5:39 pm

I was a bit disturbed at the commentator's repeated assertion that the universe is infinite.

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33. Comment #72572 by Crazymalc on September 21, 2007 at 5:48 pm

Robert S, Klaatu, tieInterceptor and any others I might have missed:

Thanks for the links to books and so on.

Appreciate it.

Other Comments by Crazymalc

34. Comment #73907 by Trilobyterian on September 26, 2007 at 2:27 pm

Wow. This character hit the wall of intellectual cowardice from the get-go. If he really wanted to get to the heart of the matter, he should have gone back and studied evolution intensively first, to make sure that he could understand it, before he went to that place for 'information'.
Science is a rigorous discipline, and it can be difficult to grasp some concepts, unlike faith, which requires nothing of the believer but blind acceptance. Wait. If he'd done that, he wouldn't have gone to the 'Diskuvery Instytoot' in the first place.
I found myself unable to continue watching it.
Sort of like watching 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. Painfully bad, to the point that it ceases to be funny and is simply unwatchable.

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35. Comment #73910 by BillySands on September 26, 2007 at 2:42 pm

Ewan D

Is this any use? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis

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36. Comment #74527 by Ewan D on September 29, 2007 at 10:37 am

Thanks Billy - that was interesting.

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37. Comment #74715 by hopeful on September 30, 2007 at 5:43 am

What is stunning, and quite scary, about this is the extreme effort that these people have gone to to make their god beliefs appear rational.

It is scary because we have a particular group of people, supposedly part of the scientific community, effectively working against good science. It is like a hospital operating room with a team of people carrying out a delicate operation, and an extra person in the room intentionally giving out false information, reaching wrong conclusions, distracting and obscuring.

To me, the whole programme was summed up when Lee Strobel said at the end "and if the evidence takes me to an uncomfortable place then that's the way I'm going to go...". It is blindingly obvious that Lee Strobel's "conclusion" is actually exactly where he wanted to go and extremely comfortable for him.

Other Comments by hopeful

38. Comment #74831 by Enlightenme.. on September 30, 2007 at 6:31 pm

28. Comment #72532 by stephenray

"Science can say 'nyaah, rubbish, statistically as likely as a change in the melting point of ice'."

I'll take that statement with a pinch of salt.
;)

Other Comments by Enlightenme..

39. Comment #106967 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 3, 2008 at 6:57 pm

the video has been removed...is there another source?

Other Comments by the_ultimate_samurai

40. Comment #134065 by Justin Hopkins on February 27, 2008 at 7:30 am

The video can be found on google video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6937267722492958878&hl=en

Thanks to Arizona Athiest for posting.

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41. Comment #232007 by Quine on August 17, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Some portion of the population will take this as the zenith of scientific whiz-bang, unfortunately.

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