Creationists Silence Critics with DMCA 585
Gothmog of A writes "As Richard Dawkins' offcial site reports, an organization called Creation Science Evangelism Ministries has been submitting DMCA copyright requests to YouTube. This has resulted in the Rational Response Squad (RRS) being banned after they protested against videos being taken down and accounts being closed. The RRS videoes attack creationism (AKA intelligent design) and promote the atheist viewpoint. According to the RRS, the copyright requests are without merit since the material in question is covered by fair use or has been declared to be in the public domain. Behind Creation Science Evangelism Ministries is the infamous Kent Hovind (AKA Dr. Dino) who is currently serving jail time for tax evasion."
Counterclaim!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Censorship continues: (Score:2, Interesting)
looks like I will have to get my abestos suit...
Ugh...why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not cool guys. Don't go making the rest of us look bad just because you can't take some criticism/arguing. And really don't make the rest of us look back by using a sore subject (DMCA) improperly and illegally to try and silence the criticism.
Re:Ugh...why? (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:religion (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree Darwinian evolution (which is what I assume you mean by "evolution") is a pretty neat idea, it seems to fit with a lot of the evidence we have about how the creatures on this planet came to exist. It isn't the only idea which would fit with the "facts" (I'll leave post-modern type discussions about the existence of objective reality though) of our world however. I do not currently have a theory which does fit all the facts as well as Darwinian evolution (or at least not one which doesn't involve a giant monkey and Kentucky Fried Chicken...). However given that there could be competing claims which could appear to have equal levels of validity (taking into account the fact that all we have is imperfect evidence) it seems a little forward to refer to evolution as;
"definatively proven (and relatively obvious)"
I began by suggesting that you meant Darwinian evolution, if that is the case then your "definitively proven" fact could easily be wrong for there is endless potential for finding examples of evolutions which goes against the Darwinian formula. Taking evolution in its most broad context though we still have room for doubt (and not just academic or Cartesian radical sceptical doubts... although I must admit my competing impressions of waking and sleeping evolution don't match...(/joke)). There is still endless "wiggle room" and maybe one day we will find fossil rabbits unusually deep (a reference to Dawkin's God Delusion), or maybe we already have but replied "my, they are older than we thought!"
My point isn't really to attack evolution, nor even Darwinian evolution, my point is just to raise some skepticism at something which we can't "clearly and distinctly perceive" (in Cartesian terms), or if you prefer, we ought not to make any claim that something is "definitively proven" because a theory is only good so long as the evidence is (following Popper) - and none of us know the future.
Re:Ugh...why? (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a news worthy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Well then you might learn something today. The mice of Madeira:
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/04_00/island_mice.shtml [genomenewsnetwork.org]
And this is 7 years old now, so it does seem your facts may not be up to date.
2) To date, no direct ancestral chains have been established. That is, where one species can be definitively proven to have descended from another.
You mean like Hyracotherium, which evolved into modern horses and all the documented transitory species in between them?
If you need living examples and a DNA chain to follow, the mice above work as an example here as well.
Please do not let this color your opinion of the evidence for the creationist position.
What evidence would this be? I have never seen any. Only religious rhetoric. Surely you're not talking about scripture?
Re:religion (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, that goes for a lot fo things. I live in the Netherlands, and if I look out of the window, I'd not immediately come up with the idea that the earth is round. With some investigation it is possible to find out that it is. With some more investigation you can find out that this holds true for any observation technique you throw at it (up to and including pictures from satellites). Now, the chasm is that the people who observe and investigate see evolution and lots of evidence for it, and those that base themselves on their particular religious book do not.
I've not too much of a problem with people having a religion. The problem is there are a bit too many people who let other people suffer from their beliefs (by flying planes into buildings, discriminate gays, etc.). And yes, that's where in my opinion freedom of religion ends.
Bert
Re:Ugh...why? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're obviously not well-versed on the tactics of proponents of creationism, because if you were, their actions here would come as absolutely no surprise. Intellectual dishonesty and sleazy tactics are par for the course because their argument is so much incredibly weaker than the argument for evolution. One of their most common tactics is "quote mining [aquaticape.org]," where they take a quote from a prominent scientist or scientific paper completely out of context, sometimes to create an impression that the scientist is saying the exact opposite of the point they're making. Or they will totally misapply other scientific concepts
At best, being a creationist means you're simply ignorant or uneducated on biology. If you actually seek to spread or reinforce that ignorance among the general public, you're either a jackass or an idiot and one shouldn't be surprised when you use the methods of a jackass or idiot.
Whatever happened to.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh Shit (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I am concerned, the various religions are a subset of cases within superstition; I would not class astrology as religion, but I do think it slots perfectly into superstition. The same goes for ghosts, all classes of magic that are not simply misunderstood natural events, homeopathy, anthropocentric views in general (religion is that in specific), and a host of others from phrenology to past lives. Creationism itself is a subset of religion.
People don't want to know the truth (Score:4, Interesting)
There's so much stuff out there that we don't know, that's completely mindblowing to contemplate, and most people are content getting slackjawed and starry-eyed over shit we already know the answer to. Go figure.
Re:Oh Shit (Score:1, Interesting)
Time to reverse it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Creationism equals intelligent design? (Score:3, Interesting)
Intelligent Design began as an attempt to strip the Creator out of Creation Science, so that what's left can be taught in public schools. Unfortunately, if you're going to strip out God, then you also have to strip out the Bible, and the Biblical account of Creation in Genesis, and then you're left with no particular reason why you should be starting with a hypothesis that says the earth is 6,000 years old or there was a global flood 4,000 years ago, so you have to throw that out too... and what you're left with is the completely unscientific notion that Evolution is wrong just because it doesn't feel right, and therefore a supernatural being (or beings, or force, or dish of pasta, or whatever) must have done it.
Hope this helps!
Re:Oh Shit (Score:4, Interesting)
I also don't have a problem with faith-based initiatives, simply because the idea is that the money is for charitable works. It doesn't matter in the least to me who's doing these charitable works, just as long as they're getting done (and reasonably efficiently).
Now, shopping laws, that we can agree is ridiculous. I purchase liquor once in a blue moon, but it's none of anyone's business when I should choose to do that.
Finally, although you don't seem like a particularly intolerant person in general, I agree with what the quoted text in your post says. We should all be tolerant of each others' beliefs, and strive to refrain from mocking them. Disagree, debate, certainly. But the relentless mocking and hatred I've seen religion get at times makes me very sad indeed, because it's something people should be above.
Re:Oh Shit (Score:4, Interesting)
And why does a religion have to be anthropocentric? When I was on my mathematical christology kick, 'the saviour of elm trees' was one of my standard test constructs. "Can trees be 'saved'? Might they benefit from it? What the f*** would that mean to a human Christian? And what would Jesus of Nazareth signify to a tree?" I would ask myself. But if your religion hands you avatars (as opposed to the standard Christian trinitarian incarnation structure, which is clearly species-indexed), your god can quite easily be a tree, I should think, even if you aren't a tree yourself.
I have no problem with areligious atheists (after all, a creator-god is unobservable by construction, so intellectually honest deism [perhaps even metatemporal theism] and areligious atheism are the same, up to isomorphism), but devout atheists who turn off their imaginations and disallow thought experiments when discussion religion hurt my head. How they think they can have certain knowledge (as opposed to a personal, but not persuasively communicable, belief) about the unobservable is beyond me. They're nuts in exactly the same way as the intelligent design crowd.
Let me put it this way: why would one suppose that Occam's razor is the right tool for answering the question 'what's your favourite story?' How can someone be wrong about their own imaginary friend?
Of course, when people start saying 'God told me to kill you,' it's time to lock them up. Weird thing is, organised religions - being, whether you hold to them or not, evolved social structures as well as metaphilosophical frameworks - will even agree with you on this. Of course there are plenty of homicidal maniacs who pretend otherwise - but they are, for the most part, consciously lying, and should no more be laid at the door of the religions in question than people who get their instructions from their gerbils.
Re:religion (Score:1, Interesting)
My objection to faith-based politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike you, I do have a big problem with faith-based initiatives. I'll explain:
As you may or may not know, Bush is using his muscle to channel foreign aid to faith-based initiatives, contrary to all that "just a piece of paper" separation of church and state. This administration sees to it that foreign aid money goes (more) to groups who profess to be Christian. No big problem there yet.
The problem is here: Money is consistently refused to foreign aid institutions who condone or practice sex education, especially birth control.
As a result of US faith-based policy, poor black people in Africa (and South America, and...) are practicing unprotected sex, having more offspring than they can feed and keeping deadly diseases in circulation.
Put in starkly simple terms, I think it could be demonstrated that together, with their stance on condoms, George Bush and the Pope are responsible for more deaths than Hitler.
Quibble about numbers or details; people are dying because of political decisions poorly informed by faith. If you were aware of this and don't have a problem with it, then you're not a caring human being.