RE: [asa] Videos

Gordon Glover's Beyond the Firmament has some good science videos online
that perhaps your church could use.
 
http://www.blog.beyondthefirmament.com/video-presentations/science-and-c
hristian-education/science-and-christian-education-page-1/
 
 
Dick Fischer, GPA president
Genesis Proclaimed Association
"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"
www.genesisproclaimed.org
 
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Jon Tandy
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 8:26 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: [asa] Videos
 
Well, it's happened. Several people at church have talked about showing
a video on science sometime, so I asked to take a look at it first.
Turns out there are two videos by Louie Giglio; one on the cosmos, and
the other going from space down into the cell, showing the grandeur of
God (I presume it will talk about Laminin). Haven't watched them yet,
but I'll let you know.
 
In the meantime, last December I finally forced myself to watch (online
on Netflix), Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
 
Having read plenty about it beforehand, watching Expelled confirmed my
suspicion: the subtitle is an appropriate Freudian slip. "No
intelligence allowed" is a pretty good description of the movie, not the
scientific community that it pretends to expose. My second thought was,
if this is the best that the Intelligent Design community can come up
with, they'd better just pack it up and go home. Its substantial
collection of logical fallacies and anti-scientific rhetoric is an
insult to the intelligence of its audience, not to mention mocking and
accusing scientists and the scientific community.
 
I've already talked to a friend who thought it was the greatest, and
mentioned the movie's false accusation against scientists by its
reference to Hitler, concentration camps, and other threatening and
murderous images. This constant ad hominem argument is not only
wearisome, it is slanderous. I also mentioned that though Hitler used
Darwinian ideas in his writings to justify killing the Jews, he also
used Christianity in the same way. Does Hitler's use of Christianity
prove that Christianity is dangerous and destructive? Or does it prove
that Hitler was a madman who could use any rhetorical argument to his
advantage, no matter how illogical?
 
It mocks the scientists by taking their arguments out of context and
presenting them in a manner calculated to make them look stupid. One of
the best illustrations of this is the comment (I think from Daniel
Dennett) that life might have begun "on the backs of crystals", then the
movie switches to a fortune teller with a crystal ball. If someone
doesn't know the difference between a crystal structure and a crystal
ball, he should not pretend he's doing any favors to science or the
truth. This doesn't mean that life did begin spontaneously on crystals
or anywhere else; it does mean that Stein has used such goofy,
anti-scientific rhetoric, that it defies belief.
 
On the other hand, though there are many practicing scientists who also
believe in God, I'm sure that there is a fair amount of bias in the
scientific community against "Intelligent Design" and religion in
general. I don't want to put the blame for this solely on Christians,
but with this kind of unintelligent tripe going around, it's sometimes
seems difficult to blame the scientific community for wanting to exclude
anything that looks like "religion".
 
Jon Tandy
 
 

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Received on Mon Jan 19 09:56:14 2009