You should read Richard Dawkins explanation of the life from outerspace question. These sort of tactics would make Michael Moore blsuh.

He explained this alien theory as plain as day in the movie, speaking to Ben Stein in front of the camera. I don't need to read about it when I could read his face as he mentioned the alien theory. He thinks it's a possibility.

It's still not science. Nor would Dawkins suggest that it was. Nor would he want it taught in schools in the science class. That's the difference in the parallel you're trying to draw. Creationism & ID is not science by the very defining characteristics of science.

He does not deny that he was offering it as a highly improbable possibility. He did this in facilitation of bridging the gap between religion and science as this was the premise of the film "crossroads" that he had been lead to believe prior to the interview.


In one sense it is perfectly reasonable as there is just as much evidence to support it as there is that godidit.


ID = creationism in fishnet stockings and has no place in a science class, religion class sure.

Why does asking this question bring about the repression of free speech and freedom of inquiry?

I am going to make my own movie. It is about how gravity is a false theory and no one will consider my alternate theory of Free Radical Orbits (TM and patent pending). Proof: Look at astronauts in space - no gravity! Also this effect can be noticed on rollercoasters for brief periods of time.

Gravity is a scam and I am feeling repressed for expressing my views!

He explained this alien theory as plain as day in the movie, speaking to Ben Stein in front of the camera. I don't need to read about it when I could read his face as he mentioned the alien theory. He thinks it's a possibility.

In case you do want to go beyond reading his mind by reading his face: http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins


Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure – that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).

Thank you for the link Neil. Don't you find it odd, that an insanely intelligent man, who can think circles around Ben Stein and is considered a god by evolutionists and atheists, would feel he needs to re-explain what he meant in Ben Stein's interview? Why would he need to do that? He doesn't acccuse Stein of cut and paste editing, or tricking him. He's back pedaling, he probably got some flack for even being in the movie. His arrogance is rather boring though, calling people IDiots and saying he was being charitible enough to consider Ben Stein honestly stupid.

This theory of Aliens was featured in the movie Mission to Mars(I think that was the title) and is obviously at least a somewhat popular theory among those who don't think godidit scientists and non-scientists alike.

BTW, I wasn't attempting to read his mind. By saying I was reading his face, I was saying I was watching him communicate this theory which is superior to merely reading someone's words on a page because you have body language and such.

Seems like runnin is grasping at straws.

$24,000 at the box office.

I don't think that covers the cost of the prints.

After finding some neat info regarding evolution... (actually the lack thereof.), I immediately thought of this thread.

Some very interesting info on Popular Science website regarding Living Fossils... animals alive today that haven't evolved in millions of years. Some surprising links to their closest "evolved" relatives

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/gallery/2008-07/living-fossils

If natural selection does not favour a change, things don't change.

These guys work well within their environment.

yep it's incredible that some creatures have been able to go so long without the need to evolve. What I find so interesting is the incredible differences these "living fossils" have to there closest genetic relative from today. It's a testament to the power of natural selection/evolution when alligators closest genetic relative evolved into birds... or a horseshoe crab is more related to spiders/scorpions (and isn't even a crab!).