Creationists rewrite natural history – Telegraph — — The big news in England is the sudden restructuring of the BBC including massive layoffs. Since this is a non-profit organization paid for by taxes, exactly what changed? Until recently the organization was hyper-critical of Bush and the right-wing. But has this perhaps been changed to a new Christian fundamentalist direction? Are they now kow-towing to creationists? I think so. Curiously the first evidence of this appears in licensed content broadcast in, of all places, Holland.
The world’s best known wildlife broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, has called on the BBC to stop Christian fundamentalists from deleting references to evolution from his documentaries.
Censored versions of Sir David’s award winning programmes have been broadcast in Holland without any references to evolution, speciation, descent and timescales of millions of years, after being censored by Christian creationists who are opposed to Charles Darwin’s ideas.
“Instead of saying “70 million years ago, something happens,” they say “a very long time ago something happens”. They also omit paragraphs such as: “This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,”” Sir David told the Telegraph. “I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said.”
I am interested why people care about this issue so much.
Evolution is simply true. I don’t see much need to get worked up about the handful of people that don’t believe it.
Evolution isn’t like religion, whether or not you believe it, it is what happened so who really cares if a religious minority wants to believe differently.
Them choosing not to believe it affects me how?
A significant percentage of people I have met that believe in fervently creationism don’t have mental capacity or the intellect to grasp most science/math; they aren’t ever going to “get it” and who cares.
once again, “dvorak.org/blog” decrees from on high that Christians are evil and most be stopped.
Forgive me if I roll my eyes at the bigotry of it all.
It’s not altogether surprising from one aspect; the Marxist left which has controlled the Beeb for a dog’s age is really as intellectually deluded / stupid / dishonest as the fundies are when it comes to science that inconveniently fails to support their respective ideologies. They both repress, ignore and distort accepted scientific fact in the name of serving an allegedly ‘higher cause’, the fundies denying evolution by natural selection and the commies denying heritability of intelligence.
It ain’t about left v. right, it ain’t about religion v. science, it’s about blind adherence to ideological dogma v. independent rational thought. Ideology and the processes that lead to it’s acceptance are what needs be expunged from society, not religion.
Get rid of people’s love of and imagined need for dogma and religion will fall, as well as political extremism.
I thought the BBC was funded by television and radio receiver license fees, not taxes.
Just tought I should throw another spanner in the works, in northern ireland, there are political parties trying to stop the theory of evoloution being taught in schools! these people obviously need put in a rocket to the sun, there a waste of good skin and bones!!!
The Earth isn’t 4000 years old?
Next you people will be telling me the Earth isn’t flat, there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny and Britney Spears doesn’t have talent.
#4
That would be the Fee Tax.
I’m dutch, this has (as far as I know) nothing to do with religious fundamentalists taking over BBC. It might have something to do with capitalist fundamentalists taking over BBC though.
The story is as follows: A dutch evangelical public tv station (instead of something relatively neutral like the BBC the Netherlands has several public tv stations representing different outlooks on life, all paid for by the public) was airing Sir David’s documentaries but edited out parts talking about evolution where not central to the show and did not air shows that specifically discussed evolution. Appearantly this was all done with the BBC’s permission.
Much brouhaha ensued in holland about a public tv station practicing censorship, lying to the public and airing religious propaganda under the banner of a scientific documentary. However, since the Beeb had agreed to these redactions and dutch law (luckily) allows you to air pretty much whatever you want, nothing could be done about this locally. Some people then tried -it appears successfully- to get Sir David to speak out against these redactions to the BBC.
I think the most you could say of the BBC in this situation (also from the layoffs that get mentioned) is that the BBC is run by unprincipled fundamentalists who will do anything for money. That a dutch public tv station is run by christians is nothing new, the debate over here has degraded to nitpicking about wether they should explicitly state that Sir David’s programs have been redacted or that this redaction is implied by the fact that the shows are aired by the _evangelical_ tv station.
If evolution is a law why is it still called a theory?
Look if it is provable beyond doubt then make it a law like motion and other science fact and be done with it? Why is there a delay if it is beyond shadow of doubt true?
Just say it is law and get on with it! This theory stuff only adds fuel to fire.
Cursor_
2. Matt Garrett once again, “dvorak.org/blog” decrees from on high that Christians are evil and most be stopped.
Forgive me if I roll my eyes at the bigotry of it all.
Wanting to stop fundamentalists for passing their dogma over as science has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with trying to stop it!
Sorry John(and I can’t believe you don’t already know this, unless your more xenophobic than most), the BBC is financed by *license fee’s*, but is a public non-profit company. The reason for the lay off’s is they have been trying to compete against the privately held networks that are now allowed to broadcast in the UK. In doing this they have been buying up programs and hiring big names to host it’s shows…..thus overspending. Gordon Brown (as Chancellor) cut their subsidies under their new contract. Add this to several very public screw up’s(show contests that were fixed before hand, viewer’s paying for toll calls to answer questions on quiz shows (BBC got a cut of the fee’s) where the winners were phoney, and the program that made the news about the Queen walking out of a photo shoot with Anne Liebowitz, in a huff (which turned out to be false and some creative editing)….these things and the constant left wing slant of the programs and news shows has led to a large drop in viewing audience.
The government told them to stop trying to be all things to all people, stop spending huge sums for hosts, and paying outside groups to make programs without checking the content of those programs, stop buying networks in other countries that are not non-profit (such as the Dutch station), and get back to what the BBC was supposed to be.
2500 employee’s will be laid off due to the budget cuts, and several game shows and silly talk shows will be axed as well.
The last 2 directors of the BBC have been political appointee’s of the Labour government and have run the company into the ground, and turned it into PC central……now that there are other t.v. networks to watch, people finally have a choice of what to watch and have discovered that the BBC has been feeding them bulls*it for the last 15 years.
Now….having said all that above…..if you know the BBC is left leaning and slants most news stories left, then you can watch them and weed out the poo poo and see some excellent newscasts. They still do serious news the best of any network in Europe, and they have staff almost everywhere who know their host countries very well.
#9: “If evolution is a law why is it still called a theory?”
Because you’re talking about three different things.
Evolution itself is a fact, not a law.
The “law of evolution” would be the model of the mechanics that drive that fact (which would be a horrid mess of biochemical reaction charts).
The various theories of evolution, finally, are attempts to explain why that law works the way it does.
A good comparison is gravity:
Gravity is a fact.
Then there is the good old Newtonian “law of gravity” (the attracting force between two objects is proportional to the product of the respective masses of the two objects’, and inversely proportional to the squared distance between them) which is simply a model of how gravity acts on the world.
However, even with that law in place, we have absolutely no idea about why it works. There are quite a few “theories of gravity” (strings, quantum field, space-time warps, you name it), but none of them provides a conclusive answer.
In fact, we know a hell of a lot more about evolution than we know about gravity, and this shows through the fact that we only have a “law of gravity”, but no coherent theory, whereas with evolution, we do have an actual theory, which, like all (scientific) theories, have been proven to work.
#9
The ‘laws of motion’ are really a theory of motion. They are subject to change /correction. This happened in the early 1900’s when Newton’s ‘laws’ of motion were replaced by Einstein’s.
Thats why science is different from religion… everything is really a theory and anything can be changed if its found to not meet the facts
#9 – Cursor_,
Funny thing about evolution. It has made numerous predictions that came true. It used to be that creationists would point to whales and say that since there were no fossils showing the intermediate steps between land mammals and cetaceans, creation must be true and evolution false. It used to be that creationists would point to feathers and say that since there were no fossils showing animals with intermediate stages of feather development, that creation must be true and evolution false.
Then they found bassilosaurus and ambulocetus showing intermediate stages of cetacean development. Then they found a wide array of early birds with the intermediate stages of feathers in tact, amazing fossils for such soft tissue to be preserved.
So, evolution is about as factual as anything can be said to be. And, we witness evolution all the time. Why do we need to get a flu shot every year instead of just once? Because, the virus mutates and evolves. Why do we test our medications on animals? I don’t mean why do we think it’s better to test a completely new drug on rats than on humans. I mean, why does it work? The answer is because we’re all related by evolution.
#2 – Matt Garrett,
It’s not that all Christians are evil. Look at Mr. Mustard who regularly posts on this site and does not believe that his beliefs must be legally mandated to be the one true set of beliefs. It’s when assholes want to legislate that because they can’t see a fact staring them in the face, no one should be allowed to do so that Christianity becomes evil. (That or when they start killing because the Bible says Thou Shalt Kill, of course)
I don’t think evolution can remove the CREATOR! What happen before big bang? Tell me that from your theory!!
its all very simple….
god, and whoever invented him, should be taken out back
and shot, once and for all.
-s
16.
That is silly. Evolution is not a theory of everything. It does not deal with what happens before the big bang. We don’t know what happened before the big bang. The point is that neither do you. So how can you draw any conclussion that there was a creator or that you know certain things about that creator?
What happen before big bang? Tell me that from your theory!!
What happened before (the) big bang?
Same thing that happened before gwad created the heavens and earth.
So, you tell me.
#2 All religion is evil and at the heart of virtually every war. As for the fundamentalists who don’t believe Darwin, just take a look at your congregation. Tell me it doesn’t remind you of a slow learner classroom.
There is a contradiction in the simultaneous belief of the following two statements:
1. I believe in evolution.
2. I believe in the Big Bang.
You cannot possibly believe in these two statements because theory 1 is based on logic while theory 2 is based on MAGIC.
This is proof that scientists who believe in both theories above are wrong about BOTH. It’s fine if you believe one of them but then to hold to your convictions you cannot believe in the other.
They’ve always supported creationists, aka Muslims.
I thought the reason it’s the theory of evolution is because there are many theories of evolution, like punctuated equilibrium?
#16 – Joey,
What happened before god? Tell me that from your hypothesis. Who created god? A god creator? Must there then be a god creator creator? Doesn’t this logic just fly right up its own asshole in endless recursion?
#21 – B Cook,
ROFLMAO!!! (even though I am not a member of any congregation)
#22 – Prodigious Procrastinator,
It’s not a question of belief. Evolution is a biological process. The big bang is based on quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics allows for, and actually requires, that matter pop in and out of existence at the quantum level. If you have a logical problem with this, so do most people. If this causes you to believe it is false despite tremendous amounts of proof over nearly a century, then turn off your computer now. The semiconductors that are required for your computer to work exist and function based purely on quantum mechanics.
#25, Misanthropic Scott said: “…that matter pop in and out of existence at the quantum level.”
All the matter in the ENTIRE universe today was crunched up into an infinitesmal point at the time of the Big Bang. If that is “quantum” level then what are we? Non-existent?
#26 – PP,
When all the matter and energy in the ENTIRE universe was crunched into a point (so to speak), quantum mechanical rules reigned supreme. Perhaps, if we are capable of coming up with a theory that will join relativity and quantum theory, this may be easier to understand. However, given our current knowledge, it was not until things expanded and cooled rather a lot that symmetries broke down and relativity and other laws of physics could play a larger role. When the universe was tiny, it was essentially a quantum soup.
26 – PP,
And, yes, relative to the universe, we are so small and insignificant as to be close enough to non-existent. Sorry if that upsets you. Perhaps you should avoid getting into the Total Perspective Vortex.
#13 Tippis
Thank You.
# 22 Prodigious Procrastinator.
Uh……..No! Since the mathematics used to lead one to the understanding of the big bang theory are obviously beyond your ability…… I will just say it is far from being a belief.
Oh and the logic of your post is also faulty. Ones “belief”, your word not mine, about 2 related or unrelated theories has zero affect on the factual nature of those theories.
22 – So as religion is fundamentally based on magic… anyone religious is always wrong about everything?
I’m not saying that… but you just did.
A thought experiment
What if we were to take all the inconsistencies and gaping holes in our understanding of Evolution, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, etc. and introduces the concept that “there is an intelligence at work in the universe”
The theist would say, “Aha! you now admit that there is a God!”
No, I am simply inspired by the theist idea that we can explain all the gaps in our knowledge by introducing an intelligence at work in the universe. This intelligence is most likely so alien to ourselves that giving this intelligence any “human” characteristics would be completely illogical.
The theist God is human. It loves, it is jealous, it is judgmental, it is merciful, it is forgining, it is caring, it has a conscious mind and is constantly watching over us. A universal intelligence is none of those things, and does not really care or think about us at all. Terms like designer, or creator, cannot apply either. Giving human qualities to something that is not human is something we humans do instinctually without even considering the real nature of that thing. Does an intelligence at work in the universe answer our prayers? Step in to save the day? Care about us at all? NO! If you think about it, a belief in an alien intelligence behind it all is ultimately the equivalent of Atheism.
Thus, if science were to conclude that there really is an intelligence behind it all, it would actually disprove the Judeo-Islamo-Christian concept of God.
Mixing religion into science is completely antithetical to science. It is also very bad for religion too. So why do so many religious people insist on doing so?