Charles Philips
Banned
There's no point in appealing to debates which ended in a dead rubber stale mate. I'm just waiting to see a single shred of evidence to expose Ray Comfort. I guess I'll be waiting foreverStarting off with a quote from Science Daily which states that a scientific method is based on "the collection of data through observation and experimentation", the entire movie fixates on the word "observable" in this quote, and a person interviews scientists and students on the street, pushing a microphone up their face, demanding immediate "on the spot" observable evidence for evolution - which they obviously fail to take out from their pockets right there and then.
Its obvious for the rational audience that all interviews are extremely likely to have been edited in such a way as to constantly regurgitate the same belief: that there is no observable proof for the evolutionary process since we can't observe monkeys turning into humans overnight. This is off course what the religious community wants to reiterate,and it's their right to do so, however, putting the complete lack of understanding in evolution aside, its obvious the producer Ray Comfort is biased and makes little attempt to truthfully depict both sides of the argument. We see nothing but choppy segments where the person's argument is interrupted by the interviewer, or the movie cuts to a different scene - constantly prohibiting the viewers to be presented with the scientific side of the argument.
When examples of how evolution is observable is given, the interviewer states an oversimplified version of the argument which can not be mistaken for anything else but a total lack of desire from the interviewer to comprehend what is being said.
Furthermore, the interviewer constantly suggests that the conviction in evolution is itself a faith because he constantly asks if they BELIEVE in evolution, making no distinction between a belief in facts and a supernatural one.
If you're on the search of evidence for evolution, then do so, but make no mistake, there is no substance to this movie what so ever.
Ray Comfort (aka The banana man) is back with yet another disappointedly impotent 'critique' of Darwinian evolution. Apart from the numerous occasions of quote mining and selective editing of interviews throughout the film he has repeated his banana fiasco with both a lack of understanding of both science and evidence.
Firstly, the film makes a false dichotomy between 'God' and Evolution. The theory of evolution, like all scientific explanations is methodologically neutral and naturalistic; to make it a conflict between God and science is deceptive and unwise.
Throughout the film, Comfort interviews a series of professors and college majors and frequently asks if any of them can present 'testable', 'observable' evidence of change from one 'kind' to 'another'. They give examples of speciation but demands they show a change of 'kind'. He doesn't even define 'kind. Creationists have been unable to specify what the created kinds are. If kinds were distinct, it should be easy to distinguish between them. Instead, we find a nested hierarchy of similarities, with kinds within kinds within kinds. For example, the twelve-spotted ladybug could be placed in the twelve- spotted ladybug kind, the ladybug kind, the beetle kind, the insect kind, or any of dozens of other kinds of kind, depending on how inclusive the kind is. No matter where one sets the cutoff for how inclusive a kind is, there will be many groups just bordering on that cutoff. This pattern exactly matches the pattern expected of evolution. It does not match what creationism predicts.
Comfort lacks any elementary knowledge of biology. He asks for changes overnight that modern biologists observe after millions of years. He is easily refuted by transitional fossils such as Tiktaalik (which shows primitive fish becoming amphibians) as well as Archaeopteryx (transition between dinosaurs and birds), which show a change from 'one kind to another'. In fact paleontologists argue whether some intermediates are for instance, reptile-like mammals or mammal-like reptiles; this means there is a multitude of intermediates dicovered.
He ignorantly dismisses Darwin's finches as 'birds remaining birds' and the Lenski experiment as 'bacteria still becoming bacteria'; using the same ignorant excuse of 'created kinds'. Although major changes from one 'kind' to another do not normally happen, except gradually over hundreds of thousands of generations, a sudden origin of a new kind has been observed. A strain of cancerous human cells (called HeLa cells) have evolved to become a wild unicellular life form (Van Valen and Maiorana 1991).
The film also says that evolutionists claim the appendix is useless because they call it 'vestigial'. This is ludicrous. "Vestigial" does not mean an organ is useless. A vestige is a "trace or visible sign left by something lost or vanished". Vestigial organs are evidence for evolution because we expect evolutionary changes to be imperfect as creatures evolve to adopt new niches. Creationism cannot explain vestigial organs. They are evidence against creationism if the creator follows a basic design principle that form follows function.The appendix appears as part of the tissues of the digestive system; it is homologous to the end of the mammalian caecum. Since it does not function as part of the digestive system, it is a vestigial part of that system, no matter what other functions it may have.
The film equates an acceptance of evolution with immorality and purposely edits and selectively quotes the interviewees. However, it is a great introduction to the terrible arguments that creationists push to achieve their agenda.
Ray presents the worst of the worst arguments to try and convince strangers with gas lighting techniques that a god is real. The arguments for a god are terrible and the arguments that his god is real are even worse. It really only seems he wants to convince the people on the street that evolution is a myth without "observable" evidence while trying to prove his god is real despite no observable evidence of his own. It's common misleading arguments to try and make everyone but himself look stupid. I can only imagine this was the best 30 minutes of footage he could use and there must be several hours of arguments against him he refused to include. It comes off as a smug "holier than thou" attitude that will only convince non god believers to continue to not believe.
Evolution vs. God: Shaking the Foundations of Faith (2013) - IMDb
Evolution vs. God: Shaking the Foundations of Faith (2013) on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more...www.imdb.com
