Behe Bit It (Michael Behe on "The Colbert Report")

It's when you say things like this that I realize that, outside of the sciences, people really don't understand what is meant by the term "scientific journal." A scientific journal is a publication where scientists publish the results of experimentation and observation in a form that explains, technically, the materials and methods employed in their research, the results, discussion of the results, and generally some remarks that place the research in a wider context. The articles almost always have joint authorship and an extensive bibliography that cites other articles, and the articles are reviewed by an anonymous jury of scientists in that field whom the magazine selects based (often) on their familiarity with the general idea of the research in question.We call these journals "primary" (as in a "primary source"), because they're the closest you can typically get to a scientist's raw data and observations in his own words short of seeing his research paperwork or being out there in the field with him. The articles usually have a certain "look" to them, kind of like this: JSTOR: Access CheckNational Geographic, while a respected publication, is not a scientific journal in any sense of the word. It's articles, as a rule, are not primary research, they're usually a journalist's interpretation of research or of interviews with researchers. As a result we call these "secondary sources", because the scientific information that can be gleaned from them is second-hand, and therefore unsuitable for citation in a primary source.National Geographic does not peer-review any articles, and researchers do not submit primary research to National Geographic, any more than my wife is going to send a copy of her thesis to the Lincoln Journal-Star. They're not primary sources; they're not scientific journals. To the extent that National Geographic is largely marketed to interested laypeople as opposed to professionals in the field of geography, we might sometimes refer to NatGeo as being part of the "popular press", which includes science-for-laypeople magazines written by journalists like Omni, Discover, and Popular Science. Nobody, to my knowledge, is suing to get Dawkin's ideas on memes taught as "official science" in the nation's high schools. If they were, I'm sure you and I would agree that it would be a pretty stupid idea - since there's no scientific evidence. Dawkins doesn't even offer it as a scientific conjecture - more of a philosophical idea.But it's really a spurious objection. I'm sure we could list about a hundred things that you've failed to mention in every single post and then try to pretend that that's evidence of some kind of hypocrisy on your part. I think you've been getting too many debate tips from right-wing websites. It wouldn't have done a very good job. It was actually through evolution - and the Piltdown fossil's inconsistency with it - that the fraud was discovered. Had Piltdown been a legitimate find - an actual hominid fossil - it would have destroyed evolution as we know it.

It's the "Tu quoque" fallacy, which is a kind of ad hominem fallacy.

Behe doesn't have findings in regards to ID, because he isn't doing research about ID.He has arguments, and not very good ones. Not findings.

Then that can only be because you don't understand them. To assert that Behe's ridiculous bullshit has the same kind of legitimacy as cosmology or biology is just nonsense. Because they, in fact, are fact, and your contention about their evidentiary basis (especially as compared to Behe's nonsense) is just fundamentally wrong.We clearly observe the effects of singularities, if not singularities themselves; and it's sufficient to observe that since life has not eternally existed in the universe, it must have began at some point.

Contradiction in terms, then. Using evidence to support belief is not, typically, a feature of religion. If Dawkins uses evidence to support his contentions, then clearly he's not engaged in an act of religion.

Not among children. Prove Santa is.Look, Mike, you can't have it both ways. It's common knowledge that God is fantasy, too, among many people. If you're going to accept people's common beliefs as proof - and like it or not, atheism is an increasingly common belief - then you really don't have a leg to stand on, here.God is likened to Santa because they're the exact same thing - beliefs people cling to out of feelings, not out of reason or evidence. Santa brought me a Transformer (Jetfire, incidentally, the awesome one) and I've seen him at the mall. Exact same thing as God. If there's no such thing as Santa, then why is he on the Coca-Cola cans every year? I'll disprove whatever you like. But there are people who make it a point to disprove belief in Santa Claus; typically we call those people "killjoys."The truth of the matter is that children eventually see through Santa because adults don't believe in it. They don't tend to see through the God delusion because adults are wrapped up in it too, which just goes to show that there's some nonsense a lot of us don't outgrow.Your problem, mainly, is that you don't know why you believe that Santa Claus is fantasy; when you understand your disbelief in Santa now compared to your belief in Santa as a child, you'll understand how your belief in God is similarly fantasy.