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Ben Stein's Exposed

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By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

In the course of some recent research, I kept running across ads for a "documentary" about Intelligent Design Creationism by Ben Stein called, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This morning, via Arts and Letters Daily, I ran into an excellent article about the movie by Michael Shermer, Director of the Skeptics Society.

I like the article for two reasons. First, it does a good job of indicating that the "case" against the Theory of Evolution is smoke and mirrors, while Creationism is being propped up by one lie after another.

In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory, not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true that you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school
I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences -- geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology -- demonstrating that evolution happened
.

It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw
Ben Stein's anti-evolution documentary film
,
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
,
opens with the
actor, game show host and speech writer
for Richard Nixon
addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University
, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn't.
The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution
. So who were these people embracing Stein’s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, Associate Provost for Research and Chair of Natural Science at Pepperdine, "
the production company
paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they
brought in extras
. Members of the audience had to sign in and the staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university."
And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film
. [bold added]

And this thread just gets better.

A second strong point about the article is that it explains the big fuss that fundamentalists make about evolution. This is, as it turns out, more subtle than just the fact that evolution does contradict the Bible. Shermer offers some further insight on this score.

Even more disturbing than these distortions is the film's other thesis that
Darwinism inexorably leads to atheism, Communism, Fascism and the Holocaust
. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of religious believers fully accept the theory of evolution,
Stein claims that we are in an ideological war between a scientific natural worldview that leads to the gulag
archipelago and Nazi gas chambers,
and a religious supernatural worldview that leads to freedom, justice and the American way
. The film's visual motifs leave no doubt in the viewer's emotional brain that Darwinism is leading America into an immoral quagmire. We're going to hell in a Darwinian hand basket. Cleverly edited interview excerpts from scientists are interspersed with various black-and-white clips for guilt by association with: bullies beating up on a 98-pound weakling, Charlton Heston's character in
Planet of the Apes
being blasted by a water hose, Nikita Khrushchev pounding his fist on a United Nations desk, East Germans captured trying to scale the Berlin Wall, and Nazi crematoria remains and Holocaust victims being bulldozed into mass graves.
This propaganda production would make Joseph Goebbels proud
. [bold added]

In other words, evolutionary theory contradicts the Bible, yes, but this attack is against reason as such, and is based on (and justified by) the false premise that freedom has no rational basis.

I would have liked the article to have also noted that Intelligent Design is an inherently religious and unscientific doctrine, but Shermer has provided an invaluable glimpse into the mindset of the proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism.

They claim to be defending freedom and that freedom has no rational basis. They are wrong on both counts, but those premises make their willingness to lie through their teeth suddenly make a lot of sense.

-- CAV

PS: There's more on Expelled over at Ari Armstrong's blog. (HT: Monica, who notices that the religious right now calls real science "Big Science" and links to the trailer.)

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected typos. (2) Added link to Ari Armstrong. (3) Linked to Monica's post.273507540

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/archives/003539.html

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From thinking of Ben Stein as a smart, witty, sensible guy, I began to see him as a typical Keynesian. Until this movie, I had no idea he was this irrational. It might be a good thing, since it will probably undercut his credibility in general. OTOH, perhaps he feels more comfortable being open about this extreme form of religion, and thinks he can get away with it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ben Stein appeared on the christian TBN channel (not a direct link to the video -- use their search), to promote his movie. It is a 30 minute interview. Near the end (27 min) he closes by talking about Nazism being inspired by Darwin, with Auswitch as the logical conclusion.

Stein: …I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Interviewer: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Edited by softwareNerd
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From thinking of Ben Stein as a smart, witty, sensible guy, I began to see him as a typical Keynesian. Until this movie, I had no idea he was this irrational. It might be a good thing, since it will probably undercut his credibility in general. OTOH, perhaps he feels more comfortable being open about this extreme form of religion, and thinks he can get away with it.

This probably describes my sentiments as well. My first doubts about Ben Stein came about when I heard him describe Michael Milken "sucking the blood of captive savings and loans like a vampire," which is allegedly in his book A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation. However, this movie seems to bring his irrationality down to frighteningly low depths.

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  • 2 weeks later...
The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms..."Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

LINK TO STORY

this is from 2005, but my chin dropped to the floor when i read this

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this is from 2005, but my chin dropped to the floor when i read this
Unlike the modern evangelicals, the Catholic church has accepted evolution for a while now. If one thinks about it, it is a smart move, because it does not put them against science in a blatant sense. Indeed, the Catholic church has such a non-literal interpretation of creation that they see things like the "big bang" as being compatible with their theological position.

On the creation story, there are two fundamentals to which the Catholics adhere, and they are very well chosen:

  • that the universe had a beginning (this confirms their position that God created the universe out of "nothing"), and
  • that all humans are descended from the first human (which confirms their position that we all bear the original sin that we inherit from Adam and Eve)

The Catholic church is willing to interpret most of the rest figuratively, or rather, as the truth told using a narrative technique that allowed that truth to be understood by people who live a few thousand years ago.

The core positions are well-chosen. The first is basically a philosophical position, so they can be safe in that it will not be refuted by some specialized science. The second is basically a true position, since we are all descended from the same lung-fish who broke the bonds of the sea!

[Some reading material here.]

Edited by softwareNerd
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The core positions are well-chosen.

Agreed. The Catholic church is, and has been for centuries, extremely competent at beating a constant tactical retreat while reason and science advance - to maintain their strategic goals. It is fascinating really.

God of the gaps. The gaps get smaller, but there will always be gaps.

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Agreed. The Catholic church is, and has been for centuries, extremely competent at beating a constant tactical retreat while reason and science advance - to maintain their strategic goals. It is fascinating really.

God of the gaps. The gaps get smaller, but there will always be gaps.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

And then Protestants have the nerve to blame all of the evil things Christians do on Catholicism.

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