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Ben Stein: Win His Career
Fox News ^ | Wednesday, April 09, 2008 | Roger Friedman

Posted on 04/09/2008 7:27:17 AM PDT by js1138

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To: bigcat32

No “perhaps” about it.

That WAS his justification.

Two reasons for vehemently trying to deny the existance of a Creator:

One - party hardy! No consequences!!!!
Two - your rights come from the government, not the Creator, and we can take them away with a simple majority vote.


41 posted on 04/09/2008 8:14:34 AM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: Congressman Billybob

I thought that the ACLU was funded by you and me - the taxpayers of this country. Where do they come off accepting $2 Million of the School District’s funds? Was the money given back to the taxpayers?

I am very confused.


42 posted on 04/09/2008 8:15:00 AM PDT by noname07718 (The Senate is based on consensus. “Consensus is the absence of leadership” - Lady M.Thatcher)
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To: js1138

Wading-through-the-Michael-Moore-wannabe-swamp-of-Agitprop-BS Bump.


43 posted on 04/09/2008 8:15:39 AM PDT by DoctorMichael (Teach the Raelian Controversey!)
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To: bigcat32
Maybe Godwin's rule should be invoked, and your point refuted by contrary evidence from the historic record.

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. “

Adolf Hitler

44 posted on 04/09/2008 8:16:30 AM PDT by allmendream ("A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal." Napoleon Dynamite)
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To: js1138
PS: Following "The Passion" release pattern, "Expelled" will open wide on the 18th but mostly in rural and poor neighborhoods. It’s got just one theater in all of New York City, in Times Square, none in places like Beverly Hills or wealthier, better-educated urban neighborhoods where more "evolved" people might live.

It's cute how this Roger Friedman thinks he's so damned intelligent, and certainly much smarter than folks who went to see The Passion or who will go to see Expelled. I will have seen both.

I don't know much about Mr. Friedman, but I would be willing to bet him $10,000 per point on a standard IQ test fairly administered on the difference between our scores, or alternately $100 per point difference on the SAT suite.

He may have evolved but I was intelligently designed.

ML/NJ

45 posted on 04/09/2008 8:21:35 AM PDT by ml/nj
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To: js1138
The whole idea of Stein, a Jew, jumping on the intelligent design bandwagon of the theory of evolution begetting the Nazis is so distasteful you wonder what in — sorry — God’s name — he was thinking when he got into this.

He does have a point, after all, since evolution made not just Nazism possible, but also Communism... If everything is just matter, what does it matter if you "break a few eggs" to bring in Utopia for the masses? Fundamental to rationalizing the massive murders-to-the-10th-power of both ideologies was atheism, and atheism in western society historically only became respectable with evolution to back it up. Every serious ideology has its own made-up history, and the myth of Darwinism is foundational to both of these barbarisms.

46 posted on 04/09/2008 8:25:28 AM PDT by AnalogReigns
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Stein is going for the same pot of cash as "The Passion of the Christ". Unfortunatly, not all Christians dismiss evolution, and this anti-science agitprop doesn't have the emotional drama of The Passion.

Stein will get all the usual critics that don't like religion, but he will get very little support from Christians to counter it. I.E. Stein will fail big time.

47 posted on 04/09/2008 8:25:33 AM PDT by Captain Pike
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To: js1138

Amusing anti Christian and anti semtic nonsense.


48 posted on 04/09/2008 8:25:46 AM PDT by lonestar67 (Its time to withdraw from the War on Bush-- your side is hopelessly lost in a quagmire.)
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To: freespirited

Freedom from religion - the latest penumbra...


49 posted on 04/09/2008 8:26:38 AM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Congressman Billybob
"..Einstein ...believed in intelligent design."

As does every rational person.

But people are being misled if it's not made clear to them that there is a major difference between (small case) "intelligent design" and "The Intelligent Design Movement".

One points to God.

The other points in every direction - including "space aliens".

50 posted on 04/09/2008 8:26:51 AM PDT by Matchett-PI (Proud member of "Operation Chaos" having the T-shirt , ball cap and bumpersticker to prove it.)
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To: SandyInSeattle

I have MUCH stronger words for this author,but since this IS a family site:)...Mister Stein is an enigma to many,but I find his points cogent and deeply thought out before he speaks. Of course,much of his stuff is tom-foolery...but we need a little of that to counter-balance the deluge of crap we face daily. Good Day to you All!


51 posted on 04/09/2008 8:27:21 AM PDT by saltnlemons
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To: AnalogReigns
He does have a point, after all, since evolution made not just Nazism possible, but also Communism...

So your point is there was no anti-semitism until Darwin?

52 posted on 04/09/2008 8:27:25 AM PDT by Captain Pike
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To: freespirited

Didn’t he also think that negroes had a built-in immunity against mosquito-spread malaria because of their body odor?


53 posted on 04/09/2008 8:30:06 AM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: js1138

Does this movie discuss Zombarific Origins?


54 posted on 04/09/2008 8:34:37 AM PDT by Shryke
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To: js1138

The fool says in his heart, there is no G_d.

The movie is about the closed ranks which allows no dissent, in science and academia. Any whiff of “ID” and even alternative mechanisms like Steven Gould’s ideas have been and are treated as fascists everywhere treat anyone who goes against State doctrine.

However, the argument will - as it has since the Garden - devolve into believers vs. non-believers.

Believers should understand that just as the Earth revolves around the sun, however and whatever is truth is of G_d.


55 posted on 04/09/2008 8:35:11 AM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.LifeEthics.org (I have a mustard seed and I'm not afraid to use it.))
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To: js1138
Stein, Frankowski and pals say in "Expelled" that perfectly good scientists and educators are being stigmatized for wanting to teach their students creationism and "intelligent design" — in other words, junk science — in addition to or instead of conventionally accepted Darwinism.

Creationism is not science at all. It is religion.

Intelligent design is not science. It is religion pretending to be pseudo-science in the hopes of being mistaken for junk science and fooling some school boards.

56 posted on 04/09/2008 8:38:02 AM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: saltnlemons

I heard Ben discussing this movie with Dr. Dobson on Monday night. I liked what he had to say.


57 posted on 04/09/2008 8:41:30 AM PDT by Not A Snowbird (Some people are like slinkys, the idea of them tumbling down a flight of stairs makes you smile.)
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To: allmendream

>>Most know that I.D. is not Science but a religious philosophy.

I received my BS/MS in Geology, and then my JD. I wished I had rec’d my JD first, because it taught me to distinguish b/w fact, and theory, assumptions, inferences, much better than what you are taught in University colleges.

Evolution is not a fact. We find fossils in the rock record. Those fossils are different at different strat-time layers. That part is fairly decided as fact. There is no fact of evolution. It is a supposition. There is no witness to evolution, that it occurred, or that it continues to occur. That is assumption, inference, theory. In fact, the original theory was so riddled with deficiencies that it was revised to “punctuated equilibrium.” Apparently, the original “fact” of evolution had to be changed to fit with the actual observable facts of the rock record.

Intelligent design is more than God created the Earth. Evolution contends that the most simple single cellular life ever, evolved, by happenstance, into the most complex forms of life of today. Great, great, great ......grandpa blue cheese. Some ID proponents have argued that some elements of life are so irreducibly complex that it could not have occurred by natural selection.

That argument, in and of itself, is wholly a scientific argument. How well either side stands up can be argued without referencing the Bible, God or any religion. And it is an incredibly challenging problem for evolution.

And aside from the biological arguments, there is the universal acknowledgment that science cannot explain what caused the Big Bang, why it happened at all, or what existed just before? Theories are that all matter of the universe was condensed into something the size of a golf ball? Then the expansion. OK. That seems scientific. Wait. Bible says there was nothing, the void, then God spoke the earth and the heavens into existence. So, both state that there was practically no matter in the universe, then there was. That seems pretty high minded science for a book that was written about 1,500 before Christ.

So, let me get my scientific hat on right, all the matter in the universe was originally compacted into the mass the size of a golf ball, then it expanded, and the Earth just so happened to develop the right atmosphere, the right gravity, be the right distance from the sun, and the from that golf ball expansion, human beings evolved from inorganic chemicals (which cannot be shown to have happened) to develop incredibly complex features such as eyes, which gave Darwin terrible trouble, and all of these are suppositions and inferences, and nearly none are fact.

Really, at bottom, the folks that so zealously object to ID feel that they, and science, are far too superior to entertain the notion that God exists, and that only their reason can explain the origin and development of man. Yet, their reason forces them to admit that they cannot know why the universe came to exist, what prompted the existence, etc.


58 posted on 04/09/2008 8:47:42 AM PDT by job
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To: MrB
Ah... but you dismiss the INTENT behind those that insist that evolution DISPROVES the Creator.

There is a show on the Sci-fi channel where these guys go off to look for "cryptozoological" animals around the world. They NEVER find anything. This of course does not "DISPROVE" the existence of Nessie or Sasquatch from a scientific standpoint, but it does call their existence into question.

My biggest gripe with Creationists and ID'ers is that they want to use science without understanding it. And worse, they postulate that something exists without providing a definition, or description of that something. To find something, you have to have an idea what it will look like, what its characteristics are. How tall is the designer? Does it have eyes? Tentacles? What does it eat? Does it have DNA? Can we get a sample of its spoor?

No, the Designer/Creator is everywhere and nowhere. It has no defining characteristics, no physical existence. It is a job for faith not science. Leave my science alone!

59 posted on 04/09/2008 8:48:06 AM PDT by Soliton (McCain couldn't even win a McCain look-alike contest)
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To: allmendream
Most Scientists in the U.S.A. are Christian.

What is your source for that statistic? Here's what I have found, from the journal Nature late 90s:

" The latest survey involved 517 members of the National Academy of Sciences; half replied. When queried about belief in "personal god," only 7% responded in the affirmative, while 72.2% expressed "personal disbelief," and 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism."

This would make the landslide majority being atheists, with the next largest plurality being agnostic--and a tiny minority being simply theistic (not necessarily Christian).

I think Ben Stein's point (see the movie trailer here) is that there is a more-than-McCarthiestic attitude that prevails in the scientific establishment against any possibility of a Creator. Intelligent Design after all is a BIG TENT, running the gamut of a few agnostics open to the possibility of a Supreme Being somehow being a part in making the universe (and even using evolution to do so....) on over to firm young-earth Creationist-Christians.

But from what I've read, and what Stein puts forth, it's very difficult to be a mainstream scientist, especially in the field of life-sciences, and be able to honestly say on Sunday
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth..."

60 posted on 04/09/2008 8:48:31 AM PDT by AnalogReigns
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