It would seem this author doesn’t know very much about Ben Stein.
Roger Friedman’s outrage may persuade me to buy a ticket to see this movie. His outrage proves the point Ben wants to make in the movie.
Bueller... Bueller...
The best part is the description of the film’s distribution pattern (executive summary: the marketers figure that the South is full of dumb goobers who will fall for their line of malarkey).
Fox News has some dumb writers. To suggest that this movie has an anti-Semitism theme is absurd. Exactly the opposite is true.
Evolutionary theory is not about who created the universe.
Some of the claims in this movie (e.g. that George Mason U fired a dissident biology professor) are just plain BS. She was a part-time instructor and her contract wasn't renewed. She went on to a full time position with another school in the state university system.
IMO, GMU would have been well within its right to fire her, but they didn't.
My opinion of Ben Stein will never be the same. Either his research skills are inexcusably bad or he is nothing more than an ideologue with no interest in facts.
What a snarky article. I’m planning on seeing this movie the day it opens.
On the other hand, I do think this: I think that the people – and I know why they're doing it, but I still think that it's a little bit disingenuous. Let's make no mistake. The people pushing intelligent design believe in the biblical version of creation. Intelligent design is a way, I think, to sneak it into the curriculum and make it less offensive to the liberals because it ostensibly does not involve religious overtones, that there is just some intelligent being far greater than anything any of us can even imagine that's responsible for all this, and of course I don't have any doubt of that. But I think that they're sort of pussyfooting around when they call it intelligent design.
'Sicko' Shows Michael Moore's Maturity as a Filmmaker
Sunday, May 20, 2007
By Roger Friedman
Filmmaker Michael Moore's brilliant and uplifting new documentary, "Sicko," deals with the failings of the U.S. healthcare system, both real and perceived. But this time around, the controversial documentarian seems to be letting the subject matter do the talking, and in the process shows a new maturity.
A Better Advisor for Florida Students: Albert Einstein or the ACLU?
by John Armor [3 April, 2008, 623 words]
Bills have been introduced in the Florida legislature, and are now pending, which would include the concept of “intelligent design” in the high school science curriculum. Predictable groups of religious, political, and teachers union representatives have lined up on both sides of the issue.
One side says this is “anti-evolution” and would be an “embarrassment” to the State of Florida. The other calls this “good news” and “common sense.” The real fight here is between Albert Einstein and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In January of this year, the ACLU wrote a letter to the Florida State Board of Education, threatening to sue the State if intelligent design was included in the science curriculum for high school students. It was a long letter with elaborate legal arguments, but its real point was in a footnote on page three. There the ACLU noted that it extracted (excuse me, “agreed to accept”) $1 million in fees from the Dover School District in Pennsylvania in an intelligent design case. ACLU lawyers added coyly that the actual fees were “more than $2 million.”
Boiled down to the essentials, the ACLU letter was the demand from a school yard bully that his victim fork over his lunch money or get beat up. But $2 million or more in attorneys fees is a lot of lunch money.
Since the subject concerns what philosophies should be presented to beginning students in science, who better to consult than the greatest scientist who has ever lived, Albert Einstein. In his famous essay, “The World as I See It,” he wrote:
“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”
Elsewhere, he wrote that genius consists of becoming an adult “without losing a child’s sense of wonder.” And he wrote, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Einstein made it clear that he belonged to no religion, and did not believe in “a personal God.” Still, to the end of his days, he marveled at the intricate design of the universe.
Even in this, Einstein refuted what the ACLU argues today. He was not religious. He was not an enemy of the theory of evolution, nor any other theory of science. Yet he believed in intelligent design. According to the arguments of the ACLU, the First Amendment to the Constitution would bar Einstein’s ideas from the classrooms of impressionable students.
This author, whose practice in the US Supreme Court has consisted mostly of First Amendment cases, argues the exact opposite. When the Amendment was written, “established religion” had a clear meaning, namely state imposition of a particular religion. Intelligent design is not a religion, and talking about it does not “impose” it. Then there is the last point, that the Amendment refers to freedom “of” religion, not freedom “from” religion.
The people who wrote and ratified that Amendment had no intention of eliminating all public mention of any aspect of religion. For any judge to rule in that manner is to rewrite the First Amendment, a power no judge legitimately possesses. The power to amend the Constitution belongs to the people, in Article V, not to any judges.
Just ask yourselves this simple question, a “thought experiment” as Einstein used to say: Who would be a better model for students just starting in science in the State of Florida? Albert Einstein, or the best and brightest of the ACLU attorneys?
Perhaps the ACLU should do a little homework on “a child’s sense of wonder.”
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About the Author: John Armor practiced 33 years in the US Supreme Court. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu This was written at the behest of the American Civil Rights Union. www.theacru.org
I’ll be going to see Expelled.
Cool. Now I’m looking forward to seeing this even more! I plan to go opening weekend.
The critic likes Mariah Carey albums!
Does any more need to be said?
Wading-through-the-Michael-Moore-wannabe-swamp-of-Agitprop-BS Bump.
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
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.
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.