Posted on 04/30/2008 7:49:41 PM PDT by EveningStar
John Derbyshire finds a rather disturbing comment from Ben Stein in an interview he did with TBN earlier this month, promoting his new film Expelled: The Movie. In explaining his reaction to researching the Holocaust by visiting Dachau and Hadamar, Stein railed against the distortions of Darwinian theory that led to the systematic eugenics murders and genocide of the Nazi regime. However, Stein misses the target by a mile...
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
the fact that Ben Stein is hanging out with those TBN shysters is disturbing in itself.
Ben endorsed the nut case running for senate in MN.
“Ben endorsed the nut case running for senate in MN.”
And gave Al Franken money....
>>Science does not lead to Dachau; ideology perverting science led to Dachau.
Wow, thanks. Glad we don’t have any Science Perverted by Ideology here in America! I am shocked; shocked! How dare someone accuse GoreBULL warming of that.
Yes, indeed. I think Stein misspoke. It’s not science that leads to murder, but what I would call pseudoscience.
Darwin’s ideas did, indeed, play a part in Nazi ideology—survival of the fittest, the right of superior races to rule over or eliminate inferior races, and so forth.
Whether that kind of Social Darwinism is a natural extension of Darwinism, or a distortion of it, has been a matter of argument. I won’t go over it here. In either case, the Nazi version of Darwinism amounted to a pseudoscience, not real science. It was, however regretably, a commonplace of 19th-century European thought that the Caucasian race was superior to all the other. This way of thinking found its full flower in Nazism, and was largely discredited as a result.
So, either Stein misspoke, or he failed to make himself clear. Science and religion are compatible, or should be compatible. Certainly the Catholic Church teaches that they are (see, e.g., Fides et Ratio, or some of Pope Benedict’s recent comments). Indeed, the rise of western science and technology was largely a product of the Christian intellectual mindset.
He's selling a movie. I'm pretty sure Mel Gibson did the same thing for his movie. For the record I am no fan at all of TBN.
Physicist Jacob Bronowski, who lost family in the death camps, said it best in the early 1970’s. The Holocaust was not the result of science, it was quite the opposite - it exemplified how men behave when the are absolutely certain they are right, with no basis in reality. Same goes for the islamofascists, or any similar nutjobs.
Exactly. But Steins point is that the scientific establishment today is no longer scientific, when it comes to questioning evolution.
From the article: The Holocaust occurred when raving anti-Semites and materialists latched onto scientific theory as a philosophy, making it into a rationalization for what they would have done regardless.
Those who insist that Intelligent Design is and cannot be scientific are, by definition, materialist atheists. Materialism insists that everything is material, and has come about by material processes...evolution being the key one for life in their view.
While it’s surely possible to be a theistic evolutionist, believing in God, by definition, that makes one believing in a Designer; theistic evolutionists are, by default, believers in Intelligent Design.
Those who object to Intelligent Design in any form are pseudo-scientific on this point, reflecting their philosophic materialism—atheism—and, as Ben Stein clearly shows, they are the same people who utterly control the life-sciences in America.
Then you would also have to say that Christianity played a part in Nazi ideology. Hitler professed himself a Christian, and cited Christianity on numerous occasions to justify his feelings toward Jews.
Martin Luther in "The Jews and Their Lies" (1543):
What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? ... I shall give you my sincere advice:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html
Indeed, the rise of western science and technology was largely a product of the Christian intellectual mindset.
Didn't the scientific method take root in the mid-1600's? If not, where would you place the time frame? My point is that Christianity was the state religion in European nations at least until the American Revolution. I have to wonder, why did it take over 1,000 years for science and technology to blossom?
I think James Madison would have a different take:
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
--James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 20 June 1785 Papers 8:298--304
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html
You didn't read Madison's statement very carefully, did you. He is blaming the legal establishment of a state religion, not Christian teachings or doctrines. You're making very much the same mistake Stein is being accused of.
And spare us that garbage about Hitler being a Christian. Hitler and the other Nazis hated Christianity, partly because they considered it a derivative of Judaism, and partly because its ethics were in conflict with the aggressive warrior mentality they espoused. Being brought up in a nominally Catholic setting doesn't make Hitler a Christian, any more than having studied for the Orthodox priesthood made Stalin a Christian.
That reminds me of one of my favorite C.S. Lewis Quotes:
"The materialist who debunks everyone else’s ideas as the subrational products of their brain chemistry or environment cannot avoid being debunked himself. If he is honest the materialist will have to admit that his own ideas are merely the “epiphe-nomenon which accompanies chemical or electrical events in a cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process.” If all thoughts are merely the products of non-rational causes, this includes the materialist’s own thoughts. In other words, there is no reason according to materialism for materialism itself to be regarded as true."
What Stein is really saying is that science itself is value-free. Science, in the absence of “love of God and compassion and empathy,” (his phrase) can indeed lead to horrors. We’ve seen science in the willing service of totalitarians and fanatics, over and over. We’re seeing it again in the anthropogenic global warming cult. Secular, anti-religious scientists like to portray themselves as noble elitists, far above “primitive superstitions” like religion, which are for the boorish masses. Typical sneering liberal snobs
I read Madison just fine. If you had read more carefully, you would have seen that I was making that very point leading in to the Madison quote:
"My point is that Christianity was the state religion in European nations at least until the American Revolution. I have to wonder, why did it take over 1,000 years for science and technology to blossom?"
Now, do you care to take a shot at that question?
And spare us that garbage about Hitler being a Christian.
Stop twisting my words. I said he professed it, and cited it to the masses to justify his feelings toward the Jews. Do you dispute that he did both?
That is indeed a good point. Did the scientific establishment oppose eugenics? No, they encouraged it. The great Darwinian scientists actually ran the eugenics show. They held Chairs of Eugenics. They ran national and international eugenics organizations. They lobbied for eugenic laws. They pushed for eugenics in the schools. They lambasted their opponents as addle-brained theologians and "science-deniers". Darwinian peer review was worthless as a force opposing eugenics. What screwed them up was popular opinion. The outbreak of WWI turned popular opinion against Karl Pearson in the UK. After WWII, American popular opinion turned against eugenics. As of the 60's, eugenicists had to stop using the word "eugenics", though Julian Huxley was a hold out until he died. There's more info on my FR page.
German science was the best in the world in the early 20th Century. (Arguably too the German people were also the best educated—with a 98% literacy rate.) Did that scientific establishment rise up to oppose Hitler’s Nazis? On the contrary, they helped the Nazis. As proof the whole American and Soviet space programs up until the 1970s were dominated by ex-Nazi-era German scientists.
No. That is a complete re-writing of actual history.
What were some of the major inventions of the Middle Ages? One of them was stirrups, which allowed a more powerful form of mounted warfare that helped Europe conquer other people. Another was the horse harness, which enabled deeper plowing and a significant expansion of agriculture. The agricultural revolution was a necessary forerunner of the industrial revolution. Another was printing, which was invented in a monastery, although that point is usually glossed over. Another was the compass. Printing and the compass were invented not long before the Renaissance, which usually gets the credit--because it took the credit.
Perhaps most significant, however, was the water wheel. The Romans discovered it, but never put it to use. it was early medieval monasteries that put it to use, for grinding flour, fulling cloth, and dozens of other uses. The water wheel powered factories--beginning in the middle ages and down into the Renaissance and Enlightenment. When King Richard went on the crusades, he was provided with an immense quantity of iron nails and horseshoes as part of the necessary supplies, which had been rapidly made in mills powered by water wheels. They were the major source of power in europe until development of the steam engine, which did not take place until the 19th century. Here in New England, the local sawmills used water power right down into the early twentieth century.
Probably the Greeks and Romans did not bother putting technology widely to use, other than as a curiosity or as an instrument for siegecraft, because they didn't need it. All the hard work was done by slaves, who needed to be kept busy.
Under the influence of Christianity, slavery was gradually abolished in Europe, not to be revived until the Renaissance, when explorers encountered Arab slavers in Africa. slavery was not permitted in Europe, mostly because of Christianity, but was used for a while in the New World, until Christianity again abolished it. Instead of slaves grinding wheat for bread with mortars and pestles, you had monastic flour mills--and later, secular village mills. And so forth.
The Whig version of history is revisionist history, in which the heirs of the earlier discoveries gave themselves more credit than they deserved.
BS. Give just one example.
"My feeling 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."
"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life...."
--http://www.hitler.org/speeches/02-01-33.html
"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 for the world against the Jewish poison."
--Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed.
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
14th October, 1941, midday: "The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.... When understanding of the universe has become widespread... Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.... "Christianity has reached the peak of absurdity.... And that's why someday its structure will collapse.... "...the only way to get rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.... "Christianity the liar.... "We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State." (p 49-52)
19th October, 1941, night: "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."
Hitler's Table Talk (Adolf Hitler, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953).
My statement is factual.
Inventions are great, but engineering is not the same thing as science.
IMHO, Galileo was the first real scientist, with science as we know it having its roots in Renaisance Italy. Though, of course, the foundations of science go back to Aristotle and certainly the insights of the medieval scholastics are also important. But the pieces did not really get fitted together until the Renaisance.
Yes, science and technology are different, but they also compliment one another like the left and right hands, and that has been why the West has continued to develop in both fields.
The Greeks developed some amazing science and some remarkable technology, but they didn’t keep after it. Basically, they lost interest, because it was purely theoretical, except for building and siege machinery. The West stayed interested and continued to move forward, because the combination of science and technology proved useful and productive.
That was my understanding, as well. I always thought that Galileo, Newton, and some others from the Renaissance era were considered to be the founders of modern science.
The indeed Greeks developed important technology. They also made important advances in mathematics and philosophy that made science possible. However, they were still a long way off from developing the scientific method, i.e. the idea of forming hypotheses and then testing them by gathering evidence or running experiments. As far as I know, Galileo was the first to do that in a systematic way.
Pierre Duhem (of the Gibbs-Duhem equation) wrote a big book or perhaps series of books presenting evidence that there was a continuity of scientific development from the Middle ages up until Newton's time. I've never seen it, but I think it was called "System du Monde" or something like that. Apparently that book was banned in France.
Universities.
It wouldn’t be hard to argue that the scientific method of hypothesis and testing derives from the basic methods of the scholastic theologians.
All the universities and law schools in Europe were originally religious establishments, founded by the Catholic Church. The typical method of academic theologians in the later middle ages was to put forth a thesis or hypothesis and then argue it with other theologians. Pico della Mirandola, who anticipated some of Francis Bacon’s interests in natural philosophy, the earlier term for what we call science (see On the Dignity of Man), proposed 500 theological theses which he was prepared to argue. And of course Martin Luther tacked up his 95 Theses on the church door, but unfortunately the usual theological argument and adducement of proofs proceeded to break down into schism and warfare.
Of course the areas of study are very different, but the method is similar. Put forward a hypothesis and defend it against the logical attacks of your peers. And if the hypothesis is sound, you will find yourself gathering allies.
Yes. I haven’t read that, but there is plenty to that effect in the work of Lynn Thorndike, Alfred North Whitehead, and in a somewhat different vein, Christopher Dawson. (Dawson focuses more on religion and culture than religion and science.)
Christopher Dawson is good. I'll probably be putting up a link to a djvu of Dynamics of History soon.
No doubt, the scholastics definitely had an important influence on the development of the scientific method. There's a difference, however, between arguing to defend a thesis and gathering physical evidence and running experiments to test a hypothesis. The scholastics did not yet make that leap from natural philosophy to science. As far as I can tell, Galileo was the first person to do that, though there might have been some who preceeded him of whom I am unaware. I am not a historian of science.
Having a nominal knowledge of genetics and learning the basic premise of "survival of the fittest" doesn't make Hitler a "Darviwist", anymore than taking bilogy classes in college makes Ben Stein an expert of evolution.
What a crock of ykw. This is all anyone who likes or admires Science needs to know about Mr. Stein or where he is coming from intellectually and the audience he is playing to. Jews contributions to Science are legendary, how would Stein countenance a Palestinian telling him that it was Jew's embracing of Science that leads to their “abuse”, “genocide”, or “apartheid” against Palestinians?
Eratosthenes figured out a system to measure the circumference of the earth around 200 B.C. (yes, they knew it was round) by measuring the angle of the shadow cast by two sticks a known distance apart.
Archimedes figured out how to tell if the King's goldsmith had cheated him by a measurement of density from a weight and volume of water displacement method and comparison to a measured mass of pure gold (less important than the method, but of interesting historic note, the King was on to something and the goldsmith did indeed cheat him by mixing in lesser metals when making his crown).
I think the biggest message of Expelled is that ID scientists are not allowed free speech/academic freedom.
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