Posted on 05/01/2008 4:10:11 PM PDT by steve-b
Rarely has a movie subtitle so capably assessed a movie’s content as does "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." There is not a shred of intelligence on display in this just released "documentary" purporting to be a careful examination of the fight over teaching creationism and evolution in America.... This is the core of what is ethically rotten about this movie. Darwinism did not lead to Nazism in Germany. Nor does Darwinism inherently contain the seeds of Nazism.
There were many nations, such as Brazil, where Darwinism led to no political ideology. There were some such as Britain which embraced Darwinism but saw a considerable number of their population killed trying to eliminate Nazism. There were other nations, such as the Soviet Union, where Darwinism was seen as so dangerous and subversive to state sponsored dreams of social engineering that those who espoused it were killed or exiled and a complete biological fairy tale, Lysenkoism, put into classrooms and agricultural policy ultimately leading to the deaths of millions from starvation....
Worse yet, while frowning at Darwin’s statute in a manly fashion, Stein makes no mention of the key factors driving Nazi ideology — racism, homophobia and hatred of the mentally ill and disabled.
To lay blame for the Holocaust upon Charles Darwin is to engage in a form of Holocaust denial that should forever make Ben Stein the subject of scorn not because of his nudnik concern that evolution somehow undermines morality but because in this contemptible movie he is willing to subvert the key reason why the Holocaust took place — racism — to serve his own ideological end. Expelled indeed.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Yeah, he sure Piled it higher & Deeper.
Elitists hate it when they are exposed.
re:Worse yet, while frowning at Darwin’s statute in a manly fashion, Stein makes no mention of the key factors driving Nazi ideology — racism, homophobia and hatred of the mentally ill and disabled.)))
Darwinism gave the Nazi ideology the means to express incipient racism, etc. How can the notion of "Master Race" be anything but Darwinism made practical?
It's kind of like how Rev. Wright works--"black liberation theology" gives haters permission to hate.
I think Eugenics would be a better fit for this criticism than Darwinism. It includes Darwin, but folds in the social and political - which is required to elevate science to government.
Hitler was greatly impressed by Eugenics in the US and it was quite popular here.
Bad psychology: the gift that keeps on giving.
You may have seen this, but the video about half way down this page: RC Sproul interviewing Ben Stein, is a great look at the issue examined in this film.
http://www.a1m.org/index.php
Groupthink mindguard writes alternative universe piece to relieve member stress that comes from believing the truth is real.
There are Networks that do this 24/7.
bump for later reading
Thanks. Good link. Informative.
The Unabomber had the same idea. Furthermore, he hated leftists and leftism. He'd probably be right at home here at FreeRepublic.
The popular British commentator/writer James Burke claims exactly that. In his book "The Day The Universe Changed" he wrote Underpinned by Darwin's theory of evolution, Nazism was born. Yet no one has called him stupid (maybe they just never read his book).
If it pisses off the Left, it’s probably 100% true.
Burke said that Darwinism was a justification for Nazism, Communism, and Capitalism.
Ben’s gone round the ben(d) one this one. Stick to your Clear Eyes, Ben.
If he’d just rated it a one star flick and left it at that, he’d be more credible. The fact that he expends so much effort trashing it tells you something. It’s like showing a cross to a vampire.
Yes, Eugenics predated Hitler and understanding its origins and its benefactors will help drive a stake into the heart of the American oligarchy.
No, that is NOT what Stein says. Those who were paying attention (obviously not the author of the MSNBC hit piece) will remember that he clearly said that Darwinism was not solely responsible nor was alone sufficient to lead to Nazism, but that it was a necessary precursor to the rise of both Nazism and the eugenics movement.
This guy is throwing a hissy fit but Darwinism, though it is bad science, did not lead to Nazism. Nazism is just one type of socialism (The real name for the party is the German National Socialist Workers Party). Hitler was a socialist. He confiscated private property and believed in government control of society. Eugenics was a popular movement at that time that may have had an influence on Hitler. Eugenics also influenced some of the New Deal Democrats and the birth control advocates. I have not seen Ben Stein’s movie and do not want to comment on it, just on this article.
I suggest detractors (or would-be detractors) actually go to the movie and then make up their minds.
This MENSA graduate couldn't even figure out that the film was NOT about intelligent design. Not one second of it.
It was entirely about so-called "science" banning and blackballing otherwise competent scientists for simply mentioning two words, or asking embarrassing questions that they can't answer.
"I don't know" seems to be beyond the mental capacities of these phonies.
Those who so fervently decry Darwinism do not even understand it.
Darwin sought to explain speciation through the study of a population in isolation. Observing the outward traits (phenotype) that were expressed in response to an environmental challenge (birds were his favorite subject of choice). When phenotypical variation become a genotypical alteration then the species is said to evolve - noting that not all change is beneficial - Darwin determined that those changes that provide an advantage would promote greater survivorship and thus transmission of those traits to more offspring - the survival of the fittest point. The theory of evolution is sound - but when the holes in the evolutionary chain where attempted to be plugged (e.g. evolution of man) Darwin himself became so uncomfortable with the notion that he shelved his years of study and did not allow it to be released until he was near death. Evolution occurs - it only means a change over time. The Nazi’s didn’t believe in classical evolution - they chose the method of agriculture - thin the undesireables out of the herd and you can control the breeding stock. Thats not evolution - it’s pure eugenics. The author is half right - Stein is half right and between them they have further muddled the whole argument.
As long as we decided not to discuss the actual movie, may I ask you...?
How are things in San Francisco?
He espouses the idea that science belief in evolution leads to killing people
Fixed it!
Oh, and I guess you're not familiar with the polls that over 60% of medical doctors reject evolution. Stein will feel perfectly comfortable in a doctor's office. It's you that should be worried.
Why those evolution rejecting doctors have left you with 168 vestigal organs that are just dead weight and ticking time bombs for cancer and disease. You need to go find you an evolutionist doctor and get those things removed.
Is his Phd in stupid?
So he's a back-to-nature environut on top of everything else. Lovely.
WTF? What kind of so-called "historian" is unaware of the fact that Stalin sent thousands of scientists to the Gulag for believing in Darwinian evolution instead of Party-approved Lysenkoist twaddle?
Please list the dates on which you saw the following movies:
Farenheit 9/11
Sicko
An Inconvenient Truth
Bowling For Columbine
I suppose if you didn’t see a movie about, say, the genesis of deserts, you could write two thousand words about how good the gay lifestyle is, and call that serious, uncomical and relevant?
I would respond. However, I’m still trying to figure out what you are even trying to say.
I have failed to find anyone on this thread with mental diarrhea condemning those movies.
Did you post that by mistake?
The "scientists" from the government are here to help you. They know what's best for you. Don't question the all-knowing scientists. Resistance is futile. All will be assimilated.
This post (<-click), while addressing tax issues, tells how the federal government's ongoing scandalous ignoring of 10th A. protected state powers and subsequent, out-of-control federal government spending got started when FDR established his constitutionally unauthorized New Deal programs.
And this post (<-click) gives examples of how corrupt justices then began using FDR's "license" to ignore 10th A. protected state powers to eventually stifle traditional values, both the USSC's scandalous legalization of abortion and now the suppression of the discussion of ID in public school classrooms being examples of this corruption.
So regardless what the renegade USSC majority wants everybody to believe about what can and cannot be discussed in public schools according to the Constitution, the states have the constitutional power (10th A.) to authorize public schools to lead non-mandatory (14th A.) classroom discussions on the pros and cons of evolution, creationism and ID, regardless that atheists, separatists, secular judges and the liberal media are misleading the people to think that doing such things in public schools is unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that the people need to reconnect with the Founder's intentions for the division of federal and government state powers. The people then need to get in the faces of the feds, demanding that the feds start respecting the Constitution that they have sworn to defend, particularly where now-ignored 10th A. protected state powers are concerned.
Amen Brother Amendment - you’ve found the underlying message.
That Stinker Stein should stick to politics, acting and economics. Wait, I guess he did cover two out of three.
The answer is simple — abortion politics.
I was right, this ethicists PHD is indeed in stupid.
He tacitly admits that many physicians agree that unborn babies can feel pain at 20 weeks while others disagree. Being a PHD ethicist he decided, what the hell, I'll err on the side of pain.
Sounds like you’ve had a bad day.
I don’t need to see the films you list because I already understand and disagree with the philosophy of the makers and, in addition, they lie. Of course, this would be your response to ID as well. The thing evo’s won’t admit is that at the base of things, evolutionary explanations are philosophical as well.
Fallacy of False Alternatives
>> The people then need to get in the faces of the feds, demanding that the feds start respecting the Constitution
They need not go further than the voting booth, but apparently that’s too challenging.
Only when you tell the lie that evolution claims to be the origin of life. It doesn't. Despite what Stein, The Discovery Institute, and Intelligent Design says.
It's kind of like me laughing at your refusal to admit that you didn't cause 9/11.
Thanks for replying.
When the people are clued in and educated as to what the problem is, then the voting booth will do what it is supposed to do.
Ben said “science leads to killing people”
What it's done is push God out of the equation and that opens the door to all sorts of things: primarily man being the top of the heap and answering to himself, or some other god he has created to rationalize and justify his actions.
That's how Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Communist China, Communist Cambodia and other regimes happen.
I have seen the movie four times. Each time, because it is so fast-paced, one can gleam new insights.
Recommend this movie whole-heartedly especially to young people.
by Denyse O'Leary
You can practically feel, let alone read, the rage over Ben Stein's evocation of the Holocaust in connection with the Darwin fans' dystopia portrayed in his Expelled documentary, shortly to open.
Richard Weikart, history prof at California State University, Stanislaus and author of From Darwin to Hitler, has contributed a good deal of useful information to the Post-Darwinist blog on Darwin's influence on the Nazis.
But one thing I had not known until he mentioned it recently is that, after Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote a second book ("Zweites Buch") , in which he went into considerable detail about his affection for Darwinian evolution concepts:
Most of the ideas in the Second Book are similar to Mein Kampf. The Second Book opens with a chapter on "War and Peace in the Struggle for Survival [literally Struggle for Life]"
The opening paragraph states: "Politics is history in the making. History itself represents the progression of a people’s struggle for survival [life]. I use the phrase 'struggle for survival' [life] intentionally here, because in reality every struggle for daily bread, whether in war or peace, is a never-ending battle against thousands and thousands of obstacles, just as life itself is a never-ending battle against death. Human beings know no more than any other creature in the world why they live, but life is filled with the longing to preserve it. The most primitive creature knows only the instinct of self-preservation; for higher beings this carries over to wife and child, and for those higher still to the entire species. But when man—not infrequently, it seems—renounces his own self-preservation instinct for the benefit of the species, he is still doing it the highest service. Because not infrequently it is this renunciation of the individual that grants life to the collective whole, and thus yet again to the individual." The great size of the drive for self-preservation corresponds to the two mightiest drives in life: hunger and love. "In truth, these two impulses are the rulers of life." "Whatever is made of flesh and blood can never escape the laws that condition its development."
On the second page, both of the German and English versions, Hitler stated: "In the limitation of this living space lies the compulsion for the struggle for survival, and the struggle for survival, in turn, contains the precondition for evolution." A page later Hitler stated: "This development (Entwicklung) is characterized by the never-ending battle (Kampf) of humans against animals and also against humans themselves." A better translation of this would be: "“This evolution is characterized by an eternal struggle of humans against animals and against humans themselves."
The opening discussion of this book, then, is all about evolution. Contra the claim that “In general, Hitler did not say very much about Darwin and evolution,� he often referred to evolution in Mein Kampf, the Second Book, and in speeches laying out his worldview, especially in secret speeches he delivered during World War II to army officers. His ideas about racial struggle, population expansion, eugenics, euthanasia, and Lebensraum were based in large part on Darwinian ideology of his day.
The second chapter of the Second Book is entitled, "Fighting, Not Industry, Secures Life." However, the German word translated "Fighting" is Kampf and would be more literally translated "Struggle." The second chapter continues the discussion of the human struggle for existence that Hitler claims is a product of expanding populations (Malthus's idea that Darwin appropriated). At the close of the chapter he stated (my translation): "Politics is the art of the execution of the struggle for life of a people [Volk] for its earthly existence. Foreign policy is the art to secure a people [Volk] its necessary living space in extent and quality."
Actually, it sounds like some popular expositions of Darwin's theory that I have heard, barring the turgid prose.
Weikart is currently completing a book on Hitler's Ethic that, he says, will demonstrate that evolutionary ethics was a central feature of Hitler’s ideology.
So why didn't Hitler mention Darwin?
While we are here, Weikart also addressed the question of why Hitler did not quote Darwin directly or mention him by name:
It's true that Hitler hardly ever mentioned Darwin by name (the only direct mention of Darwin I have been able to find is an account by a colleague Wagener).
First, Hitler hardly ever named thinkers from whom he derived ideas. I think this was because he wanted to appear like an original thinker (which he wasn't). Secondly, we have no evidence that Hitler ever read Darwin, so he probably imbibed evolutionary ideas via school, contemporary books, and especially journals and newspapers. I discuss this in my book, From Darwin to Hitler, and will discuss it further in my forthcoming book.
Concerning whether Hitler's ideas were Darwinian: Hitler believed that population pressure causes a struggle for existence between organisms that leads to evolutionary progress. He also believed that this struggle occurred between human races. This is completely Darwinian (yes, Darwin did use the rhetoric of progress), and Hitler often described evolution in Darwinian terms. Also, like Darwin, Galton, and many Darwinists of his day, Hitler believed that intellectual and moral traits are heritable.
Hitler's anti-Semitism did not derive from Darwinism, but many of his ideas did have Darwinian roots: racial struggle, eugenics, euthanasia, population expansion, need for living space. If one reads writings by German Darwinists during the early 1920s (Fritz Lenz, Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and many others), one finds many of the same ideas that Hitler was promoting.
Just this morning I was reading an SS booklet entitled _Rassenpolitik_ (Racial Policy), which is overtly Darwinian. It overtly discusses the struggle for existence, natural selection, and it even discusses mutations as the source of variation. It also uses the term Hoeherentwicklung (higher evolution) constantly.
Does that mean that typical modern-day Darwinists have anything in common with Hitler? No, of course not. But it does mean that we cannot understand Hitler without understanding the role that Darwin, especially as Darwin was understood in Germany, played in his thinking.
Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).
This segment near the end of the movie at the Darwin Museum ( was it Down House ? ) was fascinating to me. I thought it offered a glimpse into the psychology of anti-Darwinism. Along with the dark lighting, I remember in particular the use of skulls in closeup to create threatening images, like a horror movie.
I was immediately struck by the fact that this involved a rejection of the totality of the fossil evidence. Really, a rejection of objectivity, a reversion to superstition.
There you have it.
The person, Arthur Caplan, evidently needs some ‘Intelligent
Objective Perspectives’! His mind-set bears witness to the fact that he is not interested in any Scientific/unbiased
study but functions only as a robotic clone of Darwinism! It is truly sad that men can claim to be intelligent but think only as a “Fool”.
by EWM
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