Posted on 05/04/2008 5:49:05 AM PDT by Salman
...
When talking about the creationists to people who don’t follow these controversies closely, I have found that the hardest thing to get across is the shifty, low-cunning aspect of the whole modern creationist enterprise. Individual creationists can be very nice people, though they get nicer the further away they are from the full-time core enterprise of modern creationism at the Discovery Institute. The enterprise as a whole, however, really doesn’t smell good. You notice this when you’re around it a lot. I shall give some more examples in a minute; but what accounts for all this dishonesty and misrepresentation?
My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.
...
The misrepresentations in Expelled are far too numerous for me to list here, and the task is unnecessary since others have done it. ... Other science-literate bloggers have been weighing in, often very angrily. One of my favorite comments came from “Pixy Misa” (Andrew Mazels) who correctly called Ben Stein's accusing Darwin of responsibility for the Holocaust “a blood libel on science.”
I would actually go further than that, to something like “a blood libel on Western Civilization.”
...
The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism ...
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
The "Intelligent Design" movement is not just saying that God created the universe and designed the laws of nature intelligently.
What a moron.
The opposite of “Intelligent Design” is stupid design or perhaps mindless chaos.
reading and posting a movie review by some one who hasn't seen the movie is just a waste of everyone's time. Why don't you ask the moderator to take it down?
Good post and on target. Hope you’ve got your fire suit on cause you’re going to be flamed by the fundies.
I’m very disappointed that John Derbyshire would review a movie he hasn’t seen, either negatively or positively. I thought he was more honest than that. I’m surprised National Review was willing to publish it.
Now we know better.
yeah— my idea is you don’t review a movie you haven’t seen and if you notice that’s the case you have judgement enough not to post it . The best title for the article is “Ad Hominem Attack on Ben Stein”
Derb, this was done a lot better by the guys who wrote Otter’s speech to the IFC in “Animal House”:
“Point of parliamentary procedure!”
“Don’t screw around, they’re serious this time!”
“Take it easy, I’m pre-law.”
“I thought you were pre-med.”
“What’s the difference?”
“...Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did. But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but I for one am not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!”
Oh sure.
And how many people here attacked “Brokeback Mountain” without seeing it? Or “An inconvenient Truth”?
Not that I’m defending those, just tired of the sudden hypocrisy when it comes to film reviews.
And it’s actually Stein that doing the ad hominem attacks, and in a really sleazy way, if he claims evolution led to the Holocaust.
It’s about bloody time someone exposed the “intelligent design” fraud for the evidence-less paranoid fear-mongering it really is.
It’s about to become a place to debate the character of someone who writes a review of a movie he hasn’t seen, based on reviews other people have written. So what if he respects those people, and believes in their honesty? Until he did this, I respected him and believed in his.
No quote, naturally.
I love it when sottish people call others ignorant etc.... hey John Derbyshire you are sottish and NOT for the reasons many might think.
IIRC Ben Stein was interviewing the guide at a former Nazi death facility. He asked her about the relationship between the Nazi eugenics program and Darwinism. She was the one who replied that the Nazi program could not have taken place without Darwinism.
nice detail that a second hand reviewer is ignorant of.
How many of us wrote analyses of those movies without seeing them? I'm sure I did post that I didn't want to see movies about two gay shepherds or global warming, but I didn't pretend to analyze either one. If JD doesn't want to see a movie about Intelligent Design, that's fine and he's got every right to say so. Critiquing it on the basis of other people's reviews, without troubling to see it himself, is dishonest. I'd think he'd have had more concern for his own credibility.
“Below he weighs in against Ben Stein’s EXPELLED, reviewing the movie despite refusing to see it. Derbyshire’s education, it appears, consists mainly in learning to sneer while striking an erudite pose.” —William Dembski
http://www.uncommondescent.com/expelled/john-derbyshire-expelled-as-creationist-porn/
That is somewhat incorrect, the Holocaust was Eugenics the way it outta be, enough with mucking about with abortions and sterilizations, simply exterminate the living in a sort of quickened Darwinistic frenzy.
Now that wasn’t “Science” or even the Scientific Method, it was however the use of dominant thought in science at the time for political ends created by a sociopathic group of mad men.
How is this for a Ben Stein quote?:
“When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers, talking about how great scientists were, 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.
...Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Or by people who have seen the movie.
Forgot to put the close quote (”) at the end of Stein’s screed.
"As an agency making for progress, conscious selection must replace the blind forces of natural selection; and men must utilize all the knowledge acquired by studying the process of evolution in the past in order to promote moral and physical progress in the future. The nation which first takes this great work thoroughly in hand will surely not only win in all matters of international competition, but will be given a place of honour in the history of the world."- Leonard Darwin, Presidential address, First International Eugenics Congress, 1912.
"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazines of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2008202/posts
But for those following the Darwin=Hitler theme, here is something new that may explain things.
I loved reading Ben Stein’s diary in TAS it was the first thing read. But he stepped into it, basically backsliding into the old ethno bigotries that brought the world such pseudo science as “Authoritarian Personality” by dropping the nazi card.
Its pretty obvious that the 2000 years prior to Jesus was pretty unintelligent compared to the 2000 years after.
Why is this being ignored. Why are some denying the incredible strides in science, society, arts, etc since God gave us light?
Why this focus on ancient “history” when the wonders are in the modern times that Stein despises.
-snip-
"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)
"Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."
http://www.darwin-literature.com/The_Descent_Of_Man/7.html
Well, I'll be a son of a gun. I did not know that!
The extermination of other races had a different source. Thanks for your contribution!
Lemme guess... Holocaust denier?
Good catch!
Huh?
Is this satire? The author can’t be serious!
Or by people who have seen the propaganda film.
There, fixed it for you.
Have you seen it? Or you just blowing smoke?
it was however the use of dominant thought in science at the time for political ends created by a sociopathic group of mad men.
All of which had nothing to do with Darwin. It did however, have a lot to do with the Catholic Church.
The holocaust had nothing to do with the belief in survival of the fittest? Instead the holocaust was caused by the RCC? Please explain.
Beats me, I never said a peep about the Catholic Church, and why did you think that I had?
The pope at the time, and some Bishops in the Black Sea region did try to offer shelter and movement to Jews fleeing from the Camps.
Or are you a big Michael Moore fan.
Yes I know the phrase "big Michael Moore" is a tautology
Cum nimis absurdum Pope Paul IV, 1555
Since it is completely senseless and inappropriate to be in a situation where Christian piety allows the Jews (whose guilt—all of their own doing—has condemned them to eternal slavery) access to our society and even to live among us; ....
Fourth, Stein substantiates it with a damning direct quote from Darwin on not letting lesser types breed, in a deliberately human context. Darwin is as bright as you please and Stein dwells on that. But he was also a piece of work, and his social ideas were simply horrible, and papering that over is the merest whitewash.
Fifth, Darwin isn't science. Science is bigger than that, and entirely respected in Stein's movie. Sixth, the Darwinists in the movie are not simply defending science, they are aggressively promoting a religious and philosophical viewpoint, and attempting to crush any questioning of that viewpoint. Not to put too fine a point on it, there is nothing even the slightest bit scientific about Dawkins' atheism, but that is the doctrine he and his allies are actually persecuting for.
Seventh, the most delicious moment of the film comes when Stein catches Dawkins defending the "panspermia" idea, that life might have been seeded throughout the cosmos by an advanced alien civilization, and that there may even be markers of this discernable in biology. As Stein himself puts it, whoa, Richard Dawkins entertains intelligent designer as a possible hypothesis. Of course Dawkins instantly insists that any such alien one, can't be God (which Stein comically makes him spell out), and two, must itself have arisen by the usual Darwinian story.
This is the most delicious piece on the film, because it shows Dawkins putting the propositions he actually cares about beyond all possible reach of evidence, while conceeding speculatively all the points the IDers claim to actually be disputing.
It is simply a brilliant piece of moviemaking, and it shows Dawkins up for the bigoted blowhard he is. There is another great comic moment when Stein interviewing his ID archnemisis insists that still, Dawkins is very smart. The interlocturer allows it "yes he is smart. A bit of a reptile, but smart". lol.
IDers should be allowed to do science, not blackballed. Their ID opinions should be seen as their personal philosophical opinions and not as science, but as no less or more legitimate than Dawkins' atheism, or anyone's skepticism, or liking the many-worlds interpretation of QM, or speculating about the anthropic principle, or unobservable string landscapes, etc. Scientists do philosophy and they speculate. It isn't science, but it can't be outlawed, either. Doesn't need to be.
Ah, but then he doesn't. See, it matters whether you've seen the movie. Because men are systematically lying about it, and if you've seen it, you know they are lying. If you haven't, you readily believe their lies.
Derbyshire's inadvertent point is that you shouldn't support dishonest people by reading their propaganda columns.
I'm pretty sure scientists never actually told Ben Stein's relatives to to go to the showers to get gassed.
So unless you come up with an equally egregious lie by Derbyshire, I'll won't take the Steinway.
How does a stupid papal bull about 400 years before cause the holocaust? You get no argument from me that the RCC did numerous wrongs to the Jews as well as other Christian Churches when it had the power of the state to enforce it's will, but I don't think they can be blamed for the Holocaust.
I'm pretty sure Ben Stein never said they did, your dishonest reply notwithstanding.
So unless you come up with an equally egregious lie by Derbyshire
Can I just invent one? It seems to work for you.
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