That was a balanced review?
They admit they are hardcore neo-Darwinists from the outset. They are also missing the point of the movie too. Buried in page 3 or 4 of the review is the defense of their position on the issue of not being able to explain the origin of life, “We don’t know yet.”
Not a tenable position from which to lob criticism at those that suggest that an intelligent designer, and even perhaps God, may have lit the match after all. Evolution may have been a way of explaining the development of species, but there’s still a lot of it, beside the question of origin, that is something less than settled fact.
More to the point of the movie, secular humanists are using neo-Darwinism to replace God with Man as the Supreme Being in the United States. He links it with Nazism because every crackpot that manages to set up a dictatorship uses some aspects of Darwinism to go eugenic on their own population, and those of their neighbors.
If science doesn’t know yet, it should say so, if only to ensure that some dangerous autocrat doesn’t hijack the theory to wipe out a race of people. It should readily say, “The origin of life COULD be God, and it could be a Martian, and it could be somebody else, because at this point we don’t know.”
It certainly has less than concrete ideas on WHY species evolve in the manner they do.
Stein posits that there is less-than-reasoned reactive vitriol to any position that may admit the presence of a God anywhere in public life within academia. He posits the dangers of this tendency, and provide evidence that Atheism, a massively untenable belief system in its own right, has made its home in our most prominent institutions of higher learning in the US.
I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t know if he makes his case. I have always looked at science as the attempt of man to decipher the language of God. I don’t see the two as incompatible at all, Science and Religion. If any thing, I believe the penduluum on this matter has swung all the way across the arc from it’s opposite apogee, marked by the trial of Galileo. That’s my bias.
I think the people waiting for the ‘singularity’ and the people who react to ID’ers like dracula to a crucifix ought to camp out. That would be a fun documentary to film.
Excellent comments - I saw this film today - and Ben Stein does make the point....which is that the idea of Intelligent Design has been been ruled so “forbidden” by the scientific and academic elite that several scientists feared to be filmed even discussing the issue - and were filmed speaking from the shadows.
It reminded me of those in closed societies who would dare to speak about....freedom.
And that is actually the basic premise of this documentary.
That there is now NO FREEDOM of scientific inquiry if that inquiry in ANY WAY brings one iota of criticism of evolution....
It is equated to the elimination of political freedom such as was seen in the erection of the Berlin Wall and those who were not allowed to go past that wall....to venture into freedom....without risking being arrested, beaten up, or shot.
Today - the bullets used are words, tenure, academic positions, and research grants.
It also very much reminded me of the way the reformers and the protestants were treated by the Catholics ....when the fresh wind of the reformation began to blow through Europe.
It should remind all those high minded “scientists” who rail against how Galileo was treated by the scientific “elite” of that day.....
There is NO SUBSTITUTION for FREEDOM = especially in the world of scientific inquiry! And THAT FREEDOM at this time does NOT exist in this country!
Thank you, Ben Stein, for your courage in doing this documentary - and for the courage of all those whose academic / research lives have been trashed by the scientific “politburos” in our academic and scientific domains.