Posted on 04/17/2008 10:54:25 AM PDT by Boxen
...about intelligent design and evolution
In the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein poses as a "rebel" willing to stand up to the scientific establishment in defense of freedom and honest, open discussion of controversial ideas like intelligent design (ID). But Expelled has some problems of its own with honest, open presentations of the facts about evolution, ID—and with its own agenda. Here are a few examples—add your own with a comment, and we may add it to another draft of this story. For our complete coverage, see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—Scientific American's Take.
1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. 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.
Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes.
2) Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. Viewers of Expelled might think that Ben Stein has been giving speeches on college campuses and at other public venues in support of ID and against "big science." But if he has, the producers did not include one. The speech shown at the beginning and end was staged solely for the sake of the movie. Michael Shermer learned as much by speaking to officials at Pepperdine University, where those scenes were filmed. Only a few of the audience members were students; most were extras brought in by the producers. Judge the ovation Ben Stein receives accordingly.
3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie. As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit.
When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed.
4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there. One section of Expelled relates the case of Richard Sternberg, who was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks. The film mentions a 2006 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report prepared for Rep. Mark Souder (R–Ind.), "Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian," that denounced Sternberg's mistreatment.
This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie's case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal's editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last.
The report prepared by Rep. Souder, who had previously expressed pro-ID views, was never officially accepted into the Congressional Record. Notwithstanding the report's conclusions, its appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views. (More detailed descriptions of the Sternberg case can be found on Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and on Wikipedia.)
5) Science does not reject religious or "design-based" explanations because of dogmatic atheism. Expelled frequently repeats that design-based explanations (not to mention religious ones) are "forbidden" by "big science." It never explains why, however. Evolution and the rest of "big science" are just described as having an atheistic preference.
Actually, science avoids design explanations for natural phenomena out of logical necessity. The scientific method involves rigorously observing and experimenting on the material world. It accepts as evidence only what can be measured or otherwise empirically validated (a requirement called methodological naturalism). That requirement prevents scientific theories from becoming untestable and overcomplicated.
By those standards, design-based explanations rapidly lose their rigor without independent scientific proof that validates and defines the nature of the designer. Without it, design-based explanations rapidly become unhelpful and tautological: "This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this looks designed."
A major scientific problem with proposed ID explanations for life is that their proponents cannot suggest any good way to disprove them. ID "theories" are so vague that even if specific explanations are disproved, believers can simply search for new signs of design. Consequently, investigators do not generally consider ID to be a productive or useful approach to science.
6) Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution. Expelled includes many clips of scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, William Provine and PZ Myers who are also well known as atheists. They talk about how their knowledge of science confirms their convictions and how in some cases science led them to atheism. And indeed, surveys do indicate that atheism is more common among scientists than in the general population.
Nevertheless, the film is wrong to imply that understanding of evolution inevitably or necessarily leads to a rejection of religious belief. Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine, a leading neuroscientist who used to be a Dominican priest, continues to be a devout Catholic, as does the evolutionary biologist Ken Miller of Brown University. Thousands of other biologists across the U.S. who all know evolution to be true are also still religious. Moreover, billions of other people around the world simultaneously accept evolution and keep faith with their religion. The late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was compatible with Roman Catholicism as an explanation for mankind's physical origins.
During Scientific American's post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have "confused" viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film's major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God.
Inside and outside the scientific community, people will no doubt continue to debate rationalism and religion and disagree about who has the better part of that argument. Evidence from evolution will probably remain at most a small part of that conflict, however.
This is where I just don't understand thumpers!
If God created The Universe and therefore every particle of matter and energy in it. Then when life sprang from the primordial cauldron three billion years ago, how could that not be God creating life through evolution? Why should that diminish one's faith?
It shouldn't indeed, but modern biblical literalists simply ignore the contradiction you aptly point out.
Here's yet another example: The Bible repeatedly uses creationistic language to describe God's making of individual human beings in the womb. Pardon my laziness in not looking up all the verses for you just now, but you could probably google them fairly easily. They're mostly the same widely used as anti-abortion "proof texts," and thus are often collected and quoted together. Anyway it's stuff like God saying, or it being said of God (again, pardon approximate quotes) that "He knits you together of bone and sinew," and "forms your inwards parts," or "made you in that secret place (the womb)" and such like.
Granted much of this language is poetic, but nevertheless it is clearly teaching that God is actively, intimately and personally involved in the creation of individual human beings in the womb, and of their physical bodies, not just their "spirits".
Thus, by the same logic that Biblical literalists object to evolution, because it "denies" God by substituting a "purely natural" process in the creation of the human species, they OUGHT to also object to the teaching of embryology as a natural scientific phenomena with no explicit place for God. This "denies" the Bible as much as evolution does, in some respects more.
But of course they don't object to teaching embryology in science classes; even though this is abritrary and contradictory.
Oh, another fun example, although in this case, unlike God's forming fetuses, an isolated one: There is, IIRC, a verse in the book of Amos which asserts that, "God creates the wind." I believe the verb here is a form of the same one used in Genesis, which Biblical literalists sometimes insist ONLY refers to "special" creation or creation "ex nihilo;" that is direct and miraculous creative acts by God, or those that involve creation "out of nothing".
Thus meteorology is also atheistic and denies God and denies the Bible.
Lots of stuff airborn, but it looks like there's more sticks than bees.
Well then, believe evolution lies and support intolerance - typical of godless liberals of which Ben is NOT.
That's what the movie seems to be about...
Fine - you believe in "A", others believe in "B".
Why are the "A" so afraid to let the "B"'s have the same rights of free speech and dissemination of their ideas?
You believe you are right. They believe they are right.
You cannot prove you are right. They cannot prove they are right.
But each have the right
to be heard.
Just out of curiosity... Has NAY creationist, ID'er or evolution "skeptic" here in this thread, or any other Expelled thread, objected to the apparent multiple and egregious dishonesties in and associated with this film? Has any even expressed slight or momentary pause that the alligations in this article and other critiques might be true, or seemed to even give a damn if they were?
There has to be a first time for everything.
Life. :D
But in all seriousness, chemical reactions happen all the time. If you know a little bit about physics and chemistry it's not really a big stretch to go from collisions of protons to form helium to synthesis of organic molecules.
So you believe in something you can't see, but can't believe in God? OK
I can "SEE" (with the right equipment) cosmic microwave background radiation, which is predicted by the big bang theory. Every time a result predicted by a theory is seen, it strengthens that theory.
Oh OK. Give me a fact on the theory of Evolution. The last subject is pure hubris, because you cannot speak authoritatively of it as I can, just like I cannot speak of the love you have for your spouse as you can.
You say you know Christ. Can you call him up on the phone and ask him to turn your glass of water into a glass of wine? You believe in God and his only begotten son. This blinds you to the world around you. (I know, you'll say it opens your eyes to it.)
I never said anthropogenic global warming and thats not what Scientist are agreeing upon. Its Global Warming and they say its caused by man, ...
Look up anthropogenic in the dictionary.
...with no facts, only theories of what will happen in a computer model in 25 of 50 or 100 years. Water vapor isn't even figured in their "Theory". Scientists cannot even tell you how much condensation is created in 1 year, they just don't know. But its the same people who will tell us that the world is doomed in 25 or so years, yet cannot predict the weather for next Thursday.
Phew, would you like to start that study? Every time I take a beer out of the fridge, water condenses onto the bottle out of the air. I took two out tonight while I was barbecuing. Average that over the year and that's a lot of condensation. Your ignorance of science is showing.
This is a rather pointless argument since yours is a faith in man and mine is a faith in God. You'll go your way and I'll go mine from the looks of it. Neither converted, neither convinced. But mine has and will stand the test of time. Yours will crumble away.
You're right in one sense, and wrong in another. I would venture a guess that a majority of the world's population (We'll call it 3.3 billion + 1 for the sake of argument) believes in some sort of God. It may not be the same as yours, but it is a God. It has been like that forever, and for the foreseeable future it seems that it will stay that way, people will continue to believe in myth for nothing but comfort. But scientific progress will continue as well. From the ancient Egyptians who built pyramids without anything close to resembling modern technology, to the Romans and their indoor plumbing, to the middle ages and the development of ever more powerful war machines, and finally the industrial revolution.
Just for the sake of argument, let's try a thought experiment. You say God created Earth some time in the past. Well he is all powerful and what not, so let's take this to it's logical end. We don't know the date of creation. Let's place it 5000 years before Christ. So everything that we've found, every artifact, every bone, every oil field, every tool, every skeleton from before that time was placed in its place by God. Given that, what's to stop him from creating the Earth 2500 years BC? If he can put every little detail in place, then it doesn't matter does it? Now 1000 years BC. Same thing. 500 years BC? 10 years BC? How about 10 years AD? 1000 years AD? Last Thursday? Just some food for thought.
Check my very first post in the thread, it’s there. That won’t stop me from putting the facts out there and trying to change hearts and minds.
A little rage being exhibited here, too, I see. Wow. Ben has REALLY hit on something true.
I'll take that as a kind of "I'm just making this stuff up, you caught me." admission.
Thanks for the confirmation.
Well then, believe evolution lies and support intolerance - typical of godless liberals of which Ben is NOT.
I'm puzzled by your response as it bears no logical relation to my post.
I expressed disgust that Stein, who previously I have greatly admired, is involved in what appears pretty clearly at this point (I would be happy to be wrong), to be some pretty deep mendacity.
Absolutely nothing follows logically from that regarding my views on evolution, God or conservatism. For instance I might well have objected to conservatives who participated in recent email campaigns claiming that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim. This wouldn't mean that I supported Obama. It might be the case, in fact, that I strongly opposed Obama, and felt that dishonest attacks would discredit truthful criticisms.
But it's interesting that you are so intent, as are others in the thread, to change the subject.
Let me ask directly: Does it even matter to you if Expelled if full of lies, and if lies were involved in it's production and marketing? Or is it O.K. to lie if the lies are directly against evilution, and if they "work"?
And Hitler himself definitely pointed back to Christianity as justification for his ideas:
"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)
______________________________
Now, if you are going to link the TOE to the Holocaust, then would you not also have to link Christianity?
LOL!
It's permitted to lie to the Infidel
I'm starting to like you. When's your birthday?
But given the postulate of such a creator, the earth does contain quite a bit of evidence that he has taken several billion years to do it, and worked through a number of mistakes and false starts along the way.
This is a vastly greater problem for any theory opposed to evolution, which must explain, not one origin, but millions of separate origins.
The Bible was delivered to primitive people that had no concept of extended periods of time. They counted their days with lines scratched in stone, knotched sticks or knotted cords. It would not have been possible for them to comprehend eons, eras, periods or epochs. You can not communicate an idea to a person that has no words to conceive it. As humanity builds comprehension, generation upon generation, we must avoid the mistake of viewing our ancient antecedents through the myopic lens of our modern experience.
The people who were hanging Witches in Old Salem Towne thought they were obedient to God and fighting Satan too! Does that point back to the teachings of The Bible? No! And neither can natural selection identified by Darwin be blamed for the evils of the Holocaust.
To say so denies and attempts to negate the persecutions of the Jews across civilization since the diaspora. Darwin did not invent anti-Semitism! Extreme instances of persecution in history include the German Crusade of 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the expulsion from Portugal in 1497, all long long before Darwin.
I consider it almost criminal to even cast the aspersion, for everyone that attempts to connect Darwin with Hitler is implying that any intelligent and thinking person that accepts evolution also hates Jews. Talk about violating Godwin's Law, this takes the cake!
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