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.
Sorry, I didn't address this.
God IS the beginning. He didn't come from anywhere, he was always there.
Either one believes this or they don't.
I believe John referred to that “singularity” as the Word.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
I agree. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.
Many links on the left side of the page.
If this film was simply part of an attempt to expose creationist bashing in academia, I’d be more sympathetic to it. But I think the reaction they’re reporting on is as I suggested, academia’s push back at activist attempts to insert ID into science curriculums as a scientific theory (then promote the resistance here as an assault on free speech.)
There are more appropriate disciplines in education to promote creationism and promote as you say, “human life as it is lived, experienced, felt and ends in death”. Science will of course effect and be effected by that, but that does not justify teaching it in science.
I think you’re suggesting that creationism’s absence implies the promotion of a materialistic ideology in science. I don’t recognize that scientific exploration outside a religious framework is necessarily materialistic. Here’s an article I like relating to that, but it’s focused on metaphysics and epistemology rather than science: Objectivism Rejects Both Materialism and Idealism: The Monist/Reductionist Fallacy. Unfortunately I’m not able to give the discussion the time it deserves today. Thanks for your reply.
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Exactly. Evolution would be identical to creation if you allowed for multiple recent origin points and extremely focused, rapid evolution postscripted by an extended stabilization period caused by the maturing genome. I have a feeling that the theory of evolution will eventually become this way and scientists will deny there are any theological implications of the changing theory.
Holy Moley. Having just seen the film (we just got back), I am astounded at the utter vacancy of Scientific American's use of this argument.
Any fair-minded person who watches Stein's film will realize:
Stein or his interviewees say--on at least two occasions, and at some length, that Darwinism does not automatically lead to Nazism. The most elegantly stated, in my opinion, is the gentleman who acknowledges the time and space differences between Hitler and Darwin, and then he says something akin to "Darwinism is not a sufficient philosophy to lead one to Nazism, but it is a "necessary" one."
The film explicity states that not every Darwinist turns into a Nazi...but it does show how people like Margaret Sanger and Hitler freely used Darwin's ideas.
Additionally, the quote in question is used after the effect of Darwin's philosophy played itself out--in essence, the words used by Darwin that were adopted by the "pure race" advocates.
The quote takes up probably about 15 seconds of the film, after the evidence had been presented that Darwin's ideas formed the foundation for those actors in history.
In my opinion, this "objection" by SA, especially after having seen the flick, is incredibly weak.
Additionally, the quote in question is used after the effect of Darwin's philosophy played itself out--in essence, the words used by Darwin that were adopted by the "pure race" advocates.
For me, having read both Darwin, and having read some of the Nazi corpus on race theory, your description simply reinforces the fact that the film severely misrepresents Darwin.
Darwin never argued for "pure" human races. Indeed he forcefully argued in exactly the other direction. Darwin concluded for instance that humans are a single, highly variable species; that there is no way to sort humans into distinct races; that for any races one did nevertheless attempt to identify the variation within them swamps the differences between them, and that there are always an array of intermediate characters insensibly connecting all races. Darwin argued all of this in his [i]Descent of Man[/i] (in Chapter VII, "On the Races of Man"), and the Nazis adamantly rejected all of it.
The Nazis acted on the tenets of the race theories of Gobineau, Chamberlain, and the like, as explicitly set out by Alfred Rosenberg and others, that human races WERE distinct, that they originated so, that their racial purity (or that of the "aryan" race) should be restored. This was all incompatible with or foreign to Darwin's teachings and conclusions.
That is an interesting take.
I think the film does a good job of treating Darwin’s words fairly as well as showing how his ideas inspired the Nazis.
Did you see the film? Did you see what the woman who ran the memorial at the Nazi “hospital” said?
(for anyone unfamiliar with the history behind this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amateur_Scientist for more info)
If you accept that Darwin's words inspired the Nazis, then would it not be just as valid to say that Christianity inspired the Nazis as well? See excerpt from Hitler speech:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2003002/posts?page=132#132
“We’re seeing Expelled tomorrow!”
You’ll love it! I saw it Friday.
This movie is also about academic freedom.
If a scientist supports ID, they get punished, and that is wrong, no matter what theory you believe in.
“Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist, publishes a peer-reviewed paper, which posits evidence for intelligent design (ID) in the universe. For his efforts, Sternberg’s bosses at the Smithsonian Institution trashed him so badly that it led to a congressional investigation.
Iowa State University denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, an accomplished astrobiologist. University officials admitted that Gonzalez’s work on ID is a factor.
For Richard Dawkins, by contrast, job security is not a problem. To this superstar Oxford University evolutionary biologist, and devout atheist, intelligent design is nothing more than an “ideological cousin of creationism.”’
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzA4N2ZmZjAzYzhhNTU5MGEyOGJlN2FmMWIxMmE5M2I=
Ben Stein DID interview Dawkins in the documentary movie, so Stein is not afraid to let everyone speak.
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.
Interesting that such arguments were even needed in the first place. It sounds like a debate was indeed raging. This revelation only supports the filmmakers' primary contention that IDers are not tolerated by the short-sighted, snobbish elites of the "scientific" community.
“The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don’t you know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, & again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.” - Prot (’K-PAX’ 2001)
After seeing the film, I responded to the ridiculous notion that Darwin was "taken out of context" in this post:
Free Republic thread regarding "Expelled"
If you want to know how "Expelled" really treats Darwin's words in regard to the sickening ideas of the 20th century, I think I do a decent job there.
As far as your link goes, though I haven't independently verified it, I will assume it is accurate. Certainly Hitler may have tried to invoke his so-called "religion" into his political speeches.
One thing I did notice: the small bit of the speech you gave was from 1922, some eleven years before Hitler's rise to power. At that point, it seems, Hitler was using any and all rhetoric to attract followers to his sick philosophy. Was Christianity a main stepping stone for him? Expelled makes a good case that Darwinism WAS a main stepping stone.
I also believe Hitler may have used some of Martin Luther's anti-semitic rantings in his own "Mein Kempf". But when Stein visits a memorial in Nazi Germany, a former "hospital" where thousands were murdered under the guise of medical experiments, the curator of the place points out that the cruelties inflicted there were justified not by Christiand ideals, but by Darwinian thinking.
How often did Hitler refer to Jesus as his "Lord and Savior" or even to Jesus at all after he seized power?
But "Expelled" also shows recreations of Hitler-era propaganda films, apparently after he was in power, (translated of course) that use language that is undoubtedly Darwin inspired.
I can also say that brave men and women, Christians, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, died under the Nazi thumb because they spoke the truth that Christianity does not endorse the race-cleansing that Hitler pushed.
Anyone who thinks Christianity inspired Hitler as much as Darwin needs to re-think the issue. Clear thinking Christianity cannot logically lead to the desire to erase Jews from the planet, but the logical extension of Darwinism can (though not necessarily) lead one to eugenics and Nazism.
Prime!
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