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.
It’s just a movie...
I have no dog in this fight, but I'll bump this thread for that line alone. Well done, weegee.
I’m well aware of the differentiation between an athiest and an agnostic, seeing as I consider myself the latter.
The way I put my personal belief system is that I’m open to the existence of beings more powerful than us, but any god whose sole concern is the life on Earth can’t be a very important god. That being said, from your 3 choices, I’ll pick B or C, more likely C than B but I’m willing to consider both options.
I’ll go one further than you with respect to AGW though. CO2 makes up 380ppm of our atmosphere, to put that into perspective, it’s 0.03% of the dry atmosphere (it goes down to about 1/4 of that value if you include moisture, but atmospheric composition is relatively constant when moisture is normalized out.) How can a gas that makes up so little of the atmosphere have such a large effect? It’s not possible. Water vapour makes up more of the atmosphere on average and has a stronger “greenhouse” effect associated with it than CO2. Also, CO2 concentrations lag temperature changes.
Curious if they make similiar complaints about the staging of basically every Michael Moore and Al Gore movie.
;-)
So you believe there are two kinds of matter - living and non-living?
You're "science" is almost 200 years out of date.
Boy, I had to laugh out loud at this one. It's like Hillary saying Bill was the perfect husband.
Is God alive?
Where did his life come from?
Maybe, but then again, that's not their thing, Science is. Regardless, it is an intellectually dishonest tactic, whether Mikey Moore does it, or this movie. Its a shame.
Are you kidding? Some fundamentalists hate the Catholics more than they hate the Muslims or atheists.
When those who choose not to believe in God, cannot believe in God, or for whatever other reason do not believe in God (the right not to do so I fully support, although I do believe) say things like you said: “ I’m not a religious person myself, and I find no need for it, but if you need to believe to get through your day, go ahead. I won’t stop you,” you sell believers short. You seem pretty intelligent, so I must assume you meant it as a slight to believers.
Many of us who believe in God do not do so “to get through our day” as you say. We believe because we are led to believe. I imagine that there are some who say they believe in order to comfort themselves in some manner, and others who say they believe in order to fit in with those they wish to associate with. There may be other reasons for SAYING that one believes when one does not really believe.
But I venture to say that MOST of those who believe in God do so out of a sense of internal logic, personal experience and/or a true, abiding faith totally independent of any comfort or relief that the belief may provide. In fact, there are many religious believers whose faith requires them to deny themselves pleasures and benefits that, as a matter of convenience, they would never do by choice.
In short, true faith is not something one merely elects to have (or pretend to have). For those who do not believe and who say so, I respect that and I respect the honesty of it. Because I believe, however, I hope and pray (yes, pray) that non-believers will be open to receiving the gift of faith if that gift should find its way to their doorstep.
Agreed. I enjoy a rousing (*dons monocle*) debate as much as the next guy, but some people (read: FR, the internet, etc) will always take this kind of stuff too seriously.
..except of course those innocent babies our civilized medical men butcher clear up until they are almost born, but hey, those high-minded science-lovers do everything else to keep people alive, right?
And I'm not a professional debater either, but I think that's called "logic."
Silly! That movie doesn't threaten their belief system!
I wasn’t aware that evolutionary biologists were doing abortions in there spare time.
Please do provide proof of what you say. It would be most interesting.
I’ve been burned too many times by Hollywood. I’ll wait for the DVD, rather than pay more for popcorn and a drink than another (possibly) bad movie/`documentary’.
Anyway, from your post it looks like `Wild Ben’ Stein—like Mikey Moore—is preaching to the choir, and he’s one of the reasons I cancelled my Weekly Standard.
Hey, you know what’s ironically funny?
Homosexuals at Scientific American defending evolution.
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