Posted on 04/19/2008 12:17:00 PM PDT by cornelis
I like rebels, especially ones who go against type. Take Ben Stein in his latest film, Expelled, which comes out this Friday. Dressed in a sport coat, tie, and tennis shoes, he’s not who you expect — the deadpan, monotone-voiced but ever-likable teacher he portrays in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Wonder Years.
Stein retains his characteristic deadpan affect, but this time he’s playing himself — a deceptively erudite and well-educated interviewer, who is passionately skeptical of evolutionary biology and its leading proponents.
The film’s endeavor is to respond to one simple question: “Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?”
Big science doesn’t like that question because they can’t answer it. Underneath their antagonism toward explanations that suggest an intelligent cause, lies a fundamental egoism. Science wants to deny any evidence of a supreme being precisely because it wants to be a supreme being. Moreover, representatives of big science in the film are unsettlingly snippy, suggesting that they feel threatened by rival opinions, rather than assured of their own.
To make this point, the film introduces teachers and scientists who are shunned, denied tenure, and fired for questioning dogmatic Darwinism. The film’s producers spent two years traveling the world, talking with more than 150 educators and scientists who say they have been persecuted for questioning Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
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.”
The highlight of the film features Ben Stein interviewing Dawkins, who concedes that an intelligent being may have created life on earth. But that being cannot be “God.” Instead, he suggests it may be an alien, itself a product of “Darwinian evolution.” Oh, the scientific imagination — there’s nothing like it on God’s green earth.
Dawkins has since complained that the interview was set up under false pretenses, and that he didn’t even know who Stein was. It is rather astonishing that it did not occur to the world’s smartest atheist to look up Ben Stein on the Internet, where he might have readily discovered numerous examples of his writings that are critical of Darwinism.
Dawkins dismisses the Emmy-winning actor as having “no talent for comedy.” He believes during the interview Stein is an “honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist.” A lawyer, a law professor, an economist, and a speechwriter for both Nixon and Ford, Stein hardly seems to fit the description “honestly stupid.”
In the end, the film isn’t really about intelligent design as much as about a relentless attack on an authentically free inquiry. As Ben Stein points out, “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”
— Dave Berg is a senior segment producer at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
-——I post on this site in the desperate hope that the lurkers will see that not every conservative hates modern science.
See I know quite a few people who have trouble voting for republican simply because they appear to be anti-science. Such behavior isn’t good for the country nor is it good for the conservative movement.-——
Just more arrogance from the anti’s. What will we do?
If those who hold your views end up having to share research dollars that always come from the populace, you may not control the outcome. What will you do?
I have seen next to no proof that the ID side wishes to do research.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?
——I have seen next to no proof that the ID side wishes to do research.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?——
Yea, I have a hell of alot of evidence to the contrary. You share your funds that the public pays for with the ID Scientists ands lets see where it leads. This arrogant attitude that ID is something to be ignored because its not funded is so disingenuous and you know it.
Richard Dawkins has a neat, funny parody at
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2478,Sexpelled-No-Intercourse-Allowed,RichardDawkinsnet
Also, see Eugenie Scott’s site
www.expelledexposed.com
Explain to me how ID is science and I will help you push for funding.
But you must prove your point to gain my support.
‘quote’ from that video
Dawkins “As a sex maniac I am pretty hostile to the rival stork theory”
——Explain to me how ID is science and I will help you push for funding.
But you must prove your point to gain my support.——
Explain to me how Evolution is science and I will help you push for funding.
But you must prove your point to gain my support.
This game will not continue as long as you wish it would. There seems to be a tide crashing down on evo. Will evo weather the storm? If you succeed in preventing funding from public funds for your rival religion, you just might eek out a popular win. For awhile anyway.
You didn’t address my point at all. Which is rather shocking seeing as you quoted the entire thing.
This film belongs on the must see list.
Why?
——You didn’t address my point at all. Which is rather shocking seeing as you quoted the entire thing.——
Oh yea that Science thing. Pardon me if I don’t take you seriously on that. You don’t have an absolute lock on that, but if you think you do___why don’t you push for equal funding of evo and ID? That would be be so magnanimous on your part, don’t you think ;o)
——You didn’t address my point at all. Which is rather shocking seeing as you quoted the entire thing.——
Oh yea that Science thing. Pardon me if I don’t take you seriously on that. You don’t have an absolute lock on that, but if you think you do___why don’t you push for equal funding of evo and ID? That would be be so magnanimous on your part, don’t you think ;o)
Again - prove to me that it is science and I will.
Discovery Channel: I Love the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ
The world is just awesome.
——Again - prove to me that it is science and I will.-——
Again, allow other academia access to funding and see what prevails. Why are you so afraid.?
Why do you refuse to say how ID == science?
And why don’t the religious groups fund ID research if it is so important?
——Why do you refuse to say how ID == science?-——
How in any way would my declaration of such mean anything? Science is not at my beck and call. Nor yours.
——And why don’t the religious groups fund ID research if it is so important?——
Why should they be thought of as they? These people pay as much if not more taxes. How come ID is not represented in the tax roles? These people are getting totally ripped off.
At bottom, the evidence I’ve seen asserted to support evolution is the fact that we exist, and the evolutionary model is the only explanation possible.
If you want science funding you have to do science which is something that ID refuses to do.
I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was posting to you. Oh, wait...I wasn’t.
If you search for evolution on the internet your will find terabytes of information.
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