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.
How is ID science?
And how do you justify the spreading of untruths? Isn’t that against your religion?
Or is it OK as long as the ends justify the means?
Fortunately Atheism doesn’t bother w/Truth so what do you care? Your religion’s 200 million deaths was justified by Eugenics and Atheism so actually, I am spreading the Truth and that is something you/Darwinists don’t want heard.
Just how did life begin if not for God?? I say God created life, how bout you WOG? Just how did that first cell begin? Even the biggest Atheist in the movie had to admit that it was likely that ID formed the first cell. It was classic.
If you don’t know how life began, how can you believe the rest of the Disney tale?
Pray for W and Our Troops
What, what, what?
I thought that ID was science - what is all this talk about %deity%?
I’ll type slow since you never will see the movie. Scientist who investigated Micorbiology, Astronomy, Biology and other fields have been fired for looking into the possibility of Intellegent Design which has no God component.
I however, believe in Creation which has nothing to do or belief in ID.
You if you were unbiased would be outraged that your religion/science will not even look at the possibility if evidence is pointing some scientists that direction. But you have your bias and insecurity so you have to shut down any discussion that may cause you to think. Can’t have that!
Many scientists in the movie were comical in their self rightous elitism when talking about Christians. They were far and away their own worst enemies, but made Stein’s point perfectly. Bunch of pointy headed elitists hiding in their ivory towers.
Enjoy your little world cause Darwin Dumpty has fallen off the wall and all the kings scientists can’t put him back together again.
Pray for W and Our Troops
1. You're saying that people that believe in the bible never lie? Wow.
2. Science has its has it own “Baloney Detectors”, they're called Universities.
3. If one doesn't understand the context of an argument (in this case, the tools of the scientific method), evidence is anecdotal and meaningless.
4. In science, nothing is ever proven, that's why these types of terms are used. Scientists are generally very careful about making claims, i.e. “All crows are black”. (Hint - they're not.)
5. SETI? Seriously - I've been through more biology/ecology classes than I can count, and I have never heard this one. On the other hand, do you believe that humans are the only “intelligent” life in the universe? It's a pretty big place, you know.
I blame what the Nazis did on the sinfulness of many and gullibility or stupidity of too many more.
There is NO evidence of intelligent life apart from Earth. The size of the universe has nothing to do with the creation of life. Your imagination, and your disbelief in God, are dictating the absurd idea that "there has to be life besides here." How can there be a probability of other life when there are no facts to support such a thing - except your wild speculations?
Here are some facts:
- No life has EVER been observed.
- The biosphere 2 in Arizona failed.
- Mountain climbers know that no human can live above 8K meters on a mountain.
This means that humans are stuck on Earth: no space colonies, no life on other planets. Life only exists on planet earth (I don't mean bacteria, etc.). We are stuck on Planet Earth by our Creator God. Get used to it!
“Here are some facts:
- No life has EVER been observed.”
Darwin Sh**! I’m dead! Or what did you want to say? Specify your claims more detailed.
“- The biosphere 2 in Arizona failed.”
Due to limited management capabilities and concrete conversion known to civil engineers but apparently not to biologists. The experiment told us it’s very expensive to rebuild biosphere 1.
“- Mountain climbers know that no human can live above 8K meters on a mountain.”
Houston, we found an alien: Reinhold Messner
That guy was on top of all known 8k meter mountains without supplemental oxygen.
“This means that humans are stuck on Earth: no space colonies, no life on other planets. Life only exists on planet earth (I don’t mean bacteria, etc.).”
What counts as life in your eyes? Only beings able to read the bible in English? Please correct me if my guess is wrong.
You mad a big error in your reasoning. According to your logic Columbus couldn’t found America because no European have seen America before.
“We are stuck on Planet Earth by our Creator God. Get used to it!”
How old are you? In 1969 someone said “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”.
I never read in the bible something about rockets. - I don’t count rings of fire as rockets. - Who are you to tell us God never wants mankind to leave earth?
Get used to it! Being able to read the bible won’t make a prophet out of you.
What will happen to your belief if some kind of life is found on Mars or on some moon of Jupiter?
Saw it this weekend. A superb movie, and even entertaining. Stein is the perfect spokesman: mild-mannered and humble, yet wise and passionate. Stein gives Darwinism’s leading lights a little rope, with which they proceed to blow themselves up, and the bridge behind them. There really is nothing like dogmatic empiricists. An epochal film, which will be as influential as “Inherit the Wind,” except in reverse.
You should examine my FR page and pay careful attention to how many "insane" and "crazy" eugenists were darwin medalists, prominent darwinians, and members of darwin's family.
Imagine that you're walking through the jungle and you come to a library filled with thousands of books. Would you ascribe the existence of this library to intelligent agency or random chance? (I'm sure you can see where this is going.)
Yet when it comes to the study of human cells, which contain enough encoded information to fill a library, Darwinists ask us to ascribe the origin of this information to random chance, rather than intelligent agency.
This problem has become painfully obvious to leading Darwinists, which is why Crick (who discovered DNA) and Dawkins (a leading proponent of evolutionary theory today), ascribe the origin of life to "seeding" by aliens.
What ID is asking for is academic permission to ascribe intelligent design to phenomena that appear to have been designed by an intelligence. This commonsensical idea really isn't very radical.
Notice that Darwin has it completely backwards. He thinks that what prevents people from gassing the sick and weak are these pesky emotions that we are all brainwashed with. This is rather bizarre and disturbing, because for rational beings, "hard reason" urges not to do things like gas the sick and weak. Darwin evidently did not understand this form of reason (logical, moral.)
You sound exactly like Coyoteman from Darwin Central. Are you a sock puppet?
Funny - you might as well say that all the founders of “modern science” weren’t scientists,
because most had strong creationist leanings (and quotes).
“Modern Science” only developed in those cultures based on the God of the old testament (”The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West”),
because that belief system is based on a consistant Creator whose laws are empirically discoverable.
Well that should make you happy because it won't be costing you much. Unlike darwinian eugenics research, which the public had to pay for.
SUAS and the MM films got the benefit of millions of dollars in free publicity from the media. If SUAS would have done well in its opening run they would have expanded but the draw per theatre was pathetic. "Expelled" is paying for its promotion and the opening weekend was fantastic for the genre. Even now its opening is being spun as dissapointing, I doubt Stein or the producers are dissapointed at all. Expelled made it up to #26 all time with $3,153,000 on its opening weekend
While I appreciate the complement I am far below his abilities on this subject.
However I bet I know more about Doctor Who the he does.
Modern creationists, at least the young earthers, do not thing that “laws are empirically discoverable.”
They think that their deity changed to laws in the past to make the world look old and/or to trick scientists into hell.
I asked Wikipedia about “darwinians” or “darwinists” and as result I get “Darwinism”. Darwinism is not the same thing as the “theory of evolution” or short “evolution” if the context is clear.
Also you can't disprove a theory because some idiots build a bomb - Alfred Nobel, chemistry - or bigger bomb - Einstein, Hahn, Szilard, Oppenheimer..., atom theory - or a rocket to deliver a bomb - Wernher von Braun.
As I read it “Darwinism” is about the social impact of the “theory of evolution”.
All you got within science are theories. Nothing is proven within science. You can only disprove something.
Well, Mr. MHalblaub, we were ONLY talking about intelligent life. This is the stated objective of groups like SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). As far as bacteria or other tiny forms of life I just don't know. I'll leave it to you.
1. The Biosphere had a hidden goal of transporting life to Mars, Moon, etc. It WAS SUPPOSE TO WORK!!!!!
2. Your Columbus example does not make sense. I am not surprised.
3. How old are you? Probably twice your age. I was born in the early 1960's. I can tell that you are young because you are having problems reading my post and responding accordingly - you forgot the topic (intelligent life apart from earth) !!!
So back to the topic. Where is the evidence of intelligent life apart from earth? After all, the Universe is such a large thing that exponentials are used to describe its vast size. So where is the evidence? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? -- Deuteronomy 4:32
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