Mr. Derbyshire had a post over on The Corner in response to the criticism that he hasn’t seen the movie. Here it is:
Hey Hey, Ho Ho [John Derbyshire]
Some readers of today’s column are upset / angry / scornful that I have presumed to pass comment on the Expelled movie without having seen it.
As Barack Obama might say: You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In any case, I am not reviewing the movie. What I am doing is, heaping well-justified abuse on the heads of people who, for “sentimental qualms” and from a position of ignorance, trash scientific method, the greatest achievement of our civilization.
And uniquely of our civilization. A mature scientific theory is as much a glory of our civilization as is a cathedral or a university; and it is uniquely of ours. Other civilizations had temples, universities, systems of government, literature, philosophy; but only we of the West came up with scientific method, and the whole world owes the innumerable fruits of that method to us.
I am a huge fan of Western civilization. Thus, when people — well-educated people, who ought to set an example for the general — sneer at and spit on these majestic creations of the human intellect, I get mad. They are taking sides with barbarism. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Ben Stein ought to be ashamed of himself. And no, I won’t sit through his wretched movie.
There is no shortage of people here who praise the movie without having seen it.
There is no shortage of people here who didn’t see Michael Moore’s movie who roundly condemned it.
It all depends on whose ox is being gored, but it’s pretty easy to be a hypocrite when leveling this particular criticism.
Umbrellas, like minds, work best when open. Belly up to the bar, Derb, and have a piping hot bowl of Fail.
So he continues to wallow in his own ignorance.
Too bad for him.
His freedoms he now has to spew such ignorance has soooooo very little to do with the advancements of science, or some idea of scientific method; and the only way science is ultimately trashed is by allowing a fearful hate God group define for all what science is or isn’t in this country.
That’s so UN-American as to make one’s head spin!
And to be so arrogant as to say Americans (or westerners) are solely responsible for creating the so-called scientific method....oooops....we’re not ALLOWED to say creation in his world...which no one here can define by concensus anyway...
only further shows how little he knows of science!
Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of this country?
Wilson: No sir, I don't believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with whether we are good painters, good sculptors, great poets. I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending the country except to make it worth defending.