[conservatism_IS_compassion]

a Goreish/Mooreish film.

I saw the movie Sunday. It was not, BTW, exactly a packed house.

But whatever you may consider the failings of ID, Stein was not ambushing people. One of the people who appeared against ID in the film regrets it - but he accepted a fee for doing so, and wasn't chopped up and made foolish, but sounded foolish - or so he now seems to think - all by his lonesome self.

Stein doesn't take an adamant ID stance as such, he simply notices that there is some reason to wonder whether evolution can in fact explain the origin of life. And that the scientific establishment has developed antibodies against any scrutiny of that question.

Stein did a nice job on the issue of the relation of Darwinism to the Holocaust. The issue is introduced by an ID proponent who explicitly states, "Darwinism is not sufficient to explain the Holocaust - but it is necessary." Stein then takes us not to a death camp for Jews but to a "hospital" for "defectives." The guide takes Stein and us on a tour, and Stein interviews the guide. In a thick German accent the guide - who is not a liberal - reveals what went on in the facility, and the philosophical basis of that activity - Darwinism. The "treatment" which the staff applied to the defects in question was, of course, death.

Note that the present (German, non-Jewish) pope numbers his own cousin among those "treated" in this manner. The guide tells us that the killing went on 5 days a week, but not on the weekends, and Stein notes that the staff had to be given weekends off like anyone else. And you are left to ponder the meaning of it, and the overpowering message of that kind of "treatment" is plain. It is perfectly rational, on its own terms, but it is the absence of love. And, therefore, hellish.

I noted that Stein interviewed the guide. That is what he does in the whole movie - interview people. No bushwhacking, no taking out of context, no bullying. Just respectful, but non-sycophantic, interviews. Anybody who is interviewed by Stein and comes out appearing in a bad light, it is only because it looks like they know things that might not be so.

A "Goreish/Mooreish" film? That is not at all the impression I came away with.

[Sun]

Ben Stein is a good guy, too, as he visits wounded Veterans at the hospital.

[Delacon]

bfl

[steve-b]

Stein did a nice job on the issue of the relation of Darwinism to the Holocaust.

So you agree with Derbyshire's point that the film is a Blood Libel against one of the foudations (science) of Western Civilization.

(Period, not questionmark; no other conclusion is logically possible.)