Posted on 05/05/2008 7:59:31 AM PDT by KarinG1
In an essay published recently on National Review Online, John Derbyshire has declared that the documentary Expelled contains a blood libel against Western Civilization. His is an exercise of striking vulgarity, the more so since, as he insouciantly admits, he has not “seen the dang thing.” A blood libel, one might recall, refers to the charge that the Jewish people are irredeemably stained by their occasional, if modest, need for Christian blood. Some terms have acquired through their historical associations a degree of repugnance that persuades sensitive men and women not to use them. If Derbyshire has been repelled by the smell of blood, it is a revulsion that he has successfully overcome.
Having not seen the documentary that he proposes to criticize, Derbyshire is nonetheless quite certain that he knows what it conveys. “It is pretty plain,” he asserts, “that it is a piece of creationist porn.” Perhaps I will be forgiven for suggesting that John Derbyshire’s late-night scrutiny of the Internet may have corrupted his habitual search for le mot juste. Expelled has nothing to do with creationism, and if it is pornographic, the details have not become widely known.
Expelled makes a point far plainer than pornography and points to a phenomenon just as widespread. The scientific community is intolerant of dissent and morbidly so when it comes to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Those who reject criticism because it is unwelcome have in John Derbyshire acquired an ally of the best sort. He is not disposed to ask questions of his friends; and he is eager uncritically to attack their enemies.
It is a match made in heaven.
After first considering the possibility that Ben Stein was financed by secret Saudi funds — Je m’imagine cela — Derbyshire at once reprises two errors. The first is that the animations in Expelled were copied.
They were not.
And the second is that the brief segment of a John Lennon song used in the film required Yoko Ono’s permission before it could be aired.
It did not.
The facts are easily available from the Expelled website. John Derbyshire has failed to appreciate the neat retributive irony by which frivolous lawsuits have been used to suppress a film calling attention to the suppression of dissent.
Derbyshire’s generous conviction that Expelled is an exercise in dishonesty owes much to the charge that those participating in the film were duped. It is an accusation made by both P. Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins. I appear in the film, and I read and signed the same release that Myers and Dawkins did. I knew precisely what the film proposed to do. So did they. Myers and Dawkins now regret their appearance. This is because they seriously overestimated their own ability to think nimbly before a camera. They are as result appalled either by how they look or by what they said. A veritable Internet scourge, Myers sits before the camera in solemn stupefaction. He has nothing to say and says nothing. Dawkins goes much further. Without ever once realizing that he is about to topple into the badlands of absurdity, he allows Ben Stein to force him into the acknowledgment that life as it appears on earth may well have been designed by space aliens.
That Dawkins was duped is undeniable; but as in so many of the better crime stories, the victim of a crime turns out to have been its perpetrator.
This is something that John Derbyshire might have realized without my help.
Having found in Expelled an occasion to exercise his organs of indignation, Derbyshire proceeds in his essay to squeeze them until they squeal. The Discovery Institute is a special target. He regards its very existence as an affliction. His indignation has prompted him to impertinence. Knowing nothing of my life, he has nonetheless concluded that I am one of a number of “eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories.”
Non-Christian? There is no need for euphemism. I am a secular Jew, reason enough apparently for Derbyshire carelessly to suggest that I am in it for the money.
Ah, that old familiar smell — blood, I mean.
As for my eagerness to affirm that the world is flat, I believe it round, and have said so many times. Beyond this settled conviction, I have no theories to offer — not even theories of intelligent design, which I have rejected in the pages of Commentary.
It goes without saying that in all this John Derbyshire is persuaded that the Other Side holds a monopoly in “dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners.”
Does it indeed?
All this would be trivial, if tawdry, were it not for the single serious charge that Derbyshire makes: That Intelligent Design is a disguised form of creationism.
In the United States, at least, creationism is a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. Intelligent Design is otherwise. It is the thesis that living creatures appear designed because they are designed. It is said to be Darwin’s great merit that he successfully dissolved the appearance of design in life. Those who believe that the design of living systems is real believe correspondingly that Darwin’s theory is false, or, at best, incomplete.
Whether true or false, the issue is one of fact, and the inferences to which design theorists appeal are in common currency in subjects as diverse as political science, forensics and archeology. Seeing tallies scratched on a pre-historic ax handle, John Derbyshire — of all people! — might well conclude that they represent signs designating the natural numbers. The arrow of thought passes from the properties of an object to its classification as an artifact.
The question that Derbyshire has asked of an ax handle, design theorists ask of Derbyshire. Does he bear the marks of design?
Is it impermissible to ask this question? If so, why?
If not, whence the blood libel?
Like so many men who have reached late middle age, John Derbyshire suffers the impression that the “the barbarians are at the gate.” Women no longer topple blood-ripe into his lap. A “gaggle of fools and fraudsters” is everywhere disturbing his tranquility. Things that he treasures are under ceaseless attack.
And where awe is merited, none is forthcoming. “And now here is Ben Stein,” Derbyshire objects, “sneering and scoffing at Darwin.”
Stein is, in fact, doing no such thing, and I have seen the documentary in which he appears. He is asking that certain possibilities in thought not be struck from the table prematurely. In so doing, he is offering Darwin the homage that a serious thinker deserves. It is the only homage to which he is entitled.
As for the rest of John Derbyshire’s agitated geschrei, what can one say? A talented writer is entitled to make a fool of himself at least once.
Why not Derbyshire?
— David Berlinski, author of The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
Ohhhh. One of those objective observers.
I’m not sure there ARE any objective observers.
susie
That tells me all I really need to know about Derbyshire and his mindset, about any subject.
Berlinski never claimed to be an objective observer.
He points out in his article that he appeared in the film Derbyshire trashed without seeing and that he is a member of the Discovery Institute - one of those described by Derbyshire as an "eccentric non-Christian crank."
Would you assert that Derbyshire is an "objective observer"?
Berlinski is an excellent writer, in my opinion. I read his book a couple of weeks ago. You’ll notice, in this article, that he never splits an infinitive.
"This is because they seriously overestimated their own ability to think nimbly before a camera."
Beautiful!
It takes real skill consistently to use correct grammar without sounding like a cluck :-).
What’s the source of your tagline?
Exactly. If Dawkins was duped, it was only by his own intellectual incapacities.
If Derbyshire is an atheist it explains the shrill, hysterical tone of his column.
It was reputed said by Sergeant Henry Gallagher, B Company 2nd/24th Warwickshire Regiment of Foot, Her Majesty's Royal Infantry, as the Battle of Rorke's Drift began, when over 10,000 Zulu impi descended on the compound defended by around 100 British soldiers.
Horribly politically incorrect, I know, but then again, so am I.
Berlinski is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture
He is one of the creators of the movie. It’s tanking and he is whining. You haven’t heard from Ben Stein.
As to the copyright infringements. If they don’t settle, then I’ll believe they didn’t need permission.
Berlinski’s radical and often wrong-headed skepticism represents an ascendant style in the popular debate over American science: Like the recent crop of global-warming skeptics, AIDS denialists, and biotech activists, Berlinski uses doubt as a weapon against the academy—he’s more concerned with what we don’t know than what we do. He uses uncertainty to challenge the scientific consensus; he points to the evidence that isn’t there and seeks out the things that can’t be proved. In its extreme and ideological form, this contrarian approach to science can turn into a form of paranoia—a state of permanent suspicion and outrage. But Berlinski is hardly a victim of the style. He’s merely its most methodical practitioner.
Thanks, I was sure it sounded familiar. It’s sad that it should be politically incorrect to observe that Africans are black, though.
“Objective observer” is an oxymoron.
While my reservations about the presentation remain, here is another view on the film.
I think the whole point of the article, and possibly the movie (which I have yet to see, I’m waiting for it to come out on dvd), is that things we don’t know should remain open to debate and investigation. Consensus isn’t the same thing as factual knowledge. Throughout history there has been generally accepted wisdom that was wrong. History repeats. It always has.
As far as the lawsuits, so far all we know for sure is that the people who filed the lawsuits failed to convince a judge to preempt the movie release, as they had requested.
Whether more will happen remains to be seen.
The initial lawsuits did not ask for payment — they said there would be no permission, and asked that the film not be released.
He uses uncertainty to challenge the scientific consensus ...
One of the things Mr. Berlinski's book demonstrated is that the "scientific consensus" regarding fundamental facts about the universe doesn't really exist. Scientists theorize all kinds of different and contradictory things, but proving or observing them to be true is a different matter.
Plenty of sane, intelligent and educated people - with a doctor's note, IQ and SAT scores, and college degrees to prove it, Mr. Harris - find much of what scientists say on these topics to be unpersuasive. "This doesn't make any sense, and not only that, you can prove any of it, so why should I believe you, instead of the equally 'scientific' guy with a totally different theory. Why should I believe either one of you?" I suppose I'm radically skeptical, too. This might impress my kids ...
Nertz. “CAN’T prove ...”
Back to the kitchen. I probably split an infinitive, too.
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