Posted on 01/17/2008 7:42:51 AM PST by ZGuy
Intelligent design theory, or ID, is opening new doors of scientific research, particularly in cancer and other disease research, according to its adherents, but a new movie, "Expelled" starring Ben Stein explores how an "elitist scientific establishment" is apparently muzzling and smearing scientists who publicly discuss ID.
The First Amendment is under brutal attack in the scientific community, Ben Stein, a former presidential speechwriter-turned-actor and commentator, says in the film, which opens in theaters on Feb. 12.
"I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal," he says. "But recently, I've been alarmed to discover that this is not the case."
In an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service - with audio clips below - Stein contends that rigid Darwinists are silencing their critics in academia, which the film explores, and discusses how ID ideas are helping in cancer research and similar work.
Yet the ID research that could potentially produce medical breakthroughs, says Stein, is also being undermined by Darwinian scientists who don't want ID research viewed as legitimate.
Cybercast News Service: Is this controversy about science versus religion, or is this more science versus science? Simply, is this about scientists with different worldviews -with one group more willing to open themselves up to alternative explanations than others - as the film suggests?
Ben Stein: Well, first of all, I question your premise. It's not just scientists versus scientists. It is a particular subset of science which does not admit any kind of questions - it is a kind of perversion of science, which doesn't allow for any kind of questioning of itself. Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself. Neo-Darwinian science is exactly in the opposite business of endlessly trying to rationalize itself - and reprove itself, you might say - reprove that it's right without any kind of test. So it's not scientists - it's really, I would say, scientists are the ones willing to look into intelligent design. The people who are anti-science are the ones unwilling to look at anything new or different. So I'd say it's a perverted kind of science versus what I would call a more classical science. But it is also science versus at least the possibility of belief.
Cybercast News Service: There is a fair amount of discussion of creationism and how it might relate to intelligent design, and there are a lot of critics who say this is just folks with religious convictions trying to use intelligent design as a Trojan horse to advance a form of creationism. ... What sort of separation do you see or perhaps don't see between creationism, on the one hand, and intelligent design? Do you have your own definition of intelligent design, and is it distinct and different from creationism?
Ben Stein: Well, I would say it's creationism by someone. For me, I've always believed that there was a God. I've always believed that God created the heavens and earth - so, for me it's not a huge leap from there to intelligent design. I think for some of the people who work on intelligent design, they're not as long-time believers as I am. So, I would answer that question, in brief, by saying, I believe in God and God created the heavens and the earth and all the life on the earth. But what other people, who are intelligent design people, think, I could not characterize. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: There is a segment in the film, where it's made clear that intelligent design can open up new areas of inquiry that could improve the human condition. One involves a neurosurgeon, Michael Egnor, and another scientist, Jon Wells, who indicate that given how the cells are put together, with eye toward intelligent design, and with the idea that animal cells have tiny turbines - or if viewed as tiny turbines - he was able to formulate a theory that said in the event these things malfunction and don't properly shut down and could break apart, this is the first step on the way to cancer. He seemed to be suggesting that intelligent design theory could open up a lot of possibilities into improving the human condition. He doesn't explicitly say 'a cure for cancer,' but at least providing additional insight into new areas of treatment or a better understanding of how cancer is formed. What is your reaction to that part of the film? What sort of potential is attached to research going forward?
Ben Stein: Well, I think, I wouldn't say, if you say intelligent design is the answer and we're all created by an intelligent designer - that does not by itself provide the cure to cancer or any other disease or does not provide any ideas about how to deal with a stroke or with the heart hammering blood into the brain. But I would say, if you accept a broader, an even broader premise than intelligent design, namely, don't foreclose anything in your study of the human body and of the cell, then you are a lot more likely to get somewhere. I'd put it like that. I don't think saying intelligent design just automatically gets you anywhere. (Listen to Audio)
Ben Stein: But I think if you say we are going to study everything, and we are not going to let anyone close down our rights of inquiry, then I think we are getting somewhere. But also, there is this big issue about RNA and DNA, and whether RNA and DNA can respond to changes in the world around them. I think we say it can respond to changes in the world around them and that neo-Darwinians say it can only do that by random chance - it only happens by random chance. We say the cell may have the possibility of doing itself in an intelligent way that there may be some intelligence in the cell itself so that's probably a big difference between the two of us. We, on this side, think at least there's a possibility. We believe there's some possibility the cell could have an intelligence of its own. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: The film spends a fair amount of time on the complexity of the cell and makes the point that no one at the time, including Darwin himself - no one could have anticipated that level of complexity ...
Ben Stein: Not even close. (Listen to audio)
Cybercast News Service: In what way did the film have any influence or change in your thinking and how it relates to intelligent design or scientific inquiry?
Ben Stein: Oh, when I first started working on this, I had no remote clue of how complicated the cell was, and I was believer just because I'd always been a believer and the idea that an intelligent being created the universe. But after working with these scientists and interviewing them and learning about how complex the cell was and how unlikely the proposition was that it all happened by random chance, then I was just overwhelmed by this data. And I was just overwhelmed by the fact, at least as I am told, that Darwinists have never observed natural species being originated ... There's not even a clear definition of what a species is - and the Darwinists have no theory whatsoever about the origin of life, none whatsoever, except the most hazy, the kind of preposterous, New Age hypothesis. And I think our theory that there is a creator strikes even some people, even Dawkins very possibly, as more likely than it all happened by total chance.
Cybercast News Service: Mr. Dawkins describes the proponents of ID as being ignorant. They don't buy into the scientific consensus - a lot of arguments made that there is a rock solid consensus in favor of evolution to explain biology. What is your reaction to this notion of consensus, and how does this complicate the journey for scientist or academics open to the idea?
Ben Stein: It doesn't complicate it at all because Dawkins, at least in my opinion, is completely wrong, and we produced a number of people who are bona fide scientists who clearly believe there is a possibility of intelligent design. So, his idea that there is a complete rock solid consensus is completely wrong. I mean, God bless him, he's obviously an intelligent guy, but it's obviously wrong. The people we produced weren't actors pretending to be scientists - they were scientists. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: Why do you think the very idea or suggestion of intelligent design is so antagonistic to scientists who claim they have evidence? Why not have the debate? If they are so confident, why not have debate?
Ben Stein: That's a deep question. That's a sociological, psychological and ethical question. One, if they are Darwinists and they owe their jobs to being Darwinists, they are not going to challenge the orthodoxy because that would challenge the whole basis of their jobs and their lives. So they are not going to challenge the ideology that has given them lush positions in real life. That's one thing. Second thing, once people are locked into a way of thinking, they are unlikely to change. Third is, if they acknowledge the possibility of intelligent design and that intelligent design is God, then they may think God has moral expectations of them and they may be falling short of those moral expectations, and they may be worried about some sort of judgment upon them. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: The film starts with you giving a presentation about American freedom, and when you get near the end of the film there's a Polish official - I believe a member of the EU Parliament - who said there's actually more freedom and latitude in Poland than here in the United States to explore these questions, and he blames it on political correctness. Mr. Stein how did we get to this point? ... If there's more latitude for scientific inquiry overseas in a recently released communist country than there is in the United States of America?
Ben Stein: That is a very, very, very good question. How did we get here? I don't know. How did we get to this point in Hollywood? There's (sic) only certain attitudes allowed about military, religion, or small towns or about business? I don't know how we got to this, this kind of orthodoxy. I think there is this kind of Marxist establishment in this country that has been overthrown in other countries, but not overthrown here. There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: What do you think needs to happen in academia? What suggestions or prescriptions do you think will come out of the film?
Ben Stein: We want more freedom. I just spoke to some young people in Orlando. And I said, this to us - at least to me, I don't know what it is to other people in the film - is a bit like the Civil Rights movement. You want to have freedom, where our goal is freedom. We want freedom. We want all our rights, not some of them, all our rights to free speech. We want them here in America, and we want them now. That's what we want; we're not going to get it. But we hope to open the door wider to some serious debate on these issues. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: The point is made that journalists have a tendency to embrace the establishment position ...
Ben Stein: If the establishment position is the sort of left-wing establishment position. They are certainly not going to embrace the Republican establishment position. (Listen to Audio)
Cybercast News Service: This reminds me of the global warming debate. The Union of Concerned Scientists, exactly one year ago, put out a report on Exxon Mobil for their position on global warming, and in their report they say too often journalists' inclination to provide political balance leads to inaccurate reporting - and that members of the media should not quote ExxonMobil officials or anybody who questions the scientific consensus.
Ben Stein: Yes, that is precisely the analogy. Very well done. I totally agree. There are still plenty of scientists who question fossil fuels' role in global warming, but you're not allowed to question that anymore.
Its adherents are flattering themselves. AFAIK, ID has yet to generate a single falsifiable hypothesis, test it, publish the data, analyze and interpret them in usual scientific fashion. That, not some conspiracy or blind devotion to the status quo, is its real problem.
Really! What have they discovered????
If they have discovered evidence of an "Intelligent Designer", then they have direct scientific evidence of God. Wouldn't that be kind of "big news"?
It will be interesting to find out what the scientific evidence of God will tell us. Maybe His name is Allah? Maybe Zeus. What does He look like? Old man with a beard?
This hysteria about ID being a threat to science is belied by the fact that many scientists who hold to this unpopular theory are still able to do good science in other fields and even in biology.
That’s a distinction without a difference unless ID claims that no new species have evolved or been created since the universe was designed and created (just about as it is today).
Sorry, I probably shouldn't have started this today. I don't have time to finish it...
It’s not just a flute - it’s also baton. Consider this a hand off... RUN!
(I’m done today)
You nailed it.
Teach Creationism in Sunday School.
Teach Science in real school.
I guess Louis Pasteur (father of bacteriology and specifically a believer in Divine creation) and Jerome Lejeune (discoverer of the genetic cause of Down's Syndrome and devout Catholic) didn't get the memo. Anything that helps a scientist frame a falsifiable hypothesis—which is then tested for all to see—offers benefits to research of every kind. As you apply the scientific method to testing the hypothesis, the truth will come out. It doesn't matter where you got the hypothesis.
From the text above, it looks as if Stein is saying that coming from an ID point of view predicts that certain kinds of mechanisms will exist within the cell. Now, if experiment shows them to be present, you've learned something that may help you cure cancer, or whatever. Nothing requires you to share the framer of the hypothesis's belief in God in order to pursue the science. It is their failure to acknowledge this fact that reveals the Global Warming-zealots and the anti-ID academic police as cowards and poor scientists.
Ironically, the ID argument is very close to the neo-Darwinian argument. Both are opposed to the Marxist-science view that men and other life forms have no real nature, and that all life is infinitely malleable—and can be made to love the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to come with the proper training. Long ago, as a reporter for a science magazine, I knew a famous neo-Darwinian thinker and psychologist, an atheist who was Public Enemy Number One to the Marxists and liberals in his field. I asked him this question:
"What do you see when you look over the scope of life forms on earth, including man?"
His answer: "Evidence of design."
He assumed the design was created through natural selection over the generations, whereas the ID people say selection has been speeded up somehow, presumably by God. Both points of view will generate many similar, testable hypotheses. I say, let the assumptions be what they are, and let the best ideas win.
“Divine intervention offers zero potential benefits to scientific medical research”
Check out this little book (in it’s 7th printing):
“None of These Diseases” by S.I. McMillen M.D.
If in fact design was intelligent, knowing that will save a lot of time and effort in research, by not wasting time trying to shoehorn observations into an incorrect hypothesis that there must be some natural process that led to the design.
I’m interested in seeing if that support extends to the general election, or if it is just to get him the democratic nomination.
That "new perspective" was abandoned by science a couple of centuries ago as unproductive.
And there would be no squabble over the designer. The proponents of ID are nearly unanimous that the designer was the Christian god. They just can't admit it, as they have to pretend ID is science.
There, fixed that for ya.
I only committed to it making the promise, not actual delivery.
From what I've seen, they'll agree to that and then squabble over who is and isn't a "Christian".
You are right. The search for design and the presumption of purpose, however, is integral to any form of research including science.
“I always assumed scientists were free to ask any question, pursue any line of inquiry without fear or reprisal,” he says. “But recently, I’ve been alarmed to discover that this is not the case.”
Same issue with Global Warming, Climate Change, and the Greening of America. Ask questions and be accused of being an environmental heretic!
Or support science and face death threats and be called a child molestor.
Sounds like the results of lots of trial and error, or perhaps stupid design, but certainly not any form of intelligent design.
Thank you for posting the link! What a sad and shameful state for our country and culture. What is that they say, failing to learn the lessons of history means you are destined to repeat them. We have entered the age of a new type of inquisition.
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