TV game show host and economic analyst Ben Stein's film challenging evolution is a lesson in anti-scientific propaganda
by Michael Shermer
"Should I be afraid of the black gangs in this area?" Those were the first words Ben Stein said when he walked into my office at the Skeptic magazine complex, located in a mixed-race neighborhood in Altadena, California. I shrunk in my chair and hoped my two African-American coworkers hadn't heard his words. It was perhaps just a clumsy attempt to joke before he began interviewing me for a film that was supposed, as I was told, to deal with the meeting between science and religion entitled "Crossroads".
But that's not what the interview was about. And not the movie, eventually called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The subtitle reveals the main idea: intelligent design has been removed from classrooms and culture, and Ben Stein believes that this is a malicious conspiracy in action.
The arrogant financial columnist, shady actor and TV game show host was going to question me on whether I thought a person who voiced opinions contrary to popular opinion should be fired. I told him that it depends. It depends on who is fired, why, when and where. People are usually fired due to budget cuts, non-compliance or non-compliance with the employment contract. If you are hired to teach biology according to the district curriculum and instead you use the whole semester to tell the students that science has no complete and absolute explanation of what DNA, wings, eyes, brains, and the mystery of mysteries, whips of single-celled creatures - then yes , you must be fired on the spot. But I don't know of any case where this happened. For the examples that the film gives, showing cases where people were allegedly fired for such reasons, logical explanations were found which can be read on the website, which presents the details of all the cases after an investigation conducted by Eugene Scott and her diligent team from the US National Center for Science Education.
After repeating the question in a dozen different formulations, Stein finally moved on to another topic and asked about my opinion on the social impact of Darwinism. Since I had just finished writing my book on evolutionary economics (The Mind of the Market), I connected Adam Smith's "disappearing hand" with Charles Darwin's natural selection and mentioned how capitalists used social Darwinism to justify wild competition in markets, beginning From the popular opinion at the beginning of the 20th century that linked natural selection to the survival of the strongest commercial companies to the CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, who said that his favorite book at Harvard Business School was "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. That wasn't the answer Stein wanted to get, and replied passionately that I wouldn't be able to understand his point until I watched the film.
And the interpretation of the film is this: Darwinism leads to atheism, communism, fascism and a repetition of the Holocaust. According to the film, we are in the midst of a war between a natural-scientific worldview that leads to the Gulag archipelago and the gas chambers of the Nazis and a supernatural-religious worldview that leads to freedom and justice according to the "American way". Eliminating intelligent design from classrooms in the US and from culture will mercilessly undermine our law. The film's stark editing combines brief interview clips with evolutionary biologists and black-and-white videos showing, in ascending order of menace, thugs beating an underweight disabled person; Charlton Heston's character in "Planet of the Apes" is crushed by a water hose by a bully gorilla; Nikita Khrushchev pounds his fist on the podium at the UN; East German citizens who were caught while trying to climb the Berlin Wall and remains of Nazi crematoria and bodies of Holocaust victims are being bulldozed into mass graves. It is impossible to mistake the formula: Darwinism = death.
Stein's film is gross propaganda that would have made even Lenny Reifenstahl* blush, and ironically it also deserves to receive Michael Moore's Palme d'Or for objective journalism. It is impressive to see that the film is being marketed to church groups, religious organizations and conservative Christians. I watched it at the National Convention of Religious Broadcasters, where Stein and the producers were received with a standing ovation. The participants in the convention also received an "events and resources bag" for the film, which includes posters, car stickers, lesson plans, reading material from the Discovery Institute for Intelligent Planning and even a whistle to "expose the oppression". They were also given a CD containing interviews with supporters of intelligent design and suggestions for "hosting 'Dinner with Darwin' with the help of the discussion guide, the CD and the film as an opportunity to educate ourselves about the 'good science' that supports our faith."
When will the Americans learn that the theory of evolution has nothing to do with religion and that "good science" is the product of good data and good theory and not science that "has a good match with the Holy Scriptures"? After the movie, will anyone still take Ben Stein seriously?
Michael Shermer is the publisher of the journal Skeptic .
* Well-known director of Nazi propaganda films
22 תגובות
To all dear souls! Happy Harut holiday!
Why did you turn Drowin into a new idol and the "Science-Torah" into a new fanatical religion.
Please repeat the question!
It seems to me that in order to honor for a moment, the spirit of Darwin and his ongoing commemoration, in a warm-hearted temper,
I would go back, to the witty... to the witty of the water, observing the structure of the sponges, the corals, the intellectuals,
goes up to land, takes a nut, observes its special structure, which is wonderfully compatible with the structure of our brain,
And in a "phrenological" atmosphere, like Gal's way (200 years ago...) I would check again and again... what happened
To our neurological short circuit system, which received an over-pulse for acceleration in time...
Sometimes it's worth thinking, like the sponge..the fan.
Hill:
You are talking nonsense.
That people were surprised is because they didn't expect it. I promise you that even if someone suddenly "boos" them in the dark they will be surprised.
I don't know where you get your information about my knowledge on the subject of evolution, but let's say that because I don't know where you get the rest of your "information".
There is no point in repeating what I said just because you didn't understand it, because as I said, I came to the conclusion that you are unconvincing.
The fact that you say that I am like that too is a simple result of the law of action and reaction and I have no interest in referring to this nonsense either.
Michael
You probably won't be convinced by any argument either.
What does it mean that the gardens were not used for anything or were used for something else?.
Then without any intervention of the survivors they manage to create nerve cells cells so different special and specific for a certain purpose.
The scientists according to the article were very surprised by the phenomenon. I guess they believe in the theory of survival as much as you (and know it maybe a little better than you), and they were surprised.
You evolutionists are so fanatical, think for a moment, this is new research, it presents a problem.
I'm really not waiting for you, Michael, for an answer to a real problem, a problem that surprised the research scientists, but not you, you, you immediately gave an answer from the hip, and ended it by saying that nothing will convince me and Ermak.
But if there is any serious evolutionary researcher who reads the comments, I expect an answer from him. A little more reasoned, serious and less cynical than Michael's.
Hill:
What Irmak was trying to say is exactly what I said, only without the titles.
He (and you too) ignores the possibility that these genes have a different function in these beings as well as the possibility that they were not used for anything but also did not interfere (like the DNA is junk here but I really don't have the strength to go back to the starting point.
I already understood that you and Iramek will never be convinced by an argument.
Mickey
I do not rule out the possibility that intelligent creation is not exactly the smartest
It solves a lot of problems
Maybe he is like Microsoft releasing undubbed editions, the main thing is to get to the market on time.
and expects from the field (survivors) responses to the next edition.
Sorry, I wrote brain instead of nervous system, but that doesn't change the essence of my comments.
my father
If the genes contain options for whole organs that did not develop gradually (and did not exist before and disappeared) then natural selection has a serious problem and an alternative answer must be sought.
Not Michael and my father
What Sharmek shows (in the article) is that the option to develop a brain already existed in creatures that did not use the brain at all (described in detail in the article), so evolution had no hand in the development of this option.
Because as you probably know, survival according to natural selection only works on mechanisms that were created and adapted to the environment or did not adapt (and then disappeared), and not on the possibilities inherent in genes that have not yet been exposed to evolution.
(Please don't go back to ancestor Pillai who was already brainless and disappeared, because that's really ridiculous).
No. That's all............... ).
Avi:
What Irmac is trying to teach us is that the "intelligent" creation was carried out by an idiot who started to build a nervous system in sponges as well but stopped in the middle.
Larmak, how exactly does the fact that the nervous system developed before the animals separated from the sponges contradict evolution?
A priori synthetic, is that you? :) In any case... the film is probably trying to show that there is an alternative to evolution. A scientific alternative. Evolution is apparently not scientific, because any failed prediction in it is welcomed. Only recently have scientists found something interesting and surprising-
http://www.livescience.com/health/080828-nerve-origin.html
Hugin
What do you like more science or scientists?
Well, Yehudalah
And did you have a slight doubt that I did not understand the intent of the "point"?
Good and blessed week.
Dear Hugin
The denominator of a point for creationism and not healthiness.
Although I'm sure Point will not be angry that you blessed me with good health
good week
Sabdarmish Yehuda
And on an optimistic note, as Yehuda blessed us for this day... I will add
Note that Darwin, the old man, (isn't he cute?) talked about "natural-selection".. and not about "the method"
The natural one.. and the one that makes all the difference. That is, adaptive abilities of various kinds, which nature encodes (conscience) within us..
And to the point.. creationism, point: be healthy!.. here I saved you in the blink of an eye a waste of 10 million.
Take it, it's for you, with all my heart. And by the way, what's your name in Israel??
Give me $10 million and I'll be willing to be your creator for a year or two
One should not forget a number of important things that are usually ignored due to lack of knowledge.
And the first thing is that Darwinism never claimed that the strongest survives, but rather, the adapted survives. That is, there can be a weak creature that has other advantages that make it adaptable and survive.
Another thing that must not be forgotten is that all creatures that exist today are adapted and survive. It should be qualified that in the last hundreds of years because of man, some of the creatures are no longer adapted. Man in these cases constitutes a change in the environment of the aforementioned creatures, that is, the worsening of their environmental conditions and their inability to adapt to the new environment, which includes Homo sapiens.
And of course we mustn't forget the most important thing for us, Homo sapiens. We change the environment in which we live and it is not at all certain if we will be able to change, develop, adapt to the new environment and survive. In other words - it may be that the change in the environment we create is the one that will destroy us. for your attention!
Have a good and optimistic day
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Good Day
Sabdarmish Yehuda
According to the logic of creationism, according to which Darwinism is the source of evil (Nazism
Defined races as "inferior" that deserve to be extinct like the dinosaurs, for example,
Supposedly according to Darwin's theory, except that Darwin himself did not recognize the concept of "inferior race")
- and therefore we must find an alternative to it, we can decide in accounting (which it is
the foundation of economics), on a series of mathematical steps that will prove that poor is rich -
Thus "solving" the problem of the huge economic gaps between people.
Violence between humans will not be solved by turning a blind eye, and whoever rejects Darwinism, the "evil"
Supposedly, only because the Nazis "adopted" him (and to be honest: he would reject Darwin's theory
because of a certain religious concept) will accept ignorance - and religious wars.
Yehuda:
You're right.
The vast majority of those who present themselves as creationists are indeed religious.
I believe my response is the first of over fifty responses. At least on Friday Shabbat we will have some peace from the fans of creationism, unless the Lubavitcher Rebbe gives a special asher from heaven above that a response to Darwinism postpones Shabbat.
So everyone have a good and peaceful weekend
Sabdarmish Yehuda