Science and Culture Today | Page 1321 | Discovering Design in Nature

From Edward Douglas at Comingsoon.net: Summary:The filmmakers’ intentions are kept deliberately vague–is this about free speech or about teaching religion in the classroom?–but it’s a surprisingly entertaining and informative doc that at least tries to address the debate over intelligent design from another angle.Story:Ben Stein takes a look at intelligent design and how scientists and teachers who’ve dared to address it have come under attack from the scientific community using Darwin’s theories of evolution. To read more, click here:

From Dave Berg at National Review: I like rebels, especially ones who go against type. Take Ben Stein in his latest film, Expelled, which comes out this Friday. Dressed in a sport coat, tie, and tennis shoes, he’s not who you expect — the deadpan, monotone-voiced but ever-likable teacher he portrays in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Wonder Years.Stein retains his characteristic deadpan affect, but this time he’s playing himself — a deceptively erudite and well-educated interviewer, who is passionately skeptical of evolutionary biology and its leading proponents. To read more, click here.

From Dinesh D’Souza on AOLNews.com: In Ben Stein’s new film “Expelled,” there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins’ grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument… To read more, click here.

A modified version of the Louisiana Academic Freedom Bill moved out of the Louisiana Senate Education Committee on Thursday, following testimony from both proponents and opponents of the bill. I recently predicted that, “For the Darwinists who oppose the bill, this battle is about falsely appealing to people’s emotions and fears in order to suppress the teaching of scientific information that challenges evolution.” If you don’t believe me, consider the latest testimony from Darwinists encouraging legislators to oppose the bill yesterday before the Louisiana Senate Education Committee: Unfortunately, Senator Cassidy’s amendment seems to have passed into the revised version of the bill; however, the bill still contains good language encouraging school boards “to create and foster an environment … that Read More ›

David Klinghoffer nails the Darwinists’ noisome effort to deny Darwinism’s influence on Nazi ideology in today’s National Review Online. He knocks down the straw man arguments they employ–the pretense that the film is mainly or even substantially about this topic, or that the film blames the bulk of the Nazi enterprise on Darwin or that the film calls today’s Darwinists Nazis. But mainly he simply marshals the historians. (The very best current history, of course, is Darwin to Hitler, by Richard Weikart of Cal State.)

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In Part 1 and Part 2 I discussed how Michael Shermer’s review of Expelled applies one-sided skepticism to anything that challenges Darwinism, withholding skepticism of claims made by pro-evolution sources. When claiming that Richard Sternberg faced no discrimination after sympathizing with Darwin-skeptics, but simply invented a “conspiracy,” Shermer failed to scrutinize the blatantly false and contradictory claims by Darwinists trying to cover up what really happened. In that case, Eugenie Scott made private concessions that Sternberg did not do anything mortally wrong in his handling of the publication of Stephen C. Meyer’s paper on intelligent design (ID), and spoke as Read More ›

Last night in Dallas the official theater run of Expelled was kicked off with a gala premiere complete with red carpet, film narrator Ben Stein, and the film’s main stars, the Expelled scientists. Here’s a few pictures. (For full disclosure, I took the crummy one, the others were supplied by an attendee with a camera that far outclassed my phone.)Click for full size images. Expelled scientists, Drs. Richard Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, Robert Marks and Discovery’s Dr. John West at the world premiere of Expelled. Drs. Gonzalez, West, and Marks on the red carpet. Attendees partied before the actual screening of the film. Some of the attending Expelled scientists being introduced to attendees by the executive producers. (Left to right: Robert Read More ›

Finally, a writer known to me personally to be a smart and honest guy, no ignoramus nor a propagandist, attacks the Hitler-Darwin thesis in Expelled.

Ronald Bailey, who used to write book reviews for me at National Review, comments on the movie in the libertarian magazine Reason. He complains that linking Darwinism with Nazism is the “most egregious part of the film.” He harrumphs that the Expelled filmmakers “overlook the fact that people down through the millennia have found all sorts of justifications for why they are permitted to murder each other, including plunder, tribal competition, and, yes, religion.”

OK, but when Muslims today commit mass slaughter in the name of their religion, or when Christians once did so, it becomes reasonable on that basis to ask probing questions about the truth of Islam or Christianity. For that matter, it’s fair to question my own faith, Judaism, for the Hebrew Bible’s countenancing of Joshua’s bloody war against the natives of Canaan.

It would be ridiculous to say that any of this adds up to a slam-dunk argument for rejecting Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Similarly, Hitler’s appropriation of Darwinian language in Mein Kampf is by itself no case for rejecting Darwinism.

Today The Seattle Times is sure to provoke a reaction from Darwinists with an article by Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman, “An Intelligent Discussion about Life.” “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a trenchant new film by actor/economist Ben Stein, the man first made famous in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He’s now tackling with humorous dudgeon the classic example of ideological science, Darwinian evolution. Stein shows Darwinists insistently misrepresenting the scientific case against their theory. Where facts and reason might fail to persuade, personal attacks are employed, sometimes even by organizations supposedly committed to civil discourse. When I was taught Darwin’s theory in college more than four decades ago, it was represented as unassailable. But I also was taught in those Read More ›

[Note: For a detailed response to critics of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] The Darwinists claim that anyone who cites historical works in defense of the proposition that Darwin’s theory influenced Nazi ideology is “quote mining.” As usual, that is a cover-up. So is the straw man argument that the film Expelled is trying to blame poor old Darwin for the Holocaust or to claim that Darwinism originated anti-Semitism or that Darwinism was the sole source of Nazi ideology. Any such straw man intentionally exaggerates the message of the one segment of Expelled where the Nazi ideology of eugenics and race is explored. Another straw man is the pretense that the film Read More ›