Science and Culture Today | Page 1363 | Discovering Design in Nature

[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 I observed that the famous skeptic Michael Shermer’s attack upon the movie Expelled over at Scientific American adopts the following approach when denying the persecution experienced by intelligent design (ID) proponents: Shermer Blames-the-Victim Case #1: Richard SternbergThe conversation with Michael Shermer in the Expelled film revolves around the publication of Stephen C. Meyer’s pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific paper in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The editor who oversaw the publication of that article was Dr. Richard Sternberg, who, according to investigations by both the U.S. Office of Special Counsel and also by subcommittee staff Read More ›

President Bush’s welcome of Pope Benedict XVI today was noted for its evocation of the pontiff’s words that “all human life is sacred, ‘each of us is loved and each us is necessary.” It is a pro-life message, after all. The lead in to the quoted words is found on little prayer cards available at Vatican City gift shops and is also worth noting: “We are not some meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”Enriches the significance, doesn’t it?

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

It has become the main angle of attack against Expelled to express outrage at the film’s linking of Darwinism with Hitlerism. We need to look today at what Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf.

Thus, London’s Guardian newspaper publishes a hit piece on Expelled by Adam Rutherford of Nature magazine. He hasn’t seen the movie but believes gentlemen like P.Z. Myers who “indicate that Expelled suggests the Holocaust was a direct result of Darwinian thought.” That’s not what the film suggests, but never mind. Rutherford dismisses the “absurdity” of the “reductio ad Hitlerum” as “specious and simplistic.”

What Expelled has to say about the Darwin-Hitler connection is more along the lines of something a far more distinguished writer had to say in the very same newspaper just a month ago.

John Gray, political philosopher at the London School of Economics, wrote an essay in the Guardian. In passing, he noted how,

Always a tremendous booster of science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarized Darwinism and by theories of eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism.

Which is entirely correct.

The key chapter in Mein Kampf is Chapter XI, “Nation and Race,” where Hitler discusses the imperative to defend the Aryan race from the Jewish menace.

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] Scientific American has a long history of opposing intelligent design (ID), so it comes as no surprise that they have tasked their columnist Michael Shermer with the job of attacking Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Michael Shermer is the founder of Skeptic Magazine, who loves to boast about how evolution liberated him from belief in God. In fact, he does just that in his article attacking Expelled, opening it by saying: “In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory,” but when he “finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school Read More ›

As he is wont to do, Discovery senior fellow and Secondhand Smoker Wesley J. Smith, always asks the tough questions, like “Is Richard Dawkins a Raelian?”

Tonight the ever entertaining David Berlinski will continue his cross-country trek presenting his new book The Devil’s Delusion with a stop in Seattle. Even though he seems somewhat charmed with Berlinski, Daniel Engber, writing for Slate, is doing his part in warning America not to be taken in by the professional skeptic. According to Daniel Dennett, Berlinski exudes a “rich comic patina of smug miseducation”; Richard Dawkins implies that he may be wicked to the core; and blogger-ringleader P.Z. Myers has called him a “pompous pimple” and a “supercilious snot.” (Berlinski, for his part, makes no effort whatsoever to remain above the fray; he delivers some colorful rejoinders in the course of this interview he conducted with himself for an Read More ›

People such as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and author Susan Jacoby have been calling for an improved intellectual climate and reasoned, informed debate on hot topics such as the question of origins. OK, let’s give it a try. Did you know that most of the evidence claimed for evolution is actually not evidence for evolution? That’s right. Remember the mountain of evidence that evolutionists say is supposed to make evolution a fact? Well, most of it consists of biological findings that merely have been interpreted according to evolution. Here is an example: a prestigious scientific journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published last week detailed findings about how DNA information is used to make proteins Read More ›

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]

The National Center for Science Education has just unveiled its expanded website denouncing the upcoming movie “Expelled,” but the website’s clunky attacks merely provide confirmation that the film’s essential thesis is correct: Darwinists really don’t believe in academic freedom regarding evolution, and they’re more than willing to smear any scientist who disagrees with them.

The basic thrust of the NCSE’s website seems to be the preposterous claim that pro-ID scientists never, ever face harassment, intimidation, or persecution. Not ever! Scientists who claim otherwise—such as biologist Richard Sternberg, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, and Baylor University engineering professor Robert Marks—must be cry-babies or worse.

[Note: For a more detailed response to attacks on Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]
With the attacks on Expelled from distraught Darwinists coming faster and sharper, I thought I’d ask Discovery senior fellow –and columnist for the Jewish Forward— David Klinghoffer to provide us with some commentary to help put various aspects of the film into context. Here then is his first installment.

This week I’ll be blogging about a contentious issue raised by Expelled, its linking of Darwinian theory with Hitlerian ideology. Critics have misconstrued the point Ben Stein makes in the film. Expelled does not — repeat: DOES NOT — try “to blame Darwin for the Holocaust,” as the subhead on an attack piece at the Scientific American website puts it.
Instead it shows the indebtedness of Nazism to ideas expressed in Darwin’s writing.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is enmeshed in a worldview, Darwinism, that emerges clearly in The Origin of Species and, more so, in The Descent of Man. Hitler gave to Darwinism his own evil twist. Yet Hitler without Darwin’s influence, however indirect, would not have been the same Hitler we know from history. Without Darwin’s legacy to draw on, Hitler would have been compelled to frame his appeal to the German people in greatly altered terms.
That’s different, it should be obvious, from blaming gentle Charles Darwin for genocide.
Yet the author of the SciAm review, editor-in-chief John Rennie, feels that the movie should have given a fuller picture of Nazism’s philosophical genealogy: