Posted on 04/17/2008 10:54:25 AM PDT by Boxen
...about intelligent design and evolution
In the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein poses as a "rebel" willing to stand up to the scientific establishment in defense of freedom and honest, open discussion of controversial ideas like intelligent design (ID). But Expelled has some problems of its own with honest, open presentations of the facts about evolution, ID—and with its own agenda. Here are a few examples—add your own with a comment, and we may add it to another draft of this story. For our complete coverage, see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—Scientific American's Take.
1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes.
2) Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. Viewers of Expelled might think that Ben Stein has been giving speeches on college campuses and at other public venues in support of ID and against "big science." But if he has, the producers did not include one. The speech shown at the beginning and end was staged solely for the sake of the movie. Michael Shermer learned as much by speaking to officials at Pepperdine University, where those scenes were filmed. Only a few of the audience members were students; most were extras brought in by the producers. Judge the ovation Ben Stein receives accordingly.
3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie. As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit.
When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed.
4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there. One section of Expelled relates the case of Richard Sternberg, who was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks. The film mentions a 2006 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report prepared for Rep. Mark Souder (R–Ind.), "Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian," that denounced Sternberg's mistreatment.
This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie's case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal's editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last.
The report prepared by Rep. Souder, who had previously expressed pro-ID views, was never officially accepted into the Congressional Record. Notwithstanding the report's conclusions, its appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views. (More detailed descriptions of the Sternberg case can be found on Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and on Wikipedia.)
5) Science does not reject religious or "design-based" explanations because of dogmatic atheism. Expelled frequently repeats that design-based explanations (not to mention religious ones) are "forbidden" by "big science." It never explains why, however. Evolution and the rest of "big science" are just described as having an atheistic preference.
Actually, science avoids design explanations for natural phenomena out of logical necessity. The scientific method involves rigorously observing and experimenting on the material world. It accepts as evidence only what can be measured or otherwise empirically validated (a requirement called methodological naturalism). That requirement prevents scientific theories from becoming untestable and overcomplicated.
By those standards, design-based explanations rapidly lose their rigor without independent scientific proof that validates and defines the nature of the designer. Without it, design-based explanations rapidly become unhelpful and tautological: "This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this looks designed."
A major scientific problem with proposed ID explanations for life is that their proponents cannot suggest any good way to disprove them. ID "theories" are so vague that even if specific explanations are disproved, believers can simply search for new signs of design. Consequently, investigators do not generally consider ID to be a productive or useful approach to science.
6) Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution. Expelled includes many clips of scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, William Provine and PZ Myers who are also well known as atheists. They talk about how their knowledge of science confirms their convictions and how in some cases science led them to atheism. And indeed, surveys do indicate that atheism is more common among scientists than in the general population.
Nevertheless, the film is wrong to imply that understanding of evolution inevitably or necessarily leads to a rejection of religious belief. Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine, a leading neuroscientist who used to be a Dominican priest, continues to be a devout Catholic, as does the evolutionary biologist Ken Miller of Brown University. Thousands of other biologists across the U.S. who all know evolution to be true are also still religious. Moreover, billions of other people around the world simultaneously accept evolution and keep faith with their religion. The late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was compatible with Roman Catholicism as an explanation for mankind's physical origins.
During Scientific American's post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have "confused" viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film's major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God.
Inside and outside the scientific community, people will no doubt continue to debate rationalism and religion and disagree about who has the better part of that argument. Evidence from evolution will probably remain at most a small part of that conflict, however.
I also believe many of the references in the Bible that have been obscure for a few thousand years can now be more aptly considered with our scientific understanding.
I believe it is very likely that the Nephilim were a reference to the other hominids that existed parallel with modern humanity for a time and could easily have been a racial memory in the time the first stories of our origins were handed down. Genesis then finally makes perfect sense!
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Actually, you are an ape. The great apes are the members of the biological family Hominidae which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
The producers have debunked all these claims already.
I also have to say that apparently SciAm hasn’t heard of Social Darwinism. That is tied to eugenics very well. Whether the passage is selectively quoted or not, the point is still valid.
It seems to be in a lot of theaters to...have tons playing it around here unlike most documentaries.
That isn’t the point of the film...it is about how people are silenced.
It isn’t about religion. It is true many people are theistic evolutionists.
I personally think some of the evidence for evolution is strong and some other evidence could actually point in the direction of intelligent design, but regardless, God is involved.
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile. - MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler
b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.
c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.
d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.
e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.
The theory of evolution works just fine with any of these.
Well spread the good news! Coyoteman has just declared "A divine (i.e., having the nature of or being a deity) agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence, or what science knows as Creationism! Welcome to the Light side Coyoteman; you have learned something!
If you read Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century, the second most influential Nazi text after Mein Kampf, and the most explicit and extensive discussion of Nazi race philosophy, you discover that the Nazis believed human races to be primeval, with their distinct "race souls" created by God.
The Nazis weren't trying to "advance" evolution, as Ben Stein has claimed; they were trying to reverse and undo human evolution. Their goal was to restore the racial purity, the purity of "the blood" and the race soul carried in the blood, which God had created in the beginning.
The "evolution" which Nazis actually embraced was not Darwinian but pre-Darwinian. It invoked the pre-Darwinian meaning of "evolution" as "unfolding": the playing out of a prefigured plan of development. The Nazis believed the primeval races had distinct geniuses and distinct destinies. The supposed genius of the "Aryan" race was for conquest and rule, and therefore it's destiny was to conquer and enslave other races. This destiny had been foiled by "race mixing" and the dilution of racial purity. Thus reversing (normal) evolution and restoring racial purity was a necessary aspect of the Nazi program.
I think you need to examine my FR page before continuing in this vein.
"thusly"
AAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH
3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints§ 282. thusly
The adverb thusly was created in the 19th century as an alternative for thus in sentences such as Hold it thus or He put it thus. It appears to have been first used by humorists, who may have been echoing the speech of poorly educated people straining to sound stylish. The word has subsequently gained some currency in educated usage, but it is still often regarded as incorrect. A large majority of the Usage Panel found it unacceptable in an earlier survey. In formal writing, thus can still be used as in the examples above; in other styles, expressions such as this way and like this are more natural.
— The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved
Sorry. Pet peeve.
Oh, and check out Matthew 7:21...
Fish, meet barrel.
Cheers!
They really have a small amount of nitpicking cr*p to denounce the film. Looks like their fishing for more to make their counter punch. Maybe, Bill Maher can help.
Are you under the impression that evolutionary scientists and the folks doing global warming stuff are the same folks? What is the point of mentioning evos in your comments regarding global warming?
The only “confirmation” I see in all this is that Ben has hit a home run; that he is pretty close to the truth; and that it is terrifying the “scientific” community.
You know the history of a Theory? A theory is unproven fact. Its conjecture based on slim evidence, which is why its the Theory of Evolution not the Fact of Evolution.
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LOL.
I have heard of the Theory of Gravity, but I don’t recall reading about the Fact of Gravity in any science textbook I ever encountered.
And you’re gonna get in trouble with Coyoteman when you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding in how ordinary language and scientific jargon treat the word ‘theory’ very differently.
To attempt to discredit evolutionary scientists and the science they perform based on the global warming crowd is a logical fallacy of the most transparent sort.
They really have a small amount of nitpicking cr*p to denounce the film.
You might question that accuracy of the critiques. That would at least be interesting. But calling them "nitpicking" is just sheer denial, and ludicrous on its face. Critics have called into question the entire premise of the film; the central theme reflected in the very name of the movie. They said that the ID'ers in the movie were not in fact "expelled". That people who the movie claims were fired weren't fired at all, that people who claim to be persecuted weren't punished at all.
"None are so blind as those who will not see."
Germany's eugenic sterilization law, which went into effect on January 1, 1934, is no hasty improvisation of the Nazi regime. It has been taking shape gradually during many years, in the discussions of eugenicists. From one point of view, it is merely an accident that it happened to be the Hitler administration which was ready to put into effect the recommendations of specialists.
But Hitler himself - though a bachelor - has long been a convinced advocate of race betterment through eugenic measures. Probably his earlier thinking was colored by Nietzsche, but he studied the subject more thoroughly during his years in prison, following the abortive revolutionary movement of 1923. Here, it is said, he came into possession of the two-volume text on heredity and eugenics, by E. Baur, E. Fischer, and F. Lenz, which is the best-known statement of eugenics in the German language, and evidently studied it to good purpose. In his book, Mein Kampf, most of which was written during these prison years, and which outlines most of the policies since adopted by the Nazis as a political party, he bases his hopes of national regeneration solidly on the application of biological principles to human society.
Exactly what one might say about the so-called scientists.
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