Posted on 04/19/2008 12:17:00 PM PDT by cornelis
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.
The film’s endeavor is to respond to one simple question: “Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?”
Big science doesn’t like that question because they can’t answer it. Underneath their antagonism toward explanations that suggest an intelligent cause, lies a fundamental egoism. Science wants to deny any evidence of a supreme being precisely because it wants to be a supreme being. Moreover, representatives of big science in the film are unsettlingly snippy, suggesting that they feel threatened by rival opinions, rather than assured of their own.
To make this point, the film introduces teachers and scientists who are shunned, denied tenure, and fired for questioning dogmatic Darwinism. The film’s producers spent two years traveling the world, talking with more than 150 educators and scientists who say they have been persecuted for questioning Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist, publishes a peer-reviewed paper, which posits evidence for intelligent design (ID) in the universe. For his efforts, Sternberg’s bosses at the Smithsonian Institution trashed him so badly that it led to a congressional investigation.
Iowa State University denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, an accomplished astrobiologist. University officials admitted that Gonzalez’s work on ID is a factor.
For Richard Dawkins, by contrast, job security is not a problem. To this superstar Oxford University evolutionary biologist, and devout atheist, intelligent design is nothing more than an “ideological cousin of creationism.”
The highlight of the film features Ben Stein interviewing Dawkins, who concedes that an intelligent being may have created life on earth. But that being cannot be “God.” Instead, he suggests it may be an alien, itself a product of “Darwinian evolution.” Oh, the scientific imagination — there’s nothing like it on God’s green earth.
Dawkins has since complained that the interview was set up under false pretenses, and that he didn’t even know who Stein was. It is rather astonishing that it did not occur to the world’s smartest atheist to look up Ben Stein on the Internet, where he might have readily discovered numerous examples of his writings that are critical of Darwinism.
Dawkins dismisses the Emmy-winning actor as having “no talent for comedy.” He believes during the interview Stein is an “honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist.” A lawyer, a law professor, an economist, and a speechwriter for both Nixon and Ford, Stein hardly seems to fit the description “honestly stupid.”
In the end, the film isn’t really about intelligent design as much as about a relentless attack on an authentically free inquiry. As Ben Stein points out, “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”
— Dave Berg is a senior segment producer at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Should be a good documentary. I love the data about design, although I’m not pinning the God-did-it label on it. But the evidence about the complete complexity of the cell and how it’s made up of little engines and machines transforms how humans now have to think about the little guys, our cells.
What evidence exists to support ID?
The film’s endeavor is to respond to one simple question: “Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?”Big science doesn’t like that question because they can’t answer it.
Yet.
(A yet! A yet! My kingdom for a yet!)
I saw the movie last night. Very well done, and though it pokes some gentle fun at some of the atheistic dogmatics of Darwinists, Stein also has a reflective and caring moment regarding one man who is a vehement atheist but is also suffering from a brain tumor.
Stein has made a good film.
A very interesting couple of related works I've seen, just in case anyone is interested:
I recommend it to everyone.
You?
The Anthropic principal does a pretty good job.
Then who is the designer?
If you're really interested, it takes some time to listen and see. If you're not really interested, then be like the so-called Darwin scientists in the movie: put your hands over your ears and talk loudly so you won't hear. :)
Seriously, let me see if there are some good youtube links--
Unlocking The Mystery of Life on YouTube
Not you.
Your a good example of why evolution does’t exist. Why should you care what other people think?? You are basically saying think like me or else which happens to be the point. Get lost! Never mind, you already are.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
First of all, Expelled is no more of a documentary than Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary. Both films are filled with information presented as facts that can be easily refuted. Ben Stein is as credible as Michael Moore.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2003002/posts
Recovering you are wasting your time with tokenatheist. He appears to be a newbie troll, birth date 3/25/08. Or just dumb.
Big Science doesn’t believe anybody should research outside of the approved Groupthink. It has become a Stalinist religion which is what Stein (who happens to have a genius IQ) is pointing out.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Ok. Well, I just wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. They can look at the link and learn if they want. Or they can keep following the masses. :) I’ve done my part.
Thanks for the heads up, though; I’ll keep a look out.
RD
I agree.
Hell trumandogz has been here for 4 years and he considers Ben Stein as low as the traitor Michael Moore, which is even a lower form of commentary than Token-A-theist. (never thought I’d say that).
More likely a Darwin Central retread.
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