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Intelligent Critique (Film Expelled adroitly addresses the dogmaticism of Darwinian theory)
NRO ^ | 4/18/08 | Dave Berg

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: benstein; expelled; hollywood; id; moviereview; stein
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To: stockpirate

If you can not attack the message then attack the messenger?


21 posted on 04/19/2008 1:05:22 PM PDT by tokenatheist (Can I play with madness?)
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To: bray

So it is not forbidden to ask for evidence that supports ID?

You do know that behavior like that doesn’t help the ID is science cause at all. As a matter of fact it kind of supports the argument that ID isn’t science.

It absolutely amazes me how many of the tactics that the ID supporters use to suppress questions about ID mirror the tactics that they accuse ‘Big Science’ of.


22 posted on 04/19/2008 1:09:35 PM PDT by tokenatheist (Can I play with madness?)
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To: tokenatheist

It shouldn’t amaze you. There are charlatans on both sides of any aisle, democrat or republican, conservative or liberal, male or female. No party membership is necessary for being dishonest.


23 posted on 04/19/2008 1:23:31 PM PDT by cornelis
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To: tokenatheist

What no matter what anybody says your mind is absolutely closed and will say, not evidence. If you can’t see ID every time the sun rises you are a complete waste of time.

You better hope your right and were wrong since when you bow your knee he will condemn you to eternal atheism.

Pray To Our Lord Jesus Christ for W and Our Freedom Fighters


24 posted on 04/19/2008 1:23:58 PM PDT by bray (Go InSain)
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To: tokenatheist

BTW, did you go see the movie yet or are you too close minded??

Pray for W and Our Troops


25 posted on 04/19/2008 1:26:48 PM PDT by bray (Go InSain)
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To: cornelis

One thing that seems to drive the left crazy is pointing out that infact that Darwin’s theory of evolution is just that a “theory”. A theory is only an idea of how it might’ve happened and can’t be proven otherwise it would be called a fact of evolution not just a theory.


26 posted on 04/19/2008 1:28:14 PM PDT by chris_bdba
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To: BlueStateBlues
I love the data about design, although I’m not pinning the God-did-it label on it.

Then who else would the designer be?

27 posted on 04/19/2008 1:29:29 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: cornelis
The Designers have been here!

I read it on the Internet therefore it must be true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Bible says so too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..........
The image “http://pds1.exblog.jp/pds/1/200505/07/11/c0053311_2215096.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

28 posted on 04/19/2008 1:42:08 PM PDT by DoctorMichael (Creationists on the internet: The Ignorant, amplifying the Stupid.)
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To: Non-Sequitur

Some people don’t have the Courage to take the heat of believing there is a God. They want to cling to the Alien theory who is not God. Where did the Alien come from??

Pray for W and Our Troops


29 posted on 04/19/2008 1:42:22 PM PDT by bray (Go InSain)
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To: cornelis

I just got home after going to see the movie. This is a “must see” movie. It’s the best conservative movie I’ve ever seen!


30 posted on 04/19/2008 1:51:05 PM PDT by Hamilcar_Barca
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To: bray
Some people don’t have the Courage to take the heat of believing there is a God. They want to cling to the Alien theory who is not God. Where did the Alien come from??

And that's why such beliefs fall under theology rather than science.

31 posted on 04/19/2008 1:52:06 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Hamilcar_Barca
This is a “must see” movie.

It appears that this is a "must see" that most people "won't see".

"The only other newcomer in the Top 10 was conservative commentator Ben Stein's #8 documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in which he takes the creationists' side against scientists in the evolution battle. Playing in 1,052 theaters, the pic distributed by Rocky Mountain Films earned $1.2M Friday for what should be a $3.4M weekend. But the per screen average was a feeble $1,130 (not the $3,000 erroneously rumored on the Internet), showing there wasn't any pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign. So much for the conservative argument that people would flock to films not representing the "agenda of liberal Hollywood". (Just for comparison purposes: Michael Moore's most recent Sicko did $4.4 mil its opening weekend from only 441 theaters, and his Fahrenheit 9/11 did $23.9M its opening weekend from 868 venues.) "

Link on Drudge

32 posted on 04/19/2008 1:53:47 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur

Theology and science are distinct. But as human beings, we cannot afford to be pure scientists or pure theologians. You can always recognize those who try.


33 posted on 04/19/2008 1:54:16 PM PDT by cornelis
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To: Non-Sequitur

Which is the deeper point of the movie.

Pray for W and Our Troops


34 posted on 04/19/2008 1:56:08 PM PDT by bray (Go InSain)
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To: Tench_Coxe

We should check his other recent posts, may not be here long.

ZOT


35 posted on 04/19/2008 2:01:18 PM PDT by stockpirate (Obama and Hillery will make me vote for McCain, now if we can just move him to the right.)
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To: BlueStateBlues

Just saw it. It is a very good, well-made movie. My husband has a Phd in geological sciences from Caltech, a Catholic/ Christian, thot it was very good. (He has been asked before how he can believe in God and call himself a Christian!).


36 posted on 04/19/2008 2:03:12 PM PDT by bboop (Stealth Tutor)
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To: bray

When I can rent it for less than 2.00 I will watch the portions I have yet to see.


37 posted on 04/19/2008 2:40:30 PM PDT by tokenatheist (Can I play with madness?)
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To: bray

I see a beautiful site brought on by physics and a host of other explainable phenomenon. If humans were content to simply gaze upon things in awe, never attempting to try to understand what is causing it, we would still be stuck in the middle ages.

Is your favorite deity so limited that he was unable to work within the laws that you feel he created?


38 posted on 04/19/2008 2:44:01 PM PDT by tokenatheist (Can I play with madness?)
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To: stockpirate

This is amazing.

You are trying to do to me what the producers of the movie Expelled claim is done to those that support ID.

Why is your behavior OK while the same alleged behavior by scientists warrants an entire movie?


39 posted on 04/19/2008 2:46:54 PM PDT by tokenatheist (Can I play with madness?)
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To: Tench_Coxe; stockpirate; tokenatheist
More likely a Darwin Central retread.

Almost for certain.

40 posted on 04/19/2008 2:48:48 PM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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