Posted on 04/28/2008 12:01:40 PM PDT by Delacon
There are no consequences for believing in leprechauns.
‘’No, I haven’t seen the dang thing.’’
Stopped reading at that point.
It will likely end in the $8 million area, so yeah, I think the producers will make some money. Using “Hollywood Math”, they may break even.
No, Ben Stein's attacking Western Civilization.
Western Civilization is predicated on the belief that objective knowledge can be accumulated by rational, testable means. Creationism -- which is a euphemism for rejecting the concept of science and scientific knowledge -- rejects that premise.
There is no controversy as far as the facts go. But creationists insist that there is, insist that their unequal, invalid view should be placed on an equal field with science, that there shouldn't be criteria for testing ideas and their validity. "Teach the controversy," they cry, as if our society were incapable of differentiating real from imagined, right from wrong. You call yourself after the great Roman orator and statesman, yet I think Cicero would have been appalled by a line or argumentation that rejects reason and inquiry.
“I’ve not seen the movie either, and based on what I know of it have no desire to. It’s sad to see Ben Stein, who’s been very funny at times, involved with such an intellectually bereft effort.”
So, just like the liberal academics, you say that having a dissenting opinion is being “intellectually bereft?”
Nice.
That’s the hilarious part.
Those who are bashing Expelled and Stein, even here on FR,
demonstrate his exact point.
Evos and atheists are apoplectic about that connection.
While you may be addressing this to Derbyshire, since I posted the article, I'll respond for myself. I am not an atheist. I don't think a belief in God and a belief in science(in this case evolution) are mutually exclusive. But science is all about finding all the variables and constants in a hypothesis and predicting, testing and verifying to come to a conclusion. One can't have a “because God said so” variable. The whole thing is because God said so. We can't be scientifically objective that way. We are inside the “experiment”. I don't have a problem with that.
Gee, me too. I haven’t seen it yet because I haven’t had the time, but I think I’ll make some just to cheese idiots like this off.
Yep, we all know that Western Civ and Modern Science have NOTHING to do with the Judeo-Christian religion.
At least, all the enlightened folk who aren’t stupid, right?
They should be. And here too.
Anti-rationality and anti-science are not conservative values.
He got one right anyway.
Yet another idiot who’s going to be unhappy when Stein walks off with film of the year for 08.
Really?
I thought Western Civilization was predicated on rational thought, which encompasses not only science but philosophy and theology as well.
Socrates and Aristotle did not have the modern idea of "the scientific method" and yet they were able to speak about rationality in both the natural world and the meta-physical world.
When did science co-opt all rationality? Why is the study of meta-physical areas now an affront to Science, and according to you, Western Civilization?
Bet it at least makes a decent profit. Can't say that about a lot of movies.
It is true that one can determine a lot about the content of a work by reading what is said about it and what, as is generally accepted, it is reported to contain.
Nonetheless, if you're going to write a review, as a professional, for a national publication, you really ought to see it first.
Sheesh.
I stopped reading his awful screed when I got to that. He obviously lacks standing to pose and opinion.
All dissenting opinions are not created equally. Someone who believes that 2 and 2 make 8 does not have a valid opinion. Someone who believes that Jews should be exterminated does not have a valid opinion. Someone who believes that the world was created in seven days six thousand years ago does not belong anywhere near a science classroom, except as a student. The whole creationist argument is predicated on the belief that we're too stupid as human beings to be able to tell fact from fiction, and, given our stupidity, should just present all sides to schoolchildren equally since we can't hope to judge facts rationally.
I think that notion rejects the entire 2500 year tradition of Western Civilization, rejects the idea that there can be any such thing as objective knowledge.
It won’t make money. They had as much marketing costs as production costs. It won’t make $10,000,000. Some of that will go to court settlements.
After studying a subject for so long that you know that a film that is designed to appeal to people who are so uninvolved on that subject that they have to stand in line AT A MOVIE THEATRE AND PAY MONEY to someone who obviously is trying to espouse one singular point of view, a movie that is NOT a documentary by any scholarly standard and then PAY that shill profits and you think something is wrong with that?
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