Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity

eldavojohn writes "Painting the current scientific community as just as bad as the Spanish Inquisition, an extended trailer of Ben Stein's "Expelled" has a lot of people (at least that I know) talking. It looks like his movie plans to encourage people to speak out if they believe intelligent design or creationism to be correct. In the trailer he even warns you that if you are a scientist you may lose your job by watching 'Expelled.' Backlash to the movie has started popping up and this may force the creationism/evolutionist debate to a whole new level across the big screen and the internet." adholden points out a site called Expelled Exposed, which asserts that 'Expelled' "is simply an anti-science propaganda film aimed at creating controversy where none exists, while promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students."

Re:Which do you believe?

[El Puerco Loco]

*sighs* - I bet he's skeptical about anthropomorphic climate change too

yes, the climate is beginning to look more human isn't it? i thought i was the only one who noticed.

Controversy?

[neochubbz]

Meh... As long as both are prefixed with "theory of", who cares?

Academic Oppression

[Woundweavr]

Its not just "Darwinists" that force their anti-Jesus dogma on the education system. I had a similar experience in my childhood.

Given a circle with a radius of 10, whats the circumference? Some would say thats its 10 * 2 * "pi"!

But what is this pi? They can't even define it;its completely irrational! Meanwhile they suppress the controversy. When I put down a much more reasonable answer - 60, because the literal Bible tells me the circumference of a circle is 2*r*3 [biblegateway.com], I was marked wrong! The Nazis used these numbers to build their war machine and concentration camps and its being taught to children far to young to understand its deceptiveness. Inquiring minds are led to a literally endless and patternless series of numbers intended to confuse and dull the mind.

Teach the controversy!

Win ben stein's money

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it's easier than I thought to win Ben Stein's money, just pass the collection plate.

Re:Which do you believe?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

It's anthropogenic climate change. Man-made, not man-like.

Perhaps climate change wants to be man made?

(seriously, thanks for the correction).

Re:Which do you believe?

[RiotingPacifist]

On the other hand, maybe he gets the debate on the front page in a popular vein. Could be time for him and Dawkins in a live MTV cage match.

And Dawkins is taking a beating, but whats this... Stephen hawkin has entered the ring and smashed stein over the head with a chair, looks like stein is out for the count.

Fantastic stories of the "Expelled"

[Sockatume]

You know a movie's in trouble when the main response from mainstream movie critics is roughly "deceptive propagandist shit-pile", but the real fun comes when you start reading up on the people who were supposedly expelled. Like the Smithsonian employee who had his keys taken away and was fired, thrown out of his office, and thrown off the editorial staff of a journal.

Well, he was fired from his unpaid assistant job at the Smithsonian. Well, his contract for his unpaid assistant job expired. Well, it expired and they gave him a new one. But he was sacked from the journal! Oh, his contract expired there too. Well, there's his office of course, they took that away. Well they moved him into a crappy office. Well, they moved him into his own office. They took his keys away, though! They took everyone's keys away in his whole building! And, uh, they replaced them with keycards.

This is clearly the most honest movie of all time.

I think he is right

[Vexorian]

He's totally right, science in academia should be more about discussing what you believe and less about what science people have found out after observation and experimentation.

For example the other day when my chemistry teacher told me that material stuff is made of atoms, I really couldn't believe him. I think I should have been given the right back then to discuss with them about my theory that everything is conformed by milk derivatives.

I shouldn't really have to prove my theory or even get the smallest amount of evidence pointing to the certainty of my theory before being given the opportunity to have kids at school discuss about it.

And all what I said in this post is the truth, because if you read this post you may lose your job.

Re:Academic Oppression

[soilheart]

Yeah, because everyone knows that Jesus helped Solomon with his temple improvements =P

Re:Evolution doesn't disprove God(s)... BUT...

[n9uxu8]

Well, said. I wrote something about this regarding evolution and the political campaign describing just this problem. While yes there is a distinction, the fact that most people won't see it, is a problem:

Evolution:

You know the deal...reproduction leads to mutations. Some mutations benefit survival, and these traits are passed on to further generations.This leads sea monkey to salamanders and apes to man. Check the bones at your local natural history museum for the appropriate citations.

In any case, in days gone by, the evolution question was fairly simple:

I do/do not (circle one) believe in evolution.

For the most part people were okay with this. If you didn't believe in evolution, you tended to get giggled at, but nobody stole your lunch money, so all was well, and time passed.

Eventually, though, that wasn't good enough for some folks. Believing in evolution was no longer good enough. The conversation moved to something along these lines:

"So...do you believe in evolution?"

"Yes, of course I do. Ooh...wanna go to the museum? The fossils are wicked cool!"

"So, you admit that God was not involved in the creation of man, then."

"Say what now?!?!"

That's when life got ugly. All Christians want to say is that clearly the evolutionary process is going on all around us, but God is the architect behind it all. Not good enough, apparently. Evolution is strictly random. As such God cannot be involved. Unfortunately, saying God did not create man is tantamount to saying "There is no God." That's quite a pickle, don't you think? What's a politician to say?

There is an inherent contradiction in believing evolution and believing in God, but I believe that is the point. I think they used to call these essential mysteries. I believe in evolution. I believe in God...big fan of his work. I don't believe that invisible angels were at work bumping the necessary single cell organisms together to eventually create man. I do believe if I mix the proper ingredients and stick them in the oven, I'll eventually get a cake.

Re:Which do you believe?

[MightyYar]

Meh. I click on all your dangerous crap, and it's never very interesting. Maybe I should turn off NoScript?

Re:Which do you believe?

[MightyYar]

Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe there is only one true God. And he lives in this lake. And his name is Zorgo.

(apologies to The State [youtube.com])

Re:Which do you believe?

[cloakable]

This is strongly confirmed in the one human who rose from the dead

Citation needed. More than one book, please.

Re:Can you please link to the CNN article?

[sm62704]

But you don't really illustrate the point - the OP was talking about scientists, and you illustrated the point with a story about a journalist and an environmental activist

"The OP was talking about Christian preachers, and you illustrated the point with a story about a journalist and Jerry Fallwall!

Re:It isn't science.

[gawdonblue]

Flying Spagetti Monster

Tis spelt Spaghetti thou blasphemer. Ware His Noodly Appendage lest it smite thee!

Oh, and further scientific proof that pirates stop global warming: http://www.google.com/trends?q=global+warming%2C+pirates&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=1 [google.com]

Re:Indeed, Scientific Zealotry Hurts the Cause ...

[Danse]

And please stop with the Moore-bashing, it's getting tiresome.

So are his movies, but he doesn't seem to be stopping. That said, I agree with the rest of your post :)

Re:Which do you believe?

[Prof.Phreak]

chaos is: short term predictable, long term unpredictable.

random is: short term unpredictable, long term predictable.

Nobody studies random chaos, as there's nothing to predict.

Re:It isn't science.

[Tetsujin]

Until then it is as much a waste of time as it is trying to work out how much flour Flying Spaghetti Monster is made up of.

Hi,

      Is there a denomination that believes in a Flying Spaghetti Monster made of rice pasta? My wife has Celiac and so we want our thinly veiled lampoon-deity to be gluten-free.

Re:An honest question for the young-Earth types.

[ArchMageZeratuL]

The oil was obviously placed there by Jesus. However, knowing that heretics would take over the world someday, he decided to put all the oil exactly where you'd expect to find it if the Earth was actually 4.55 billion years old, so oil companies in Texas could become rich and elect the Bush family to power.

Oh, and he obviously also placed a lot of oil in the Middle-East to stimulate a crusade against the Muslim infidels that he predicted would appear centuries later.

Isn't Jesus fantastic? Well, either that or the Earth really is 4.55 billion years old, but would you really believe the lies that those evolutionists tell you? Ben Stein said they are nazis, so they must be, right?

Re:No need for debate

[tomcode]

Clearly education isn't working. The average IQ has held steady at 100 for as long as records have been kept.

Re:Which do you believe?

[DarthJohn]

Stop anthropomorphizing the climate. It hates it when you do that.

Re:Which do you believe?

[dclydew]

Ah, but you are incorrect. Discordians study Random Chaos, non-random chaos, chaotic randomness and randomly chaotic studies.

Re:The irony is thick in this one

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse then that - he was *in the movie.*

Re:Oh there is SOOO much more

[lgw]

Not to mention the optic nerve connects to the wrong side of the retina, producing a completely unnecessary blind spot at the center of vision. And what sort of "intelligent" designer puts a sewage outlet in the middle of a playground, I ask you?

Re:It isn't science.

[mog007]

The Great Noodly one is not composed of flour, He created the world, and gave us knowledge of his Noodlyness so we may eventually create flour, and turn it into an approximation of His form.