Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity 1766
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."
Which do you believe? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other side, we've got.... an ex-Nixon speechwiter/game show host.
*sighs* - I bet he's skeptical about anthropomorphic climate change too (there seems to be an extraordinarily high overlap between the two groups).
Oh, and he Godwins himself at 2:40 in the linked video. Discussion over.
Who the hell is Ben Stein ... (Score:4, Interesting)
So he's a comedian, a writer, a white-house speech writer, a law professor and a believer in intelligent design.
Fine, another one of those scientist who think that being a scientist, they can have a scientific opinion on any subject out there.
He's a lawyer, he can have scientific stances on law (if that's possible anyway
Feel free to believe in an Old Man in the Sky, and to embrace ID. Just don't forget to mention that scientific evidence points the other way.
Re:A toast (Score:2, Interesting)
I listened to an interview w/ Stein. He pointed that Scientists' are creating about a trillionth of a second after the big bang. The question is what about before? Stein simply argues for a discussion about ID. That there some inherent design vs. it is purely an accident. He does not point to some religious creationism.
Fundamentally the issue is a matter of philosophical issue. Was the big bang and succeeding events an accident or the product of some sort of design. Science really can't answer that. But, the issue should be open for discussion. Looking at the comments here already demonstrate what Stein was talking about in his interview.
Another American obsession (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole debate seems pretty strange to European eyes. I consider myself to be a fundamentalist Bible believing evangelical Christian, but, in Britain, people like me take the view that Genesis describes the evolutionary process pretty well. Although many Evangelicals support Intelligent Design or Young Earth Creationism, there's little opposition within Christian circles to full acceptance of the scientific explanation of the origins of life.
Between this and support for a right-wing social and foreign policy agenda, I sometimes wonder if American evangelicals read the same Bible that I do.
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked with a great number of scientists in my life, I would not note them for lack of bias or neutrality. In fact, I'd say scientists are noted for their strong opinions and personal bias'.
Re:Monkey's uncle? (Score:2, Interesting)
ex nihilo nihil fit
Re:Win Ben Stein's Attention (Score:3, Interesting)
So, he doesn't reject evolution except for the part that really undermines his personal choice of mythologies. And he doesn't like university science curriculums because they
If he has a point in this area, it has far more to do with liberal arts and poli-sci type educations, where far more subjective and debatable things are quashed in the classroom every day. Is he bothered by the way science is twisted in some classrooms? Then he should start with the professors who think that the World Trade Center was blown up by an army of stealthy NSA demolotion experts because - lacking some basic science education - they can't get their heads around the difference between "melted" steel and "weakened" steel. There's plenty of things to examine in the classroom without debating whether or not you can become infected by a bacteria today that didn't exist yesterday (since, you can).
Why the fuss? (Score:2, Interesting)
But seriously, it's Ben Stein making a movie!?!? Why is this going to be "promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students"?
Listen, there are VERY FEW MOVIES of which I would ever suggest to a kid to _learn_ from. As a boilerplate, if you see it on TV, it is probably fiction (except for most of what discovery et al have in their programming, you can generally learn from those).
But come on! It's a religiously themed movie that seems to take after those awful Moore movies. Buy a ticket or don't, but why blow this up (in typical American fashion) and out of proportion?
Get over it, it's a movie, move on, ride a bike or something and forget about it.
Re:Not the issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Your use of the term "theory" in this context shows that you have no idea what it means for something to be a scientific Theory. People who call intelligent design a "theory" are simply trying to convince your average Joe Sixpack that it is equally as plausible and on the some footing as the scientific Theory of Evolution. It is not. As far as I know, no other Theories currently exist to explain the diversity of life. No one is hiding other theories, because there aren't any. There are some fairy tales that were meant to try and explain it several thousand years ago, which in no way resemble a theory of any sort.
Re:Not the issue... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Controversy? (Score:1, Interesting)
Really, I have yet to see any evolution be observed in my can of peanut butter. And heck, I've given it the advantage of tons of organic matter.
Oh wait...it's supposed to be observed over millions of years. Even though we constantly have discovered where x variant of animal is thought to have been derived from y. But then we later find y concurrent or even before x. Leading one to conclude that if anything. We're not witnessing evolution but a continual loss of species to extinction.
But then again, survival of the fittest dictates that in the end there will be only one species within the environment. Yes, people like to point to symbiotic relationships. This is only necessary until a species can supersede the symbiotic relationship inherently by itself.
"Your willingness to tolerate creationism"
Let's not tolerate creationism but at least consider intelligent design. If you look at the genetic code, the similarities the re-use of design patterns. Any true scientist who is not bias should at least accept the theoretical prospect of design within the evidence that we have observed.
In truth, I think scientists are afraid. They're afraid that if they admit there are aspects and evidence of design that they will be condoning creation as a whole rather than the simple design aspect. And then I think a few just are afraid of admitting to the possibility of design as it reflects on their being and existence personally. And that my dear, is a cowardly scientist who would rather be blind than face a mere possibility of his fear.
Re:Who the hell is Ben Stein ... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a fundamental difference you're missing. The application of logic in law is always with a presupposed conclusion.
A defense lawer applying the logic of law MUST apply that logic in a way that it shows his client innocent or deserving of leniency - and that's his job. A prosecutor MUST apply the law's logic such that it shows that the defendant is guilty, and deserving of the punishment being sought. The conclusions are predefined.
Science is not (at least ostensibly) supposed to be like that. You apply logic and you get the conclusions you get. If you're trying to bend it and twist it to somehow fit your hypothesis, or take you to some predefined conclusions, then you're fundamentally subverting the process.
Re:Academic Oppression (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that the ridiculous "pi equals three because the Bible says so" is just as bad an example of cherry-picking as the folks who will quote specific out-of-context Leviticus quotes to "prove" that the Bible is against homosexuality, or point to Genesis and say it "proves" that the universe was created in 6000 years.
You say everyone recognizes that "pi = 3" was not the point of the Bible, and yet there are thousands of Biblical literalists out there who do that exact same thing with whichever passages they find convenient, while hand-waving away those parts that contradict what they want to believe.
Re:Indeed, Scientific Zealotry Hurts the Cause ... (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) A BBC reporter wrote a fair, non-biased article on global warming. In one paragraph he stated, "Not all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man-made actions," which is an accurate statement. Not "all" scientists think man caused the problem. Some don't even think it's a problem, saying it's just part of a natural cycle that's been happening for the last 10,000 years.
(2) The reporter published the article on the website, and immediately an email rolled-in from an environmentalist demanding that phrase be expunged.
(3) The reporter and activist went back-and-forth several times, with the activist saying, "There is no doubt," and "We may be uncertain of the cause, but we must not let the common people know that we are uncertain."
(4) The reporter refused to rewrite his article until the activist told him, "If you do not comply, I will rally my group and you will receive thousands of emails demanding the change."
(5) The reporter, obviously concerned about this prospect (and possibly losing his job), immediately deleted the offending paragraph.
And thus:
An activist, acting somewhat akin to a religious zealot, took a balanced BBC article & turned it into a one-sided piece using the tactics of threats and coercion to silence any contrarian views about global warming. It does not surprise me to learn that similar tactics are being used to silence researchers and/or scientists.
Lemme chime in here... (Score:3, Interesting)
As an aside: if you really want to see how typically American the problem with Bible-thumping Christians is - just look at the book they take their beliefs from. It won't be the Aramaic original, it won't be one of the early Greek or Latin translations, it will be a comparatively recent translation that has all the biases, word choices and mistranslations from latter centuries built in ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" or "camel through the eye of a needle" come to mind). If those people really cared about their Holy Book, their writings giving to them from a divine being, they'd surely try to get as close to the original, the source, as possible, wouldn't you think?
Interesting YouTube bias (Score:3, Interesting)
Conservative modus operandi (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who the hell is Ben Stein ... (Score:5, Interesting)
He is posing questions like, Why do we teach kids the difference between laws, and theory and then act like evolution is a law?
Evolution is really good at explaining how butterflies change color overtime, it does not explain how you get from paramecium to human does that not leave room for some alternate theories?
In what way does the presents of evolution rule out an intelligent designer; might that designer have included an evolutionary mechanism?
All Stein is doing is asking scientists to act like it. They should acknowledge the weak spots in any theory and look to finding the explanations. Stein's documentary could have been about a variety of other subjects. He is simply saying don't close the books until all the facts are in. There is nothing wrong with that its good science. Imagine if people had decided special relativity worked so well we need not bother look at string theory?
Its the same thing. Anyone who takes issue with Steins message is being pretty petty and short sighted.
God forbid (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone is telling us to stand up for our beliefs?
Seriously people, Ben Stein is doing a service to the scientific community by encouraging critical thinking and making people challenge the status quo. Besides, science is the biggest group-think boys club there is. Just ask anyone who's ever challeneged string theory. There's scant evidence supporting it, there are way too many variations of it to be taken seriously, and anyone who comes up with an alternate theory (see variable gravity theories) is laughed out without anyone even looking at their paper.
No need for debate (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no need for conflict between the two.
It is not incomprehensible to see the universe was created by a higher power, who set into motion the laws of natural selection and everything we see in it.
Ugh.
I firmly believe in science and a higher power that created it all, so it baffles me every day (well, it doesn't entirely, an average IQ of 100 does explain it well) that people are debating something that doesn't need a debate and are arguing something that has no conflict.
Now, does anyone have a link to that paper?
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:5, Interesting)
As example, scientists once thought the planets moved in perfectly-circular orbits, but when observations showed that was not true, these same scientists refused to believe the data. It took several years (and the death of the stubborn scientists) for a new generation to propose ellipitical orbits. The refusal to accept new data is called "protecting your paradigm" aka your belief system, even in the face of facts that challenge it.
Scientists often do this to protect their lifelong work and/or career, rather than admit they are wrong.
Dear Ben Stien, et al. (Score:4, Interesting)
I too have asked the same exact questions that your trailers ask. But I do have answers. I've followed the I.D. vs evolution debate, and I come down firmly on the evolution side. But that is not what you ask about...
Scientific inquiry first clashed with religion when a man innocently attempted to determine the motion of the heavenly bodies in an effort to determine God's intent. This man was Newton, but he started a long battle of God giving up ground to science. For as long as science is practiced, the domain of God has reduced. It is likely that at some time in the future that we have "God" reduced to the fundamental constants of the universe. (Only in terms of a mechanical sense, not spiritual) This can only be the case if scientific inquiry is allowed to continue.
The problem I have, and as it seems schools (public and private), and government have as well with I.D. people being key in scientific discovery , is that it threatens further scientific discoveries. The threat is not intentional, or, at least I believe in most cases it is not intentional (but the Dover school district it was quite intentional). The reason why it threatens scientific discovery, was shown in the Dover court case. The cellular structure that was heralded as 'irreducible' was actually shown to be reducible. Once the researcher was content with the idea that the structure was irreducible, scientific inquiry ended. This is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in projects funded by public or private grants. I fear if I.D. was ever accepted as a viable answer, all sufficiently complicated systems would be described as I.D. and we'd throw our arms up and declare ourselves done. I could imagine a time when all things are attributed to I.D. and such a time scares me.
I do not think that all professors who suppose I.D. would be haphazard, but it is not a risk we do not have to take. The question is if there is room for I.D. and a mind that is willing to probe deeper. Can someone have reverence and probe deeper? Newton did, so it is possible, but I doubt all of the I.D. proponents could.
The biggest failure of I.D. is to factor in the value of processes. And really this is what it boils down to. With I.D. there is no process, and it is all design. With science it is all process and no design. For the past 400 years, we've had nearly every process that has been attributed to God be re-attributed to a process. The question then is God a process, or is God designed? If God is a process then there can be no irreducible complexity, and I.D. effectively eats itself. Processes happen in the domain of time, so the question then becomes what is the domain of time for life on earth. We see evolution happening here on earth, so when did that start? And then the question is what was the process for earth? Answering that question is a question of celestial processes arising in planet formation and going back to the beginning of the universe.
Given then that we are the result of processes, how relevant or prevalent is I.D.? Is there any I.D. still left? It would seem that if the I.D. of our creator was irreducible, then we could never replace any part of the design. This would mean we could only add-on to make alterations (adaptation) and this would create more complication from the base simplicity. The neat feature is that any design is completely mutable. You can bury the original design so deep it could not be discerned. What I am describing of course is DNA. However the smallest number of genes for an independent organism is 1500 genes. This would be a boon for I.D. as until there are 1500 genes, there is no way to evolve and combine 1500 genes at once. However, these genes do contain junk DNA, showing that they were created by a process. The only thing I can conclude, and indeed others should be able to conclude, is that we don't understand the process. This is where scientists who don'
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Debate? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t3575.html [chinahistoryforum.com]
For nationalistic purposes, many Chinese scholars maintain that Peking Man evolved indigenously in north China, rather than sharing an origin point in Africa like other human ethnic groups.
Which I think is nonsense. If we don't all share a common African ancestor, how come we can interbreed? As someone else puts it
By my understanding, it is almost a statistical impossibility for the same species to originate independently in several places at once. Modern Chinese are, without a doubt, Homo sapiens, as are all other humans, by the only objective test for species: Chinese and all other humans can interbreed and give birth to fertile children. Homo erectus was a different species from Homo sapiens. If Chinese were descended from a different species, they ought to be even more different from Homo sapiens than Homo erectus was, and therefore not interfertile with other people. But this is not the case.
Re:As a Christian..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Indeed, Scientific Zealotry Hurts the Cause ... (Score:3, Interesting)
To draw a parallel: The Ether was discredited around 100 years ago as being unnecessary. No serious physicist talks about it any more. Science has moved on, and is now talking about (for example) string theory. In a hundred year's time it will have moved on again and string theory will either be accepted as a working model, or rejected.
Biologists have done the science on evolution, they have questioned it, poked it, prodded it and tested it for over a hundred years, and it stands up to that. It's a good working model, and now everyone would like to move on and stop talking about it.
The desire to not talk about evolution/creationism is not a desire for orthodoxy, but a desire to move the science on.
Re:An honest question for the young-Earth types. (Score:2, Interesting)
You ought to be able to do better by using the predictions you get from understanding flood geology or simply be reading in your bible as to where most of this matter was converted in oil. Failing that simply praying would surely be by far the most accurate method of finding oil wouldn't it ? I mean it doesn't get much more accurate than the direct Word Of The Lord does it, he is surely the ultimate last word on the subject and it surely would be strange indeed if he decided not to answer your prayers when you were setting up this religiously powered company to bring glory to His name and supply the world with a vital resource He has provided to power Churches to do Glory to His Name. In fact being as he is All Powerful it's hard to see why he wouldn't just deliver the diesal direct to your SUVs fuel tank if it would give you more time to smite sinners and Give Glory To His Greatness.
Re:Curiosity... (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't take science away. Sure there are concerns of losing jobs, but according to the Expelled trailer it happens on both sides. Let's just remember that without science Ben Stein wouldn't have been able to make his movie.
Re:why? (Score:3, Interesting)
All of this darwin talk, and nobody brings up Dysgenics? [wikipedia.org] It's not just the US population, some scientists think it's a worldwide effect.
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:2, Interesting)
I heard on the radio (they speaking about a clip from Dateline NBC) this morning that the socialist Bolivian president plans on filing suit against wealthy countries to make up for the fact that the glacier that they get their drinking water from is melting due to "global warming".
Re:Indeed, Scientific Zealotry Hurts the Cause ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The very idea behind is makes it non-scientific and as such it shouldn't be treated as science.
The very fact that it is not falsifiable strips intelligent design from any scientific purpose.
Non-euclidean geometry might have been a niche... but it never was anti-scientific.
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on what you mean by free will.
Some people are incompatibilists - this means that they believe that they believe free will is incompatible with determinism - that if you weren't morally suspended, as some theologians might say, and completely free to choose either way, it wouldn't be free will. Some then go on to say that this is proof that free will does not exist, and some are then inclined to say that this means we do (but this are hard to frame in terms of science for obvious reasons).
Others, however, have the idea that free will and determinism are totally compatible. As John Milton's God said, "Just because I knew what they'd do doesn't remove their free will." Basically, any time you make a decision, that's free will, and a decision is but the result of the inputs fed into a computer, albeit a vastly complicated, conscious, very buggy computer.
Re:The comments here indicate the movie was a succ (Score:2, Interesting)
Even the mighty House of Representatives condemned the study (a first in our modern and very scientific times). The data was solid, the methodology was stone hard and still, when talking to a bunch of retards it does not matter. Especially if the retards are SCIENTISTS. That is why i am very weary when it comes to "consensus".
Zealotry (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers,
_GP_
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a pretty severe misunderstanding. A truly chaotic system will eventually diverge from your predictions, no matter how accurate your knowledge. More accuracy means your predictions remain valid for longer, but not forever.
If infinite information existed (infinite precision numbers for example) then maybe, but I have a feeling that Heisenberg will come along to put the kibosh on those dreams...
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:1, Interesting)
2) Jesus lived approx 2000 years ago and is know to nearly all people of the world and is believed by at least 50% (according to population statistics on adherents http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html [adherents.com]) to be at least a prophet. [argument by majority I know]
3) Christians and Hindus believe him, Jesus, to be God; Muslims to be a prophet; many other misguided souls believe him to be just a righteous man.
That's enough for a "deserves more attention" enquiry.
Interestingly both Jesus and the FSM (may his meatballs be ever spicy!) are well documented but you choose to believe a parody to have equal weight to an historic person. Delusional ever?
I love responding to flamebait
RD's Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying (Score:4, Interesting)
The creationism / evolution debate has been done many times here on Slashdot. There'll be comments making one or more of the hundreds of old and refuted creationist arguments [talkorigins.org](1). It's possible that a couple of comments will use arguments even the Answers in Genesis creationist group says not to use [answersingenesis.org](2). Someone will say there's no evidence for Macroevolution and someone else will point out 29 plus evidences for Macroevolution [talkorigins.org](3).
The point of Expelled is to make people think they've learned about the creation / ID / evolution debate, but to feel that Darwin= Holocaust. Note how they interview scientists of all sorts, but they don't interview academics who cover antisemitism in pre-20th century Europe. Even one hint or reminder that, say, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies [humanitas-...tional.org] in 1543 would ruin the Darwin -->Holocaust propoganda.
----------
(1) "evolution requires faith," "Piltdown," "Midocean magnetic anomalies are not reversals"...
(2) "there are no beneficial mutations," "no new species have ever been produced"...
(3) Even if there were no fossils, how to explain how biochemistry matches phylogeny? It's one thing to claim the designer re-uses code to explain similarity, but why would a designer reuse broken code?
Re:Which do you believe? (Score:3, Interesting)
that one day a cell just "plopped" into existence with the ability to procreate, and then against all odds survived everything the galaxy will throwed at it for 6 billion years.
Let me understand this
But you can comprehend in an almighty force that is all knowing, exists everywhere, created this entire universe just for this one planet, put us on it, pays attention to the prayers of billions of people, and gives us free will, then punishes us for using it if we don't follow his rules. Which he can't seem to adequately communicate since there are what, about 20 different main religions, and over 1,000 different Christian sects??
Your faith requires some real leaps of faith, where my beliefs just requires being able to say 'I don't know the answer to that'.
The more I learn about other religions, the more I am convinced Christianity is just nuts and no different from believing in Santa Claus.
Re:Except the people who lost their jobs didn't... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, there's nothing stupid and emotional about liberal "reasoning" either.
Get a clue. Ninety percent of the people on both sides are mostly emotion-driven in their beliefs and, especially, their actions.
Re:A toast (Score:2, Interesting)
And yes Steien DOES point to a god. ID is just Creationism with a new look. Google for the PBS documentary on the Dover School Trial and you'll see what I mean.