EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed - Science Under Attack

It's definitely not satire, Taz, but you're on the right track when you mention people being stupid. The film will certainly backfire against the I.D. people. Here's how the (Jewish) Anti-Defamation League reacted to a previous (2006) attempt to blame The ToE for the holocaust:

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...Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

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Page not Found | ADLThe choice of a Jewish presenter for the film may not be a coincidence, as the above comment was made about a documentary by Christian "supremacists" (people who openly want to turn the U.S. into a Christian theocracy).The Discovery Institute has at least one prominent Christian supremacist donor/supporter, and I wonder if Ben Stein really understands the minefield he's walking into.He clearly doesn't understand the science, for one thing, and he may be politically naive as well.

Eugenics, under different names, is ancient. European aristocrats and royalty used to give it names like "breeding". When humans first noticed that characteristics could be hereditary, we'll never know, but I'd guess it was long before they invented things like the wheel and written language, and before they even started breeding animals.Now there's a thought for you, Randman. Eugenics is artificial selection, not "natural selection", isn't it? I don't think you're so ignorant as to think that artificial selection, both of animals and humans, dates from the nineteenth century.Here, in England, people who regarded themselves as having "blue blood" would go to great lengths to stop their children marrying people of "lowly stock". Stock, as in animal stock. The connection between animal breeding and attempts at directed human breeding is ancient, and shows in the language used.Artificial selection is an ancient idea. Darwin's observation that nature also selects was partially inspired by observation of artificial selection, not the other way around.

True. I once searched the text for both "Darwin" and "God". Darwin, zero. God, so many, I got bored looking at the contexts. Here's something (not from Mein Kamf) that you might find interesting.

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My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.

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-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

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Fundies say the darndest things.

Certainly, in the broad sense, but natural, like many words, has more than one use. So, it's used to describe things that aren't man made (natural lake/artificial lake etc) and the natural/artificial selection definitions come from that tradition. Again, that illustrates the deficiency of language. I agree that in the broad sense of the word, that it's natural for us to send rockets to the moon, and to do anything that we do.It's worth noting that the English language evolved at a time when it was standard for our ancestors to perceive themselves as, to some extent at least, separate from other life forms, and special in the eyes of God.You've made a good point (about language, at least) and it's an interesting one, coming from an I.D. supporter.For example, when I.D. people point to human designs as examples of intelligent design, they are pointing to things that are made by biological creatures. Making the comparison of a bacterial flagellum to an outboard motor is making an interesting note of the similarity of two things produced by nature (in the broad sense) but not in the narrow sense of the word nature. I.D. could perhaps be summed up by describing it as an attempt to prove that man is not part of nature by assuming that he's not.

Here's William Dembski commenting on "Expelled", which he seems to see as exposing the scientific establishment's attempts to keep God out of science academia, rather than some kind of unknown intelligent designer or designers whose existence can only be inferred from his or their designs.So, he has obviously deserted the I.D. camp and become a creationist.http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=27872

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Ben Stein's new movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" opens this weekend in theaters. It explores the widespread persecution -- destruction of livelihoods, careers and reputations -- of scientists who doubt Darwin's theory of evolution and think intelligence is needed to explain life's origin and development.

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Widespread? Livelihoods? Should we be sending food parcels? Reputations? I can't think of any creationist scientists I'd ever heard of for their work before they came out as creationists. Seems like a quick road to fame and fortune, if anything.

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Controversy surrounds this film. Reviews tend to be extremely positive or extremely negative. Who likes it? People who think God may have had something to do with our being here and therefore find it reasonable that God may have left tangible evidence of His involvement in creation. Who hates it? A science, education and media elite who prefer that God had nothing to do with it and think that nature must do all its own creating.

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Ah, God. A useful new three letter abbreviation for "Intelligent Designer", I suppose.

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No scientific theory is written in stone. No scientific theory should be venerated. Every scientific theory should now and again be subjected to severe scrutiny. This is healthy for science.

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Certainly, Bill. And how many scientific theories in the entire history of science can you think of that have been subject to more scrutiny than the Theory of Evolution?None, if you're honest.

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Expelled, by contrast, points up the unhealthy state of contemporary science regarding biological origins. Our intellectual elite have insulated Darwinian evolution from scientific scrutiny.

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But Bill was talking about God, above. He needs to learn the difference between "scientific scrutiny", and religious attack.

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The unwashed masses, in which I place myself, will love the film. Ordinary people, who often pay the Darwinists' salaries through their tax dollars, will rightly be incensed. They'll see that enough is enough: They will no longer be bullied by a Richard Dawkins, who tells them that if they don't subscribe to Darwinian evolution, they're either stupid, wicked, ignorant or insane. They will start demanding that evolution be taught honestly -- warts and all. And young people will be encouraged to take up careers in science to restore its health and integrity.

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"Unwashed" is an interesting way of saying "ignorant". But the bit I like is about young people being encouraged to take up careers in science. Bill should beware. There are countries in which young people know more about science than in America, and in each and every one of them, there is a higher acceptance of evolutionary theory, and lower levels of religiosity than in the U.S.

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The day Darwinism and Intelligent Design can be fairly discussed without fear of reprisal represents the removal of a barrier even greater than the Berlin Wall. When future intellectual historians describe the key events that led to the fall of "Darwin's Wall," Ben Stein's Expelled will top the list.

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And people who think that evidence is important in science will be burned at the stake. Edited by bluegenes, : title added.Edited by bluegenes, : typoEdited by bluegenes, : typos

My excuses for replying to my own post, but in post 115, I quoted the ADL saying this about a previous attempt to exploit the deaths of Jews under the Nazis by creationists in the modern culture wars:

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...Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis.

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From this press release: Page not Found | ADLI was guessing that they would come up with a similar condemnation of the "Expelled" film, and sure enough, they have.Press release here: Page not Found | ADL

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The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

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Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.

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Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

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Ben Stein, meanwhile, is busy digging himself into an even deeper hole:

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Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

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Read more hereWithout realising it, Stein is giving plenty of ammunition to the mainstream scientists who claim that I.D. is anti-science. When the more thoughtful sector of the U.S. public read things like this, it'll occur to them that it would hardly be surprising if science departments were expelling people if they're part of a "science kills" religious movement!I think that we'll see some I.D. people disassociating themselves from some aspects of the film.

Most seem to have given up that pretense, Taz, which was why I was laughing about Dembski using the word "God" as a three letter abbreviation for "intelligent designer" in his review of the film I linked to a few posts back (post 180).Are you sure that Stein said "Christian God"? Is he a convert?

Odd implication if he's a believer in Judaism, which was what I was getting at.

Not really. Christ is God for Christians, but certainly not for Jews. A God who comes to earth as his own son and a God who doesn't cannot be one and the same. When there's a split in religion, like the split of Christianity from Judaism, a new God is automatically created. Same with the split of Islam from Christianity. Old earth Christians and YECs also believe in different Gods who created different universes in different ways.There are many "true" Gods of Abraham!Theists aren't people who all believe in the same God who actually exists. They believe in lots of different human inventions. But this is O.T.To relate it to the topic, it is because of these two different Gods and religions that two groups of people in central Europe were kept separate from each other for 1.5 millennia, and there were sometimes serious attacks and slaughters of followers of the minority religion, as during the crusades.If Ben Stein and the makers of "Expelled" really wanted to understand the holocaust, they would need to go into this history, and examine the role of religion. Pretending that science is a killer responsible for the symptoms of religious division will not alter the historical realities.After the war, religious people, both Christian and Jewish, tried to downplay the role of religion in the rise of the Nazis. But the Nazis were elected by an overwhelmingly Christian electorate, and a look at Hitler's speeches and writing shows the ancient religious prejudices that he was appealing to.The irony is that conservative Christians of the time were behind the Nazis and their pseudoscience, and it is conservative Christians who are the force behind the I.D. movement and their pseudoscience, as well as the film "Expelled", and its pathetic attempt to point the finger at real science as being the killer.This is one reason why the film is likely to backfire badly on the I.D. movement.

No, that's the one I linked to an extract from in post 183 on the Anti-defamation League's statement, and Rrhain linked to later on. It's a good one, though, and contains great lines if you ever have another "is I.D. science court case."Scientists can hardly be blamed for "expelling" people who are part of a "science kills" religious cult, can they. The film will backfire, inevitably. I don't know if most Americans are aware of Hitler's many creationist Christian anti-Jewish quotes, but if the film is an unlikely success, they can easily be made aware of them.