The Shame of Ben Stein, Intelligent Designer
Ronald Bailey | September 27, 2007, 2:31pm
Ben Stein, yes, the Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and yes, the Ben Stein of Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money" is the host/interviewer for an intelligent design documentary entitled, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. One tagline asserts, "Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom." The "new idea" is the old argument from design for the existence of God.
Expelled basically asserts that science is intolerant of brave scientists who question Darwinian orthodoxy on the evolution of life. They lose their jobs, don't get grants, and so forth. Anyway, the New York Times is running an article today in which various supporters of Darwinian evolution claimed to have been hoodwinked into participating in the documentary.
Now it's not nice for journalists and documentarians to mislead interviewees, but it happens all the time. When journalists mislead they generally do it by not telling interviewees everything they know. The seductive aspects of reporting were controversially discussed in Janet Malcolm's famous essay, "The Journalist and the Murderer". Now people like Richard Dawkins and Eugenie C. Scott, who were both interviewed for the movie, are highly media savvy and should not be surprised by this booking technique.
In any case, I'm sure the evolutionary biologists didn't say anything they didn't believe. The real shame of Expelled is that a prominent public personality like Ben Stein would enthusiastically participate in this project. According to the Times Stein:
...said in a telephone interview that he accepted the producers’ invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution — he said there was a “very high likelihood” that Darwin was on to something — but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.
He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.”
Stein's Hitler remark is reminescent of the comment by fundamentalist Rev. John Roach Straton in the run-up to the Scopes trial that "Monkey men means monkey morals."
If Stein were genuinely intellectually curious about the "debate" over intelligent design, he would do well to read Judge John Jones' decision in Kitzmuller v. Dover in which the judge found it unconstitutional to teach intelligent design in public school science classes. Why? Because it is a religious belief, not a scientific theory.
Whole New York Times story here.
Some of my observations about ID and the Dover decision here.
whit | September 27, 2007, 6:48pm | #
"In that you are simply wrong. Unless the mountains of material we have in which people discuss their actions are simply a form of self-delusion. Religion as community identity has been the cassus belli for many, many wars. Indeed, can you imagine a British Civil War sans Charles I trying to force through his Laudian reforms on the Scottish Presbyterian church? I really don't think it would have started without such."
which isn't the same thing, of course, as saying that religion was the cause of these wars, or more importantly, that we wouldn't have at least as many wars (and govt. sponsored violence w.o religion)
the fact is that (especially in the timeframe mentioned) most people were religious. therefore, it would be surprising if we didn't see them using religion so often as a causus belli.
however, if there is one thing the 20th century made abundantly clear, it is that the rise of "official state mandated atheism" and numerous nation states that were officially atheist, were at least as (if not more) prone to fight wars. they just didn't use religion as an excuse. they used other stuff.
i think that prior to the 20th century, it was a reasonable assumption (even if incorrect) that religion was the cause of so much war and strife n stuff, and if only (see: john lennon) we got rid of these mythologies, we would all be living in a much more peaceful world.
i don't think any rational student of history can believe that after digesting the rapacious murderous warlike recent history of the world.
the fact is that man is a churlish, selfish, aggressive, warlike beast. it's not religion's fault.
Someone Who Doesn't Want to Lose His Job | September 28, 2007, 1:54pm | #
Joe | September 27, 2007, 11:06pm | #
Food for thought: Neither theory of the origin of the universe is scientifically provable. Why? Because science is the study of what we can observe. The scientific method deals with observable results. We cannot prove either scientifically wrong or right because neither can be observed because they are things of the past.
This is a common misinterpretation of what science does. Science actually doesn't prove things, it disproves them. Science works by falsification, not by verification. No amount of specific observations (unless that amount is
"all") prove anything. So science functions by setting up and performing tests that might disprove whatever theory is being proposed. The results of the test don't definitively give us correct theories, they eliminate incorrect ones. Biblical creationism, by the way, routinely fails these sorts of tests (by testing the age of the universe, the age of mankind, evidence of the mass destruction of all but two members of every species by flood, etc.).
If you take the specific ID claims divorced from the usually soon-to-follow Genesis claims, science can't disprove them because much like past unfalsifiable claims (as those of Freud), the bar keeps shifting any time a testable claim is made. (In the case of ID, I can't actually recall any testable claim that might disprove it ever being made.) Creationism, unless it engages in this same "bar-shifting" practice, is easily falsifiable. ID is almost content-free enough that it can't be falsified, at least 'til its supporters finally come out of the closet enough to admit they're actually creationists. This is what makes ID unsuitable to be taught in any science class: not that it's
wrong, but that it doesn't have the ability to be tested and potentially falsified that scientific claims do.
ID is, I guess, if it's anything, philosophy, rather than science. (I'm not sure it's even that, actually.) If most of its proponents were real scientists, they might focus on creating tests for the parts of evolution that they find unlikely. However, the usual method of an ID proponent is simply a claim: "This couldn't have happened. These blood coagulants could have served no use if not in tandem. A part of this flagellum or this eye would not be useful." No tests are proposed, and so none are completed. Science is not advanced.
Steven Sullivan | October 9, 2007, 6:12pm | #
Mickey Klein writes:
"Many of us have found ourselves on the dissent end of a consensus, such as global warming or passive smoke, and whenever that rolls around we all say "consensus is not part of the method" and other things asserting the right of the skeptic.
No matter how rediculous the dissent we must allow people to have their say, after all, with fair honest application of the scientific method there is no danger intelligent design will win out."
Yes, and while we're at it let's let alchemy into chemistry class, and astology into physics class. Let science sort it out! Again! What an excellent use of class and laboratory time!
Btw, evolution is a *fact*, an actual observable phenomenon that occurs in the real world (that includes speciation, for you crypto-creationists who like to make a spurious distinction between 'micro' and 'macro'), and there is a theory of evolution to describe and explain its mechanism, just as gravitation is a fact, a phenomenon that has a theory of gravitation to describe and explain it.
Also btw, current consensus theory of evolution shouldn't be referred to as 'evolution by natural selection'. Natural selection is just one driving force, genetic drift is another, founder effect yet another, and of course mutation is required as well.
This is all Evolution 101, a course few 'skeptics' seem ever to take. One could do much worse than to read the various FAQs on the talkorigins.org website
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