posted
The Anti-Defamation League has stepped up and responded to Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
quote: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.
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.
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.
It's one thing to make a movie about creationism. It's quite another to come out with a film that is essentially Godwin's law brought to the big screen.
posted
I agree, and I have not seen the movie. What does Darwin have to do with Hitler? Hitler was just using the ridiculous hatred folks in Germany and all around Europe had for the Jews which was around ages after Darwin. Social Darwinism was just an updated version of the Great Chain of Being.
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posted
Yeah....but there is a thread leading between them as well.
Let me make this perfectly clear....I disagree with his premise, and with his methods as well.
The thread connecting them is that Hitler used Darwinism to justify his "master race", and his views that others were inferior due to their racial genetics.
Just because a madman misuses a scientific theory to justify his madness does NOT mean the theory itself is to blame.
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quote:The thread connecting them is that Hitler used Darwinism to justify his "master race", and his views that others were inferior due to their racial genetics.
Why does that thread go back to Darwin rather than to the longer established selective breeding techniques from agriculture? Heck, even the Bible includes references to the purity of bloodlines.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: The thread connecting them is that Hitler used Darwinism to justify his "master race", and his views that others were inferior due to their racial genetics.
I think the point is that he didn't use Darwinism (I assume you mean evolutionary based science, as there really isn't anything that goes under the term "darwinism") at all. He may have called it that, but his methods were demonstrably nowhere connected to evolutionary theory.
But that's really besides the point, as Stein's movie tries to make the argument that mere belief in evolution somehow allowed the Holocaust to happen.
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posted
For a little more 'fun', here's an excerpt from a TBN interview Stein did recently that just got my blood boiling.
quote:Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.
posted
He seemed OK when he had that gameshow - I wonder if he was always a nutcase, or if that's just recently come about.
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quote:Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.
Oh, for the love of all that is good and holy?!!! All scientists are Mengele now!!!!?
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posted
That movie was such a profound embarrassment when it came to the theaters that I began to realize that Stein was going to wish that the movie had remained obscure.
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quote:Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. [PZ] Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.
Oh, for the love of all that is good and holy?!!! All scientists are Mengele now!!!!?
Even more exasperating is that the argument could be made that Mengele wasn't even a scientist. (Based on the lack of quality of his 'work', never mind the monstrous things he did.)
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posted
As annoying as the film may be to me, conflating the Darwinism and the Holocaust, I wonder if it would be even more doubly annoying for an outspoken atheist of Jewish background with scientific training (like Isaac Asimov if he was alive, Hitchens would be interesting though he has no formal training AKAIK).
To be doubly hit with that accusation and see that trivialization of the Holocaust, oy.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: As annoying as the film may be to me, conflating the Darwinism and the Holocaust, I wonder if it would be even more doubly annoying for an outspoken atheist of Jewish background with scientific training (like Isaac Asimov if he was alive, Hitchens would be interesting though he has no formal training AKAIK).
To be doubly hit with that accusation and see that trivialization of the Holocaust, oy.
And triply annoying to anyone who had even a tiny bit of respect for Ben Stein. Remembering that I used to like "Win Ben Stein's Money" just makes me kind of sad.
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posted
A little context is needed here... What exactly did Stein say in his movie about connecting the Nazis and Darwin?
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quote:Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.
posted
One really has to question when he started to think like this. Was he brought up thinking scientists were horrible, or was he recently brainwashed?
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
the stench of ignorence in that mans statement is just sickening.
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Wow. Reading that interview is painful.
He sounds familiar, honestly...
If you're thinking about who I think you're thinking about, I don't know that I'd ever expect him to admit to not knowing something like Ben Stein did.
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posted
Excuse me, you do know that Ben Stein, amoung many other things, is a HUMORIST who has a very dry sarcastic wit.
Consequently, his new movie, I believe, is meant to be a joke. It is meant to sarcastically point out the absurdity of the very case he is making. True, it certainly is never going to be 'Ha-Ha' funny, but you must admit an element of dry sarcasm, which as I have pointed out, is somewhat Stein's trademark.
quote:Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.
If his point is simply that being a scientist doesn't necessarily make one morally right, using the Nazis as an example, then he does have a point. Science is a morally-neutral tool that can lead to immoral behavior if not checked by people with a sound moral conscience. That sounds like what he is getting at, but he also vastly overstates his case - and forgets to note that religion also has a significant and well-established history of being misused and distorted into evil behavior.
But given his central argument in the movie is supposedly that "scientists are wrongly suppressing dissent", it does make sense of him to try to make a case that scientists are not necessarily morally pure. And the Nazi example is an example of that. At the same time, I hope the film doesn't expect us to make the irrational leap that just because Nazi scientists did something bad, we should assume all or most scientists are immoral. That's obviously untrue. But again, without knowing what the movie itself actually says, I don't think it is fair to assume it is or assume it is not misusing the Hitler issue.
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posted
Steve, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Stein is playing a joke. Why do you think he is? He is a humorist but also has been a political adviser.
I saw him on Craig Ferguson's show talking about the movie and it was embarrassing. He was saying the movie just set out to prove that evolution won't build space rockets (I'm paraphrasing), that it isn't the end-all and be-all of science. It was total baloney...the movie is an attempt to build support for treating Intelligent Design as a "scientific" alternative to evolutionary theory, in public school classrooms. That's bad enough (not that I expect everyone to agree with me), but toss in all the rhetorical abuses of the movie and it's egregious.
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quote:Originally posted by Xaposert: But again, without knowing what the movie itself actually says, I don't think it is fair to assume it is or assume it is not misusing the Hitler issue.
Having read numerous reviews, both pro and con (though very few pro), I think it's VERY safe to assume he is misusing the Hitler issue.
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- There hasn't been much progress in Darwinism since Darwin (paraphrased) - "The first cause is not... it's lightning striking a mud puddle. See this is what evolutionists say."
- "The reason they are so angry about it and so defensive is because the theory has some many holes in it and it's such a weak theory that they have to be defensive about it to fight off what are going to be some obvious attacks on it."
- "Rather than regard humankind as carrying the spark of the divine, they believe we're nothing more than mud and made by lightning." - "... the Darwinists are afraid, they're hiding something..." Link
The documentary itself is fully of lies and misinformation. Scientists were lied to so that they would be interviewed and their interview responses were manipulated and taken out of context. Link
quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Excuse me, you do know that Ben Stein, amoung many other things, is a HUMORIST who has a very dry sarcastic wit.
And among other things he is a former Nixon speechwriter who accused the watergate story breakers of genocide and who is a profound opponent of "darwinists."
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Keep in mind that Stein can't simply come out and say "It's a joke" because for joke like this to admit it's a joke ruins the joke. The joke is to keep us wonder 'is he serious or not'. That fact that we are discussing it seriously, and the fact that all these religious groups are outrage, as well as the outrage of the science community, should be all we need to see that we shouldn't take it serious. This movie seems to be an equal opportunity offender.
I the absurdity of some of the claims themselves indicates a lack of seriousness.
That fact that so many on all sides are taking it serious, is the very thing that the rest of us are laughing at.
posted
BlueWizard your grasping at straws as absurd as we think his claims are it is obvious from his history that he believes the utter lies he is spouting but other people also believe them which is why he made the movie, with Borat as an example I do not think it is possible to secretly make a joke movie and not tell people without being intellectually and professionally dishonest.
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quote:I the absurdity of some of the claims themselves indicates a lack of seriousness.
The problem with your theory is that this sort of endless pejorative association of evolutionary theory to genocide and nazis is not unusual for creationists. There's nothing to differentiate it as an 'absurd' play-up since they do it all the time anyway.
Their rampant self-entrapment in Godwin's Law is a hallmark. It is not better or worse than what I can dredge up from Discovery Institute's proffered opinion on the scientific institutions of the world.
I would see something of a possibility that this was supposed to be a joke had it not been intended to bolster a belief that Stein holds with absolute seriousness.
If you want to laugh at us for taking this movie at face value, that's your choice, but I personally would have waited for credible evidence that this movie is a bizarre self-biting hoax by Stein who is not actually that humorous when it comes to politics.
posted
Stein is not one of the writers. Kevin Miller, one of the writers, has made it clear on his blog that he considers the Nazi/Darwin link to be valid. He even provided links to some of his sources and none of them were satirical.
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quote:Originally posted by BlueWizard: Keep in mind that Stein can't simply come out and say "It's a joke" because for joke like this to admit it's a joke ruins the joke. The joke is to keep us wonder 'is he serious or not'. That fact that we are discussing it seriously, and the fact that all these religious groups are outrage, as well as the outrage of the science community, should be all we need to see that we shouldn't take it serious. This movie seems to be an equal opportunity offender.
The joke is that he intentionally angers and creates unnecessary tension between two groups (one of them legitimately from either POV)? The joke sucks if thats the case.
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quote:We all know that Ben Stein thinks that “science leads you to killing people”. The following is a quote from a 2002 article Stein wrote for Forbes magazine, in which he offers “a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century”. Forbes’ readers probably thought that Stein’s “suggestions” were meant as satire, but in light of recent events, it is clear that he was in fact serious about doing his part to tank America’s economic future (presumably to avoid all the people-killing caused by sound science education).
quote: 12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism–and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women–to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
Ben Stein, “How to Ruin American Enterprise“, Forbes 12/23/2002
posted
Well, it could be an excessively clever, elongated satire with a very delayed punchline. If you take the Forbes article as the seed of the satire as opposed to the seed of the craziness, it sort of could work, if he has a complex world view.
quote:3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke."
So he's either for the litigation culture (unlikely - serious) or for it (likely - satire) but then if it's satire he's also against the litigation of tobacco companies which for or against, is likely.
quote:7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
Is it possible he dislikes innovation? yes. Is it possible that he also supports drug use, sex and violence? not really.
I can believe this article is satire. I could even believe that his whole life for the last ten or so years is kind a giant satire.
I can think of people like Daniel Defoe writing anonymously in a very convincing manner that replicated the people he opposed so well that nobody picked up on the satire, but he was writing anonymously. Ben Stein would have to be living an incredibly complicated lie for years on end.
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