Kevin 11, the screenwriter for "Expelled," had been telling us on his blog that he doesn't say anywhere in his film that Darwin or atheism were the cause of Hitler's policies. Yet according to this "Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda," by Richard Dawkins, people like Michael Shermer have gotten letters saying things like this:
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
It turned out the author of the letter had just seen "Expelled."
And if you go to his blog you'll find Kevin continually trying to deny he has made any such connection. In the comments section of his blog, for example, this one, he wrote:
...no one is arguing that Darwinism is a sufficient condition for Nazism, but it is a necessary one, because Darwinism provided the philosophical and scientific justifications for pre-existing prejudices and hatreds.
New communications technologies, railroads and trucks were necessary conditions to kill millions, but Darwin's theory was not. Without the trains and trucks for the transportation of the victims, Hitler's henchmen could not have gotten them to the camps easily. Without the communications technology, Hitler and his henchmen couldn't have passed their orders across Germany and Europe.
Not only are "necessary conditions" such as railroads and radio generally considered morally blameless, or at least not something to be abandoned because they enabled mass murder, the idea that Darwin's theory is even in that group is utterly bogus. The first assumption in this faulty logic here is that because the killings of millions of people like that didn't happen until after Darwin that his theory might be a necessary condition or cause. But killing people, killing Jews, in large numbers, hundreds and thousands, goes back to before the Roman empire. The only big change was in humanity's capability to organize and move people.
Kevin 11 admits that his research pretty much involved reading books like Peter Weikart's "From Darwin to Hitler," which is itself a political propaganda book.
UPDATE: Brian Flemming predicted it would happen on his last blogpost, but I couldn't believe they'd be that stupid.
Ben Stein wrote this article, "Florida's Darwinian Interlude," for The American Spectator. He begins by asking a few "tiny, insignificant little questions" such as "How did the universe start? Where did matter come from? Where did energy come from? Where did the laws of motion, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry, come from? Where did gravity come from? How did inorganic matter, that is, lifeless matter such as dirt and rocks, become living beings? Has anyone ever observed beyond doubt the evolution of a new mammalian or aviary species, as opposed to changes within a species?" He then claims that Darwinism has no verifiable answers to them and then he admits to having only a "little pea brain" this way:
To my little pea brain, these are some pretty big issues about evolution, the origins of life, and genetics that Darwinism cannot answer. Now, to be fair, does anyone else have verifiable answers either? Not as far as I know.
Alas, what Ben Stein's little pea brain isn't able to grasp is that Darwin's theory doesn't need to answer most of those questions any more than Einstein's theory of relativity does, or Newton's theory on planetary motion, or Galileo's and Copernicus' theory of heliocentrism answers them. Those are still successful scientific theories in spite of the fact that none of them tell us how the universe started or where matter and energy came from? Would Ben Stein throw out Einstein, Newton and Galileo along with Darwin because they didn't provide answers? Would he insist that a Bible based "theory" about a flat earth and an earth centered universe be taught along with heliocentrism because none of the questions about where the matter, energy and the universe came from are answered?
Scientific theories have limited scope. The only questions Stein asks that are appropriate to Darwin's theory are "How didinorganic matter, that is, lifeless matter such as dirt and rocks, becomeliving beings?" and "has anyone ever observed beyond doubt the evolution of a new mammalian or aviary species, as opposed to changes within a species?" And note that he only asks about mammalian and avian species. This is a clue that Ben Stein knows he is full of bullshit. He knows that we have observed the evolution of new plantspecies, insectspecies, amphibian species, and new "bacterialspecies."
Even though not directly observed by scientists we can be fairly certain that mammals like domestic cows and sheep, which probably descends from the wild mouflon of south-central and south-west Asia, are a result of humans using artificial speciation and selecting existing genetic variants within species or hybridizing different subspecies or breeds to create new species that are more suited to human use. We can be pretty sure that cows are descended from the extinct species of wild cattle Bos primigenius.
Also, the evolution of new species has also been observed in the fossil record numerous times which includes the fossil bird Archaeopteryx.
Now turn that question around and ask Ben Stein if anyone has ever observed beyond doubt the divine creation of new plant, insect, or bacterial species?
Ben Stein asks:
... if there are no answers that can be reproduced in the laboratory, isn't any theory about them a hypothesis or a guess? Isn't any hypothesis worth thinking about?
No. Evolution is not just a hypothesis or a guess, it is a theory. It's a theory where certain answers can be reproduced in thelaboratory and in the field. It has lines of evidence no other theory about the diversity of life can touch. And no, not all hypothesis are worth thinking about and more importantly, they are not all science.
Florida did not (as Ben Stein was told) consider "legislation that would make it illegal to allow teachers or students in public schools to discuss any hypothesis about origins of life or the universe except that it all happened by accident without any prime mover or first cause or designer -- allowing only, again, the hypothesis, which is considered Darwinian, that it all started by, well, by, something that Darwin never even mentioned." Going farther Stein says:
... we know now that Darwin was wildly wrong about some subjects such as genetics, and, again, although he wrote about the evolution of species, never observed an entirely new species evolve.
That's partly true, Darwin was wrong about a few things, but not "wildly" wrong. He didn't directly observe an entirely new species evolve either, but he found significant evidence for his theory. Remember, Einstein never observed time slowing down and he only followed a beam of light in his imagination.
However, Darwin didn't write a Bible that's the supposedly infallible Word of God, so he's allowed to make a few wrong guesses. The theory of evolution has grown and expanded a lot since Darwin wrote that very old book. Yet after more than a hundred years of testing and challenges, Darwin's basic theory has held up with only minor corrections. What we've learned since then has only confirmed most of what Darwin theorized. For example, we now know that human beings and apes are genetically similar with human beings and chimpanzees sharing about 99% of their DNA. This genetic similarity is a confirmation of one of Darwin's basic ideas: that human beings and apes have a common ancestor. And Darwin created his theory before we knew about DNA. Darwin had no mechanism for evolution and he predicted one. That is the way science works. Theories are created to explain observations; theories generate predictions; predictions are confirmed or refuted. Our ability to read and compare DNA provided further confirmation of Darwin's theory far beyond comparing men and chimps.
We know that thousands of separate species are descended from a few common ancestors, which are descended in their turn from an even smaller number of common ancestors, you would expect that these ancestral relationships are reflected in DNA, and they are.
To Stein the proposed Florida school standards were "beyond Stalinism":
Stalinism decreed that only Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin knew all the answers, but it did not say that subjects they never mentioned could only be studied if the student guessed at what they might have said. The proposed law in the state of Florida was an anti-knowledge, anti-freedom of inquiry law on a scale such as has rarely been encountered. Maybe in Pol Pot's Kampuchea there were such laws, but they have been unknown in the USA until now.
Good grief! What a load of steaming, stinking bullshit. This guy is actually worse than Vox Day when it comes to psychotic hyperbole. Nothing in that above bit of quoted paragraph is true. Stalinism never decreed that only Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin knew all the answers. Florida's school board only established that evolution was a fundamental concept that every student should understand. And what the hell does "subjects they never mentioned could only be studied if the student guessed at what they might have said" even mean exactly?
... at the last minute, the state of Florida changed the proposed regulations. They backed off powerfully saying that only Darwinism could possibly make sense and said they would allow discussion of differing theories about the origins of life. That's the current proposal as I write this on the afternoon of the 19th of February.
Allowing discussion of differing theories about the origins of life may not be a bad idea because they need to teach kids why arguments like Ben Stein's are so utterly fraudulent. The fact that some people actually find Stein's claims convincing is solid evidence that we have failed to educate too many Americans.
I suspect the now omitted proposals would have been unconstitutional in any event (although this always depends on the court you ask). Freedom of inquiry is part of freedom of speech. That is basic. That is what America is all about. Whatever the proposed -- now discarded -- regulations were, they have nothing to do with freedom, very little to do with science, and not even much to do with Darwin, who had a lot more respect for freedom of thought than his henchmen in Florida apparently do.
Ben Stein thinks the omitted proposals would have been unconstitutional even though he doesn't seem to know exactly what they were, saying: "Whatever the proposed -- now discarded -- regulations were." If such regulations are so bad one has to wonder why it's the Intelligent Design advocates that tend to loose in court cases like Dover's Kitzmiller case.
Dr. Debra Walker of the Monroe County School Board noted in an Orlando Sentinel article that those counties passing anti-evolution resolutions are the ones where the students have the lowest scores in the state on the science portion of the FCAT.
The graph below compares the average raw FCAT scores of the counties that have indicated support for or rejection of teaching evolution with the statewide FCAT scores:
In those counties where evolution is strongly supported, FCAT science scores are significantly higher. In the counties where evolution education is strongly opposed, science literacy is below the state average. That ties in with my earlier post, "Religion as a force for ignorance and delusion," where I point out the inverse correlation between a country's religiosity and its per capita GDP.
But a nit-wit he must be for only a nit-wit would repeat a creationist lie so obviously false that it only takes a few minutes on Google to prove it utterly wrong, and that's what Ben Stein did.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's look at some of what Stein wrote:
...a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe? EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
Wow! He thinks atheists can read minds! Well, he's right, we can. I guess Sam Harris will be hooking up every scientist in America to his fMRI machine and then firing the ones who believe in God. Alas we don't have the money to put them all in an fMRI machine and I'm sure the courts would never allow it if we could. Besides, Sam Harris doesn't have the authority to fire anyone. In fact, most scientists are hired and fired by non-scientists. So, even if the majority of scientists are atheistic and agnostic most of their careers depend on business men, college administrators, politicians and others who are in the majority religious people.
And then Ben Stein digs his hole even deeper:
...in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened.
The idea that the laws of physics, as discovered by Einstein, Newton and Galileo, were created by God or a higher being is not Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design as it is defined by its major proponents is about biology, not physics. Intelligent Design is the claim that Darwin could not have been right because certain features of life are too irreducibly complex for evolution to create. Darwin himself answered that argument and admitted that if it could be demonstrated that any feature of life that couldn't be arrived at in a long series of gradual steps he would be proved wrong. The lie of ID is the claim that they have proven this -- they have not. It has been demonstrated that the features that ID proponents have claimed were irreducibly complex were not in fact so. For example, the bacterial flagellum; Biochemistry professor Michael Behe, an ID proponent who hasn't so far been fired for supporting ID, claimed the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex but during the Dover trail it was shown that the bacterial flagellum could be produced by the gradual stages of evolution called for by Darwin. In fact, nature still retains many of the not quite flagellums that it may have evolved from.
Ben Stein is also claiming that an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research. What exactly does it mean to be an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo? Just believing in some kind of God? Does it mean being a "creationist"? If he means a creationist, he shouldn't have Einstein on the list. Einstein wasn't even Christian. Newton and Galileo could be called creationists, but that's because they died before Darwin was born. We don't know what they would have made of Darwin's arguments.
Assuming he means their belief in God this is what I mean when I say it only takes a few minutes on Google to prove it utterly wrong because I can not only find working scientists who believe in God I can find prominent evolutionary biologists who believe in God, who claim to be Christian, and who are still working and getting grants. Here are a few names for you:
Francis Collins, physical chemist, medical geneticist and head of the Human Genome Project. A very successful working biologist who wrote a book entitled “The Language of God.”
Michael J. Behe, still a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in spite of writing several ID books.
If Michael J. Behe is still working and getting published how can Ben Stein claim ID proponents will be fired? By the example of a few who claimed they were fired because of their beliefs? I bet I could come up with atheists who make the claim they were fired for their atheism.
...unlike PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, the interviews with Will [Provine] and I were not included in the film. Why not? Because (as many posters at this site are well aware), we regularly invite ID proponents (such as Michael Behe, John Sanford, Hannah Maxson, and Phillip Johnson, among many others) to make presentations in our evolution courses at Cornell. But this fact would clash in an unfortunate way with the premise of the film, which is that “Darwinists” unfairly discriminate against ID supporters and creationists.
In other words, “Expelled” is a propaganda piece, pure and simple, as are virtually all of the public pronouncements of the Discovery Institute and their supporters. Scientists don’t make propaganda movies (although we are sometimes invited to participate in them under fraudulent pretenses). No, we go out into the field and the laboratory and investigate nature.
Some people do give ID a hearing. However, that's at the University level. At the high school level there has already been a trial concerning the presentation of Intelligent Design in a public high school. It was Kitzmiller v. Dover. According to U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III: "Intelligent Design is a religious view, not a scientific theory."
Would Ben Stein speak up for historians who were fired from teaching history for questioning the Holocaust? Would he support teachers in public high schools who wanted to teach astrology? How about drivers ed instructors who want to teach that speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are mere suggestions?
