Dispelled
The hottest new movie this season will certainly be Expelled.
You probably haven’t heard of the movie unless you’ve stayed up late enough to see the ads. But you’ve probably heard of the narrator, former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein. You probably remember the quiz show Win Ben Stein’s Money, and despite the faster than the eye crawler that concealed from everybody who didn’t have a TiVo that Ben wasn’t reaching into his own pocket to pay the contestants, the show was entertaining.
Which is what convinces me that moviegoers will storm the theaters to listen to an hour and 45 minutes of Ben Stein’s golden voice narrating the shocking story that the real reason you can’t find Young Earth Creationists on the faculty of any decent university isn’t because of the creationists’ incompetence and dishonesty. Oh my, no! It’s because of a conspiracy by a Cabal of Evil Evolutionists (i.e., actual biologists, astronomers, paleontologists, and geologists) to keep The Truth from good clean white Christians.
Which is why I’m shocked, simply shocked that those Evil Evolutionists have a website, Expelled Exposed, that’s just gone live.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think. Which I’ll bet is a hell of a lot more than you’ll get out of Expelled itself.
Isn’t Ben Stein the same guy who also sells Pacific Northwest seafood, claiming you should eat all you want since it’s in endless supply?
Since he’s a former speech writer for Nixon, his grasp of spin is well honed. As charming a character as he may be, he still has some dark ideas.
To profess intelligence while promoting ignorance is the ultimate spin, wouldn’t you say?
B~
April 15th, 2008 at 10:38 amThe Claim
“Intelligent design was being suppressed in a systematic and ruthless fashion” (Ben Stein, Expelled).
The Facts
Intelligent design has not produced any research to suppress. When prominent ID proponent William Dembski was asked about his research, and why “you don’t do those tests?” he responded, “I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.” If even proponents of ID do not think it is a fruitful enterprise, why should the scientific community take any interest in it?
As shown elsewhere, http://www.expelledexposed.com the supposed cases of suppression offered in Expelled are dishonest attempts to make mountains out of molehills and to create martyrs where martyrdom does not exist.
Intelligent design is scientifically unproductive, and this perhaps explains why scientists like Guillermo Gonzalez and Michael Behe publish far fewer papers after they become attracted to intelligent design. Ultimately, intelligent design’s lack of success in science departments is the fault of the flawed and unscientific nature of intelligent design itself, not the result of bias in the scientific community.
The issue is not the suppression of ID, but the lack of warrant for its scientific claims. And ultimately, ID has an uphill struggle to demonstrate that it is, indeed, science. The fundamental problem with intelligent design as science is that intelligent design claims cannot be tested. Scientific testing requires that there be some set of phenomena which are incompatible with your idea. No observation could possibly be incompatible with a claim that an “intelligent agent” (whom everyone recognizes as God) acted to, say, introduce information into a system. Untestable claims are not scientific claims. Regardless of their attractiveness as religious ideas (although many people of faith strongly reject intelligent design) intelligent design has not passed muster as science.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:50 amWait, isn’t Stein Jewish? Granted, he’s thrown in with the CC folks…
April 15th, 2008 at 2:35 pmWhen the rapture comes,maybe they’ll throw him off the balcony last?
Don’t you remember that scene in Left Behind where the smiling family gathers to whack Uncle Irving?
Evidently Ben didn’t.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:05 pmSciAm’s podcast reviews the movie. There’s nothing new in their slam. But they say they had a conversation with the movie’s producer immediately after the viewing, and it was heated, and it is available unedited on their website. (Haven’t watched yet, myself.)
April 17th, 2008 at 9:06 pmHah! Bob, I certainly hope you don’t think I actually read that series of books…or played the computer game…or watched the movie (if there even is one, I have no idea)…
April 18th, 2008 at 8:21 amI didn’t freely choose to see the movie (starring Hannah Montana and the Mouseketeers). I blogged about it on the old blog (and one day we may get the old posts and comments transferred over here.
Long story short, one of the nurses in the neuro ICU put it on while I was semi-awake but I don’t remember it very well. I hope I’m never called on to testify about what was really in that movie.
I also hope I’m never called on to see that awful movie again.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:41 pm“moviegoers will storm the theaters to listen”
to his lies? I think not. 20/20 hindsight
July 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pm