Apr 29 2008
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Just in case you though Ben Stein wasn’t an evil jerk…
… Hemant has this:
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.
Yes, Ben Stein went there. He equates PZ with Nazis who gassed Jews by the hundreds of thousands.
Great guy, huh?
There is nothing too onerous for that foul little man to say. Nothing. And then he turns around and talks about "God’s love". What an evil hypocrite.
I can’t believe that Myers have the guts to say that.
Stein jumped right to Godwin’s Law.
I propose a new term for the act of colossal self-Godwinning: “Pulling a Stein” or perhaps more hiply, the “Steiner”.
As in, “That post is a total Steiner,” or, “That guy totally pulled a Stein on the issue.”
One would have thought that using such public defamation as association with nazi murderers would carry some legal recourse.
Or is Mr. Stein a righteous person and therefore immune from law or judgement?
Oh, and Phil… “wank” is just as bad as “wank…” in the UK!
I love how he relates keeping the planets in orbit and “Darwinism.” The last time I checked, Darwin was mainly evolution, not astronomy.
My favorite though has to be:
“Stein: … Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Crouch: Good word, good word. ”
Wow.
Ben Stein = Cancer
So now an OPINION makes you EVIL?! Dude, you are totally insecure and it’s extremely disappointing that you’ve stooped to this level.
Sorry to point out this, but typo in title.
What is the bottom line agenda here? What is it about science in general that so profoundly threatens these people?
Supposedly, Eve and Adam eating the apple from the tree of knowledge is what got them, and subsequently all of humanity, thrown out of the paradise known as the “Garden of Eden”. Ergo, knowledge is evil, and ignorance is goodness and purity. Stein is an ignorant fool, and he feels threatened when he sees smart people consistently increasing the gap between them.
As an aside, does anyone doubt that Ben Stein has ever had diarrhea, or a headache, a cold, the flu, constipation, or anything else which would require the use of medication? He likely sees his doctor as regularly as anyone else, while remaining ignorant (surprise!) that the knowledge he was seeking didn’t come from Genesis.
I thought it was “wanker,” not “wank.”
In any case, I like the idea of pulling a “Steiner–” Something similar worked for our senator Santorum, after all.
Basically, anything that doesn’t support their worldview threatens it. It’s the same logic that sees gay marriage as a threat to straight marriage.
Hey Ben Stein, a mediocre actor once beat up my dog, ,therefore, all mediocre actors are capable of doing that. Why don’t we incarcerate all those bit-part actors because you never know how far they’re willing to go. Maybe next, they’ll decide to beat up my wife and children and they won’t stop till every single person I know has been assaulted. We have to put a stop to this travesty. Who knows how far they’re willing to go.
@Matt Garrett: So you would have no problem if I made a movie which expressed my OPINION that you were laundering money for transvestite bikers who robbed money from old ladies and then ate their livers for dinner with a nice chianti and sent you the leftovers in a nice slow cooked old lady stew?
Great! I’ll get right on it!!
That reminds me, now that I come to think of it, my 5th grade teacher threw a chalkboard eraser at me. You know what must be done? We have to fire all the 5th grade teachers.
“So now an OPINION makes you EVIL?! Dude, you are totally insecure and it’s extremely disappointing that you’ve stooped to this level.”
Yes, people that have evil opinions are generally pretty evil.
If anyone actually stopped by the Expelled MySpace page, the #1 selling point of the film is apparently the fact that it is sooooo very controversial in the blogosphere.
Yes, Stein & Co. are autotrolling, intentionally making outrageous statements in order to provoke a response. Stein’s comment is so blatantly idiotic and offensive that it simply can’t be taken seriously. Yet at the same time it must be taken seriously.
Too bad. I got a kick out of Stein in Ferris Bueller, and Win Ben Stein’s Money, and the Visine commercials. Eh. Well, he’s ventured into Tom Cruise/Mel Gibson-level wacknuttery, and I can still enjoy movies that they’re in. Sometimes.
Matt Garretton says on 29 Apr 2008 at 6:21 pm
Stein backs up his evil opinions with evil activities - thus the movie “Expelled”.
And yes, having evil opinions quite likely marks a person as evil.
JBS
There’s no crazy like creationist crazy.
Evil, right?
I don’t like Ben Stein. I am a skeptic. I am not a creationist/ID’er. I strongly disagree with most of what is coming out of Ben Stein’s mouth these days, esp. in equating science with Nazis.
But evil?
Evil–at least to me–is the guy flying the plane into the WTC. Evil is the “father” in Austria raping his daughter over the last 20 something years. Evil is the guy cutting Nick Berg’s head off, or the guy murdering Daniel Pearl. Evil refers to those wonderful people chopping little kids arms off in the jungles of Cote D’Ivoire.
Ben Stein is—a joke; misguided; a fool; someone with no real concept of science or scientific inquiry; historically naive.
Evil is something else.
It’s like when you call someone a “racist” or a “Nazi.” In politics, these words have been thrown around quite liberally (no pun intended), and slung at anyone who happens to have a different opinion than you do. It tends to inflame the argument on an emotional level rather than advancing any rational point from your side. Those terms have almost become meaningless in their overuse.
Kind of like the using the word “evil” here.
He’s got a simple agenda, flogging his movie to make money. He’s PR person probably told him, that controversy would help to hype it up.
Wow. The linked interview is just…wow. Really, the Tom Cruise “Scientologists are the only ones who can help at car accidents” video almost seems coherent next to that random pile of gibberish.
Reject Science, Mr. Stein! No medicines or airplanes or air conditioners or plastics or internal combustion engines for you! No television or radio or movies or internet! No surgery! No corrective lenses! No Visine to get the red out! All these are the offspring of demonic Science, which seeks only to destroy all goodly people! Reject them all, all these things offered by Science!
Damon B.
I propose a new term for the act of colossal self-Godwinning: “Pulling a Stein” or perhaps more hiply, the “Steiner”.
Drat! Steined again!
J/P=?
We’ve covered the use of “evl” in dealing with Stein and the producers of this movie before… but come on, Dave D… at some point, after countless brazen attempts to link science and evolution with Nazizm and gassing innocent people… how can you not understand the reason one would equate that with being “evil”… no matter what your definition?
I have never been more frustrated.
I have been researching a new book, basically a cultural history of science and popular perception in the 1930s. I have come to believe that public respect for science actually peaked during that period and has been in decline ever since.
Examples:
When Corning poured the blank for the Hale telescopes’s 200 inch mirror in 1934, public interest was so high that one of the nation’s leading broadcasters, Lowell Thomas, reported live from the scene for 16 straight hours, over a national network.
When the blank was shipped to California on a special train, regular radio announcements tracked its progress across the country. Schools let out so children could see it, even though it was sealed in a special steel case. People all along the route stood by the tracks and cheered as it went by.
When a California political candidate denounced scientists for “spending millions on a telescope” while people were going hungry, the crowd jeered and threw garbage at him. His speech was cut short and the police had to hustle him out the back door. Remember, this was 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, when people really were going hungry.
The horrors of World War 2 were naturally the beginning of the decline; but even there, I suspect a contrarian and biased agenda in our collective perception, for many refuse to recognize the role science played not only in promoting evil but in defeating it.
Such a careful weighing of the evidence, and such confident conclusions, apparently have no place in the age of the sound-bite and lowest common denominator news.
@Matt Garrett
It is my OPINION that you are a pedophile.
Therefore you should be banned from schools, Chuck-e-Cheese, daycare facilities, parks, libraries, and any other place where children may gather.
I trust you have no problem with this because it’s just my OPINION.
Does it make sense now?
-OEJ
Wiki: Evil is a broad term used to indicate a negative moral or ethical judgment, often used to describe intentional acts that are cruel, unjust, or selfish.
Well he got two out of three and possibly three out of three.
Yes, no question, he is an evil wanker
Wow. Reading the Hemant posting, it’s obvious that Stein isn’t just anti-evolution, he’s rabidly anti-science and anti-scientists.
What a nutjob.
My apology to Phil if my previous statement was too graphic for this blog. It was intentional since few things in my mind compare to the level of evil that was the Holocaust.
For the record, that is not my opinion, and I have no ill feelings towards Matt. I was simply making a point by creating a parallel example.
-OEJ
Speaking of evil, do Steinistas remember a place called the World Trade Center?
Gee, I wonder what role Darwin had in motivating Osama bin Laden.
/sarcasm
I was going to school Matt Garrett, my new creationist commenter, but I see everyone else already has.
I stand by my use of the term evil. Stein is evil. He is trying to destroy all of science. Make no mistake about it.
Belief in a “master race,” and similar Nazi claptrap, is not science, Darwinian or otherwise.
It is superstition and pseudoscience and therefore falls into the same category as Creationism and ID.
So, “Darwinism” is now the Unified Field Theory?
I can’t keep up with their stupid anymore.
One doesn’t have to agree with everything someone says in order to like/dislike them. Seems a bit childish to judge someone based on a difference of opinion.
Why is it everytime an actor or an actress opens their mouth something stupid flies out, well when they are not delivering their lines.
Okay, I can see your point–it’s your OPINION that Stein is evil. And opinions are like a**holes, right? Everybody’s got one. . .
And I guess that is what these comment boards are all about–expressing one’s opinions (I love America, don’t you?).
I just feel like we blur the definitions of what is evil and what is not when we toss that word around. What makes the commenters here any different from what Stein does in his bogus equating of science and Nazism?
@Ad Hominid
When your world view is centred on a set of everlasting Truths, curiousity is dangerous and discouraged. Persistent inquiry in the manner of science is a howling, destroying wind. Since the 16th century, they’ve lost control of almost everything - cosmology, history, medicine, morality, and then evolution even took away the idea that humans were central and special.
All they have left is their certainty, even while YouTube and MySpace and gay marriage and divorce and abortion and stem cell research rip at their defenses. They’re screaming in disbelieving psychological agony at their loss. Why would they not hit back at what hurts them most?
I think we’ve got to call Poe’s Law on Stein. His comedic style was based on unflinching deadpan, and I think it’s entirely possible this is just another comedic endeavor for Mr. Stein. Granted, it’s sick and twisted, but there’s no way in hell he can actually be serious. Look at some of the stuff he’s saying:
“Science leads to killing people.”
and
“Scientists are Nazi’s who sent my family to be slaughtered.” (paraphrase)
But at the same time he argues Intelligent Design is a legitimate science and deserves to be taught in classrooms. Will he then argue that Intelligent Designers killed his family, like he does with ‘Darwinism?’
Mr. Stein’s arguments and comments throughout this whole ordeal lead me to believe this is his version of “Wondershowzen.” It’s sick, twisted, and absurd.
Did he try the, “Yeah…well God made Hitler!” retort.
It’s about as witty, really…
My brother sent an email to Ben Stein about similar comments he made in Christianity Today. He actually got a short reply, too. Here’s the recap .
As ever, the situation is more complex than “scientists instructing people to undress and go to the gas chambers” - including doctors who decided if you live and die, kapo and sonderkommandos who took people to the gas chamber and brought them back out, and the guards who administered the gas.
I’m sure they were all drawn from many walks of life, and were not just scientists.
We have Poe’s Law and Godwin’s Law but do we have a law for when a poster on a forum/message board/blog will defend something no matter how nonsensical, obnoxious, inflammatory, evil or just plain stupid because it supports their worldview?
Hang on, I suppose we do. Trolling? The Law of Trolls?
My favorite though has to be:
“Stein: … Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Wasn’t that the last words of Jim Jones?
“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.”
Because none of his relatives has EVER been to a doctor.
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm
Given Stein’s less than truthful nature, I found myself wondering if he even had relatives who were gassed by the Nazis.
So I attempted a little research. In the end, I can’t answer that question, although Ben Stein’s father was born here in the US in 1916 and I suspect his mother was born here as well. It seems to me that any relatives were likely to be distant relatives.
However, I did find out something that struck me as funny. Believe it or not, his father’s middle name is “Ape.”
That’s right, regardless of what he might claim otherwise, Ben Stein is descended from an Ape.
P.S. Phil, I’m not sure “onerous” is the word you were looking for in your original post.
That “thunk thunk” sound is me plopping my head down on the kitchen island after reading some of these posts….”teh stoopid, teh stoopid” I repeat to myself…(and cudgle with how awesome it is to spell words differently! But they are still phonetic! Shhhhhweeet!).
I’m going to give Stein props on one bit - he made that movie, and used those Nazi scenes deliberately b/c he knew it would enrage the chattering class and drum up coverage. The continuing posts on this blog (and others) are proof of that. If he made a boring ID movie it wouldn’t have gotten much ink. But he spiked it up and the coverage followed (and so did the attendance– and therefore the $).
The BA is right that his science is off (WAY OFF). The BA is wrong to use the word “evil” in describing him. Honestly dissappointing from the guy that writes the best blog in the bizzzzznesssss. I think Stein is a good hearted religious Jew who has a particular world view that was shaped by history (and again, for “teh stoopid” bloggers- I completely disagree on the science that he spouts!).
I think my gripe comes from this- his movie doesn’t try to deny evolutionary teaching in the classroom- it’s only trying to re-introduce ID. PZ and others want to deny even the idea of ID. So one wants open discussion, the others want ideas limited.
I think, Ad, that the turnaround was with the “communist menace.” America had to stand for the flop to their flip, so being “godless” was seen as bad, so any tussle science and religion got into was decided by fiat in the favor of religion, at least through the 1950’s, when the politico’s turned being “communist” into a litmus test, and any “commie” trait was seen as marking you as “red” and “evil.”
For social programs? Communist.
Atheist? Communist.
On the wrong side in the struggle between science and religion? Obviously atheist, and therefore: Communist.
You see? Science was tainted by association - only Godly scientists were okay, as witnessed by countless 50’s monster movies where the nonjudgmental scientist is consumed or killed while the absolute moralist stands up to the Communist Alien menace. Hence the South Park “Awesomo” episode where the military man constantly derides “MISter ScIENtist!”
I think the association of science with nonjudgmental assessment led to science equaling atheism or communism, until all knowledge was seen as elite or bad. And then ignorance was glorified, as if knowing things tainted one. Nothing that indoctrinating organizations like better than uneducated followers.
Yikes, D’oh! It’s true!
Herbert Ape Stein
Brouha, you’re wrong on two counts:
It is evil, and no, there is no discussion to be had. ID is not science: it’s goal is not to promote science, or seek answers. It already has its answer, as made abundantly clear already. Science is not about forcing your answer down everyone else’s throat, especially when it’s not peer reviewed, not researched, and not open to discussion.
ID needs no introduction. It needs indoctrination - otherwise, it doesn’t survive as a science. My niece was recently foisted with the “carbon dating isn’t accurate” argument by her biology teacher. This is Texas, after all. Did the teacher go on to point out that for recent dates carbon dating was checked with tree growth rings, and found to correlate closely? Did the teacher point out that numerous dating techniques are available, and those that are accepted are in general agreement?
No, and no. ID would stop at “carbon dating isn’t accurate.” There is no discussion of relative accuracy, no replacement offered by ID other than “begats.”
Thank you, but I have enough of a hard time untangling her brain from this ridiculous indoctrination without Ben Stein and company spouting that Nazis are somehow involved. Anything to make biology distasteful.
@ Brouha
rrrgghhh… that thump-thumping sound you hear is me beating MY head against my desk for having to explain this yet again:
Let me corerct your above quote for you so that perhaps you can re-read it and it will make sense:
his movie doesn’t try to deny evolutionary teaching in the classroom- it’s only trying to re-introduce ID… IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM.
PZ and others want to deny even the idea of ID… IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM.
So one wants open discussion, the others want ideas limited… IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM.
Now that you’ve had your statements properly qualified, do you see the problem with what you are saying? And why it is an issue?
Poor examples all. 1) if you make a movie casting me as Hannibal Lector, at least give me an audition. 2) With all due respect. All I see here is character assasination, mostly aimed at me now because I choose not to call movie making an “evil act.”
Evil is killing 6 million jews.
Evil is flying airplanes into buildings and killing thousands of innocents.
Evil is hogtying an innocent man and removing his head for all to see on the internet.
Uttering an opinion of how people are fired because they believe in creationism is just that. AN OPINION. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to pay your $10 to see it. Which I DOUBT few here have.
As for B.A. “schooling me.” BRING IT ON. I still believe we landed on the moon.
One Eyed Jack, you uttered slander to me and you apologize to Phil? Gee. How nice. You state it’s not your opinion, afterall, but you don’t bother to apologize and request the slander be edited out, now do you?
In essence, what I see people accusing the filmmakers of Expelled doing, they’re doing themselves on this board. And that’s MY correlation.
Uh, Ben Stein? Are you aware that there are, and have been, Jewish scientists?
Einstein? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
@ Matt Garret
How is that exactly? Care to actually give an example?
Oh… and by the way… it’s not just THIS BOARD accusing the filmmakers… it’s also an entire organization called the Anti-Defamation league…
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm
Care to take your defense of Ben Stein’s opinion to them? Or are they just too obtuse to understand Mr. Stein like you do?
Matt
Troll you may be, albeit professional or not, but that’s not really the issue. Equating an entire profession with people who ran chemical showers and human ovens? Nice for a one-time opinion. Not so nice at added repeatings. Making a movie promulgating this as fact, then implying that scientists *only* utter statements that lead to genocide? He’s drinking his own Kool-aid, and guzzling it hard. There are a lot of worthwhile people who are scientists - many of whom were Jewish oddly enough.
Stein is equating some of the hardest working and most dedicated humans on the planet with a nationalist regime with a racist agenda. It’s anti-intellectualism on a grand scale, and in case you didn’t know: most other regimes around the world got their start by offing intellectuals. Why?
Because intellectuals, people trained in thinking, are bad for pushing Kool-aid. Ben Stein and crew are pushing an anti-intellectual agenda, and pushing it hard. It is evil because it is attempting to incite-and those incitements are part and parcel of purges and pogroms. Incitement is evil. He is no longer expressing his opinion: he is pushing the idea that scientist, as a class, should be- what? The exercise is left up to the reader, but no good has ever come from incitement.
Evil does not have a body count threshold. Evil has to do with what you will do to get your way. Evil is throwing out all morals and scruples and whatnot to achieve your goal. Ben and crew have passed that marker and are running full tilt on.
Matt Garrett, no one has slandered you on this occasion. You were not being called a pedophile. It was essentially an argument of the form Reductio Ad Absurdum, by which your own game rules were shown to lead to an absurdity.
Well said Pat… as well as anyone here has described it.
Celtic - Yeah, I get your points in BOLD CAPS SO I CAN MORE EASILY UNDERSTAND THEM (awesome!). Thanks for “qualifying my statements”…that sounds so official. I’m honored. Sounds like I’m running for office.
As regarding what is taught: “IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM!”: let’s maybe approach students with competing ideas. No, I’m just kidding. Let’s call people names and freak out and react like Ritalin duped spaz balls (ooh, I like that one! “Spaz Balls”! tm). Hitler was evil. Osama is evil. Ben is doubly evil.
Do we have a playbook/thinkbook for what we are supposed to follow? Sort of like a Party Line manual or something?
You know… I can’t believe it took me till like the fifth time reading Stein’s quote that BA shows here before it really hit me. The quote actually says “scientists… were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed”…
Wow… I really hadn’t realized that he had just actually come out and STATED that SCIENTISTS ordered Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers. No veiled insinuations or loose connections… he actually STATES it. No wonder the ADL had to come out and smack this guy.
What a creep!
So, Brouha, what you are saying is that you don’t understand why non-science shouldn’t be taught in science class?
Which competing ideas should we imagine up for gravity? Ooooh! How about we are all tied down by magical invisible strings woven in secret by the Keebler elves. Why not? It’s a competing idea. Forget the fact that it is totally invented and has no merit. It’s a competing idea, so let it be taught! Do I have that right?
Or would you like to continue nit-picking my use of caps for emphasis?
Ad and D’oh,
I have to say that I find the claim that Herb Stein’s middle name is Ape a little dubious (still, it was funny!). While Wikipedia is fairly reliable, it isn’t infallible, and I can’t put too much trust in it in this case–it’s almost too deliciously perfect. I googled a bit further and could find no other mention of his middle name, though I did see that he used the middle initial A. on one of his books. But still, Ape? Abe, perhaps, but Ape? I just don’t see it.
Still and all, he did raise an idiot.
Ah, well, Brouha-you’ve discovered sarcasm. No, there’s no playbook. The idea is to approach the subject at the very first with students understanding that nobody -that’s right, nobody- has all of the answers. Scientists have a good idea based on the body of evidence, and students should be aware that a competing idea has to account for the entire body of evidence as known so far and make better predictions to supplant the currently taught explanation. Hence Relativity supplanting Newtonian understandings of gravitation.
ID does not attempt to account for the body of evidence: it attempts to poke holes in the current theory, then stand itself up as an alternative without doing the work.
Because work is hard.
Look at poor Darwin: it was over twenty years from his first sketchings of a cladistic tree to the publication of On the Origin of Species. Why? Because he had to check his theory against the evidence, and that took a long time. A really long time, especially in the days before the internet.
Ben and crew will have every right to complain once ID has done the work. Work, by the way, that nobody is denying them the right to do. Oddly enough, people do take umbrage at ID claiming all others are wrong and it has special privileges in that it doesn’t have to do the work because it is right.
Which one smacks of elitism again?
Woah, Pat. Brilliantly done. I dislike Stein, and his movie, and just about everything he says, but even I wasn’t climbing on the “evil” bandwagon. But you’ve single-handedly made me rethink that position…
I just checked RottenTomatoes and Expelled has a freshness rating of 9 percent
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/
Here is a list of movies that are rated better than Expelled:
Plan 9 from Outer Space: 62%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/plan_9_from_outer_space/
C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers): 20%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chud
King Kong vs. Godzilla: 36%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_kong_vs_godzilla
Mothra vs. Godzilla: 89%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godzilla_vs_mothra
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: 79%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rocky_horror_picture_show
I would never pay money to see any of these other crappy movies and they’re much higher rated than Expelled. Why would anyone pay money to see this turkey Expelled?
I confess, Tom, that I did do just that. For several reasons. I review movies for a local newspaper, and as I was getting tired of the cries of “how can you comment on a movie you’ve never seen”… so to speak intelligently on the subject, I felt the need to see it.
And to quote one Philip J. Frye… “I don’t regret this decision… but I immediately rue and lament it”.
Ah Tom, because somebody has to. Otherwise, how would it even get a RottenTomatoes rating?
Hmmm…am I conceiving a new episode of ‘Dirty Jobs?’ “On the next episode, Mike Rowe sits through all 90 minutes of Expelled.”
Celtic - “What competing ideas should we imagine up for gravity”? Well, I think we could discuss Newton’s laws and then maybe go into the more accurate laws of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (it’s a theory that accurately describes how space-time works). Would that be ok? It’s proven science and pretty important.
“Keebler elves” don’t have much to do with it. Although I love the left-field reference that comes from a mind like that (non-sensical-but worth a chuckle).
And in terms of my so-called “nit picking” on your style…I think you put the wrong emPHasis on the wroNG SYLLable there. I just get entertainment from it (doubly so if you can’t understand the joke lead on that one).
Don’t post when angry man. Sounds a bit vindictive.
But to your point about theories that have no merit- PZ and Dawkin’s theories of the origin cell creation have merit right? Little green alien men? Crystal construction? Molecular Biogist that has absolutely no coherent explanation for the construction of the first cell (but a very good one for how Evolution works afterword- he gets props there).
Worth asking questions or no?
Wow. I’m gob-smacked and do not even know where to start with this fool. To equate scientists with murdering Nazis is such a repulsive opinion to enunciate. I feel physically sick.
Phil, I trust that your “BE POLITE” rule here does not apply to our comments in relation to Mr Stein’s ridiculously idiotic and downright insulting statements. Right?
So my two cents on this matter, invoking the special exemption to the rules of this forum, is simply that Stein is a complete and utter #@!%^#( @!## @#)&#!$ !@#$@#**@@#!!!!
Brouha:
PZ and Dawkins were throwing out vague alternatives and explanations in response to abiogenesis. Neither one is a chemist, a biochemist or the like. Neither one has made a definitive study of the RNA world, ribozymes, distribution of organic molecules in the nearby solar system, or the like. Those interviews were out of context “gotcha” style ambush interviews.
Ask anyone at the DI about abiogenesis, and they will state (like Stein) that it is impossible. How is that an answer? Science states probabilities- and based on that, given a giant ocean and a billion years and you’ve got room for all sorts of improbable events. Open your mind to the possibilities that truly epic scales of time offer and you’ll see.
Keep it in Stein’s camp and you won’t.
So, wait–is this right?
Ben Stein equating scientists with Nazis====evil.
BA/BABloggers equating Stein with evil========brilliant.
” . . .you called me a name, so I’m gonna call you a name . . .” ??????
WT#@#%%? Is this third grade? Are we better than they are, or are we going to act just like them?
When “outsiders” (Muggles?) read this blog, or PZ’s blog, and the comments especially, do you think we help show ourselves as rational, reasonable people? Or maybe we are turning people off completely, and helping to foster a new generation of Steins, who distrust the high and mighty scientists, calling everyone evil, and referring to “teh stoopids?”
Maybe not evil, but derranged. Completely hideously and utterly derranged.
Brouha: I suggest you go to Wikipedia and look up ‘Mechanical explanations of gravitation’ and ‘Alternatives to general relativity’. There are a couple of dozen of alternative theories to gravity. Should all of these be taught?
Most of these theories have more support for them than Intelligent Design (they at least make testable predictions which have excluded most of them as viable theories for gravity).
Another example: Should geology classes teach Hollow Earth theory?
Science classes have to teach scientific theories. A basic criteria that makes a hypothesis valid as a scientific theory is that it produces testable and falsifiable predictions. ID lacks these and so is merely a hypothesis. It is also a thinly veiled version of creationism and so is religious - suitable for religious studies not science classes.
Matt, Ad hominid did not slander you. It was satire, though I would argue is an inappropriate choice. But after rereading it, it’s not so bad as all that. The point of satire is to go way over the top to make a point.
It’s jolting, but that’s the point. it’s not supposed to be personally insulting. If it were, have no fear I would take steps.
Ben Stein is an evil man. Exploiting the holocaust to make money and to push a religious agenda is morally wrong aka “evil”. A very appropriate term for him. He should be booed off of any stage, ridiculed, and ignored. A “evil crackpot” is what he is. I hope his career goes down in flames. Whatever is left of his career that is.
defectiverobot,
You are probably right about Wikipedia being wrong. I checked the history: no middle name is given until the March 28th version. So I suspect someone is having a bit of fun (or it is an innocent typo.) There is, I suppose, the remote possibility that “Ape” is a perfectly good name in some Eastern European language.
You’re right Dave. Third grade remarks may be too advanced for Stein to comprehend. Lets keep it nice and simple for him folks. How about just “Stein, you’re an idiot. Please, PLEASE shut up.”
Oh, and we don’t have to worry about the likes of this man reading our blog posts or comment. The internet afterall is a product of evil science that they would surely wish to avoid.
Tom Marking—
Expelled DID, however, get a slightly higher tomatomometer rating than “Manos: the Hands of Fate”. Hm.
Brouha: being against teaching ID isn’t “towing the party line”. Reality is (or should not be) not a partisan issue. Science class should be about science. That’s it. It should be about agreed-upon science based on empirical observation. ID is not based on science. It’s based against science. It was created specifically to annoy scientists. ID did not come from a scientist who observed some facts and followed wherever they lead; it was not a matter of evidence leading naturally toward a conclusion. Instead, it put the cart before the horse. The conclusion (evolution is bad) was already in place, and the ID fans cherry-picked info to back it up. This is a backwards way to do science, and a pretty awful way to form opinions and ideas in general.
Has any ID-supporter ever considered the problem of the Designer’s designer? If life is too complex to have happened spontaneously, there must have been a designer to make it. Well, such a designer would have to be pretty complex, wouldn’t it? So where did the designer come from? Why do ID proponents refuse to accept a universe that just happened, but ask us to accept a Deity—uh, I mean “Designer”, that just happened? It seems like an unnecessary middleman.
And Brouha, as long as we’re talking about letting in alternative viewpoints, why does ID only allow for one Designer? Why not have multiple designers while we’re at it? Is it because the Designer really is a stand-in for the Judeo-Christian God, and allowing multiple designers would be an acknowledgment (or even approval) of polytheism?
Would you push for alternative viewpoints in a church service? Is it closed-minded for a priest giving a sermon about Genesis to be unwilling to address his congregation with, “In the beginning, there was a giant turtle…”
Dave, before you chide:
What scale of evil do you judge on? What are your criteria? How much does somebody abandon scruples and morals before they become evil? What ends justify these means? Body count is not a good measure, because a good many evil people never murdered. Leona Helmsley, Alfredo Paoletti, and David Duke have no blood on their hands, technically, but they constitute evil for exploitation, effective slavery, and incitement to riot, respectively.
Again, what is your particular threshold? Mine happens to be abandonment of scruples and morality in pursuit of a goal.
“Keebler elves” don’t have much to do with it.
*sighs* Wow. You really don’t get the point?
Brouha, since you want non-science like ID taught in science classes, where do you draw the line? There are a lot of unsupported, nonsensensical ideas out there. How do you want to decide which ones get into the 10th-grade science curriculum?
“Science leads to killing.”
“Intelligent Design is science.”
“We should teach Intelligent Design to school kids.”
They are all Stein’s own propositions.
Lobbying to teach our kids to become killers sure looks like evil intent to me - especially when coupled with Stein’s call for a significant increase in US military capacity.
While it might be true that the term “Nazi” is so widely used today that it’s lost much of its impact, it is generally used in a metaphorical sense. For example, in our office we regularly refer to overzealous, self-appointed cleaners as “The Kitchen Nazi’s” when they start instructing others on the rights and wrongs of keeping the place tidy.
Even when Gowdwin’s Law is invoked in arguments, it is generally a metaphorical reference rather than one person actually accusing the other of being responsible for the Holocaust. But Stein wasn’t being metaphorical - he’s stating emphatically (and repeatedly) that science leads to killing. He is saying that scientists caused the Holocaust, literally. There’s no subtlety in his message at all.
Even if Stein’s comments were intended to incite controversy for the sake of commercial success (and I have to concede similar suspicion - either that or mental illness), that just makes it all the worse and still more condemnable, not less so.
He’s evil.
@Matt Garrett: “All I see here is character assasination, mostly aimed at me now because I choose not to call movie making an “evil act.”"
Funny, all I see is OPINIONS.
So, clear this up for me… are you okay with OPINIONS, or not?
Nindubsar - Great questions. Fantastic questions actually. The kind that should motivate a bunch of skeptics/science people to sit around a big table and argue them out (damn I wish!). I don’t think ID allows for one designer (maybe it does? I don’t know), and you have stumped me with some others (but the “giant turtle…” one- come on!). I don’t think ID was based “specifically to annoy scientists”.
We need more smart people asking smart questions and vociferously debating them. And dag-nammit I wish I was one of them brainiac folks (which I’m obviously not).
Open debate is my point. And to those “teh stoopids” that still are afraid and want to name call- “boring….”…
“Naked Bunny with a Whip”- dude or dudette- you really need to get some if you are self-electing that as your handle. Creep-y.
“Again, what is your particular threshold? Mine happens to be abandonment of scruples and morality in pursuit of a goal.”
Al Gore? Michael Moore? Oliver Stone? Bill Ayers?
___________________ (fill in the blank with the name of almost ANY politician, including Bush, Clinton(s), and Obama?)
I don’t know that I have a particular threshold, Pat. But your threshold sure makes you live in one evil place, man.
It’s evil to insinuate that scientists are amoral people who are no different that the folks who ran death camps. Why is that evil? It is “morally bad and wrong” (the definition of “evil”) to incite hatred against groups or individuals. It’s vile to use the suffering of one’s dead parents as you paint someone as amoral or immoral. The hated you incite could easily manifest itself in violence or persecution of the hated group, the very lesson that Stein exterminates in his evil characterizations.
It would be more evil for Stein to lead a mob to burn down the house of an atheist scientist, but that’s a matter of degree not nature.
Brouha
As you have been repeatedly told, abiogenesis is not part of evolutionary theory. By definition, it’s not a part of the “ID vs. evolution” debate, nor is it part of the “Darwinism” that Stein rages against in expelled.
Abiogenesis is a fascinating topic, and the subject of interesting speculation and research. However, just about anyone in the field will be happy to tell you that all current theories are speculative. There are interesting ideas, but for the moment we just don’t know. This is perfectly normal in science.
Does ID qualify as one of those speculative theories ? Not in the form that it is presented by the ID movement, because it makes no testable predictions. Their argument boils down to “we don’t know, therefor God some unspecified designer did it”.
If ID were to make specific, falsifiable predictions (for example when and how the designer operated and what traces this left behind), they could have a scientific theory. However, they won’t do this because:
1) They don’t any evidence that suggests testable predictions.
2) If they made predictions, research might show them to be false.
3) They have already concluded that the designer is God. God by definition can do anything he darn well pleases, so no specific prediction can be made. This of course is why God, whether real or not, is outside science.
I have a new hero.
Oh, so it’s okay to use British swear words on this blog…
Useful to know.
(I guess kids in the UK don’t need to be protected from bad language like American kids do…..)
[…] the Bad Astronomer (via TheFriendlyAtheist) points out this Ben Stein quote: Stein: When we just saw that man, I think […]
Great questions. Fantastic questions actually. The kind that should motivate a bunch of skeptics/science people to sit around a big table and argue them out (damn I wish!).
Eh?
See, this is really the big lie of Intelligent Design: the idea that what they are presenting is something NEW, and that “Big Science” is refusing to give it its day in the sun. Like, what the hell.
Intelligent design is actually older than the theory of evolution. I mean, the name is new, as well as this term “irreducible complexity”, which everyone but Behe refuses to actually define precisely — but the fundamental concepts are all straight from the early 1800s.
The ID proponents keep whining “Scientists won’t let us present our evidence!” You’re a hundred years too late to the party! If they would actually sit down and, oh I don’t know, do some ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, they might actually come up with something that hadn’t been disproven in the previous century.
But of course they don’t do that because they don’t care about actual science; they care about abusing religion for political gain. Pure and simple. And the people who are qualified to do scientific research know that it’s already been done; it’s being done every day. They’re just not getting the results that the ID people want.
After watching several interviews featuring Stein, and seeing in each and every one how he rages that Evolution = Social Darwinism = Hitler, I have come to the conclusion that his entire beef with the theory of evolution is entirely centered around this one misconception.
He honestly believes that knowledge of the fact of Evolution made Hitler slaughter his people in untold numbers. Therefor, Evolution must be evil.
He should look into Hitler’s religious background a little more closely.
video clip of the interview
Ben Stein made the most abominable anti-science remarks at the 1:05 mark.
I agree, “Evil” is not the right word here. Incredibly stupid and childish is a much better fit.
I know I’m going to be flamed for this but when stop & think a bit more broadly the Shoah - Holocaust of Jews by Nazi’s - is surely the most over-emphasised, over-hyped act of genocide ever.
Yes it happened, yes it was utterly evil & awful but it was NOT as bad as many, many other acts of genocide most against people with far less welathand power than the Jews for example :
1) The genocides against the indigenous Peoples of North America
The Chinese genocide against the Tibetans
2) The genocides against the indigenous Peoples of Australia (incl. notably what happened to the Tasmanians esp. !)
3) The genocides against the Aztecs, Incans & other South Americans by the Conquistadors
4) The genocides carried out by Mao Tze-Tung in Communist China
5) The genocides conducted against many indigenous peoples inAfrica (incl. at present what’s happening in Darfur)
6) The 40 million plus murdered by Stalin’s Purges and deliberate famines and his forced relocations of peoples eg. all the Chechen population
7) The Mongol Empires massive genocides piling up pyramids of skulls and utterly obliterating many Russian cities inthe 12-1300’s.
9) The Khmer Rouges genocide lead by Pol Pot against his own Cambodian people (thatone too was very much aime datwipingout all intellectuals)
10) The Nakbah or “Distaster” that the Israeli’s have inflicted against the Palestinean people for so much *longer* than the Shoah 50 + years since 1948 versus only two or three years - 5 or six being generous for the Shoah (Jewish Holocaust) ..
11) The genocide of the Armenians by theOttoman Turkish empire
&
12) The genocidal extermination (ordered by Yahweh /Jehovah if you believe their Talmud/Torah /Mishna) of the indigenous Canaanite, Amalekite, Moabite, Jebusite, Philistine, & other original inhabitants of theland of Canaan-Palestien by the proto-Jewish Israelite tribesmen.
There are so many appalling acts of genocide, evil and extermination in human history to choose from … Why do we only ever hear about one?
Many peoples have had their entire cultures and belifsystems wiped out altogether, have been like the Caribbean natives who greeted Columbus or the Aboriginal people who saved the Australian explorers BUrke &Wills reduced to notasingle surviving member.
If evil cna be measure din degres such things hare far worse, such people have suffered far worse than the Jews who have, lets be honest, been exploiting the memory & Western guilt over the Shoah / Holocaust ever since ..
Where are the Museums’, the shrine stothe victims of teh Mongolians, the victims of the Europena -Americans, thevictims of the Isrealis or Chinese etc … Where is the state imposed & armed and funded by Western guilt for the Chechens or Canaanites or Aztecs?
… & another thing why dowe forget that the Nazi Holocuats wasn’t justaimed at Jews but also targeted and exterminated gypsies & homosexuals & German dissidents and Communists and Russians & so forth …
Lets think about this people - lets stop pretending that the Jews are theonlypeople to have suffered inhuman history - and start remebrering thatalot of thetime theJewish tribes & Jewish bigoits have been tehone’s doing the persecuting.
Stein’s shcoking skunk of a movie is only one example of the disgusting abuse of theJewish Holocaust for despicable political ends.
Israel & what it gets away with - quite literally murder, apartheid & genocide - is another.
Flame away now if you like - but that’s the stark truth.
By the way I am neither anti-Semitic (actually I’m very pro-Semitic -the Palestineans & Arabs are Semites too!) nor a self-hating Jew.
I’m just a reasonable objective observer who’s actually knows & thinks a bit more than the Israeli extremist fundamentalist Jewish lobby can stand.
The facts are in my favour not theirs. Research & think fairly & you’ll find you’ll agree with me.
One out of context quote, spoon fed to you so that you can be spared the inconvenience of thinking for yourself.
Am I religious? Do I agree with Ben Stein? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that in America today we group with people who are of like opinion to us, and rarely does anyone give any opinion other than their own and SERIOUS thought. Christian, atheist, gay, straight, rich, poor. We whine and complain about people who disagree with us on blogs to make ourselves feel righteous. Get a life. Lemmings.
P.S. If you do not believe in God, how can Ben Stein be evil? And your typos hurt my heart a little.
CORRECTED VERSION SINCE I CAN”T EDIT HERE :
(Feel free to delete the initial one if you like BA)
———————————————————-
I know I’m going to be flamed for this but when stop & think a bit more broadly the Shoah - Holocaust of Jews by Nazi’s - is surely the most over-emphasised, over-hyped, over-exploited act of genocide ever.
Yes, it happened, yes it was utterly evil & awful but it was NOT as bad as many, many other acts of genocide most against people with far less wealth and power than the Jews for example :
1) The genocides against the indigenous Peoples of North America
2) The genocides against the indigenous Peoples of Australia (incl. notably what happened to the Tasmanians esp. !)
3) The genocides against the Aztecs, Incans & other South Americans by the Conquistadors.
4) The genocides carried out by Mao Tze-Tung in Communist China.
5) The genocides conducted against many indigenous peoples inAfrica (incl. at present what’s happening in Darfur)
6) The 40 million plus murdered by Stalin’s Purges and deliberate famines and his forced relocations of peoples eg. all the Chechen population.
7) The Mongol Empires massive genocides piling up pyramids of skulls and utterly obliterating many Russian cities in the 12-1300’s.
9) The Khmer Rouges genocide lead by Pol Pot against his own Cambodian people (that one too was very much aimed at wiping out all intellectuals.)
10) The Nakbah or “Disaster” that the Israeli’s have inflicted against the Palestinean people for so much *longer* than the Shoah : 50 + years since 1948 versus only two or three years - 5 or six being generous for the Shoah (Jewish Holocaust) ..
11) The genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish empire
&
12) The genocidal extermination (ordered by Yahweh /Jehovah if you believe their Talmud/Torah /Mishna) of the indigenous Canaanite, Amalekite, Moabite, Jebusite, Philistine, & other original inhabitants of the land of Canaan-Palestine by the proto-Jewish Israelite tribesmen.
There are so many appalling acts of genocide, evil and extermination in human history to choose from … Why do we only ever hear about one?
Many peoples have had their entire cultures and belief systems wiped out altogether, have been like the Caribbean natives who greeted Columbus or the Aboriginal people who saved the Australian explorers Burke &Wills reduced to not a single surviving member. If evil can be measured in degrees, such things are far worse, such people have suffered far worse than the Jews who have, lets be honest, been exploiting the memory & Western guilt over the Shoah / Holocaust ever since ..
Where are the museums, the shrines to the victims of these atrocities, to the victims of Mao or the Mongolians, the victims of the European-Americans, the victims of the Israelis or Chinese etc … Where is the state imposed & armed and funded by Western guilt for the Chechens or Canaanites or Aztecs?
… & another thing why do we forget that the Nazi Holocuats wasn’t just aimed at Jews but also targeted and exterminated gypsies & German dissidents & homosexuals & Communists & Russians & so forth …
Lets think about this people - lets stop pretending that the Jews are the only people to have suffered in human history - and start remembering that a lot of the time the Jewish tribes & Jewish bigots have been the one’s doing the persecuting.
Stein’s shocking skunk of a movie is only one example of the disgusting abuse of the Jewish Holocaust for despicable political ends.
Israel & what it gets away with - quite literally murder, apartheid & genocide - is another.
Flame away now if you like - but that’s the stark truth.
By the way I am neither anti-Semitic (actually I’m very pro-Semitic -the Palestineans & Arabs are Semites too!) nor a self-hating Jew. These are NOT despite the Israeli lobbies Big Lie to the contary the only reasons people criticise their theocratic fascist nation-state which fatally runs over peace protestors with bulldozer-tank hybrids (see Rachel Corrie) and shells innocent Palestinean families and invades & attacks its neighbours regularly.
Nor do I think Israel should be wiped off the earth & its people killed -although I strongly think it should NEVER have been created in the first place. I do think it should be evacuated from its current untenable location and shifted to either the USA or Germany though with its people’s current stranglehold over US foreign policy broken for the sake of our planet and our species.
And that’s because I’m just a reasonable objective observer who’s actually knows & thinks a bit more than the Israeli extremist fundamentalist Jewish lobby can stand.
The facts are in my favour not theirs. If you research & think fairly & you’ll find you’ll agree with me.
8 ) The Chinese genocide against the Tibetans.
Obviously.
%^%$%#$^%! auto-emoticon!
I also think inmalienable human righst arefor everybody -Tibetans, Uighar, Taiwanese, Iraqius, Palestinenas, Israelis, Amercians, Congolese, Samaritans, Mexicans, Canadians, etc .. alike.
The IOC should NEVER have given the games to China and should take e’m away from Beijing now & The world should recognise and work to free Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang and Palestine among other places!
Wrote # Matt Garrett on 29 Apr 2008 at 8:37 pm :
“Poor examples all. ….
Evil is killing 6 million jews.
Evil is flying airplanes into buildings and killing thousands of innocents.
Evil is hogtying an innocent man and removing his head for all to see on the internet.”
Here are some more examples for y’all :
Evil is killing 90-95 % of Native Americans and wiping out their entire culture & way of life.
Evil is lying to create an illegal invasion & occupation that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi women, men & children.
Evil is dropping napalm on innocent Vietnamese villagers
Evil isdropping A-bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki - killing innocent civilians and destroying whole cities.
Evil is firebombing Tokyo & Dresden
Evil is Isreal occuppying Palestine and the US arming,funding & supporting it.
Evil is what the janjaweed militia are doing in Darfur and the Chinese are doing in Tibet.
Evil is Pat Robertson calls for in advocating murdering the democratically elected President of Venezula.
Evil is Gerry Falwell blaming the 9th September 2001 attacks on gays and feminists.
Evil is the CIA’s role in assassinating Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Argentina in its 9th September atrocity.
Evil is the CIA training Osma Bin Laden and working withSaddam Hussein because it’s politically expedient at the time.
Evil is voting for a President who says God wants him to invade other cnations that pose ypour nation no threat.
Evil is made incarnate in Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney and the other neo-Con Retardicans.
Evil is an awful lot of things - and yes it is also Ben Stein making an evil movie blaming science for Nazism too.
Correction :
Evil is Gerry Falwell blaming the 11th September 2001 attacks on gays and feminists.
Evil is the CIA’s role in assassinating Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Argentina in its 11th September atrocity.
\
Keep forgetting you Yanks always do your dtaes tehwrong way around - 9-11 is actually the ninth of November not the eleventh September here!
Why not just have things in a logical order : eg. year-month-day or vice versa instaed of month-day-year format people??
NOT that it really matters …
Ad Hominid, tell me more about your book. You can reach me through my web site (click my name above) or directly at jhagerty’at’juno.com
- Jack
Quoteth # k on 30 Apr 2008 at 1:48 am :
P.S. If you do not believe in God, how can Ben Stein be evil? And your typos hurt my heart a little.
Que? Since when does saying or noting people or their acts as being evil have anything to do with believing in God or not?
Evil = extremely unethical
& whether the person being or assessing such conduct is religious or not has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
Deir Yassin’s Ghosts,
The article is about Stein appropriating the Holocaust to wrongly and wickedly smear science, PZ Myers in particular.
Stein is from a Jewish background, which is probably why he didn’t use the other examples.
Please don’t hijack the article. There are plenty of political forums where you can expound your views in a more appropriate context.
martijn
Wow look we have the real evisionist nazis on the blog at last. I knoew it would’nt be long. Mention the words Jew and Nazi on any web site and they will crawl out of the slime pretending to be
‘neither anti-Semitic (actually I’m very pro-Semitic -the Palestineans & Arabs are Semites too!) nor a self-hating Jew’
and
‘just a reasonable objective observer who’s actually knows & thinks a bit more than the Israeli extremist fundamentalist Jewish lobby can stand’
they will claim that
‘The facts are in my favour not theirs’
and of course they know you will agree if you only look at their point of view.
Unfortunatley now there is one of them there will be more and more and that will be the end of the blog Iam afraid.
K: “What matters is that in America today we group with people who are of like opinion to us, and rarely does anyone give any opinion other than their own and SERIOUS thought.”
If you’re assuming that intelligent design has not been given serious thought, you’re simply wrong. Creationism and Intelligent Design were the prevailing theory for millenia; when evolution was proposed it had something that creationism and intelligent design didn’t: evidence. The evidence was weighed and creationism was rejected in favour of the better theory.
In light of the evidence of evolution, asking for further “serious” thought on the matter is like asking for further “serious” thought being applied to the flat-earth theory.
I guess Matt Garrett was absent from school on the day that the teacher explained the difference between facts and opinions. When you make a statement about whether something did or did not happen or how it happened you are stating a FACT. Regardless of whether it’s true or not.
“The sky is red”
“The sky is blue”
BOTH of those are facts.
When you make a value judgment about something that is an opinion.
“Red is the best color”
“Blue is the best color”
BOTH of those are opinions. Clear now?
Well, to put this in a christian context, murder is the subject of its own commandment. So is ‘false witness’, aka lying. Stein’s bible puts it on exactly the same footing, without any distinctions whatsoever on what moral relativity might exist between the two. And Stein’s religion says that the Bible is literal truth and that you do not get to pick and choose. Oh dear.
So yes, in literal biblical standards, murder = lying. By the standards that Stein claims to follow, his demonstrable lies make him roughly exactly as evil as your ‘ordinary decent nazi’.
Of course, that’s not a reasonable position to take, not by a long shot. But Stein took that position, and it’s not unfair to judge him by his own standards of conduct.
Evil was the massacre of 200,000+ innocent civilians at Nanking without the use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Evil would have been the loss of who knows how many American lives by NOT using the A bombs and instead invading Japan. As General Patton said (and I’m not a fan of his by any means) ‘You don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by making the other poor b*****d die for his.’ (Not sure if that word is BA Approved thus the asterisks!)
D’Oh! & BA - I think odious is the word required in place of onerous.
That should be toeing, as in ‘toe the line.’
Ever the pedant, Pete
I’m not sure you can really claim “family friendly” if you use words like “wank” in the titles here…
Well, I followed the link to the atheist site then to TBN and watched the video. The entire thing. All thirty minutes. I’ve don’t think I’ve watched that much to fact check the 700 Club. I came away with a different impression. Not only of Mr. Stein, but of Mr. Meyers as well, of Expelled, and, I’m sad to say, of skepticism.
The quote where Mr. Stein supposedly equates scientists to Nazis takes place around 27 to 28 minutes into it. It follows the clip of Mr. Meyers saying that he doesn’t want to do away with religion, only wants it to take a “proper” place in people’s lives, then proceeds to describe that place as a belief that has no influence on their lives. Mr. Stein then responds to a question from the interviewer. In the context of what I’ve seen Mr. Stein is not condemning scientists, he’s condemning the idea that only science, which is morally neutral, should be the only guide people have. This dovetails with the previous segment, which showed statements of atheists including Mr. Meyers.
I know this assessment does not match BA’s, or of the board in general. But that’s my understanding of what I saw.
This, immediately follow a post claiming ID = Creationism (Sir Fred Hoyle, who was not a Christian, supported ID, and I hardly think he was a creationist), has me thinking that maybe, just maybe, Expelled could be right. Especially when I see the hostility toward Mr. Stein.
Maybe this is what passes as skepticism these days. If, so, it’s not critical thinking.
This is very likely my last post to BA’s blog. I came expecting to find his excellent writing on astronomy (and BA, you do write well, when you write about science). I go away finding more scoffing than skepticism - and I go away very disappointed.
I won’t let the door hit me on my way out.
let’s maybe approach students with competing ideas.
Science class isn’t about competing ideas. It is about evidence.
ID has no evidence, ergo it is not science. QED.
ID is not a competing idea to anything scientific. ID does not belong in a science classroom. ID does not belong in a scientific laboratory.
ID belongs in a comparative religion class. ID belongs in a philosophy class.
When the proponents of ID find evidence to support their hypothesis, when they publish peer reviewed papers in mainstream journals, when that evidence is verified and their experiments repeatable, then, and only then, can ID be called science and be worthy of a science classroom.
That’s a pretty low bar to set really.
Indeed, I only read the comments for funnies about the wank gaffe. I’ve been disappointed ;-(
Most religions claim that all wanking is evil. But I’m an atheist - I’ve had good wanks and bad wanks, but never an evil one.
Actually, they’ve all been pretty good.
(Too much information?)
Matt Garrett, your position in this thread seems to be that Phil is in the wrong for calling Stein ‘evil’, citing mass murders and genocide as examples of evil.
Okay, but you’ve been totally silent regarding Stein’s equating science with naziism, whose behavior you’ve deemed ‘evil’.
To clear this up, do you consider Stein’s (and the movie’s) direct comparison of scientists to naziism (and thus, evil) to be defensible? If so, why. If not, why not?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: 79%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rocky_horror_picture_show
I would never pay money to see any of these other crappy movies and they’re much higher rated than Expelled. Why would anyone pay money to see this turkey Expelled?
I dunno… Susan Sarandon looks pretty hot in the “Touch Me” scene.
KC, you need to keep in mind that PZ Meyer’s interview was several hours long, and that interview was heavily edited. The portion you’re talking about was literally accurate, but clipped out of its original context.
In fact, all interviews in that movie were selectively edited to make the pro-creationist argument more favorable, and to make the scientists look more like nazi sympathizers.
Then perhaps any time Ben Stein or the Disco Institute are mentioned there could be a warning put on the post?
“Warning - Offensive but HIGHLY appropriate language in use.”
I’d say the movie itself is less of a problem than the stuff currently going down in Florida, where a bunch of (insert offensive language here) have actually passed an anti-evolution bill. Out of all the states the DI have attacked so far, the Florida one has been the most successful. Nothing’s set in stone yet, but still…
(I guess kids in the UK don’t need to be protected from bad language like American kids do…..)
Probably not. European kids (and Canadian for that matter) aren’t as delicate
In the context of what I’ve seen Mr. Stein is not condemning scientists, he’s condemning the idea that only science, which is morally neutral, should be the only guide people have.
I don’t recall any scientists providing a life-guide of any sort… at least not to me or not in my life.
When I have a “how to behave” question, I don’t call a scientist. In fact, the only time I can ever remember being told how to behave by a scientist was when I was berated by my Grade 13 chemistry teacher for dissolving pennies in nitric acid.
So what “guide” is science offering? Where can I get a copy? This scientific guide seems to be the principle resistance that so many religious people have to scientific inquiry. Religions all offer a guide book, but I’ve never seen science’s guide.
Please post the ISBN number so I can pick up a copy.
I’m not sure that’s a particularly meaningful distinction, given that no one is actually proposing such an idea.
Hoyle did not support the body of ideas commonly referred to as ID. That one could conceivably describe some of his beliefs using the term intelligent design is not relevant; you’re simply equivocating. Theistic evolutionists like Ken Miller could arguably be said to believe in something that could be described by the term ‘intelligent design,’ but it certainly isn’t what that term is commonly used to describe. ID, as the term is actually used, most certainly is a form of creationism.
“k” said:
We whine and complain about people who disagree with us on blogs to make ourselves feel righteous. Get a life. Lemmings.
Shortest self-contradicting quote ever. Whining about others whining about others.
Not really, we’ve been discussing the nature of evil, and what tactics constitute a definition of that. It’s been a back and forth, with some laying claim to moral high ground (see above) but quite a few others open to discussion. Oddly enough, it varies, much like most human opinion.
Then there’s the soft warm cushion of anonymity and namecalling. Really, coming to a science blog and giving an insult of “lemmings” is belittling to lemmings, who, contrary to the Disney version of events, do not run over cliffs after one-another pell-mell. They are instead herded and hurled by the handful by unscrupulous filmmakers.
I think the animal you are looking for is “sheep,” the one so admired in Christian metaphor.
I object to the objections to wanking. Or to the word wank, or wanker. As someone who hails from Wanker’s Corner, I find a frequent need to stand up for a little respect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankers_Corner,_Oregon
Thank you, BA, for not wilting to the cold showers of the false-prudes.
+1 for the UK “family-friendly” comments. Doesn’t bother me personally, but if you are going to use British slang, make sure you research the exact level of obscenity of the words
Dave, actually I do live in an evil, evil world. Which is why I tend to chafe at religion or religious fervor being equated with “good.” To me, it is evil to take somebody who broke a law they never heard of while still being a good person and punish them eternally for it. I do calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. And yes, Michael Moore does rise to the level of evil, which is why his films are not on my “to see” list either.
There are few “good” people out there who will adhere to principle while still striving for their goals. I hearken back to Lord John Whorfin:
Character is what you are in the dark.
Indeed- given the curtain of anonymity by either the intertubes, or by insulation in a self-sealed institute of like thinkers, what restraints are there other than what you put upon yourself? I have ethics, and would not slander or libel. I put honesty and evidence as sacrosanct, life and freedom as essential and inviolate. In that criterion, Ben has broken three of four pillars, enough to bring the ceiling down. Incitement when you are losing an argument is so newsgroups circa 1999.
I don’t think Stein is evil in any way, I just think he is misguided, severely misguided, as if he sincerely views science as some sort of philosophical or religious belief (like sciencism or something) that is attempting to “replace God”. Yes, this is absurd, and it is simple anti-intellectualism, it also discredits his movie, suggesting that the basis of the entire premise for Expelled is the idea that science on it’s own is some sort of nefarious ideology.
Didn’t he used to be a comedian? Is he still? Is THAT was this is all about? If so, he’s not very funny anymore.
Ben Stein was funny in “Ferris Buehler” and for me that’s about where it ended. He is “smart” only because he says so. From what I see here, BA is doing a great job of publicity for him and helping further his career as an Icon of…. what?
OK, now I sent an email to Ben Stein and got a reply. You can give it a try, too! His email address is benstein99@aol.com
Creationists just hit the hard rock bottom. They tried pulling the bible, it didn’t work. Tried flawed logic, it didn’t work. They tried cheap theories, it didn’t work. Their only option left to destroy the science that questions their beliefs is to compare it to something that is the summum of all evil: Nazis.
They are going so low because they’re like fish out of the water… Struggling for air. They fail at everything so they pull out cheapshots and the ultimate twists of lies. Comparing reasoning to naziism makes logic look like a monster for shallow minded people.
Shall I pull the ol’ bible out too and mention all the nations and people the Israelites destroyed? That’s one big gigantic genocide the Israelites pulled there, Stein. I think the Nazis are jealous.
Dagnabbit… that’s the biggest problem with sleep… you miss some of the best conversations.
It’s a little late to post a reply to Brouha at this point… besides, I think he’s been addressed pretty well. Although I still get the eerie feeling that he still is insisting that “open debate about ID” is appropriate for the science class. Yeesh.
Well, I posted a comment to that on the TBN site, but they have a severe character restriction so I couldn’t say much. So this is what I sent off:
—–
About Ben Stein’s on Crouch’s show: wrong. There’s a lot more I could say:
The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism
by David I. Kertzer
“After Auschwitz: Religion and the Origins of the Death Camps.”
“Theologian Richard Rubenstein wrote that the Nazis “did not invent a new villain…They took over the 2,000-year-old Christian trdition of the Jew as villain…The roots of the death camps must be sought in the mythic structure of Christianity.
—-
“Ghosts of Deir Yassin”
Allende was president of Chile, not Argentina. You may want to consider whether other “facts” you cite to demonize the United States are of similar quality.
Brouha:
Only the IDers say that science “wants ideas limited”.
Science advances by an open discussion of ideas, even those that go contrary to what is “known” to be “true”.
The “gotcha” is that, for something to be “science”, it needs to follow some ru