… 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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I can’t believe that Myers have the guts to say that.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Stein jumped right to Godwin’s Law.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
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.”
April 29th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
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!
April 29th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Ben Stein = Cancer
April 29th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
So now an OPINION makes you EVIL?! Dude, you are totally insecure and it’s extremely disappointing that you’ve stooped to this level.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Sorry to point out this, but typo in title.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
What is the bottom line agenda here? What is it about science in general that so profoundly threatens these people?
April 29th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
@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!!
April 29th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
“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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
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
April 29th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
There’s no crazy like creationist crazy.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
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!
April 29th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
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=?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
@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
April 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
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
April 29th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
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
April 29th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
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
April 29th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
So, “Darwinism” is now the Unified Field Theory?
I can’t keep up with their stupid anymore.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Why is it everytime an actor or an actress opens their mouth something stupid flies out, well when they are not delivering their lines.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
@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?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Did he try the, “Yeah…well God made Hitler!” retort.
It’s about as witty, really…
April 29th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
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 .
April 29th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
“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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm
April 29th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Yikes, D’oh! It’s true!
Herbert Ape Stein
April 29th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
@ 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?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Uh, Ben Stein? Are you aware that there are, and have been, Jewish scientists?
Einstein? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
@ 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?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Well said Pat… as well as anyone here has described it.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
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!
April 29th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
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…
April 29th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
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”.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
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.”
April 29th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
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?
April 29th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
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 #@!%^#( @!## @#)&#!$ !@#$@#**@@#!!!!
April 29th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
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?”
April 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Maybe not evil, but derranged. Completely hideously and utterly derranged.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
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…”
April 29th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
“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?
April 29th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
“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.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
@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?
April 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
“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.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
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.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I have a new hero.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
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…..)
April 29th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
[…] the Bad Astronomer (via TheFriendlyAtheist) points out this Ben Stein quote: Stein: When we just saw that man, I think […]
April 30th, 2008 at 12:04 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:18 am
video clip of the interview
Ben Stein made the most abominable anti-science remarks at the 1:05 mark.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:21 am
I agree, “Evil” is not the right word here. Incredibly stupid and childish is a much better fit.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:22 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:28 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:46 am
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.
April 30th, 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.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:49 am
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.
The Chinese genocide against the Tibetans
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:55 am
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!
April 30th, 2008 at 2:22 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:28 am
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 …
April 30th, 2008 at 2:33 am
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
April 30th, 2008 at 2:33 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:35 am
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
April 30th, 2008 at 2:37 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:27 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:50 am
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?
April 30th, 2008 at 4:18 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:29 am
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
April 30th, 2008 at 4:58 am
I’m not sure you can really claim “family friendly” if you use words like “wank” in the titles here…
April 30th, 2008 at 5:09 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:11 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:11 am
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?)
April 30th, 2008 at 5:14 am
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?
April 30th, 2008 at 5:14 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:19 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:20 am
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…
April 30th, 2008 at 5:20 am
(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
April 30th, 2008 at 5:29 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:34 am
I’m not sure that’s a particularly meaningful distinction, given that no one is actually proposing such an idea.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:39 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:45 am
“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.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:52 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:21 am
+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
April 30th, 2008 at 6:21 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:02 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:11 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:13 am
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?
April 30th, 2008 at 7:33 am
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
April 30th, 2008 at 7:33 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:40 am
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.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:47 am
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.
—-
April 30th, 2008 at 7:48 am
“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.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:24 am
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 rules, not the least of which are the ability to make predictions, and the ability to be proven false. To be called “science”, you need to be able to say “if I do X, then Y should happen”, and perform experiments to see if that is true. You also need to be able to say “if Z happens, then the hypothesis is false”.
The problem with ID/creationism is that it fails in both categories. You cannot make predictions and perform experiments to see if the outcome fits the predicted results, nor is there any evidence you could provide which would show your hypothesis to be false.
No one is saying “ID is a forbidden subject”, they’re just saying “ID isn’t science, and therefore doesn’t belong in a science class”.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:31 am
,,,and Carl Sagans description of the Demon Haunted World strikes true again. ANYONE who seeks knowledge of the material world is, de-facto, a demon, which in Greek means “knowledge ,,,particularly of the material world,,,”
As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, good and evil are simplistic descriptions of very complex interactions. Evil to nuke Hiroshima? Maybe. But the recipients of that nuke were themselves guilty of supporting an “evil” military regime. “EVIL” to fire bomb Dresden? Again, they were hardly innocents there.
Am I evil to defend my loved ones from Ben Steins neurotic adherence to ignorance? I am not one innocent of my mortality, like a simple pre-sentient in the Garden of Eden. I am a sentient being, quite aware that someday my life will end, so I make understanding the material world my (demonic) obsession. Perhaps that obsessiveness may someday lead to the defeat of aging,,,or maybe not but, w/o trying I’ll never KNOW.
I may be a demon, but I WILL pursue truth wherever it takes me, even unto darkness unremitting.(note: that is truth with a very small T).
May you find peace Ben Stein or, as my Moslem friends would say,”Al Hum duh la lah,,,erk,,,dang phonetic spelling,,,)
Gary 7
GAry 7
April 30th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I would like to know how this man can possibly consider himself a part of the intelligensia and be able to say things like that. It is plain he knows nothing about science and yet seeks to blame all of society’s ills on scientists. Does he not realize that Hitler did precisely the same thing to the Jews? He has become exactly the thing he is claiming to fight.
This man is a repulsive, ignorant little fool with an overblown sense of his own importance. I hope his floundering career suffers when people in general see how much of a wretch he actually is.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:57 am
To all you Republican believers out there: how is Ben Stein any better than Jeremiah Wright?
April 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am
For those who balk at using the word “evil” to describe Ben Stein’s words and actions with respect to “Expelled”, may I suggest instead…..”sordid”.
Scanning down this (if I’ve done the linky thing correctly; no guarantees): http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sordid , several of the definitions would seem applicable:
1. morally ignoble or base; vile: sordid methods.
2. meanly selfish, self-seeking, or mercenary
Further down the page:
3. Morally degraded
Even further down:
2. unethical or dishonest
Still further:
(of a person’s behaviour etc) showing low standards or ideals etc; not very pleasant or admirable
April 30th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Grand Theft Auto IV is out!
Have you people no priorities?!?!?!?!?
Although I have to finish Assassin’s Creed. In *that* game you assassinate high ranking members of the Third Crusade.
Probably not. European kids (and Canadian for that matter) aren’t as delicate
Pfft. American kids will take your lunch money and laugh! And then jack your car because, you know, they’re so mind controlled by games like GTA4. Well, that’s what Jack Thompson says.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:13 am
“The last time Ben Steins relatives had creationists telling them what to do, they were being told to get in the gas chambers.”
There. I fixed it.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I’m late, I know, but I’ve got something I’ve got to get off my chest:
Ben Stein ought to be ashamed of himself. To state that scientists are the equivalent of those who marched Jewish prisoners into the gas chambers is disgusting and abhorrent. To do so in an interview which will be disseminated using mass media that would not be possible without science is crazy. To do so to promote a film from which he personally benefits both financially and in fame, a film which would not have been possible without science, is sickening.
Mr. Stein, if you choose to continue on this line of reasoning, I suggest you immediately cease to receive any personal benefit from science.
No more computers, microwaves, medicine, cars, modern construction equipment and materials, highways, plastics, television, newspapers, BIC pens, bread, ketchup, non-clumping granulated salt, anything store-bought, electric light, toilet paper, modern septic/sewer systems… I’m guessing that I have made my point here, so I’ll move on.
I wonder how his family feels about him using their tragedy and the tragedy of millions for his own personal gain. How can he sleep at night knowing he trots out the horrific suffering of his relatives to show off for the cameras? How can he possibly feel as though he has a right to trivialize the suffering and struggle of the Jewish people before, during and after WWII?
I sincerely hope he apologizes for his remarks, to PZ, scientists in general and to the Jewish people. If he chooses to continue to parrot such disgusting, baseless statements I hope that leaders in both science and religion take him to task for his idiocy.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Just a couple of points I’d like to make after looking at all of this.
1. Telling lies, omiting details or intentionally distorting facts is wrong. It certainly puts you in the bad person category. I think its a bit much to call that person evil, since I generally consider evil acts to be things like murder, rape and genocide. I guess liars can be evil, if murders, rapists and Nazis are REALLY evil. Depends on your definition or at least your common understanding of the words you use.
2. Not all religious people are IDers or creationists. Many believers such as myself are engineers or scientists and have a very negative opinion of the IDers. And they (and me) is don’t mix Faith and science - and they are not at odds. I recommend Kenneth Millers book on the subject. Attacks against religious people just because they believe (or maybe someone did something bad hundred(s) of years ago in the name of religion) turn off allies you could use.
3. Not all Republicans are IDers or creationists. Most Republicans I know are embarrassed by such talk. Unfortunately, they have been a growing influence in the Republican party that must be stopped (in my humble opinion). I also predict that this will be a growing problem for the Democratic party as they return to their “faith” as their campaign strategies are described in various articles. I would be exaggerating to say it will be as large a problem as for the Republicans though.
4. The only way to stop wrong thinking such as ID is to stay involved. If calling people evil or writing to blogs such as this makes you feel good, go ahead, but it won’t help much. You won’t convert the diehards (just like they probably won’t convert you). You need to pull in the “undecided”. (Why do these things usually divide into thirds?) You won’t pull (most) of this group to your side by insulting others or raving. Present the truth. Contrary to many people’s opinion, people are good and smart and will make the right choices.
5. Go to school board meetings, get involved in politics, or just simply educate your kids or others. My experience in public service is that the driven lunatics (sorry, just using this a general descriptive term for all zealots regardless of the subject) usually win because they have the drive to stay at it long after the rest of us get tired and go home.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:48 am
You know, I think we should redefine “Darwinism”. It’s a term made up by the creationists, anyways, so we should just use it to mean: someone who blames all of societies ills on science and Darwin, in particular. Ben Stein is definitely a Darwinist. He’s a hell of a lot more obsessed with Darwin than any evolutionary biologist I’ve ever met.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I love Ken’s idea of redefining Darwinism!
I also think we are at the point of needing a website specifically for keeping track of stein’s idiotic quotes.
Sort of like the Vin Deisel / Chuck Norris facts, but with actual Stein quotes (which are equally ridiculous).
steinquotes.com?
bensteinquotes.com?
bensteinlies.com?
April 30th, 2008 at 10:32 am
“What is it about science in general that so profoundly threatens these people?”
“Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the Human condition is just too awfull.” Kilgor Trout
April 30th, 2008 at 10:47 am
“Darwinism” is a convenient keyword. When someone uses it unironically, I know immediately that they are misinformed and quite likely prefer it that way.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
@ Bill H
Listen, Vonnegut ROOLS! So it goes…..
: )
April 30th, 2008 at 11:19 am
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show: 79%
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rocky_horror_picture_show
I dunno… Susan Sarandon looks pretty hot in the “Touch Me” scene.”
Here’s an idea for Ben Stein’s next movie that I would pay money to go see. Let’s call it The Rocky Horror Expelled Show. I have just the lyrics for the opening scene. Ben better get busy learning the lines:
THE STEIN-WARP
It’s astounding
Sheep are bleating
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely
Evolution is nonsense
I am just a troll
I remember doing the Stein-warp
Writing speeches for Nixon
The darkness would hit me
And God would be calling
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
It’s just a jump to the right
And then crossing that line
Between what we know are the facts
And what is asinine
But it’s the innuendo
That really drives you insane
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
I’m so creepy, Oh please Expel me
So you can’t hear me, no, not at all
If the movie seems jarrin’
We can blame it on Darwin
He’s a Nazi after all
If Dawkins cries no fair
We’ll zoom in on his nosehair
And nothing can ever be the same
I’m spaced out on creation
Like I’m under sedation
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Well I was walking down the street just having a think
When God came down and gave me an evil wink
He shook me up, and said that He rules all
He told me that the Darwin idol must fall
He stared at me and I felt a change
Facts meant nothing, never would again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
It’s just a jump to the right
And then crossing that line
Between what we know are the facts
And what is asinine
But it’s the innuendo
That really drives you insane
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
Let’s do the Stein-warp again
April 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am
@ Brouha
While I agree with the argument most others gave you for why ID shouldn’t be taught in the science classroom, I think this argument works as well. Aside from its lack of merit, it simply isn’t science… it is a philosophy at best. Science classes should teach what science tells us. I don’t see anybody advocating the teaching of american legal studies in a math class… so why would it make sense to teach a non-scientific theory in a science class?
April 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Then let’s say: IHmmm…I’m a relative of Giordano Bruno, and all the good catholics out there are evil, because some religious zealots sent my relative to burn at the stake. What a moron!!
April 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I have heard the term used on British TV, so I assumed it was safe enough. Just in case, I changed the title.
And I am amazed, as always, at the low level of critical thinking that goes on when Nazis are mentioned.
KC, if you’re still reading, there is no mistaking what Stein said. He is equating science with the gas chambers. That’s the point of the whole movie. Also, ID as being promulgated in the US is precisely equal to creationism. This has been proven, in a court of law: research the Dover case.
As far as my use of the word “evil”: trying to change the teaching system of the United States to violate the Constitution and brainwash kids into thinking religion is science, and that current science leads to Nazism… that’s evil, no matter how you slice it.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Tom Marking:
You have way too much time on your hands. Keep up the good work.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
This is so beyond anything… Stein will be on CNN’s resident idiot Glenn Beck’s show for 1 hour on Friday. Forget the LHC creating a black hole to swallow the earth, this show should do that quite nicely.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
So, Tom Marking… how many characters have you dressed up as while waiting outside the local 1 screen theater at midnight waiting for the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”…
April 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
You compare them to NAMBLA and the KKK and you’re a champion of the thinking minority.
He compares you to Nazi’s and he lacks critical thinking.
You are a hypocrite and a troll.
Unsubscribing from your blog now.
I will change the radio or the TV any time you happen to come on.
Thanks.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
@ Xenu
I’d reply to your post pointing out the flaws in your argument, but since you’ve scurried away anyhow, that would seem pointless.
So long, cheers, farvel, lolama yani, hyvasti, auf wiedersehen, and annyong-hi kashipshio.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I can’t help it. The more I read about Stein, the more I think that this has to be some kind of joke. It’s amazing that no matter how outrageous or absurd his statements are ID/creationists nod and agree with him. Is he trying to make them look loony?
If he is, it’s succeeding.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
“So, Tom Marking… how many characters have you dressed up as while waiting outside the local 1 screen theater at midnight waiting for the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”
I went one time and I didn’t dress up. People were looking at me strangely. I felt like a total freak.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Bad Astronomer, how dare the “evil hypocrite” Ben Stein use a Nazi reference! It’s like comparing the opposition to the “KKK” or “NAMBLA”…oh wait. Pot…kettle…black…
Now, as important as it is to stress the importance of science and critical thinking, the mud slinging just detracts from everyone’s credibility.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Wow, folks, if you can’t see the difference between what I am doing and what he’s doing, then I sure hope you don’t vote.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
@ Tom Marking
Been there, done that… dated a girl in college who was big into Rocky Horror culture.
Needless to say I stood out like Tom Cruise at a Mensa meeting…
April 30th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Just my two cents worth about “Expelled” at a little webcomic called “Not Meat”
http://bolson.org/rmcs/view?cid=1230&thresh=-5
April 30th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
BA, what you are fighting for is great, but there’s something to be said for taking the higher ground.
There’s a saying, “Never wrestle with a pig - you’ll both get dirty, and the pig will love it.”
April 30th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
@CE
From what I’ve heard of some Mensa folks, I think Mr. Cruise may actually fit in at a Mensa meeting…perhaps the UFO group.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
OK… since this seems to be the new theme for our Stein defenders to latch on to, I’ll address it:
Ben Stein made the statement that scientists sent Jews to the chambers to be gassed. BA called the use of that statment, and the equating of science to Nazism “evil”. Use “sordid” if you wish, as suggested by cicely, but BA sticks by his use of “evil”, and I’m not going to argue that point… the important thing here is that BA is responding to an actual action taken by Stein where he does not make a mere comparison, but an actual slanderous statement.
A week ago or so, BA compared a radio station’s airing of a commercial for “Expelled” to being like taking money from organizations that are seen as “evil”.
So… on one hand you have Ben Stein calling scientists genocidal and blaming science for the murder of thousands… and someone (BA) making the statement that in his eyes, that’s evil.
And on the other you have someone (BA) making a comparison that taking money from the organization that is the outlet for that person’s horrific statements (the movie’s marketing team) is like taking money from other organizations that are perceived as evil.
And you see hypocrisy here? How exactly? Refute that explanation, if you’d like… I’d love to hear the defense of it…
Stein accused a group of hard working, dedicated people of genocide.
BA accused a radio Station of incredibly poor judgement on the order of supporting other “sordid” organizations. I really don’t think you can hold the two up as comparible. Please.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
K. WELL SAID!
Deir Yassin - although you proved my point that making a movie cannot be considered an illegal act. IT’S A MOVIE.
I must point out that it isn’t a lie to rely on the intelligence of over eight different intelligence agencies, including your own, to justify invading a country which has CHOSEN to reinstitute the conditions of a previous war. It may have been a mistake based on faulty intelligence. But a lie? You’d have a hard time proving that in court, my friend.
As for the other silly definitions you point out …
“Evil isdropping A-bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki - killing innocent civilians and destroying whole cities.”
An act that probably SAVED more lives than it took. Must we recall that the world was at war and Japan was unwilling to sue for peace? You talk about facts and history but IGNORE that we warned Japan several times before dropping the bomb … and the target was more strategic.
“Evil is firebombing Tokyo & Dresden”
So was tossing V1s and V2s into the London civilian population. But such is war.
“Evil is Isreal occupying Palestine and the US arming,funding & supporting it.”
NONSENSE. There was NEVER a Palestine. Palestine was the name given by the Romans to the area. And the land of Israel was mostly PURCHASED, not “illegally occupied.” In a military biography of Moshe Dayan, the early Zionist activity is described this way:
* “Using Rothschild’s money, these Jews purchased land from absentee Turkish landlords. To the Arab tenant farmers, the transfer of land from Turkish to Jewish ownership was of little consequence since the Jews rehired them as agricultural workers.”
“Evil is what the janjaweed militia are doing in Darfur and the Chinese are doing in Tibet.”
You’ll get no argument from me on that. Perhaps you libbies should spend more time demonstrating the Olympics and less time complaining about Iraq.
“Evil is Pat Robertson calls for in advocating murdering the democratically elected President of Venezula.”
No. It’s an opinion. It’s not an evil act to say something stupid and politically short sided. He has no power so it’s a pointless thing to say anyway.
“Evil is Gerry Falwell blaming the 9th September 2001 attacks on gays and feminists.”
See my comments above. Just curious though. Was it an evil act when Jerry Fallwell said on MSNBC that if he were a lawyer, he too would argue for civil rights for gays?
“Evil is the CIA’s role in assassinating Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader of Argentina in its 9th September atrocity.”
Care to elaborate? Otherwise you’re just tossing driveby comments.
“Evil is the CIA training Osma Bin Laden and working withSaddam Hussein because it’s politically expedient at the time.”
The CIA trained OBL to defend Afghanistan which was illegally invaded in the 80s. We supported SH due to Iran’s destabilizing efforts in the area. Sure, it was a mistake to do so, but evil? hardly. I’d like to think we’ve corrected that situation. But you probably also think that’s an illegal act.
“Evil is voting for a President who says God wants him to invade other nations that pose your nation no threat.”
Never said it. During a White House press briefing, Mr McClellan said: “No, that’s absurd. He’s never made such comments.”
“Evil is made incarnate in Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney and the other neo-Con Retardicans.”
Care to eleborate? Or is it just because they have an (R) at the end of their names? what evil acts have they committed since you’re so elaborate in your evil definitions?
“Evil is an awful lot of things - and yes it is also Ben Stein making an evil movie blaming science for Nazism to …”
No it isn’t. IT’S A MOVIE. Nothing more.
As for being called a troll. To quote wiki: “The term is often erroneously used to discredit an opposing position, or its proponent, by argument fallacy ad hominem.”
So you can attack me by calling me a troll (and other things on this board) but in doing so, you only show your own “trollish behavior.”
April 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
As for Stein’s evolution/holocaust component … from wiki:
“Stein does not say belief in the theory of evolution alone leads to genocide, but that it is a necessary component.”
April 30th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
“Stein does not say belief in the theory of evolution alone leads to genocide, but that it is a necessary component.”
I think that religion can be a necessary component as well.
READ THE BIBLE. SEE THE GENOCIDES.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
@ Matt Garett
Ummm… from this very flippin post:
“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.”
Please reconcile this more recent statement from the man himself before using some Wiki quote on someone else’s opinions on his beliefs and motives. Care to do that? You’ve been asked to repeatedly but still continue to toss up random defenses of a clearly indefensible act. Sheesh…
April 30th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
@CE
Let’s get a little perspective here. I would consider myself a supporter of science and scientific thought in general, rather than a supporter of a specific individual. I understand that people feel compelled to defend their team, no matter whether the team has made mistakes or not.
Let’s keep it even more simple. One side equates the other side to an “evil” group, specifically referring to the “KKK” and “NAMBLA”.
Next, the other side equates the other group to Nazis (indirectly referring to the gassing).
Both are enjoying the use of fallacies to promote their arguments.
You can attempt to justify it many ways, but it only ends up diluting the main issues, which is my main point. (Somehow I feel a little dirtier for having to explain this.)
April 30th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
@ Matt Garett
Here’s another Stein quote for you from a Christianity Today interview:
“Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.”
April 30th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
And Tim, Stein is not equating scientists to Nazis, he’s actually saying that scientists WERE THE CAUSE OF the holocaust. Evidentally he thinks that Hitler wouldn’t have been all that bad of a guy, if he didn’t have those evil scienitsts whispering in his ear.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
@Tim
Couple of major issues here, Tim…
First, you say “indirectly referring to the gassing”… there’s nothing indirect about what Stein said here, Tim. Nothing at all.
Second, the comparison isn’t valid on either scope or scale. There’s a huge difference. Surely you see that.
Even if one concedes that using the comparison of taking money from the “KKK” and “NAMBLA” to taking money from the “Expelled” people is an indirect comparison (and just to be clear, if you read through that thread, you’ll see that I was one of the people that didn’t agree with BA’s use of this comparison… so I’m really not defending that itself)… there’s still a major difference in both scope and scale here that makes your equating of the two completely off-board.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Stein: “Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews.”
Does he actually name any names there? He might have a partial point there in that science and engineering were involved in the Holocaust. Somebody had to develop Zyklon B and test it, somebody had to develop the crematoria, etc., etc. These are all science and engineering activities. But what he fails to mention is there were thousands of scientists working very hard in the Allied countries in order to defeat the Nazis. So by no means should he be allowed to get away with tarring ALL SCIENTISTS with the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Actually, there’s a very interesting article on Wikipedia about the history of Zyklon B. It turns out it was initially developed by a German Jew as an insecticide. Very ironic that it would later be used to slaughter the inventor’s kin a few decades later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B
April 30th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Ben Stein is just trolling to get more people to see his piece of junk movie.
BA is just trolling to get more people to watch his piece of junk tv show or buy his book.
I’m over being manipulated by little people with ulterior financial interests in seeing me angry.
I’m over anyone who makes money off of getting me to Hate.
I’m over Ben Stein.
I’m over the Bad Astronomer.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“Stein does not say belief in the theory of evolution alone leads to genocide, but that it is a necessary component.”
I suppose it’s no surprise that a Nixon speechwriter would lie like that.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
@CE
I agree, my previous post was unclear. (I blame the rush to grab a quick lunch.) I originally meant that the word “Nazi” was not directly used, but of course the meaning was clearly implied to be “Scientist = Nazi”. My original point is that “evil” comparisons were made on both sides.
Yes, there is an argument going on over the scope of evil on this thread. Yes, the names-calling refers to what can be considered varying degrees of evil. Yes, the “Nazi” evil is considered to outweigh the “KKK & NAMBLA” evil. No, that doesn’t mean the “KKK & NAMBLA” are suddenly not evil by comparison. And no, that doesn’t change the original point that there is name-calling in the first place which continues to detract from the main issues.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
@Tim
But Stein is not participating in name calling, if he were I’m sure people wouldn’t care as much. I know I wouldn’t. Pretty much everyone who has ever expressed their veiws on the internet have been called a Nazi. But the issue is that Stein is trying to pass off as historical fact that science caused, and scientists were the main participants in, the holocaust. This goes well beyond simple name calling, and is what is pissing so many people off.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
@Kevin
I’m in no way arguing that Stein is not misguided or even deranged. I’m saying that name-calling shouldn’t be used in the first place. You somewhat expect an idiot to say idiotic things, but a critical thinker should be able to argue without the name calling.
If you don’t agree with that, you are a Nazi.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
The guy’s a total Stein. At this point, it’s hard to reconcile the fact that stein is a synagogue-attending Jew. I ask you, where is there a temple where people will not snub you for being such a sell-out, and invoking Godwin’s law? (it seems apparent that the expelled production has purchased a complete marketing package of stein’s services. given that stein’s future employment will be damaged, he has to milk this for full salary)
April 30th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
OK, I’m confused (again).
I thought Nazi scientists were working on making an atomic bomb and designing rockets to bombard England. Now the ever-so-reputable Ben Stein tells me they were telling his ancestors how to enter a gas chamber.
Norman, correlate….
April 30th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
@Tim
OK, I normally would agree, but sometimes you have to just call an a-hole an a-hole. It’s not like anyone is going to convince Ben Stein that he’s wrong by being nice to him. He probably already knows he’s wrong, he’s just being malicious. You’re right though, we should all strive to be better, nicer people. Now I’m going to go murder some hookers and hijack some cars in GTA IV. Have a good night everyone!
April 30th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I only object to the use of the word “evil” because it’s confusing. It smacks of absolutism, and needs to be qualified. IMHO, all “good” or “evil” is relative to what you value — so yes, Stein is “evil” towards the cause of intellectual honesty. I’d prefer to use a word like “damaging”, “dishonest”, or even “ignorant” — depending on how you assess his motives.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Personally, I don’t know which group disgusts me more…
…the deluded, relgionist, knuckle-draggers who want defend their bronze age mythology…
…or the gutless wimps who oh so very, very offended that Phil called that festering pile of horse crap Stein “evil.”
This is war people! In war you destroy your enemies, not serve them tea and cookies.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
EDIT: …want to defend…
April 30th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
I know this is only tangental, but Matt Garett and others touch a raw nerve with the claim the the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless lives. Aside from the postwar evidence that Japanese leaders were seeking a way to make peace (which would have been a lot easier if the US had let on earlier that it was not really serious about “unconditional surrender”) there is the fact that several prominent military leaders expressed their regret at the unnecessary act. They were Generals MacArthur and Marshall and Admirals Nimitz and King. But would they have known about it.
On the substance of this discussion, I think it takes special blinders not to see that Stein’s remarks about death camps, indeed his whole role in this fiasco, falls somewhere to the left of the origin on the evil to good axis.
As for character assassination, I fear that Stein’s wounds are all self-inflicted.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
While I am by no means the world’s foremost scholar on Nazi Germany, I think I can say with some confidence that the SS officers who ran the death camps were not scientists.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Stein is a political hack. First, last and always.
He has a political agenda, which is largely driven by his religious convictions. His fondest wish is to impose his values on the rest of the United States, by any means necessary, fair or foul.
For him this is not about being truthful, but about being “right”.
He forgets that it is better to do right than to be right.
Stein believes he is fighting a war against Evil, and in war one wins by whatever means are at hand. To people like Stein, the fact that we rely on the products of science in our everyday lives is secondary to the desire to drive the country into the 6th century CE.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Deir Yassin’s Ghosts:
Another factual error. Dude, Burke & Wills died. The failed. They weren’t saved by anybody.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Hey BA, I wouldn’t worry too much about using wanker in the pejorative sense. Means much the same as jerk or tosser. We residents of the former British Empire don’t have the same sensitivity to cuss words as our dear friends in the USA.
This is how our cousins in NZ sensibly dealt with the use of the word wanker and ass in an episode of The Simpsons:
Full complaint and decision here:
http://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/2004/2004-201.htm
You’d probably find the same thing in Australia, the UK, Canada & South Africa.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Matt Garretton 29 Apr 2008 at 8:37 pm
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.
Excuse me. Why do you imply EVIL must be violent and sudden? Can a slow methodical EVIL exist? Read your history, Matt. Christians had more than a thousand years to test the prayer-will-cure-it hypothesis. It failed. Bubonic plague, 1347. Yeah, I know, sad.
So, thanks to Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Redi, etc. who fought the church every step of the way, we tossed the prayer-will-cure-it hypothesis and tried a little empirical data. By golly, it worked! Airplanes are flown, internets are invented, and most important, lives are saved!!!
Bubonic Plague
1347 - prevention/cure method: prayer. Fail. Millions dead.
2008 - prevention/cure method: science. Success. 10-15 cases a year in U.S. (CDC).
Back to evil. Is taking away the ability to cure diseases and save lives not evil? Causing students to be fearful of an angry God isn’t evil?
I went to a doctor with symptoms once, 26 years ago. Nausea, mostly. He told me to hold out my hand where he took it and began praying for me. Turns out, however, that I wasn’t a lost soul. I was pregnant.
If your response to a symptom is to go to church or pray, that is your perogative. I, however, want to keep my right to go to a doctor. A doctor who will diagnose me using actual data. Keep the religion out of my science classroom.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Tim said…..
There’s a saying, “Never wrestle with a pig - you’ll both get dirty, and the pig will love it.”….
Well you’re clean Phil. And the bacon you’re cooking up tastes great!
I strongly believe that it is our duty to be vigilant in rebuking those who seek to distort and destroy truth and stymie scientific advancement using vile Steinian tactics. It may be a lofty ideal, but I think that the survival and improvement of our species depends on us doing so - EVERY SINGLE TIME.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Funny, didn’t somebody unsubscribe, then come back and complain again? Has the meaning of “Unsubscribe” changed? I’m old, you see, and not much on new-fangled kid-speak.
Now, round about this argument here, Phil is a person, not an icon. Just as Ben is free to go a-jawin ’bout outright lies, so Phil is able to register the all too human emotion of outright disgust with a fellow human being. The wrinkling of your nose is a normal reaction when you smell effluent.
Sorry to break it to some, but Phil is as human as Ben. Not nearly as unscrupulous, underhanded, mealy-mouthed, two-faced, back stabbing and hypocritical, but at least still in the same species.
To translate that to new-fangled kid-speak: WTFBBQZOMG.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I’m completely convinced that evil is not too far a stretch now to describe Ben Stein. Tom Cruise has stooped to saying things that, given a little bit of political weight behind them, would mean people would not be allowed to take psychiatric medicine because L. Ron Hubbard opposed them. All of this is not a matter of free speech, it’s having core values that are consistent with totalitarianism and tyranny. Ben Stein has core values that are consistent with totalitarianism and tyranny. He opposes science: his statements are consistent with that assessment. If you needed to prove in court that he opposes science, he has said a lot that would incriminate him.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Okay, Ben, no more antibiotics for you.
That makes me the science Nazi.
Tough potatoes, Ben. There are a couple things you should have figured out before you made this movie and these statements.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
[…] (via Bad Astronomy) […]
April 30th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Wow, this subject could have many interesting arguments and information (and some here have provided) but the arguments over the the word “evil” have got to be the most tiresome, boring posts.
Dictionary pedant alert: There is the adjective of “evil” and the noun of “evil.” From Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged (a far cry from the free online version):
It’s rather a waste of time arguing over someone’s use of “evil” if they’ve declared to use it as they please, and that their usage agrees with common usage. Geesh. Yes, Ben Stein is acting in an evil way or else he’s lost his marbles, and I don’t think it’s quite that…well, maybe.
He’s got no scruples, that’s for sure.
â??Stein does not say belief in the theory of evolution alone leads to genocide, but that it is a necessary component.â??
Don’t know who said that, but it’s an absurd statement. The theory of evolution has never been necessary (or even known or understood) in countless acts of genocide, extermination or ethnic cleansing throughout history and in recent genocides such as in Rwanda. The necessary component is the desire to eliminate people for whatever reasons and/or find justifications (no matter how twisted) to support one’s prejudice. An example would be past “studies” that falsely claimed that black Africans were less intelligent, something a relative of mine latched onto years ago as well as others because it “supported” their existing prejudice.
Good point, but it’s not so ironic if one is to believe that Ben Stein is the “brainiac” he claims to be. A so-called trivia expert would know that, especially if he researched any science. He’s skating on a slippery sheet of ice by blaming scientists and picking on Darwin while any scientist could be blamed for the tools or research they developed including Edward Teller, “father of the hydrogen bomb” and big military supporter. You can easily see where that goes: Darwin = Bad, Edward Teller = Bad, Science = Death. The Anti-Defamation League is well aware of recent attempts, such as in an Iraqi movie that portrayed, among other things, a Jewish American doctor using Iraqis as guinea pigs, and right now some commenters on Haaretz are equating Jews with Nazis, so when one equates “evil” with science everyone becomes fair game however whacky and one-sided. More important issues and causes are obscured in propaganda. It’s a mess of an argument and the Discovery Institute appears to be finding any way to capitalize on it regardless of current affairs or the sensitivity of the subject. Where’s all their evidence and support for Intelligent Design? Where’s their science? They don’t have any.
Unfortunately some TBN watchers will just take what he says at face value…until they, uh, realize that science saves millions of lives. But he’s attacking Darwin primarily; and as they move onto current scientists researching genetics (far removed from Darwin) they’ll keep milking it. The Discovery Institute now has Methodists on its side:
Perhaps most importantly, the Methodists warn of the danger of eugenics in our own time.
http://Methodists Nail Darwinian Nazi Record, Repent U.S. Past, Warn About 21st Century Eugenics.
It’s like watching a circus freak show, much like the media these days.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Wow, this subject could have many interesting arguments and information (and some here have provided) but the arguments over the the word “evil” have got to be the most tiresome, boring posts.
Dictionary pedant alert: There is the adjective of “evil” and the noun of “evil.” From Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged (a far cry from the free online version):
It’s rather a waste of time arguing over someone’s use of “evil” if they’ve declared to use it as they please, and that their usage agrees with common usage. Geesh. Yes, Ben Stein is acting in an evil way or else he’s lost his marbles, and I don’t think it’s quite that…well, maybe.
He’s got no scruples, that’s for sure.
“Stein does not say belief in the theory of evolution alone leads to genocide, but that it is a necessary component.”
Don’t know who said that, but it’s an absurd statement. The theory of evolution has never been necessary (or even known or understood) in countless acts of genocide, extermination or ethnic cleansing throughout history and in recent genocides such as in Rwanda. The necessary component is the desire to eliminate people for whatever reasons and/or find justifications (no matter how twisted) to support one’s prejudice. An example would be past “studies” that falsely claimed that black Africans were less intelligent, something a relative of mine latched onto years ago as well as others because it “supported” their existing prejudice.
Good point, but it’s not so ironic if one is to believe that Ben Stein is the “brainiac” he claims to be. A so-called trivia expert would know that, especially if he researched any science. He’s skating on a slippery sheet of ice by blaming scientists and picking on Darwin while any scientist could be blamed for the tools or research they developed including Edward Teller, “father of the hydrogen bomb” and big military supporter. You can easily see where that goes: Darwin = Bad, Edward Teller = Bad, Science = Death. The Anti-Defamation League is well aware of recent attempts, such as in an Iraqi movie that portrayed, among other things, a Jewish American doctor using Iraqis as guinea pigs, and right now some commenters on Haaretz are equating Jews with Nazis, so when one equates “evil” with science everyone becomes fair game however whacky and one-sided. More important issues and causes are obscured in propaganda. It’s a mess of an argument and the Discovery Institute appears to be finding any way to capitalize on it regardless of current affairs or the sensitivity of the subject. Where’s all their evidence and support for Intelligent Design? Where’s their science? They don’t have any.
Unfortunately some TBN watchers will just take what he says at face value…until they, uh, realize that science saves millions of lives. But he’s attacking Darwin primarily; and as they move onto current scientists researching genetics (far removed from Darwin) they’ll keep milking it. The Discovery Institute now has Methodists on its side:
Perhaps most importantly, the Methodists warn of the danger of eugenics in our own time.
Methodists Nail Darwinian Nazi Record, Repent U.S. Past, Warn About 21st Century Eugenics.
It’s like watching a circus freak show, much like the media these days.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Sorry for the long double post - yikes! The last one is the corrected version with the right tags.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:08 am
Perhaps wank means a wonk that has gone bad.
Or perhaps a wank is a fake wonk.
I like the latter better. Seems a better description. Either he’s intellectually dishonest, in which case he’s no wonk. Or he’s just not very bright, and again, not a wonk.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:26 am
Tom Marking, you are officially The Man.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:39 am
[…] Bad Astronomy Blog » Just in case you though Ben Stein wasn’t an evil jerk… Interesting discussion in the comments about Godwin’s Law, genocide, the nature of evil, and of course Intelligent Design and science. (tags: godwinslaw nazi hitler evil intelligentdesign science benstein pzmyers dawkins genocide) […]
May 1st, 2008 at 4:20 am
Stein: “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.”
Uh… Pardon me for asking, but wasn’t it Nazi soldiers who actually did that, not scientists?
I mean, I could see how he might get confused. Nazis have two arms, scientists have two arms. Nazis have… uh… two legs, and, er… scientists have two legs. Um… Someone help me out here…
P.S. Dave D, yes, a person unjustly slandering a whole group of innocent people to push a religious agenda is evil, and pointing this out about that person is not evil. Don’t confuse calling one person a name that he has justly earned with what Stein did by blaming a whole group of people for a horrible evil that wasn’t their fault.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:35 am
I don’t think Darwinism nor Copernicusism should be taught in public schools :p
May 1st, 2008 at 4:53 am
CopernicANism
May 1st, 2008 at 5:55 am
I won’t respond to any of the comments specifically, because there is just too much.
Matt Garrett - everything you have said is wrong.
BA, I support your assessment of Ben Stein. He is an evil hypocrite. He has made a film that is full of lies, that libels science as a profession, and that propagates misinformation.
His film complains about censorship of “ID”. This is hypocritical in three important ways:
First, the concept of ID has been examined by the science community and been found to be empty. There is no scientific theory of ID. Even a prominent DI fellow (Johnson) agrees with this. Thus, there is nothing to censor.
Second, both Ben Stein and key ID advocate Bill Dembski censor comments on their websites. On Ben Stein’s website, his “guestbook” is full of praise for Expelled, yet I and others have posted opposing opinions (polite, relevant and restrained) and have not seen them appear. Bill Demsbki’s blog, Uncommon Descent, is notorious on the Panda’s Thumb blog because any poster who expresses an opinion that is at variance with the moderators’ opinions is instantly banned. Thus, Dembski’s blog censors out all of the hard questions that ID cannot address; all of the evidence that contradicts ID; any logical analysis of ID; and any chance of engaging the ID supporters in a rational debate.
Third, if there were some kind of huge conspiracy to silence ID proponents, how the hell could Stein and Mathis get away with releasing a movie about it?? And, since they were producing a movie, why the hell does it not contain a description of the “ID research” that is supposedly being silenced?
In addition to this (as if that weren’t enough), Stein and Mathis have created a “documentary” that portrays science as the root of pretty much all of the evil in the world. Not only does this illegally defame science and scientists everywhere, but it diverts people from investigating or trying to understand the real causes of evil, encouraging the gullible to believe instead in a fairy story.
Added to that, most of the reviews of Expelled that I have read point out that it is boring, too.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:15 am
Spot on, Nigel Depledge and Mesuline.
And yep, Ben Stein is evil. He may not have killed millions, or killed kittens on a regular basis or eaten babies for lunch. But he has lumped himself with an organisation which is dedicated to turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Remember, the DI produced the Wedge document, which specifically states these goals and also gets much of its funds from one multi-millionaire Christian Reconstructionist Howie Ahmanson. Not to mention the fact that the DI and all its buddies will lie, slander, cheat and steal at every turn (which is all documented) in order to try to turn public opinion and get what it wants.
Whether or not Ben Stein actually agrees with the DI or is only in it for the money, doesn’t matter - he knows the score. Therefore he’s an evil (insert favorite profanity here).
That’s it.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:48 am
CopernicANism
It’s okay, Tim. Students should be exposed to many ideas about how to spell words, without Big Spelling censoring opposing viewpoints.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:25 am
Sad to notice two things: that argument over a religious nut attracts more attention than the actual achievements of scientists; that so many people professing to be educated routinely attempt fallacious arguments, never realizing that the same criteria they would use to describe the behavior of quanta actually do apply to observations of government policy and individual actions.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:19 am
HiEvon: Uh… Pardon me for asking, but wasn’t it Nazi soldiers who actually did that, not scientists?
A Jewish scientist came up with the insecticide. Nazi officers insanely decided that humans… insects… pfff, what’s the difference? Plumbers set up the piping. Soldiers turned the valves.
And Stein lied about it all.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am
@ david mabus
ummm… I doubt your post will last long enough once BA deletes it for language…
But, uhhh… why would you link to a thread to support your really goofy post here, when that thread itself even refers to you as a troll.
Anyhow… I will now enagage “ignore troll mode” myself where you are concerned.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:31 am
@David Mabus
I just saw you post an identical rant over on Pharyngula.
I do not mind reading posts from those I disagree with, as long as they are polite, reasonable, and discussing the matter at hand.
Since your posts fit none of these categories, may I politely suggest that you go away?
Phil - can you block him? Thanks.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:47 am
Just once I’d like to see Stein and someone of his ilk discuss the actually science of ID.
They love to compare scientists to Nazis, but I have yet to see them make the case for their “theory”.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:56 am
The dumb in Stein’s statement runs both wide and deep.
Zyklon B was developed as an insecticide (and yes, by a Jewish scientist); when the Nazis experimented with using it on humans their guinea-pigs were, firstly gypsy children and then captured red army soldiers (atheists?).
So unless Stein has some Roma or Soviet blood in him it’s pretty doubtful a scientist ever gassed any of his relatives, however, a German soldier may have.
But on that point, has Stein ever cited an actual relative of his killed by the Nazis?
He’s the American born son of a famous economist (himself born in Detroit). So, whilst I realise it’s perfectly possible that he had relatives in Europe who were killed by the Nazis for being Jewish (hell, I know I do and I’m goy), I would like to see some actual evidence of that before I credit what comes out of Stein’s lie-hole.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am
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!)
What about the poor b***ard civilians who just wanted to live out their lives in peace? Seems to me that nuking (and by “nuking,” I mean “murdering”) 150K? 200K? non-combatants is evil in a different (and by “different,” I mean “far more obvious”) way that sending soldiers into a brutal battle is.
Taking warfare to civilian populations is evil. Period. And I don’t give a **** if it was your grandfather on the Enola Gay who dropped the bomb. Still evil.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am
Classic creationist idiocy from drive-by-troll “k”:
Okay, everyone, k has just identified himself as a sociopath. The classic “there is no morality without my imaginary friend” lie. This says much more about k’s morality than about anything else. It shows that the only reason he’s not going around randomly murdering people is becasue his imaginary friend hasn’t given him premission yet. Not only a Liar For Jesus™, but a MURDERER For Jesus™
What wonderful company Stein’s put himself in. Holocaust deniers, pathological liars, crooks, and sociopaths.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Umm I think you guys are totally missing the point here! Nazis are BAD!!!11 I MEAN REALLLLY BAD, so like stop supporting nazis and their nazi science. The only thing Nazi science ever gave us was the Ark of the Covenant and The Holy grail, all though they kind of stole that science from Indiana Jones, but I mean they were instrumental in the discovery. Anyways, I digress.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
So david mabus, you think a six-legged lamb is proof of the paranormal? If something unusual and grotesque is proof of the paranormal, then your brain qualifies, too.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:42 pm
He’s right. There are still people alive today that witnessed the power of indisputable science based on Darwinism - Eugenics.
Hitler didn’t invent it - He was just the Al Gore of it, made it popular. He was the “rock star” of Eugenics.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
Late to the party again, but since no one has addressed this canard by Brouha:
“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?”
You are wrongly imputing to Dawkins and Myers a belief that aliens seeded life on Earth. Why don’t you read what the man himself has to say about it:
”The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such ‘Directed Panspermia’ was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent ‘crane’ (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists’ whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity — and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently — comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.
This ‘Ultimate 747′ argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment — however implausible — was designed to illustrate intelligent design’s closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don’t think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.”
Let me add this to Dawkins’ argument: Absent supporting evidence, the expected probability that aliens plopped down to our planet 3.8 billion years ago tossing erlenmeyers full of bacteria into the ocean is miniscule, but at least it doesn’t require breaking the laws of physics by interaction with the ‘supernatural’. According to what we know to be physically possible, ETs *could* have travelled to our planet – we just have no reason to assume they did. Divine intervention shares this lack of evidence with the little gray man, but it *also* requires a whole new set of physics describing the relationship between the physical and a putative magical realm, for which there is no evidence either. “God did it” theory contains at least one major unevidenced proposition more than “ET did it”, and multiple improbabilities multiply to yield an even smaller chance of correctness. It indeed appears that divine intervention’s degree of certainty is surpassed even by the highly implausible hypothesis of alien intervention.
It further appears that people refuse to see this because beliefs in alien visitation are for the most part socially jeered and god-beliefs cheered.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 am
url didn’t work.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:16 am
Ben Gonzalez
>>>”He’s right. There are still people alive today that witnessed the power of indisputable science based on Darwinism - Eugenics.
Hitler didn’t invent it - He was just the Al Gore of it, made it popular. He was the “rock star” of Eugenics.”
Benny boy, I guess you aren’t quite aware then that eugenics flies in the face of evolutionary natural selection. Eugenics is about ARTIFICIAL selection.
And does this have any effect on whether a scientific theory is true or not? Of course not. Do not conflate the validity of science with the uses to which it is put - by PEOPLE. If science says we can make an axe, it does not automatically mean that we should use it to go around chopping people’s heads off. By your logic, we should also blame chemistry for chemical weapons and physics for guns. Let’s get rid of science altogether!
Or, we could lay blame on the actual PEOPLE who misuse science for evil means rather than the science itself. because uh, that would be DUMB.
I don’t blame the internet for the slanderous idiotic statements of Ben Stein.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Well said, Darth Robo.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Just for the record…. regarding the ‘English swearing’ … ‘wanker’ means the same thing here in Australia too. ‘Wank’, literally means ‘masturbate’. (yes it’s funny) So a ‘wanker’ is someone that ‘masturbates’.
To American ears its a cute little word that sounds funny. For a blog however, that not too long ago layed down the law to ‘be polite’ and to not swear, and has an international audience, well , its both not polite and is swearing.
Not that I overly care. Just pointing it out to those that did not know.
May 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Probably not polite, what insult is, but I really doubt that it can still be considered swearing. See the wiki for a history of the word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanker
You could probably have a look at my previous comment above about how at least one tribunal doesn’t think it is too bad either.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Facts about scientists and the Nazis:
1. Most of the top physicists were Jews and fled.
2. Many non-Jewish scientists fled the third Reich.
Is a vicious lie evil? Were Hitler’s lies evil? Did they establish
the climate where horrible acts became thinkable?
Is Ben Stein’s vicious lie evil? What is he trying to do with
his off the wall charge? Just sell his movie?
August 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[…] as asocial nerds that never leave their lab. Actually, it has gotten worse recently where Ben Stein basically said that scientists are all evil. Add onto that the low pay for most scientists, the […]
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
what’s really disturbing is that on the website for his movie, he got rave comments about how the movie was an eye-opener and brought up a REAL issue in our schools. someone actually said that they see now that science is teaching us to be godless in school, and act as if this vindicates some crazy idea that scientists have some hidden agenda in teaching science. i just don’t understand how there can be so many (too many, even if the negative comments are being censored) people who not only believe the movie, but believing it to be very well done. very frustrating and scary indeed.