No Intelligence Allowed
I'm in the middle of watching Expelled, the documentary hosted by Ben Stein that promotes Intelligent Design against evolution.
The straw men and ridiculous imagery are thick and numerous. Nearly every sentence out of Stein's mouth is setting up a straw man, and the ID proponent interviewees knock them down. The segments are interspersed with stock footage of Nazis and Fascists. It fully embraces the propaganda that the Discovery Institute disseminates, including calling evolution "Darwinism".
The thesis of the movie is that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory that is so revolutionary that the science establishment is aligned against it. The movie also argues that Intelligent Design is not a religious idea; specifically that it's not Creationism in disguise.
What Expelled never addresses, though, is that a Designer is never a scientific explanation for anything. It states that ID is not a religious idea, but it also states that the Designer is God. I don't understand how anyone who watches this movie can get past this central contradiction.
Now that I'm into the second half of the movie, I notice that it's dropped all pretense of being impartial and gone straight to attacking atheists and "Darwinists" (who, it proposes, are one and the same). There was just a clip of Stalin presiding over a parade. At 1:05:30, it starts outright equating evolution to Nazi Germany. Now Ben Stein is visitinga concentration camp in Germany and equating evolution to eugenics.
Stein just said "I know that Darwinism does not automatically equate to Nazism, but if Darwinism inspired and justified such horrific events in the past, could it be used to rationalize similar initiatives today?" Interesting you say that, considering you just spent the last 10 minutes doing just that.
Now they are saying that "Darwinism" promotes euthanasia and abortion, implying that a resurgence of eugenics is underway, without actually explaining how.
The straw men and ridiculous imagery are thick and numerous. Nearly every sentence out of Stein's mouth is setting up a straw man, and the ID proponent interviewees knock them down. The segments are interspersed with stock footage of Nazis and Fascists. It fully embraces the propaganda that the Discovery Institute disseminates, including calling evolution "Darwinism".
The thesis of the movie is that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory that is so revolutionary that the science establishment is aligned against it. The movie also argues that Intelligent Design is not a religious idea; specifically that it's not Creationism in disguise.
What Expelled never addresses, though, is that a Designer is never a scientific explanation for anything. It states that ID is not a religious idea, but it also states that the Designer is God. I don't understand how anyone who watches this movie can get past this central contradiction.
Now that I'm into the second half of the movie, I notice that it's dropped all pretense of being impartial and gone straight to attacking atheists and "Darwinists" (who, it proposes, are one and the same). There was just a clip of Stalin presiding over a parade. At 1:05:30, it starts outright equating evolution to Nazi Germany. Now Ben Stein is visitinga concentration camp in Germany and equating evolution to eugenics.
Stein just said "I know that Darwinism does not automatically equate to Nazism, but if Darwinism inspired and justified such horrific events in the past, could it be used to rationalize similar initiatives today?" Interesting you say that, considering you just spent the last 10 minutes doing just that.
Now they are saying that "Darwinism" promotes euthanasia and abortion, implying that a resurgence of eugenics is underway, without actually explaining how.