Torontoist: From Darwin To Dachau With Ben Stein

zeal4him

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:41:53 -0500

See the movie. It shows, by evolutionist's own words, that if you believe in anything, you will be censored, lose your job, research money, etc. It's all true. Then ask some of the evolutionists to disavow what they said. They don't want you to see the denial of academic freedoms and free speech. #12 all-time U.S. Documentary. I'm a Canadian native living in the U.S.

EricSmith

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:35:49 -0500

Eugenics is just the application of the long-established practice of "animal husbandry" to humans, and thus also a particular form of racism, both of which predate the theory of evolution by quite some time. And if it weren't for the science of biology, there'd still be plenty of fine excuses for inhumanity. Guess what's among them? Starts with a "G," rhymes with "fraud."Mass murder in the name of God was centuries old before Charles Darwin sketched his first finch. The faithful are projecting.

james a

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:43:39 -0500

@14: Was that a counter-point, or just a demonstration of the aforementioned "self assured dogmatic attitude"? I have to say, I'm pretty excited to see this. I assume I'll probably disagree with the message, but years of watching Win Ben Stein's Money tell me that Stein is obviously a very smart and witty guy. If anyone can make that viewpoint interesting, it would be him. As an aside, congrats on landing the interview, TOist. I'm insanely jealous you got to meet Ben Stein. :)

McKingford

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:16:36 -0500

Movies such as Expelled are important, for they challenge the self-assured dogmatic attitude that permeates academia; Movies such as Expelled lie. They are important to those who wish to believe such lies. That is all.

McKingford

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:14:22 -0500

I'm not really sure what your point is, Ling, other than tarring by association. Darwinism, or evolution, as a scientific theory is either falsifiable or it is not. It is scientifically valid or not (hint: it is). Whether the Nazis usurped it (or not) for political or ideological purposes is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of whether evolution is good science. After all, the Nazis also perfected coal gassification, and put it to bad ends, but that says little about the scientific validity of coal gassification. Indeed, eugenics, or what the Nazis did, is entirely contrary to Darwinism (or evolution). Rather than a natural selection process in furtherance of evolution, the Nazis - through murder and eugenics - artificially distort the natural selection process. Which brings me back to my original point: what do the Nazis have to do with this?

Patrick Metzger

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:37:24 -0500

I don't have the impression that Stein is a creationist; just that he sees unanswered questions in science and says "God!". The problem for me is that while it's perfectly legitimate to believe that some intelligence mashed together the first self-reproducimg molecule, within the bounds of science it's also reasonable to assume that it happened by chance. Occam's Razor tells us to assume chance in the absence of proof. Spirituality can be a wonderful thing but it doesn't belong in a science classroom.

spacejack

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:27:40 -0500

kstop, I think there's a difference between young earth creationists (biblical literalists who think the world is 6000 years old) and old earth creationists or ID'ers who would see the bible as needing interpretation (which probably includes most scientists who are also religious.) No idea which of the two Stein believes or advocates.

PickleToes

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:13:16 -0500

Movies such as Expelled are important, for they challenge the self-assured dogmatic attitude that permeates academia; perhaps next Ben should make one about human activity being the cause of global warming. That being said, I would feel just as positively about efforts to expose those within organized religion who try to strong arm theistic Darwinists.

Ling

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:13:08 -0500

Marc, did you mean to say that eugenics existed long before the Nazis or before Darwin? Because if you meant the former, well yeah, of course. But there's still a strong link between the two because the Nazis used eugenics as justification for "purifying" the human race. It doesn't make Darwin responsible for the Holocaust, of course, just because some nut-jobs distorted his work to suit their own purposes. But yeah, there is a connection, even though eugenics came first. But if you meant that it existed before Darwin, though that's technically true, the modern eugenics movement really was started by Francis Galton (who, incidentally, is Darwin's cousin).

kstop

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:08:27 -0500

"...even ones that similarly threaten a literal interpretation of the Bible" The thing about that is, while the debate is often framed in terms of creationism vs. evolution (and I'm sorry, but ID is just creationism, let's not pretend here), it's actually creationism vs. evolution+cosmology+geology+paleontology plus probably a bunch of other -ologies. In order for creationism to be true, scientific theories of the age of the universe have to be wrong, and the same for the age of the Earth. Any sane interpretation of the fossil record also has to be wrong, or just ignored. So a consistent belief in creationism pretty much requires you to pretend whole areas of science from Copernicus on. Evolution has historically been picked on because it was an easy target in a technological society and it was relatively new compared to, say heliocentric models. Physics makes new toys, geology finds valuable minerals, so they get a pass. Everything else had already been tested by time, so evolution was the only one left. You'd hope that the one good thing to come out of the main C20 assault on evolution, Lysenkoism, would be that the economic and social disasters caused by that particular insanity would have made people less likely to attack evolution. But sadly, here we are in C21, with people like Ben Stein trotting out the same baseless propaganda linking evolution to Nazism that the Lysenkoites used, with the added irony that he's so contemptuous of his audience's intelligence that he also links evolution to Stalin! To me that's the worst thing about this movie - it's made by people who know that they're lying, if they've done any research at all, and are cynically manipulating the audience and keeping them in the dark. This kind of stuff is no longer just of interest to academics. We have to have at least a passing understanding of the world if we're to participate in a properly democratic process, and all this movie does is try to keep a whole bunch of people confirmed in prejudice and ignorance, and voting as a bloc for whoever is scummy enough to use the appropriate trigger-words in their speeches. What's really going on here is not evolution vs. creationism, because there can only ever be one winner of that one on the battleground of fact. What is really at stake is access to knowledge and the capacity and opportunity for independent thought, and the makers of Expelled are squarely on the side of the bad guys.

Marc Lostracco

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:39:51 -0500

The concept of eugenics existed long before the Nazis. Also, Darwinism ≠ evolutionism. Darwin was wrong about a lot of things, and the science of evolution involves much, much more than Darwin's work. "Darwinists" is a term being used as a rhetorical tool against scientists by the right wing, who are intentionally mislabeling them in the same way how "pro-family" actually means "anti-family" and "fair and balanced" actually means "unfair and biased." The most offensive thing about this movie is that it is positioning ID as a valid scientific counter-theory to evolution, and claims that those rejecting the defensible, scientifically undisputed mountain of evidence confirming the existence of evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt are discriminated against and muzzled by the godless, "atheist elite." It's alarming that there are massive swaths of kids being insularly homeschooled in this erroneous school of thought under the guise of sanctioned, "science" education, and that many will perpetuate this "documentary" as a confirmation of their beliefs.

Ling

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:52:20 -0500

I haven't seen the film, so I can't comment on how they expressed the idea, but there is definitely a link between Darwin and forced sterilization/abortion/Nazism. Eugenics and Social Darwinism draw on the concept of natural selection and apply it to humans, and some of the most extreme proponents (the Nazis) believed that only the fittest should be allowed to survive. I don't know if the film explained that clearly though. I think the movie sounds interesting, especially since it's coming at it from a sociological and not scientific point of view. Evolution is such a controversial topic and is often blindly defending or attacked, more so than any other scientific theory...even ones that similarly threaten a literal interpretation of the Bible. Where's all the Lyell hating? I got to say that I hate comments like the one David Toronto made. It's great to talk about these issues in a mature, intelligent way.

Miles Storey

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:37:44 -0500

Every time I hear someone calling a critic an "elite" it makes me shudder, especially when they turn around and describe another as a "pathetic nobody in some town in Wisconsin".

David Toronto

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:03:50 -0500

This whole ID business leaves me wondering one thing: how does it justify the clowns like John Baird, Charles McVety, and Michael Coren? Doesn't their very existence disprove the ID theory? Just asking, y'know.

matty

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:10:18 -0500

Great review, thoughtful and well balanced.

Acadie

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:05:00 -0500

Well if old Ben there bothered to look he would see religion is also part of evolution. This film is a joke and panders to the already self deluded. I am very familiar with this idiotic film and have seen a copy of it already, what it does it try to pass off ID ( Idiotic Design) as some sort of real science. I am intolerant of all religion and not one has any redeeming quality, none.

davedave

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:55:16 -0500

Stein has turned into a right wing jackass. He suggests that Nazi atrocities were the product of atheism. Pretty stoopid.