Comments on: Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film raises hackles

By: Instapundit on the Creationism/ID/Evolution debate. >> liberal.family

Instapundit on the Creationism/ID/Evolution debate. >> liberal.family — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:31:00 +0000

[...] lets his thoughts be known (through someone else’s quote, albeit) regarding the recently flared up Creationism/ID/Evolution debate. I agree with this sentiment as [...]

By: Virgil H. Soule

Virgil H. Soule — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:02:38 +0000

One problem we have today is that things are occurring that we don’t understand. Global warming is apparently a reality. Plant and animal species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Are the two phenomena connected? The Bible provides no insight into problems such as this. Nor does Intelligent Design.

Darwin’s theory of evolution and its modern derivatives provide the beginnings of answers to these questions. Genetics introduces new forms into our world and natural selection tests them for viability. If they survive the tests, they pass their genes to succeeding generations. By understanding the test criteria that natural selection is applying, we can begin to change our ways in order to protect our world from ourselves.

Even though we’ve been booted out to fend for ourselves, this world is still our Eden and we are responsible for it. Answers the scriptures don’t provide we must find for ourselves based on what we see around us.

Some people characterize science as atheistic. It is not; it is agnostic. Science does not and cannot say anything about God one way or another because a formal, objective (“scientific”) proof of God’s existence cannot be written. We can’t make a spirit detector or a meta-telescope to look into supernatural realms and therefore have no way of testing for God’s existence.

Ben Stein’s movie is a propaganda piece produced purely for political purposes. It has neither scientific nor religious value.

By: Christopher Gambino

Christopher Gambino — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:53:39 +0000

I saw the movie and one thing kept coming to mind….evolution is just as much a religion as any other and, in fact, takes more faith to believe. The part about a cells intricacy and complexity alone lead us to an intelligent designer.

My argument is that evolutionists don’t want to place themselves under an intelligent designer’s authority, and if intelligent design is given any credibility then they lose the ability to do whatever they want. I believe the Christian God was the intelligent designer in 6 days and him being creator, we must live under his authority; meaning what he tells us in the Bible. The Bible is a great book to learn about History and explains so much more about life, a relationship with the creator, and death. It is a plumb line to show us our own heart and sinful condition when we place it next to our lives.

Knowing what the Bible says about creation and the earth, we can come to some very simple conclusion about macroevolution—it doesn’t occur and evolutionist still can’t answer the question about where the first cell came from. The Bible is a historical book written by man thru the inspiration of God, and has been tested under intense scrutiny over time. The Bible tells us in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

By: Virgil H. Soule

Virgil H. Soule — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:42:24 +0000

Expelled is another attempt by Creationists - now using the ID masquerade - to subvert science education and the First Amendment prohibition of official religion. Getting their dogma into public schools would provide leverage to enable the Creationists to expand their influence into other areas of our government with the ultimate goal of making Fundamentalist Christianity the national religion. Freedom of speech is not the issue as the movie alleges. Creationists have all the freedom they need to preach their peculiar view of the world through religious channels. Our governmental system is secular and must remain so if we all are to remain free. I have not and will not see the movie because it is another attempt to dispense the same propaganda that Creationists have been peddling for years.

Virgil H. Soule
Frederick, MD

By: Carl Schmidt

Carl Schmidt — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:40:25 +0000

There is plenty of freedom in schools and universities to discuss the nonsense of intelligent design- in courses covering comparative religion or philosophy. What many supporters of this silly movie fail to comprehend is that ID fails one of the basic tests of science–it proposes no useful, testable hypotheses. This is why scientists view ID as a complete waste. It is not that professors are afraid to discuss evolution, they simply are not interested in wasting time on a belief that proposes no experiments and has no supporting evidence. Science is about the testable, real world, not the fabricated world of fairy tales, gods and imaginary designers.

By: Rejean Bergeron

Rejean Bergeron — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:41:41 +0000

I have seen the movie and its worth the price, nothing can hinder the Truth… Go see it !!

By: Dannel R. Ballesteros

Dannel R. Ballesteros — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:30:05 +0000

Mr. Ben Stein can be equated to David against the giant Goliath (Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism) What a Man! God bless him, his family and his Mission!

Dan

By: Ralph Gaily

Ralph Gaily — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:39:08 +0000

The only disturbing thing that came out of Ben’s movie is the now unveiled fact that there is no freedom within the schools and general scientific community to discuss honest scientific evidence if it threatens to pull the rug out from under the vain, and dishonest “professors”, and “scientists”. It is a slap in the face to every honest, true, scientist, and teacher in the past, to treat legitimate evidence in the shameful way portrayed in this movie. If Darwin would have had access to what we now know about the absolutely amazing, internal workings of an organic cell, he would have lept at the chance to “follow the evidence”. These cowardly “professors”, and so-called “scientists” of today are shamefully trying to protect their status, grants, personal reputations, careers, and egos….. all at the expence of legitimate science. Newton, Gallileo, and Copernicus would be screaming at these lazy bums for not opening up their eyes and seeing what is obviously in their faces….but willfully being ignored. “The heavens proclaim the glory of the Lord….the earth beholds His handiwork”. Wake up scientists and professors!! Bring honor back to your chosen professions. Seek the truth wherever it leads you……have some guts!! Ralph Gaily

By: Nathan Shuster

Nathan Shuster — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:24:13 +0000

Why such a nasty rejection of Stein’s documentary? Why such vilification? Why such gloating at its modest box-office take?
You would think that he has “desecrated” the secular Jews’ “dogma,” and maybe he did. As for myself - not a synagogue-going Jew and hasn’t seen the film - who lives in the real world, his thesis may not be so far off the mark.
When one looks at the enemies of Israel, they seem to come either from the poisonous swamp of fanatical Islam or from SECULAR and “enlightened” Europe. Who are its largest pool of friends in America?
Surely you all know.
Why they rather than the “free-thinking” university professors?
What group of Americans supports the destruction of the yet-to-be-born? Religious zealots? What Americans tolerate and defend pornography and its incidious and destructive impact on our children’s lives?
Are these people informed by religious faith and morality or are they products of “man is but a flesh-and-blood culmination of evolution” devoid of the divine?
Hitler was not a religious fanatic. Only those who embrace Darwin’s theory can easily embrace without guilt feelings the status of Super-man and their “duty” to clear the earth of “inferiors.”
A religious concept?
I don’t think so.

By: Neil Fiertel

Neil Fiertel — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:54:18 +0000

Jews have no argument with evolution and even the late Pope considered it to be well within the realm of acceptance as only fools who accept an ancient collections of writings as the absolute word of God believe in Adam and Eve as an exact event..It is laughable that this ignorant claptrap called Intelligent Design even gets ink in newspapers or that a movie theatre would show its foolish propagandist views as worthy of their screen space. It goes to show us all how poor scientific education has become in the US that people can watch this idiocy and not see something ludicrous in its assumptions, its inaccurate conclusions and its no knowing rhetoric. Freedom of Speech comes with it the idiots and flat earth theorists along with real understanding and scientific conclusions. Believe what you want but I am very angry that this Stein character tries to rub excrement upon what he does not personally believe by trying absurdly to tie Darwinian Evolution to the Holocaust. To use the deaths of my entire European family during the Holocaust to affirm his mischievous beliefs makes me want to upchuck. He is using Nazi tactics himself to tar scientifically sophisticated people with a eugenics tag. Eugenics as a movement by the way started amongst religious farming people in areas such as those of North America and Canada and in fact, Hitler used the policies for sterilisation passed by the former Social Credit Governemnt in Alberta as a starting point for his Nuremberg Laws. The head of that government was the equivalent to a born again minister. The Holocaust was promulgated by church going bigots who likely believed in Biblical accounts of human origins. The only government that actively attacked Darwinian Evolution was that of Stalin. Darwinism in the distorted form of Social Darwinism was not of his making, is not an acceptable belief amongst any scientist and is, if anything, a fascistic distortion of science and is a leftover from the 19th century as a pseudo science argument for brutality and racism. It has nothing ,whatever, to do with the great Darwin nor of the billions on this earth that know where THE human race came from and where all the animals and plants originated. MOST OF US ARE NOT FOOLS AS STEIN WOULD THINK. I SAY FOR SHAME TO HIM AND HIS SUPPORTERS. FOR SHAME.