Ben Stein’s anti-evolution film raises hackles
Did Darwin's theory of evolution provoke the Holocaust? That's the claim being advanced by actor/economist Ben Stein in his new film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Called "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time" by the New York Times, the film, which debuted last week to dismal modest* box office response, proposes a direct correlation between evolutionary science, Social Darwinism, "godlessness," and Nazism.
Stein's assertions about the evil intentions of evolutionary biologists have some in the scientific community crying foul.
"Unfortunately," John Rennie wrote recently in Scientific American, "Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film's attacks—all recycled from previous pro-[Intelligent Design] works—would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency."
Indeed, by Stein's logic, Reb Gedalia Nadel z"tl, an esteemed pupil of the Hazon Ish who advocated reconciling Torah with modern scientific knowledge – particularly on the subject of creation and evolution, would have been a Nazi sympathizer.
Such absurdities aren't preventing Jews from taking the bait, however. On Friday, April 18, the day of Expelled's premier, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and a vocal opponent of Intelligent Design theory, received a hostile email from a Jewish viewer of Stein's film, stating: "You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. [...] We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!"
Shermer forwarded the email to famed geneticist and author of the 2006 atheist manifesto The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, who penned a public response to the email, refuting Expelled's claims and informing the email's angry author that "you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others."
Likewise, in an op-ed published by MSNBC, Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, called the film "immoral," adding that,
To lay blame for the Holocaust upon Charles Darwin is to engage in a form of Holocaust denial that should forever make Ben Stein the subject of scorn not because of his nudnik concern that evolution somehow undermines morality but because in this contemptible movie he is willing to subvert the key reason why the Holocaust took place — racism — to serve his own ideological end.
*[Update] The article I had cited for box office figures has been updated since my initial writing of this entry and now shows that the film performed better than originally anticipated.
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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.”
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.
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Virgil H. Soule
04/24/08 05:42 AM
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