EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed
This movie should be interesting. Regardless of anyone’s views on the subject, Ben Stein is a pretty interesting guy. He’s been involved in everything from political speech writing to hosting a game show, but I never expected him to do a documentary like this. Color me surprised. And impressed.
Benjamin Franklin:
You said this movie should be interesting,
In their review, Fox news said that it was “more than just a little boring”.
The movie is also getting ravaged for the visual pattern it uses of interspersing video clips of Nazi attrocities in with the interviews of scientists, pretty sad.
April 11, 2008, 9:41 amNeo:
It should be interesting.
The “reviewer” you mentioned is a gossip columnist for Fox News. His column is at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348468,00.html . I wouldn’t really call it a review, more of an opinion piece. Still, I rarely base my moviegoing decisions on reviews. Reviewers are far too jaded, and it’s clear by the rest of this guy’s comments that he’s pushing an agenda, just like everyone else is doing. I’d rather see it and make up my own mind.
At least they didn’t chop up their interviews like one of Michael Moore’s wastes of film stock.
As for the discussion of Darwin’s influences on Hitler’s ideology, I understand it may be politically incorrect to say so, but when you read passages like the following, from Descent of Man, you can perhaps see where the documentary is coming from:
You may want to change your chosen pseudonym, unless you’re really named Benjamin Franklin, by the way. He was a deist with some ideas I think you’d find pretty wacky: http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf2/articles.htm
April 11, 2008, 10:07 amBret:
They clearly remove the end of a Dawkins quote, removing all context (the one about being hostile towards theories opposing evolution).
Scientific American does a good job summing up the shortcomings of this movie: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=ben-steins-expelled-review-john-rennie&print=true
April 11, 2008, 3:29 pmNeo:
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Update: Got there, and had already read it. Anyway, as for the Dawkins quote, I’m assuming you mean in the “Super Trailer” — they excerpted all of the interviews there, for the sake of fitting them in the trailer. It remains to be seen whether it’s treated that way in the movie itself. According to this review:
I’ll go see for myself.
April 11, 2008, 3:40 pmElissa:
>.<
April 12, 2008, 4:51 pmNeo:
Yes, yes. I know.
April 12, 2008, 7:26 pmBenjamin Franklin:
Neo-
My name is Benjamin Franklin, and my theology falls more in line with that of Albert Einstein.
I have never seen any of Michale Moore’s films, so I really can’t comment on them.
One thing I do know, is that when I was watching Ben Stein on Hannity & Colmes this past Friday night, he said that “Hitler was a linear descendant of Darwin”. Thats just utter nonsense, and totally incorrect.
I also read in the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention “Texan” interview with Logan Craft (executive producer of Expelled):
TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?
CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…
Those kinds of things cause me to question any “facts” raised in the movie.
April 13, 2008, 3:50 pmNeo:
I think he may have misspoken a bit on that. I think it’s not completely unfair to say that the way of thinking was logically descended from some of the writings of Darwin. Certainly not that he is an actual descendent of Darwin.
It is the inevitable conclusion, however, that the whole “all men are created equal” thing doesn’t really fly in a strict interpretation of darwinistic worldview — which is why no modern Darwinists would hold those types of positions, today.
April 13, 2008, 11:54 pmBenjamin Franklin:
Neo-
You are taking the “all men are created equal thing” out of context. All men (and women) are most certainly not created equal. Some are smarter, some are dumber, some are stronger, some are weaker, some are taller, some are shorter, no one can deny that.
What it does means (in Darwins age, and before, by Enlightenment thinkers, as well as in our age) is that all men are created equal in that they should be endowed with the same natural rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and that those rights should be protected by law in an equal fashion.
Let me ask you this. Had Henry Ford not started assembly line construction of automobiles, would assembly lines not have been eventually envisioned and put into use? Had Curie not discovered the presence of X-rays, would their presence never had been discovered? Had it not been Charles Darwin that published the theory of evolution, would it not have entually brought to light?
How then, in any way, does the genocidal actions of a madman negate the validity of the change in species change over time?
April 14, 2008, 9:55 amNeo:
Benjamin,
I am not of the opinion that Hitler’s atrocities have an effect (either supporting or negating) on the validity of the evolutionary world view. I am, however, defending the attempt of the film to show the relationship between the two.
Let me describe the scenario I am picturing, to perhaps explain the stance I’m taking a bit more thoroughly. This is more of a philosophical question than a scientific one, I’m aware.
If we view the races of mankind as Darwin did in the previous quote, as existing on some sort of continuum from less advanced to more advanced, such that distinctions can be made about one group being more evolutionarily advanced than another, then it seems that one or more of several outcomes become likely:
1. Genocide by those who are deemed (or deem themselves) more evolved than others will be rationalized as a continuation of survival of the fittest and a belief that the ends will justify the means.
2. The “less evolved” members may be subjugated by their “superiors” into slavery or a working caste.
3. If, as I would hope, part of what we consider more “advanced” about the human mind is its capacity for compassion and institution of certain laws and rights endowed mankind, we will actually retard the pace of our own evolution by artificially propagating the genes of those less suited to survive, eventually being “caught up to” by other species.
4. Non-violent eugenics may be employed to continue advancing the gene pool, possibly by leaps and bounds far beyond what natural selection would provide. The most advanced of these procedures would no doubt be available to only the countries/individuals with the means to finance them, turning the “class divide” into a “gene divide.”
5. Eventually, in any case, if we assume that evolution is indeed a fact, mankind will produce offspring that are unable to mate with humans and give rise to a new species. It seems to my admittedly meager intellect at this point unavoidable that at some point in the future of that species, they will come to look at homo sapiens as we might a neanderthal. Further still, a chimpanzee, and at some point long after, a dog. Will the self-awareness of homo sapiens be enough to grant us equal rights by that time, assuming our branch of the evolutionary tree still survives? I don’t know, but at that point, more than ever, I can see the cycle begin anew at #1.
This is why it seems to me that it is fair to draw the relationship the film does. It seems inevitable that at some point, genocide is the end result. The only question is whether or not those doing the killing are far enough removed evolutionarily from those being killed for it to be classified as genocide, or something akin to the woolly mammoth’s extinction. The core flaw in Hitler’s “logic,” so far as the logic of a madman can be called so, is that he wrongly perceived this line to have already been crossed and therefore dismissed the ethical quandary.
April 14, 2008, 11:06 amElissa:
Science = is, not ought. The theory of evolution no more justified genocide than the theory of gravity justifies me pushing you down the stairs.
April 14, 2008, 3:12 pmAnti-semitism and genocide predate Darwin by, oh, forever.
Neo:
I never said it justified it in any way, shape, or form. I said that the correlation, not causation, was a fair one for the film to draw.
A bit sensationalist? Yes. But it’s a film. That’s kind of the point — to sell tickets. I don’t think it was outside the realm of fair play.
April 14, 2008, 3:33 pmNeo:
Incidentally, Ben Stein does clarify this point twice in the film, which makes me wonder why so many people were so quick to jump down his throat before they saw it.
April 21, 2008, 12:07 amElissa:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know&page=3
This SciAm article is pretty good. Nothing new in the last 2 points, but the first 4 are interesting.
April 21, 2008, 10:51 amElissa:
You explained to me that the point Ben Stein is supposed to have clarified was that the theory of evolution (or Darwinism, or is there a difference in your mind?) was somehow “necessary but not sufficient” for Nazism, which leaves me with a lot of questions. Which part was it necessary for? Presumably not the anti-Semitism, or the genocide, since a cursory examination of history will find multiple examples of those things before Darwin was born.
April 23, 2008, 11:02 amNeo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
His claim was about Nazism itself. Not genocide or anti-semitism or racism, but the specific justifications that Hitler used involving the reasons he did what he did.
Accuse me, or him, of committing a naturalistic fallacy if you wish, but what is his particularly violent brand of eugenics if not one application of evolutionary theory? I believe that was where Stein’s clarification was pointing. I wish I had the direct quote available, but I could not find it.
April 23, 2008, 11:46 amElissa:
“Accuse me, or him, of committing a naturalistic fallacy if you wish, but what is his particularly violent brand of eugenics if not one application of evolutionary theory?”
The evolutionary theory, like any scientific theory, tells us how things have happened. It tells us how things will happen (to the extent prediction is possible) if we take various courses of action. It does not tell us what we should do. Darwin himself made quite an astute observation about the ethics of eugenics, if you read point 1 of that SciAm article I linked.
You might as well argue that metallurgy is wrong, or bad, because the Nazis used guns and tanks. Indeed, I would think metallurgy is far more to blame for the Holocaust than evolutionary theory, since it’s clear that technological advances helped make the killing much more efficient, while history has proven it’s quite easy to find other, equally compelling reasons to kill some Jews unrelated to eugenics.
April 23, 2008, 12:57 pmNeo:
I did read it, and the argument Stein makes is not materially changed by the inclusion of the omitted parts. Besides, we could always opt to also include the excerpt I referenced above from Descent of Man, if we’re looking to further analyze the conclusions that can be drawn from Darwin’s theories.
It’s all well and good to say “science == is, not ought” which fits nicely on a bumper sticker, but the body of scientific knowledge informs decisions every day.
Let’s assume for a moment that I was in possession of an ACME-brand anvil, and I was at the top of an apartment building. A man that I dislike walks out of the building below me, and I drop my anvil, killing him. Were my intentions murderous?
Let’s assume for the moment that current scientific knowledge asserted that the anvil would float beautifully into the air, like a particularly ominous-looking balloon, which I intended to use to frighten my enemy. One could assume, then, that my desired ends did not match the actual outcome, and therefore I did not intend to kill the man.
Of course, knowing what we do about gravity, we can safely assume that I had indeed intended to murder him, because I know that this anvil has considerable mass and will accelerate toward earth until such time as upward resistance meets or exceeds downward force.
Either way, I would have taken an action to achieve a desired end, informed by what I believe I know about the world.
You’re right, of course. Science doesn’t inform us what we ought to do, but it informs us about what we might expect to achieve, and therefore is directly applicable to determining intent. Uncovering evidence that people drilled holes into the heads of other people might be construed as evidence of a barbaric society, until we understand that the intent was to provide treatment for a hematoma in an emergency situation.
Nazism was a philosophy, not just a single act of genocide. It made certain ethical judgments based on specific beliefs about the outcome that would be obtained through actions. One can say the regime did unethical things, which I would agree with. However, it isn’t a question of “is” vs “ought” but a question of “why.” A large part of the “why” would be nonexistent apart from evolutionary theory. It isn’t a matter of faulting the theory for the actions, but saying that the philosophy would not exist (in the form it did) apart from certain prevailing theory. This is why the distinction between necessity and cause is important, and Stein made this distinction.
April 23, 2008, 2:03 pmElissa:
This conversation is clearly no longer productive; you’ve heard my arguments and don’t feel their force. I’m a bit disappointed, but I’m sure we’ll both survive.
April 23, 2008, 2:31 pm