Apr 24 2008
Ben Stein’s horrible joke of a movie
Those of you who follow the neverending assault on science and reason known as “Intelligent Design Theory” are probably familiar by now with the new movie out now about it by former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. PZ at Pharyngula has been writing about it quite regularly, so if you need some background, go over there and poke around.
The long and short of it is it’s an hour and a half of pure bullshit, persecution complexes, faulty logic, and something that will appeal to the incredibly ignorant. Arthur Caplan eviscerated the movie in a review at MSNBC. The worst thing about the movie, though:
Then, and most culpably in terms of the downright immorality of the movie and everyone associated with it, we are presented with what will happen if we keep teaching Darwinism in our schools. The logical consequence of Darwinism is Nazi eugenics: the state directed murder of the handicapped, mentally ill, political dissidents and racial “inferiors”!
No, I am not making this up. The core of the movie consists of a sequence in which Stein visits the former German psychiatric hospital at Hadamar where the mass sterilization and murder techniques were first perfected that were later to be used in the concentration camps. Then Ben heads to Dachau, the first concentration camp, where 35,000 people died. These excursions are followed by a visit to Down House, Charles Darwin’s country home outside of London where Ben looks warily at the memorabilia of Darwin’s scientific work that led him to posit the theory of evolution. Stein finishes this sequence by bravely visiting a statue of Darwin where he stares the long deceased now marbleized evil-doer down while making it clear who is directly to blame for Hitler, the sterilization of tens of thousands of German children, the death of 6 million Jews and the deaths of countless other millions of victims of Nazism and those who died fighting the Nazi regime.
This frighteningly immoral narrative is capped off with a lot of shots of the Berlin Wall, old stock footage of East German police kicking around those trying to escape through the wall to the West and some solemn blather by Ben, who calls upon each one of us to rise up in defense of freedom and knock down a few walls in order to get creationism back into the curriculum at Iowa State, Baylor, and other dens of American secular iniquity.
I suspect this movie will rake in a lot of Christianist bucks, no surprise considering how much money they give away to other bullshit-spreaders. And of course, anyone with even a cursory understanding of evolution (sadly, too few Americans) either won’t waste their time with this garbage, or will come away with even more ammo against the IDiots.
11 Responses to “Ben Stein’s horrible joke of a movie”
Posts
Mr Ryan-
The movie severly underperformed. The producer’s expectations were $12 million gross opening weekend. Actual first weekend gross was under $3 million. And it is dying a quick death after opening weekend taking in under $250,000 per day, and falling fast.
This is after it shot its wad calling the faithfull for the opening. Look for the movie to come out on DVD by summer. It will likely be shown in church basements from then until rapture.
Well, perhaps that God they revere so much has a sense of humor, after all. Got a link with that data?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/tools_data/charts/boxoffice/weekly_top_10.jsp
I guess the movie came out on April 18th.
I saw the movie. What I enjoyed was the fact that Dawin himself said debate is what needs to be done. No one needs to except one theory over another. If it’s God, Aliens, and just chance, it’s the ability to have an open conversation, and remain flexible, not to toss aside 100% of anothers opinion because it isn”t your opinion. Aftter all, all of this is just theory, an educated guess. it’s sad when folks rant over those they disagree with, this isn’t constructive, but is a form of communistic thinking, Commarde, think as we do, or shut up, and die. I suggest everyone see the movie, just to understand others opinions, with out comdemnation. Cheers, Hogist
ps: tough typing in a bouncing automobile!
Thanks for stopping by, Hogist, but sorry, you’re flat out wrong.
“No one needs to accept one theory over another.”
Well, when we’re talking about science, yes, one does need to find a theory that best explains everything. And that is evolution. ID is not even a ‘theory’ in the loosest sense of the word, in that it has almost nothing that can be verified.
it’s the ability to have an open conversation, and remain flexible, not to toss aside 100% of anothers opinion because it isn”t your opinion.
In some cases that may be true, but evolution is not simply “an opinion”; it’s something verifiable, and is the basis of modern biology. Sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not all opinions are true.
After all, all of this is just theory, an educated guess.
Uh, no, it’s a theory backed up by mountains of evidence, and in the scientific definition, not ‘just a hunch”. An educated guess is not a theory, it’s a hypothesis. There is really no debate in the scientific community about this, and in regards to science, that’s the only one that matters, not of those who don’t know the difference between a theory and a hypothesis.
I have no desire or need to see the movie, as it does not present anything that is sound science, it has a religious agenda - not a scientific one, and is filled with ridiculous false monstrosities such as the allusion that the Holocaust was somehow Darwin’s fault. No thanks.
We’re having problems with the same nonsense over here in Europe. This “intelligent design” is pure superstition and isn’t worth any serious atttention at all, and it’s a crime (literally) to tell children or uneducated people otherwise. We also had an Imam (a sort of muslim pastor, the word means ‘he who comes first (leads)) who started about this ‘darwinism-leads-to-fascism’ idiocy. Fascism, eugenitics, the holocaust and all those abysmal things, were off-shoots of christianity (with some added nationalist and socialist flavours): centuries of anti-jewish christian propagandy (the Jews crucified Jesus Christ!) created the cultural context for what happened in nazi-germany.
Aw, Scherp, you’re destroying my assumptions that over on your side of the ocean there is so much more “evolved” than our side is on these matters. Or perhaps the hardcore religious threat in Europe is Islamic in nature, as the Christians aren’t so hot-headed there?
No, the threat is not completely islamic in nature. A professor (in natural science, no less) wrote a book on Intelligent Design. I don’t know the man personally, but colleagues told me he is a good scientist, but has not dealt with his early days in the so-called ‘bible belt’, a part of holland in which the protestant religion is still predominant, in all aspects of daily life (the situation in some communities is comparable to the Amish community). What has changed due to islam, is the behaviour of fundamentalist christians: they were used to criticism and had learned to respect other opinions, but have found a ‘partner’ now in militant muslims.
It’ll be interesting to see how that fundie partnership works out, because over here, they view each other as Satan, basically.
The difference between Europe and the U.S. is that in Europe, nobody who actually makes decisions takes ID seriously. In many districts the U.S., school curriculum is under the control of whatever yahoos get elected to the local school board.
Here in Europe (I say “here” just because I happen to be visiting my adopted country of Ireland at the moment), education and curriculum is left to educators and bureaucrats. So there is some protection from those with religious or political agendas. Not foolproof, but not as susceptible as our local school boards to the machinations of a few crackpots.
Speaking of islamic religion in schools - here in Ireland muslims were fighting for the right to wear head scarves in school. The Irish answer: It’s fine, as long as the scarves are in the school’s colors. (They all wear school uniforms here) How’s that for an Irish answer to an Irish problem?
-Mike
Of course Mike is right when he says that things are different (less serious) overhere in Europe. Still a member of the government proposed last year to pay some attention to ID in schools, next to darwinismn. Don’t forget that in Holland two of the three parties that form the government are ‘christian’: the biggest party is the CDA (christian democratic appeal, a centre right movement), the second one, much smaller, is really a christian-fundamentalist movement.
About the opposition christians-muslims: I know they view each other as satan in the US, but it’s completely different here. Muslims have a sort of alliance with christians because they are religious. They have a sort of alliance with socialists, because they’re unprivileged. They have a sort of alliance with communists, because they hate jews. If you think I’m joking: I’m not.