A little bit of comment in SSS

Ashleigh 2022-03-25 08:01:02

By now you've probably heard of "Expelled", the new Ben Stein anti-evolution crocumentary. It officially opens today, as I speak that's April 18th. Of my job, I've had the misfortune of sitting through this film twice now, at least I was getting paid. The film tries very hard to connect Darwin with the Holocaust. Toward the end Stein reads the following quote from the book Descent of Man "with savages, the weak in body or mind, are soon eliminated, we civilized man, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." That's the end of the quote, and when he finishes reading the quote, Ben Stein intones the guilty verdict by naming the source--Charles Darwin.


Oh my! It sounds like Darwin actually did provide a rationale to the horrific practices of the Nazis. Well, I've been covering the anti-evolution crowd for over twenty years. So I immediately suspected that the propaganda makers had engaged in what's called "quote mining". You examine the writings of somebody you want to smear, and then selectively quote those portions that appear to make your point. I bet that whatever came immediately after the quoted portion would be something that Ben Stein wouldn't want you to hear. My research took all of about 3 minutes. I went to a full text of "Descent of Man" online and found the quoted passage, and then found the sentences that come right after where Ben Stein stopped quoting.



So here is Charles Darwin again from "Decent of Man": "The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner previously indicated more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest heart of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient. But if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit within overwhelming present evil--leads to kind of the very opposite impression of Darwin that the film makers want you to take away.


Mind you none of this has anything to do with whether or not Darwin's scientific findings were correct, they were, but Ben Stein and his cronies, in their selective use of passages written by a great man, merely showed themselves to be so very small. We have a package of coverage about "Expelled", and its misinformation at our website Sciam.com. Also check out a resource page put together by the National Center for Science Education, www.expelledexposed.com.

View more about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed reviews

Extended Reading
  • Barrett 2022-03-25 08:01:02

    I thought the film was a critique of the theory of intelligent design, but then I gradually realized that something was wrong, and there were accusations of evolution everywhere. If this film is from conception to dialectics to creation to editing, it is really awesome. The reason why I believe in the theory of evolution is because the defense focuses on academic freedom, freedom of speech (using the Berlin Wall as an example) and moral belief (using Christian goodness). Faith and Hitler's Nazism), but the protagonist interviews the biologist Dawkins (who is reading his "The Selfish Gene") and asks him how life on Earth came about, he says The origin of life may be endowed by life from extraterrestrials, but the aliens came through evolution. What about the origins of aliens? This is the biggest weakness of intelligent design theory, and it will return to the problem of thousands of years - creationism. Because if the intelligence of aliens did not come through evolution, it must have been created by an all-knowing and almighty God. Just like a dog can't understand the super intelligent electronic dog, if the dog can think, it will definitely ask who created the electronic dog. This endless question is not the spirit of science and philosophy

  • Kale 2022-03-25 09:01:23

    It was released by the Pharaoh of Religious Studies in college.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed quotes

  • Ben Stein: What if after you died you ran into God, and he says, what have you been doing, Richard? I mean what have you been doing? I've been trying to be nice to you. I gave you a multi-million dollar paycheck, over and over again with your book, and look what you did.

    Richard Dawkins: Bertrand Russell had that point put to him, and he said something like: sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself?

    Ben Stein: [voice over] But, if the Intelligent Design people are right, he isn't hidden. We may even be able to encounter God through science, if we have the freedom to go there. What could be more intriguing than that?

  • David Berlinski: Suppose we find, simply as a matter of fact, that our scientific inquiries point in one direction: a creator. Why should we eliminate that from discussion? 'Strang verboten'? How come? Why?