The Antichristian Phenomenon

Let me first preface this critique by saying that prior to this I had a lot of respect for Ben Stein. I have read his commentary on the economy and I quite enjoyed it. I always took him for a realistic perspective and didn’t think he would fall victim to this kind of a work. I am dismayed at having seen him take this direction. At first I saw what Stein’s point was, but as I learned more and more about this documentary and how he treated the scientific community, all I have to say is it’s underhanded. He apparently tries to create this huge controversy in the scientific community and he sensationalized the topic a little too much in this documentary, to the point where I’m wondering how much he’s getting paid to back this up. My one fear for those who see this is that they will not look at it from an intellectual perspective, and rather look at the sensational points that Stein pointed out to give a rather “damning” image of science and the scientific community…

The basic premise of the documentary was apparently not to favor one side or the other, but to show that the scientific community is apparently abusing their privilege in academia (that’s called “favoring” last time I checked). He gets scientists that make claims how their lives were ruined, but have been refuted on “expelledexposed.com” if you want detail explanations. Now I should point out that this documentary has almost nothing to do with science. This documentary is about what is happening within the community and if there is some knowledge and teachings that are being suppressed. Stein presents fairly convincing evidence that shows that this could quite realistically be taking place in the American scientific community; unfortunately it appears to be a major fabrication.

What sparked all this? Why, Creationism and the religious sector of course. I don’t think there is any secret that there is a huge divide between these two sectors in the U.S. Sometimes it feels like the plight Galileo went through never ended.  We tend to view the organized religions as an oppressive entity that wants to keep the people from being free thinkers. What Ben Stein shows us is that the scientific community, which is so critical of the religious community, may be guilty of the exact same thing! Honestly, I’m outraged by such a concept because you simply can’t take the higher road and be a hypocrite about it, it’s just nonsensical. Then it turns out that Ben Stein is the one participating in a dishonest approach to this, claiming to show that Intelligent Design is being suppressed from science in schools (which it rightfully is, it’s not science), he turns around and takes very specific interviews in hopes to embarrass scientists like Richard Dawkins, because he couldn’t provide an answer to “how do you think life began.” After Dawkins pointed out that he didn’t know, then Ben forces him to try and come up with something on the spot, so Dawkins spouts off a possible example, when it was pretty clear that he wasn’t 100% taken with the explanation himself. This makes it looks like the largest opponent of Intelligent Design and Creationism doesn’t know what he believes, when the whole point is that he doesn’t believe the answer is the Abrahamic deity of the Old Testament, the end. He said that, but Ben wouldn’t let up as if the man that already said he has no answer somehow could come up with something revelatory and provable. No, it doesn’t work like that. Naturally that isn’t the full interview, but due to editing we didn’t see that in theaters.

In fact Stein went to the level that barely involved religion. I was pretty surprised about this, since this followed my viewing of another documentary called “Flock of Dodos” which basically pitted science against religion. Stein decided to show that there is a divide within the scientific community. I will point out that, while I am a proponent of Darwinian Evolutionary theory (yes, it’s more than just a random notion), I was in no way swayed to the other side at the end of this documentary, which is not its purpose. In fact a lot of the scientists that strayed from the generally accepted theory did not say that Darwin was wrong. Granted some did think he was wrong, but for the most part they were saying that the Darwinian theory isn’t a hundred percent complete, which it isn’t and science freely admits this right now. However, they can show time and again that evolution IS a fact, it’s the part that the single origin of life that’s the question right now.

In terms of Microbiology, Darwin is gravely lacking and this is probably due to the fact that there is such a huge world of microbes out there and you can’t expect a small portion of the scientific community to focus on the origins of every single one. It’s going to take some time, but in todays spoiled world of instant gratification people expect science to turn around proof in an hour. Again, it doesn’t work like that. They bring up the point that the evolutionary theory of species variation doesn’t hold water, this concept doesn’t even hold 100% water either. What about the new hominid fossils found in Chad, called the Toumai fossil, that have much stronger lineage between apes and the Lucy fossils? Sounds like a very possible bridge to me. Stein does go on at length about Intelligent Design, but frankly that doesn’t answer any questions either. He doesn’t show how it is truly the proof and the right way to think of things scientifically. If anything it’s addressed as an opinion, and scientific rigor isn’t based on opinions. Is it possible that our universe is intelligently designed and there’s a creator behind the curtain? Of course that’s a possibility. But you can make the same argument for literally everything and anything. Such as why do I like the style of music I like? The answer could be that I was designed to do so, but that doesn’t quite give me a fool proof answer. That’s not an answer as to why I like Black Metal and someone else doesn’t, it makes no sense, but you can obviously present that as a possible theory to the query and anyone can lie with statistics and probability to make the point appear “true”. The same is true for anything else in the world.

Unfortunately the way Intelligent Design is being promoted within the community has a fairly lacking quality. I can see why science is taking such an adverse reaction, because the way it’s presented is that it feels like a science stopper! For example, if one scientist can’t figure out how something came to be he or she may feel obliged to say, a higher being must’ve been involved. I get that feeling whenever I read “Darwin’s Black Box” by Michael Behe. Then three hundred years from now a completely different scientist with new technology at their fingertips may have a long drawn out and very correct answer. I can see how the scientific community could view this as a dangerous idea. However, this does not give them the right to silence other scientists who may find credence in the theory. You can believe whatever you want regardless of how wrong you are; just don’t force it on someone else as a fact is all I ask. It’s a truly foolish notion too, because the Intelligent Design argument is literally non-testable. You can’t prove that some other being or whatever designed organisms to work the way they do. You can prove that with computers because humans obviously made them, but it won’t work the other way around. So why this possibly has a place in science is beyond me… it just doesn’t even fit. For hundreds of years people erroneously believed the world was flat till that got proven wrong too, so are we to repeat the same crazy mistake of believing something that is improvable once again just to satisfy a few people who think it adheres to their “God” hypothesis more congenially? At least until it can be proven.

One thing I was disappointed to see Stein show in his film is going over the probability theory. This is the theory that the chances that life would exist on this planet is almost zero. Thus it must be a miracle that life exists at all. This whole statistics and probability concept has no place in this forum. Honestly, what are the chances that life exists on this planet? One hundred percent! Life is here isn’t it? People need to stop making this argument with probability, because it’s inherently useless on a mathematical level. The answer is a hundred percent and once people get over this fact we can move on and start looking at something much more realistic instead of crunching meaningless numbers.  And no, “random mutation” is not as random as people seem to ascribe it. It’s weighted to favorable traits, so favorable traits are more likely to be passed on than unfavorable; I hope people can grasp that very simple mathematical principle of weighted probabilities in that sequence. Yes I’m fully aware of all the planetary notions physics has for us living in the green zone which is perfect to support life. Guess what, during the life of our star (the Sun) that’s going to go away. So as that special little zone erodes are you then going to claim how perfectly designed this whole solar system is? Wait, you’ll be dead, you won’t care about making fantastical and erroneous claims…

I acknowledge that I am not the average viewer. I consider myself to be very well read and pretty well educated and I further approach everything with a very analytical eye. That being said, Ben has over sensationalized this topic, which has already been over sensationalized. I think this is a very dangerous documentary, especially if viewed by religious fundamentalists, because this will then be used as ammunition to their arguments (when there really are none). This is also why I think the scientific community is afraid to discuss the discrepancies in Darwinian Theory in a public forum. It’s a very sad concept, but it’s also very realistic. I have spoken to far too many people that adhere to the thought that the Earth is only six thousand years old due to the dates ascribed to the Bible. What Stein did correctly was to show Intelligent Design theory in the light that it is inherently irreligious in concept. This would hold far more weight to their proposal, but I’m personally afraid of the religious view that this will help their six thousand year old Earth theory. Both theories are just wrong and they’re not scientific either. It’s a belief and it’s based on faith and it is not testable in a laboratory. That’s the fact of the situation.

Now the biggest problem I had with this film was the relation between the Darwinian path into Nazi Germany. This just came right out of left field. Were there Nazi scientists that were influenced by Darwin? Of course there were. I’d challenge someone to find a country WITHOUT a scientist that supported Darwin in the 1940’s. Furthermore, I felt like Stein was unnecessarily putting forth the Darwinian concept to show it was an influence on Nazism and Hitler’s concept for ethnic cleansing. But this is only part of the story. He didn’t even once point out that Hitler was also influenced by religion. One scientist pointed out that if you read “Mein Kampf” you can see Darwinian Theory in the influence. Is that true? It definitely is. But if you read “Mein Kampf” (and I have, for the record) you will also find that Hitler modeled his rise to power after the rise of power of the Catholic Church. He had a great respect for this institution, not to mention he was obsessed with religious relics. Hitler was also hugely influenced by Neitzsche, so maybe Philosophy was the real problem of the holocaust? Or how about “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” the document that Hitler based virtually all his anti-Semtism on. No, clearly that’s not the primary factor; it was Darwin and his very dangerous theory. Honestly, humanity has been using any excuse it can to kill, look at Judaism in the book of Numbers. Biblically, the term “dooming” a city means to basically destroy everything: kill all women, children, and men. This happens a lot in the Old Testament. Last time I checked that’s the complaint people are making against Darwin. How about Karl Marx and his Communism concepts? Hitler hated them too and he wanted all of them dead, which had nothing to do with Darwin, that was a political maneuver, so maybe its politics? While we’re going crazy we can go back and say how horrid metallurgy is because mankind made swords out of metal then killed fellow man. See science is a huge problem. Honestly, if you’re going to make it look like Darwin is a primary fault of the holocaust you need to tell the whole story. I’m not sure that’s what he intended, but that’s how it came off.

Frankly, I felt like Darwinian Theory was being demonized by Stein in the sense that it was one of the root causes for Hitler’s ideology, which just isn’t true at all. I realize Ben’s of Jewish descent and how it probably hit home for him once that scientist mentioned Hitler and Darwin in the same sentence, but I felt like that part was overly done. Frankly, it’s far too touchy of a subject to bring people out into a forum to discuss a theory that’s already too touchy. However, I do admire Ben for balancing it off a little with the Eugenics programs the U.S. was running at the time in tandem with Hitler’s regime. I think this gave us the right perspective that it wasn’t just a Nazi Germany concept. Unfortunately, I think the average viewer is going to walk away equating Darwin with Hitler in the same concept. Especially since there are so many people out there today who think Hitler was an atheist and there are now a new group of people saying the holocaust was a conspiracy that never actually happened. This is absolutely crazy and bringing that period of time into the argument only makes it far more of problem for the uneducated peoples in the world today. Pretty soon we’ll have Darwin sitting on Hitler’s cabinet as an adviser because no one knows their history anymore.

Yeah, I wrote a long review for this. It deserves a long response. Congratulations if you made it through this treatise against some of this documentary’s gross flaws. This is coming from someone who actually thought Ben Stein’s commentary was well done, but this is just tasteless. I will now await the barrage of trolls and spam from all the Intelligent Design proponents out there, but please at least try to explain why I’m wrong. I believe in giving the best reviews possible, with as much critical analysis as is necessary. Telling me Intelligent Design IS a science with no real backing is not a realistic reason as to why this review isn’t helpful. I’m actually a pretty reasonable fellow and I enjoy great discussions on this topic, but only if people are willing to listen and are at least fair and balanced. Not backing up your words isn’t being fair or balanced.

As I mentioned above visit www.expelledexposed.com to find out more about what’s really going on behind the scenes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 4:11 am and is filed under Culture, Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.