Questions that aren’t properly answered won’t go away
It’s been a week since Expelled was released into the theaters. That’s enough time for dozens of movie reviews; blogs about it; and blogs about other bloggers views, even from people who didn’t see the movie. So it’s safe to say that the movie has been successful — in getting people to talk — and ask questions.
I had been itching to see Expelled, since my friend John (from Michigan) told me about it, and Wednesday night I saw it. This morning my facebook friend John (from California) told me about Dinesh D’Souza’s (Hoover Institute - Stanford) AOL News article where DD says:
Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can’t. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can’t bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET.
ToTheSource is running a side by side comparison of viewpoints.
Terry W. Frizell says: Stein deals with the huge question, “Where did life come from?” and therefore the movie is a “must-see”.
Seldom Wrong still had not gone to the movie, but asked - Is it reasonable to think that life arose by chance?
… as noted by D’Souza, Expelled exposes Richard Dawkins’s belief that life on earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. That is genuinely as good a demonstration as one can imagine that it’s not reasonable to think that life arose by chance…
We assert further that evolutionary biology and ID are really only different in very narrow areas that have to do with these very questions: is it reasonable to think that life arose by chance, and is it reasonable to think that an intelligence designed the universe?
Mary Alice has already seen the movie twice, and gets to the heart of the matter.
Kevin Porter said the movie was “quite excellent” and Richard Dawkins reminded him of a dog chasing his tail.
Brock Gill says: A new front has been opened in the culture wars.
Universalist Steve questions the honesty, ethics and marketing techniques of the films producers.
Monado from Toronto asserts in her Science Notes that: “An invincible ignorance of science seems to be the real pre-requisite for Intelligent Design believers” — and appears comfortably ignorant of her own presuppositions.
Chris Mooney at Science Progress says the movie is a deeply dishonest piece of propaganda.
Images of Hitler and the Berlin wall frighten people. Movies are supposed to have images — moving images. That’s what movies do. Movies sell ideas with imagery to make a point. Vodka advertisements use imagery to sell products, and the pundits just don’t like a movie that mixes imagery with science, religion, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy.
But, there is more at risk than selling vodka. Absolutely, says Kevin Clark at the Charcoal Fire: “This is the most thought-provoking thing to come out of Hollywood in a long time” … Expelled Exposes Irresponsible and Irrational Scientists :
“Darwinism indeed was the philosophy that Nazi scientists held. Darwinism’s theory of natural selection was the foundation of policies and propaganda that helped build the menace of the Nazi regime. And Darwinism is today building the menace of academic totalitarianism and the abortion machine. And yes, this is the problem: Scientists have squelched philosophy as a pseudoscience, and in doing so have themselves become the philosophers.”
Daniel Wigington says in his hopefully-not-boring blog:
Stein prods the Darwinists enough that some of them — including Richard Dawkins — make some unexpected statements about the possibility of intelligence in biological design and the philosophical implications of Darwinian theory.
Phil said,
April 27, 2008 at 9:34 pm
did you download the video above? It apparently is no longer available. I’m assuming it must be good if you thought it worthy to post.
admin said,
April 28, 2008 at 5:44 am
Actually the video-link I posted is the longer movie trailer found on YouTube, at this URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLZi-yU2d7s
It’s working for me this morning, so try it again, or perhaps your flash plugin is not working in your browser?
Monado, FCD said,
April 29, 2008 at 10:54 am
Josh Timonen, who saw the movie at a preview screening, points out that Stein persistently asked Dawkins to speculate on some way in which ID could be science, just so he could falsely imply that Dawkins accepts ID as long as it doesn’t involve God. See “Expelled Overview, Richard Dawkisn section.”
Josh also points out that it’s the Expelled team putting make-up on Dawkins and mussing his hair: “I’ve been I’filming Richard for the last 2 years, and we don’t put makeup on him. This is just another underhanded attempt to make Richard look bad.”
To quote Professor Dawkins himself:
That’s not a presupposition, that’s an observation. If you’d care to explain the science behind Intelligent Design to me, I’m all ears. In fact, I’ve been waiting for years to hear it.
Monado, FCD said,
April 30, 2008 at 8:03 pm
To see what I mean about ignorance of science, read this article which I wrote in 2005 and copied to a blog page in 2008: Molecular Evolution and Michael Behe.
Pauli Ojala said,
May 1, 2008 at 4:13 am
Ben(jamin) Stein is under heavy artillery for ‘exaggerating’ or ‘going easy’ on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the ‘Politics-is-applied-biology’ Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I. It was Charles Darwin himself, who praised and raised the monstrous German Ernst Haeckel with his still recycled embryo drawing frauds etc. in the spotlight as the greatest authority in the field of human evolution, even in the preface to his Descent of man in 1871. If Thomas Henry Huxley with his concept of ‘agnostism’ was Darwins bulldog in England, Haeckel was his Rotweiler in Germany.
‘Kampf’ was a direct translation of ’struggle’ from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Seinen Kampf. His application.
Catch 22: Haeckel’s 140 years old fake embryo drawings have been mindlessly recycled for the ‘public understanding of science’ (PUS) in most biology text books until this millennium. Despite factum est that Haeckel’s crackpot raging Recapitulation/Biogenetic Law and functioning gill slits of human embryos have been at the ethical tangent race hygiene/eugenics/genocide, infanticide, and Freudian psychoanalysis (subconscious atavisms). Dawkins is the Oxford professor for PUS - and should gather the courage of Stephen Jay Gould who could feel ashamed about it.
Some edited quotes from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline/edit them a ‘bit’):
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf
The marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between “white” and “colored races” was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).
The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould’s scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87). Typically, the operations hit blacks the most in the US, poor women in the Europe, and often the victims were never even told they had been sterilized.
Mendelism outweighed recapitulation (embryos climbing up their evolutionary tree through fish-, amphibian- and reptilian stages), but that merely smoothened the way for the brutal 1930’s biolegislation - that quickly penetrated practically all Western countries. The laws were copied from country to country. The A-B-O blood groups, haemophilia, eye colours etc. were found to be inherited in a Mendelian fashion by 1910. So also the complex traits and social (mis)behaviour such as alcoholism, schizophrenia, manic depression, criminality, rebelliousness, artistic sense, pauperism, racial differences, inherited scholarship (and its converse, feeble-mindedness) were all thought to be determined by one or two genes. Mendelism was “experimental” and quantitative, and its exaggeration outweighed the more cautious biometry operating on smaller variations, not discontinuous leaps. Its advocates boldly claimed that these problems could be done away within a few generations through selection, persisted (although most biologists must have known that defective genes could not be eliminated, even with the most intense forced sterilizations and marriage restrictions due to recessive genes and synergism. Nevertheless, these laws were held until 1970’s and were typically changed only when the abortion legislation were released (1973).
So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938 ) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the ‘Up’ of the ancient city from Plinius’ Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17). Today, Swedish state church is definitely the most liberal in the face of the world.
Hitler’s formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the “Nordics”, a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel’s position on the ‘Judenfrage’ was assimilation and Expelled-command from their university chairs, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?
In 1917 the immigration of “defective” groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census. Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the “nordic” balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).
Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,
and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Regarding us Finns, Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the “yellow” group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.
Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century. And she went Full Monty.
Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. In England, they are fertilizing human embryos for research purposes and pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys, ‘legally’. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.
I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.
pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm