The New Road

Ben Stein: Expelled

Once in a while Ben Stein comes up with something I actually agree with, but other times he's just completely off the rails. He's a kind of conservative in slightly liberal sheepy clothing. Or at least he was, until he created "Expelled." Expelled is his new documentary on Intelligent Design. Watch the trailer, it's an interesting take on pitching ID. Instead of trying to present facts he is saying the ID believers are unfairly persecuted (complete with Holocaust imagery no less). So we should put ID into the classroom because we feel sorry for them.

I wonder how the ID leadership feels about the movie. If you listen to the leadership all you hear is, "ID is not creationism" and "ID is not Christianity or even religion". Which is really for legal reasons since the Supreme Court has made it clear that creationism and religion have no place in the science classroom. The ID relabeling is bullshit, but it's an important facade for them to maintain.

With that in mind the have a look at the message board where people post their experiences with those horrible scientists trying to keep their beliefs down. It's all about creation and Christianity. Ooops. Could ID really be about Creationism? That's just crazy talk.

On the ID note I kinda get why people have picked up on it. It's great marketing. When someone asks you "Do you think some intelligent agency was involved in building life on earth?" it's very easy to say yes. I get that. The problem is in the details of what ID is actually trying to do.

First, to get ID into the classroom the ID scientists have to prove that God actively made some adjustment to evolution somewhere along the line. They started with the evolution of the eye, but they couldn't defend that. So now they are down to the 'flagellum', which is a little tail on a bacteria. Seriously, they are saying God's impact on the genesis of man was to put a tail on bacteria. Seriously. It's offensive. If you believe in an all powerful God this has to offend you.

Second, in order to accept ID as science we would actually have to change the definition of the scientific method to allow for 'supernatural influence'. Which means that science would actually have to teach astrology, numerology, parapsychology, tarot cards, all that stuff. They become, literally, scientific? Tired of using an equation to figure out how much fuel to put in the 747 to get to New York? Use Tarot Cards! Too lazy to do the experiments to figure out which receptors to target in a cancer drug? Just look at the tea leaves in the bottom of your mug.

You think I'm joking? Behe, the number one proponent of ID was asked on the stand in Dover whether his definition of science would include Astrology. His answer was yes.

Oh, and one last thing. If you abandon evolution and go with ID then you can no longer test drugs on cats, dogs, monkeys, mice or whatever. Unless you are developing a drug for the cat, dog or whatever. Why? Because according to ID we aren't related to cats, dogs, or anything like that. So drugs that work on them won't work on us. So we have to test drugs for humans on humans only. Good luck with that.