So, apparently Ben Stein is a Creationist.
And he’s making a movie, the gist of which appears to be that freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed because… well, this is where it gets fuzzy. He claims:
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator.
Has anyone personally told you what you are allowed to think? This is the most ridiculous claim I’ve read all week. I’d love to see him support this argument. His justification appears to be that he’s heard some people say that they wouldn’t hire people who believe in intelligent design.
If going that far out on a limb wasn’t bad enough, he digs himself into a deep hole with this selectively-ignorant name-dropping:
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being.
He’s quite right that scientists of the past professed a belief in a higher being. Let’s ignore religious funding sources for a moment. Thing is, it wasn’t until relatively recently that we had any plausible explanation for the complexity in the world we see around us. Humans crave answers, and where no scientific answers are handy, superstition fills the gap. It is completely understandable that history is brimming with theists, for this reason alone.
His name-dropping is meant to imply that great intellects like theirs would be stifled today, but you have to assume that they would be Creationists if they were alive today for this to make any sense.
Let’s say you were going to hire a scientist and after a brief discussion you realized that he:
Today, you’d never hire this person. There is a difference between freedom of thought and willful ignorance.
Well, actually, maybe there isn’t. You should be allowed to be ignorant in a free society. However, why anyone should have the obligation to hire you is beyond me.
The point is, way back in Galileo’s day, you wouldn’t expect even the best scientists to accept a lot of what we know today. Because science is a process and you can’t just jump ahead to the answer. I imagine these great scientists would understand the science if they were allowed to study it, but they can’t be used to bolster arguments about Creationism because the world has changed too much since they lived.
I thought Ben Stein was a conservative. It sounds really odd for a conservative to be arguing that some organization should be forced to hire someone who is not up to their standards. But of course, this issue involves the conservative boogeyman “universities” and the hero of our conservative story “Judeo-Christianity.” Suddenly, the idea of a merit basis goes out the window when they want to peddle their beliefs as science.
I may actually see this film when it comes out on DVD. But I expect it will be a bunch of badgering of scientists. Already, according to comments on Stein’s blog, comments have been deleted and a blog entry itself has been deleted. They claim they didn’t have to use any trickery to get their footage of scientists for the film, but it turns out that they duped scientist-blogger P.Z. Meyers into being in the film. This does not bode well for the intellectual honesty of the film.
But who actually needs intellectual honesty when you’ve got a supreme being and the Truth on your side? Many religious people feel they do. They’re just not Creationists.
Posted by James at August 23, 2007 10:14 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Well, pooh. I'd always rather liked him, even when I disagreed with him, but this is a bit much.
mj
Posted by: mjfrombuffalo at August 24, 2007 7:28 AMYeah. I thought he was an eccentric, but a lovable eccentric. Now it turns out he's just a prat. Apparently, lying is not a sin.
Posted by: briwei at August 24, 2007 9:23 AMProfessor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty.
he ask one of his new students to stand and....
Prof.: so you believe in God?
Student: absolutely, sir.
Prof.: is God good?
Student: sure.
Prof.: is God all-powerful?
Student: yes.
Prof.: my brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill, but God didn't. how is this God good then? Hmm?
Student: (student is silent)
Prof.: you can't answer can you? let's start again, young fella.. is God good?
Student: yes.
Prof.: is satan good?
Student: no.
Prof.: where does satan come from?
Student: from..... God.
Prof.: that's right.. tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: yes.
Prof.: Evil is everywhere, isn't it? and God did make everything.. . correct?
Student: yes.
Prof.: so who created evil?
Student: (student does not answer)
Prof.: is there sickness, immorality? hatred? ugliness? all these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student: yes sir.
Prof.: so, who created them?
Student: (student has no answer)
Prof.: science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me son... have you ever seen God?
Student: no, sir.
Prof.: tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: no, sir.
Prof.: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student: no, sir. i'm afraid i haven't.
Prof.: yet you still believe in him?
Student: yes.
Prof.: according to empirical, testable, demonstrable, protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. what do you say to that, son?
Student: nothing. i only have my faith.
Prof.: yes, faith, and that is the problem science has.
Student: professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof.: yes.
Student: and is there such a thing as cold?
Prof.: yes.
Student: no sir. there isn't.
(the lecture theater becomes, very quite with this turned of events.)
Student: sir, you can have lots of heat even more heat, super heat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. but we don't have anything called cold. we can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. there is no such a thing as cold. cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. we cannot measure cold. heat is energy.. . . cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(there is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre).
Student: what about darkness, professor? is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof.: yes. what is night if there isn't darkness?
Student: you're wrong again, sir. darkness is the absence of something. you can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light . . . . . but if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it’s called darkness isn't it . . . , if it were you, would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?
Prof.: so what is the point you are making, young man?
Student: sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof.: flawed? can you explain how?
Student: s i r, you are working on the premise of duality, you argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. you are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. sir, science can't even explain a thought. it uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. to view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. . . . now tell me, professor. . . . . . . . do you teach us students that they evolved from a monkey?
Prof.: if you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, i do.
Student: have you ever observed evolution with our own eyes, sir?
Prof.: (the professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)
Student: since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion sir? are you not a scientist but a preacher?
Student: is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain? Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it?...... no one appears to have done so... so, according to the established rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable, protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.
with due respect, sir. how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(the room is silent, the professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable. )
Prof.: i guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.
Posted by: Steve Torrus at August 27, 2007 11:56 PMWow, thanks for taking the time to cut and paste something you can find anywhere on the freakin' intertubes to my humble blog.
I'm assuming you're the author. Can you please finish the tale and have the student actually answer the questions? Oh, and while you're at it, could you get a professor in there who actually knows something about science instead of a lousy strawman?
kthnxbye
Posted by: James at August 28, 2007 8:17 AMI love the part where the professor "begins to realize where the argument is going." It is sad that anyone could read this babble and think that it is "going" anywhere, or that somebody realizes it's "going" somewhere, even though it makes no sense to them. Since they are accustomed to taking things "on faith," I suppose that isn't a stretch.
Posted by: Maggie at August 28, 2007 12:52 PMHey Steve, most professors I know aren't that stupid as that one. Come to think of it, most college students I know aren't as stupid as that one too.
Nice try though. Thanks for the cut'n'paste.
Posted by: Chuck S. at August 28, 2007 10:01 PMWhat an odd and contradictory viewpoint Ben Stein holds. I followed your link to his site and you managed to put his viewpoint much more clearly than he did.
How could people be refused jobs because of what they think but haven't expressed? Maybe recruitment agencies have some amazing new tech that reads your mind.
And in the backward non-telepathic-scanning world that the rest of us live in, is it even remotely likely that a college looking for a mathematics teacher would ask what a candidate believed about evolution?
Surely views on evolution would only matter to an academic institution hiring biologists.
And if this means would-be biology teachers aren't getting jobs because of their refusal to have learned any biology, who would be surprised?
I claim my biology tenureship now. I don't actually know anything about biology but I imagine I could put that right by study. Unlike those "biologists" who don't seem to have even grasped the simple point that their subject has nothing to do with theology.
Though, both words end in "ology." This might be a bit confusing to the sort of people who believe that ID is a scientific theory.
Posted by: heather at August 30, 2007 4:15 PM