Saturday, December 22, 2007

Aha!

... so this is what Expelled is about: Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I now agree with Jeff McDonald's comment here, since I happen to agree that "the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature." In other words, science is about how nature works. Religion is about something else.

Dave Lull sent me what Ben Stein has to say about the Times piece. It's only available on subscription, but I think it only to quote a bit of it:

But then why am I in the article? I didn't schedule the interviews. No
one I interviewed ever asked me what the movie was about. So far as I
know, all of the people interviewed were paid and paid well. None of
them ever complained to me. So why am I in that article?

First, because I told the reporter that I thought Darwinism sometimes
led to racism and to the Holocaust as evil people believed they would
just help along "survival of the fittest." This, according to the
reporter, is a view commonly held by Creationists. So now I am a
Creationist, you see, a knuckle-dragging Creationist like the William
Jennings Bryan character in Inherit the Wind. ("Mr. Stein, do you now
or have you ever believed in a God of Creation?")

Second, because I denied that I ever misled anyone. So there's a photo
of me in a silly outfit with the caption, "Ben Stein denies he misled
anyone." The caption--of course-implies that I did mislead someone but
that I deny it. Now here comes the great part: NO ONE IN THE ARTICLE
ACCUSES ME OF MISLEADING HIM OR HER.

1 comment:

  1. Frank, hope the worst of the cold is past ..... and that you are on the mend.

    Thanks for the link to Dean's article ..... while it covered some material I had already read, there was also some new material there for me ..... which largely reinforced my earlier views of the film.

    Re" "In other words, science is about how nature works. Religion is about something else." ..... right on! It reminds me of something about which Steven Jay Gould once wrote, "non-overlapping magisteria," where science and religion deal with fundamentally separate aspects of human experience. He believed that, as long as each stays within its own domain, they co-exist peacefully.

    History tends to cite men-of-science at odds with men-of-faith ..... but there have been occasions where individuals were both ..... to the betterment of both aspects of human life.

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