Kingdumb come: Ben Stein makes a movie

Ben Stein—known for his immortal mantra of “Bueller…Bueller…” in the 1986 film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”—is a smart guy.

An undergraduate of Columbia University in New York, Stein was Valedictorian of his graduating class at Yale Law School, where he was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Following graduation, Stein served as a speechwriter for President Nixon (where he was rumored to have been the famed “Deep Throat” informant to Bob Woodward) and President Ford, a trial lawyer for the Federal Commission and a professor of economics and political science at Pepperdine University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Clearly, Stein is a smart guy, so I wondered why he would take part in a film as seemingly ignorant, shameful and perfunctory as “Expelled: No Intelligent Allowed.”
The documentary, which opened in wide-release April 18, boldly declares that Stein “blows the horn on Suppression! Science and Education has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has its rebel…”

In this case, the “smart new ideas” of today’s scientific world mean Intelligent Design, aka, creationism in a cheap tuxedo—the argument that our world, in all its complexities, had an intelligent creator behind its design (meaning, a Judeo-Christian God) and is not the product of Darwinian Evolution by Natural Selection.

When I originally heard of the prospects for this film back in 2007, two thoughts crossed my mind: one, that challenging Darwinian Evolution, a scientific theory of insurmountable evidence, is simply intellectual suicide, and two, that a man as accomplished and presumably intelligent as Stein would know better.

So I saw the movie…and was amazed as what I saw. But to better demonstrate why it is so misguided, I presented members of the ECC faculty with some of the more powerful claims that Stein and his company of propagandists make about evolution. Taking part were David Zacker, a Professor of Humanities with a PhD in the Philosophy of Science, and Marc Healy, an Instructor of Anthropology who teaches a course in Human Evolution at ECC.

Claim #1: The Theory of Evolution has failed. Darwin could not comprehend the complexity of life and his rudimentary ideas reflect this.

Stein’s first major argument of the film boldly professes that evolution, as a theory, has failed. While no explanation or hard data is ever provided to suggest how this has occurred, and what led to the falsification of the theory, an argument that is presented is that Darwin, in the late 1800s, could not account for the complexity of the cell or life as we know it today.
Therefore, his theory cannot account for these complexities, and the theory is flawed. As Zacker puts it, Stein & co. are going about it the wrong way.

“That’s not the way to complain about it,” Zacker said. “You don’t criticize the theory because you don’t like the person or the person didn’t understand something else. We just call that an ‘ad hominem,’ you’re attacking the person, not the theory.”

Furthermore, as Healy explained, the statement that evolution cannot account for the complexity of life is also flawed.

“The reason Darwinism has become the central organizing theory of modern biology is precisely because the theory is extremely successful at explaining relationships and phenomena,” Healy stated. “The nearly universal acceptance of the modern synthesis of evolution within biology is not based upon some cult of personality or ancestor worship- it's based upon the continued success of the theory to generate answers.”

Claim #2: Scientists know of these flaws, but they suppress anyone who questions the theory because they are afraid of dissent.

This becomes the bread and butter of Stein’s film—that “smart new ideas” are being kept out of the classroom by a greedy, paranoid and totalitarian majority that supports Darwinian Evolution; unfortunately, this is also flawed.

Firstly, there is nothing “new” about the idea of Intelligent Design.

“Intelligent Design is not really a new idea- it was first put forth before Darwin as the ‘watchmaker’s hypothesis,’” Healy stated.

By “watchmaker’s hypothesis,” Healy is alluding to the “watchmaker analogy” that was used by 18th century philosophy William Paley, who argued that in viewing a watch, we understand that the watch, in all is intricacies, had a creator, just as our universe.

Secondly, the film seems to be misunderstanding the process of science and the nature of scientific theories.

“All theories have flaws in them,” Zacker said. “Every theory does. You go to any scientific theory, [and] there is something that is unanswered.”

“If I say to you,” Zacker continued, “‘Ok, my theory has some flaws in it [and] there are some things that it can’t explain, or that I can’t explain yet,’ and you don’t understand that that is…part of the way that science works, you might think that that means that your theory is bad, when it doesn’t mean that, it just means that you have more work to do with the theory.”
So, Stein & co. misunderstand what it means for something to be a “theory,” which is to say, a scientific explanation backed by years of research and mountains of supporting evidence. Scientists have absolute faith in their theories, and to claim any have major flaws is to undermine the years upon years of data and effort that supports a theory’s claims.
And finally, the film’s supposition that scientists do not question evolution is entirely flawed.
Healy stated, “Evolutionary scientists question evolution all the time- there are great debates that rage about different aspects of the theory. The basic tenets of the theory, however, are no longer seriously questioned.”

Claim #3: By suppressing Intelligent Design, scientists are breaching academic freedoms and our basic freedom of thought.

Expanding on Stein’s second claim of totalitarianism, this third statement proclaims that freedom and liberty—characteristics that are what America stands for—are being violated by the monopoly that evolution holds in science classrooms.

Once again, this attitude comes from a misunderstanding of science.

As Healy stated, “ID [Intelligent Design] isn’t really being ‘suppressed.’ Rather, it’s being rejected, just as astronomers reject astrology, and historians reject holocaust deniers.”
Zacker also spoke on this idea, saying, “It [ID] is probably suppressed in the same way that a Geologist argues that the earth is flat gets suppressed. There’s just no evidence for creationism.”
And so is the film’s misunderstanding of how science works. Evolution has built the reputation it holds because of the preponderance of evidence that support its claims in a WIDE variety of disciplines, such as geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology, to name a few.

Zacker said, “If there is evidence, or somebody can find the evidence [for ID], scientists will listen to them seriously, but until you start finding the evidence and start showing the evidence…and it’s gotta be a body of evidence, [but when] you start showing that, it will start coming around.”

Problem is, the evidence is not there.

Claim #4: Evolution makes you doubt religion and embrace atheism.

With this claim, the film slowly and subtly begins making a case for organized religion, stating that bad, secular atheism draws people away from good, holy creationism.

“This is a mere canard,” Healy stated. “People who put forth this argument deign to speak for all people of faith. Darwin eventually became an agnostic, and indeed his theory is entirely secular, but it does not negate the existence of God. At best it is entirely silent on the matter.”

Furthermore, it is ridiculous to think that an embracement of scientific truths—based on evidence and reason, mind you—would make someone abandon all sense of righteousness and morality.

Healy stated, “Few would take seriously the idea that geologists who claim the world is 4.6 billion years old, or physicists who claim the universe began with a big bang some 14 billion years ago, or the tens of thousands of educators who teach these ideas, are leading people down the dark passages of heresy towards the sinful gates of apostasy. This is easily recognizable as falsehood.”

Interestingly, what is often presented in the religion/science debate is people of a certain religion imposing their viewpoints on science, as opposed to accepting the evidence and views that science provides.

“It seems to me that they’re going the opposite route,” Zacker said, in speaking of theists who criticize evolution. “They’re trying to find a theory that rationalizes their view as opposed to finding a theory that makes sense and then using that to inform their view.”

Claim #5: Evolution de-privileges humans, and our society is decaying as it embraces its ideals.

Once again, the film makes broader strokes with its claims, this time increasing its scope to our current society and claiming that many of the problems that currently exist are due to our embracing of bad, secular evolution. This is simplistic beyond measure.

“That would be such a simplistic view of the way that society works that I couldn’t imagine that actually being the case,” Zacker said. “You can track the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome. Does that mean that Christianity leads to the fall of Rome? I don’t think so. Is there a connection? Maybe, but it’s much more complex than just Christianity.”

Also, while the fifth claim of the film may have a certain emotional resonance with certain viewers, in reality it does little to counter the claims of evolution, which was supposedly Stein’s intent on making the film.

“What makes evolution right or wrong is that there is evidence for or against it based on testing,” Zacker said. “So, again, that’s rationalizing, looking at the world [and saying] ‘I don’t like the results, therefore, evolution must be wrong.’”

Claim #6: Evolution is the blame for the holocaust, as its world view of "survival of the fittest" heavily inspired Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime.

Stein goes for the ultimate emotional appeal with this whopper of a statement, suggesting that Darwin could possibly be to blame for the largest systematic slaughter of human beings on record. Sadly, in making this statement, he makes one of the most common—and embarrassing—faux pas anyone can make regarding evolutionary theory.

“‘Survival of the Fittest’ is a term coined by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin,” Healy stated. “It's a very popular misconception and not a very accurate summation of natural selection either, which is based upon reproductive success, not survival.”

So, not only does the film put words in Darwin’s mouth, but it totally misunderstands what Darwin originally argued with Natural Selection, which simply states that, A) variations will exist in species, B) a variation that affects a proportion of that population positively or negatively will increase or decrease that proportions reproductive success, and C) this variation will eventually result in new species. In other words, the theory states nothing about “survival of the fittest.”

Beyond the film’s chronic misunderstanding, however, is its failure to recognize that a statement of this magnitude is really a two-way street.

Zacker said, “If you take evolution, and you say, ‘Ok, here is somebody who believed in it, and they did really bad things based on their understanding of the view,’ and then you condemn evolution as a result, if you’re gonna be consistent, you’d have to virtually condemn every religion that’s out there, because everybody’s misrepresented a religion.”

Claim #7: Intelligent Design is a valid science and deserves to be taught alongside evolution in modern science classes.

This statement is incorrect because of one key point—Intelligent Design is NOT a science.
“ID can't be said to be science for a number of reasons,” Healy stated. “First of all, science seeks explanations rooted in natural processes, not supernatural occurrences. God may very well enact miracles, but if so they are outside the realm of empirical, naturalistic phenomenon that can be studied scientifically.

“The biggest difference between ID and a scientific perspective is that ID presupposes a conclusion and then seeks evidence to support it, which is entirely unscientific.”

These statements echoed exactly what Zacker said, that Intelligent Design is not a science because it is not testable.

“It’s either not testable or when the tests are conducted, we find that the evidence is against creation science,” Zacker said. “Being a good scientist, you’d have to reject the theory.”