Expelled!: Stupidity, Greivous Insult, or Both?
For those of you who don't know, Ben Stein is starring in a new movie (I refuse to call it a documentary) called Expelled!. The movie's tagline is: "Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom. What they forgot is that every generation has its Rebel..." I can think of more influential people in Stein's generation, but whatever. The idea of the film is that American academia is censoring people with "smart new ideas" (read: intelligent design) from being successful. I could go into detail about how ID is neither smart nor new, but it's been done for me, many, many times. I have two big problems with this movie (or at least what I've heard so far; it doesn't open publicly until April). Problem 1 is the way the movie tries to portray the "problem" as an issue of free speech, and problem 2 is the comparisons that the producers try to make between real scientists and another famous historical group. Allow me to expand.
Imagine, if you will, that after I get off work today, I go down to Mercy Regional Health Center (the local hospital). I somehow get everyone who works in the hospital into a big meeting, all at once. Doctors, nurses, administrators, everyone. Perhaps I brought some sort of small refreshment, cookies or something, perhaps not; I leave that to your imagination. In any case, when everyone is assembled, I begin to tell them how I've discovered something wonderful. I have found a miracle cure made from crushed grasshoppers, Dr. Pepper, turpentine, and a formula of "snips and snails and puppy-dog tails". This potion, I say, cures everything from asthma to zephyrsma (shut up, it's hard to find a disease that starts with a Z). I have reams of evidence to support my theory, but no, I can't show them, because I must have left it in my other pants. The result will be that I am about to get laughed right out of the hospital. Is that my right to free speech being squelched? Am I being oppressed? Are my rights being trampled? No, not at all. I'm an idiot, and have just let every doctor in the hospital know it in no uncertain terms. Being laughed out would be merciful, though, when the full extent of my actions became known; while all the doctors were in the lecture hall listening to me, how many patients would die?
I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but only just barely. The people in academia are going to ignore you and laugh at you if you suggest things that make as much scientific sense as my bug-pop-turp-SSP potion did. It's not a free speech conflict, it's an issue of appropriateness. Science is based on observable phenomena backed up with lots and lots of evidence. This evidence comes from repeated testing by many, many scientists all over the world. As soon as a theory appears on the scientific stage that has just as much evidence as evolution does from so many varied fields (geology, genetics, physics, anthropology, chemistry, etc.), I will support it being taught alongside evolution. I am an advocate of free speech, and am very passionate about it. If this were a free speech issue, I would be all fired up.
The other aspect of the hospital analogy is that when real scientists are forced to stop and explain what they're doing, and why they don't pray for better results, it keeps them from doing real work. Admittedly, not all scientific research is vital, world changing stuff, but cancer research? Immunology work? Stem cells? Regenerating lost tissue? That's really important, possibly world altering research, and when scientists are held to the kind of thinking more appropriate to Inquisition era minds, it takes their time from the important work they're doing.
The second issue that I mentioned, comparing the work of scientists to the work of Nazis, is much more galling and offensive to me. Not even in the part that directly insults me (being that I am a scientist; well, a scientist-in-training), but the sheer devaluation of the human misery and loss of life in Nazi Germany. The sheer hubris behind the idea that academics not listening to crackpot theories is on the same level as 6 million murders (and that's just Jewish deaths, to say nothing of Gypsies, homosexuals, black, or any other minorities targeted) astounds me. Sheer bloody minded arrogance of this sort is intolerable to anyone who has actually thought about the death toll of the Nazi death camps, much less to the survivors and their families.
So shame on you, Ben Stein. Shame on you, Mark Mathis. Shame, for making a mockery of all those who have dedicated their lives to unlocking the secrets of the natural world. Shame, for callously ignoring the pain of millions of people in one of the worst tragedies in human history. And finally, shame for lying to your viewers, trying to make your whining out to be a violation of your rights. You have proven yourselves to have no intellectual, moral, or common decency, and as such, are people who have no business telling other people what a valid intellectual pursuit is. My hope is that this movie will be very forgettable, one that will soon be lost from the public consciousness. I'd hope that theaters will refuse to pick it up, but I'll keep my hopes reasonable for the time being.
Imagine, if you will, that after I get off work today, I go down to Mercy Regional Health Center (the local hospital). I somehow get everyone who works in the hospital into a big meeting, all at once. Doctors, nurses, administrators, everyone. Perhaps I brought some sort of small refreshment, cookies or something, perhaps not; I leave that to your imagination. In any case, when everyone is assembled, I begin to tell them how I've discovered something wonderful. I have found a miracle cure made from crushed grasshoppers, Dr. Pepper, turpentine, and a formula of "snips and snails and puppy-dog tails". This potion, I say, cures everything from asthma to zephyrsma (shut up, it's hard to find a disease that starts with a Z). I have reams of evidence to support my theory, but no, I can't show them, because I must have left it in my other pants. The result will be that I am about to get laughed right out of the hospital. Is that my right to free speech being squelched? Am I being oppressed? Are my rights being trampled? No, not at all. I'm an idiot, and have just let every doctor in the hospital know it in no uncertain terms. Being laughed out would be merciful, though, when the full extent of my actions became known; while all the doctors were in the lecture hall listening to me, how many patients would die?
I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but only just barely. The people in academia are going to ignore you and laugh at you if you suggest things that make as much scientific sense as my bug-pop-turp-SSP potion did. It's not a free speech conflict, it's an issue of appropriateness. Science is based on observable phenomena backed up with lots and lots of evidence. This evidence comes from repeated testing by many, many scientists all over the world. As soon as a theory appears on the scientific stage that has just as much evidence as evolution does from so many varied fields (geology, genetics, physics, anthropology, chemistry, etc.), I will support it being taught alongside evolution. I am an advocate of free speech, and am very passionate about it. If this were a free speech issue, I would be all fired up.
The other aspect of the hospital analogy is that when real scientists are forced to stop and explain what they're doing, and why they don't pray for better results, it keeps them from doing real work. Admittedly, not all scientific research is vital, world changing stuff, but cancer research? Immunology work? Stem cells? Regenerating lost tissue? That's really important, possibly world altering research, and when scientists are held to the kind of thinking more appropriate to Inquisition era minds, it takes their time from the important work they're doing.
The second issue that I mentioned, comparing the work of scientists to the work of Nazis, is much more galling and offensive to me. Not even in the part that directly insults me (being that I am a scientist; well, a scientist-in-training), but the sheer devaluation of the human misery and loss of life in Nazi Germany. The sheer hubris behind the idea that academics not listening to crackpot theories is on the same level as 6 million murders (and that's just Jewish deaths, to say nothing of Gypsies, homosexuals, black, or any other minorities targeted) astounds me. Sheer bloody minded arrogance of this sort is intolerable to anyone who has actually thought about the death toll of the Nazi death camps, much less to the survivors and their families.
So shame on you, Ben Stein. Shame on you, Mark Mathis. Shame, for making a mockery of all those who have dedicated their lives to unlocking the secrets of the natural world. Shame, for callously ignoring the pain of millions of people in one of the worst tragedies in human history. And finally, shame for lying to your viewers, trying to make your whining out to be a violation of your rights. You have proven yourselves to have no intellectual, moral, or common decency, and as such, are people who have no business telling other people what a valid intellectual pursuit is. My hope is that this movie will be very forgettable, one that will soon be lost from the public consciousness. I'd hope that theaters will refuse to pick it up, but I'll keep my hopes reasonable for the time being.
posted by Chainer at 9:29 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting...
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