Six Things Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know
Scientific American lists 6 prevarications from Ben Stein's Expelled.
In brief:
1. Stein quotes Darwin selectively to manipulate his message.
2. Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a sham.
3. Scientists were interviewed for film under false premises.
4. The "employee" fired from the Smithsonian was never actually employed there.
5. Science doesn't reject creationism because of atheism.
6. Not all evolutionary biologists are atheists as the movie claims.
What's more is that the movie pilfers intellectual property left and right.
See more on how Expelled completely misrepresents the scientific community.
Update: the NY Times calls Expelled "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time."
The movie opens tomorrow. I won't be going. If you go, be sure to bring your creationist bingo card. I'll buy lunch for the first person to get five canards in a row. From skeptico.
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Science rejects creationism because it's untestable.
ReplyDeleteBut Christianity should reject creationism because it's just such bad theology. This is an angle that should get better press. Unfortunately, Christians are as Biblically illiterate as most people are scientifically illiterate. A shame too, since their immortal souls depend on it. Many are called, but few are chosen. (In science, that's more like "Many are cold, but few are frozen.").
The bingo card is great, but needs a URL explaining each entry. I'm imagining a bunch of people yelling Bingo and leaving.
ReplyDeleteMany people in mainstream fundamentalist Christianity are taught that a literal interpretation of Genesis is inconsistant with an earth millions of years old and inconsistant with species being created by God over millions of years. If you read the first few verses of Genesis carefully, you will notice that the earth existed prior to the six days of creation. In Genesis 1:1, the earth is created. In verse 2 it already exists, covered by water. There is Bible evidence outside of Genesis that suggests that the earth was not originally created in that state, so some event may have occured between verse 1 and verse 2 that resulted in the earth being covered in water and in darkness. This entire time period could have been billions of years. Then starting in verse 3 is an account of how God renewed the surface of the earth, repairing the damage and restoring life that previously existed. This first chapter of Genesis, even when taken literally, is consistant with the fossil and genetic evidence and it is consistant with the teaching that life was created by God.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems with evolution as it is taught is that it is taught as proven fact, but proof requires that you look at both sides of the issue, and science has never proven that God has not created the species. Science is not equipped to do that because science does not consider and examine supernatural causes or theological explanations for why God created life in the way He did consistant with the physical evidence. So science is limited to the study of natural physical processes only. The best science can say, if it is honest, is that evolution is science's best explanation for how life might have arisen naturally if God did not create life supernaturally. But science cannot prove that evolution actually happened.