A friend just sent me the link to Ben Stein: Expelled, a forthcoming documentary that deals with intelligent design and chronicles Ben Stein's "confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers" (source).
The Expelled Blog has been around since August (read Stein's introductory post), so this may have been discussed ad nauseam in the blog world. But if there are others who, like me, have taken a joyful and extended holiday from the blogs, I thought it would be worth linking again here.
Stein approaches the issue based on the fact that a free and progressive society should have the freedom to discuss intelligent design without fear of discrimination and persecution.
The Expelled site has several videos, including a lengthy 'super trailer' (pictured above). Check them out here, or view the teaser trailer @ youtube embedded below.
RELATED
Ben Stein's homepage
Stein on Bill O'Reilly (youtube video)
Stein @ technorati
As personal note, this documentary is especially interesting to me given that the Fellowship Associates residents just finished reading and discussing Nancy Pearcey's, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study Guide Edition).
Technorati Tags: BenStein, intelligentdesign
How did life and the universe come to be? An honest scientist must candidly admit that science has not yet been able to answer this question definitively.
A variety of natural theories of origins have been proposed. A scientist’s professional integrity requires that he or she critically examine each theory and point out areas where it falls short of providing a full and adequate explanation of the empirical data.
What evolutionists do not like – what some find intolerable – is that a critical examination of natural explanations and their shortcomings inevitably leads people to consider the possibility of supernatural explanations. Evolutionists have decided for themselves (and hold it as one of their most basic core beliefs) that they will not acknowledge even the possibility of an unseen being that possesses the power to design and manufacture the universe and its living beings. They personally refuse to accept the idea of a living God.
It is, of course, their right to make this choice for themselves. The problem enters when they seek to impose their personal choice on others whose minds are still open to all possibilities. Their personal animosity toward the idea of a supernatural explanation of origins causes them to be less than honest in their teaching of science and in their treatment of others who do not share that animosity.
In their teaching they feel compelled to insist that some natural explanation provides a good and satisfactory explanation of origins when in fact every natural explanation that has been offered to date contains serious problems which an honest scientist should probably label fatal flaws. But rather than call attention to those flaws they become willing participants in a conspiracy of silence. They skew their teaching with a view toward hiding the truth.
And if any brave soul has the professional integrity to refuse to be a part of that conspiracy, he or she is professionally crucified, in spite of whatever positive contributions he or she may have made to the advancement of true science.
When the forces of the state and the scientific establishment are arrayed behind one theory in such a way as to squelch all legitimate criticism of it, true scientists must object. When scientists are not allowed to criticize a prevailing theory and propose alternatives, true science does not advance. Science advances when all theories are presented and considered in light of the empirical evidence.
Posted by: miket | March 21, 2008 at 01:09 PM