Ben Stein, Scientific Crusader

Update: I’ve been Bad Astronomered! Welcome to everyone coming here from Phil Plait’s site.

(Image from Ono.)

You’re probably aware that fundie clowndick Ben Stein has a forthcoming movie about the alleged “Darwinist” conspiracy to suppress science. I’m expecting the film to be something on the order of the infamous Fox TV Moon Hoax “documentary”, which was full of outright lies and deceptive editing. When it comes out, maybe we can compare the two and see which is worse.

Fundiecast Cybercast News Service has published an interview with Ben Stein. Let’s take a look.

Intelligent design theory…

Wow! They don’t waste any time. The very first phrase is a lie! Intelligent design creationism is not a theory. The American Heritage Dictionary has a good definition of “theory”.

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

As you can see, ID creationism fails on three counts:

1. It has not been repeatedly tested.

2. It is not widely accepted.

3. It can not be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Let’s get back to the Cybercast article:

[A] new movie, “Expelled” starring Ben Stein explores how an “elitist scientific establishment” is apparently muzzling and smearing scientists who publicly discuss ID.

There’s no question that anybody claiming that ID creationism is science is being laughed at — not only by scientists but just about anybody with even a remote understanding of science — but there is no vast conspiracy to muzzle anybody.

The First Amendment is under brutal attack in the scientific community, Ben Stein, a former presidential speechwriter-turned-actor and commentator, says in the film, which opens in theaters on Feb. 12.

Really? Now the First Amendment is “under brutal attack”. Actually, that part is true. The attack isn’t coming from scientists, though. It’s coming from crackpot organizations like the Discovery Institute and Access Research Network that are trying to get their religious dogma (ID creationism) taught in the schools.

In an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service – with audio clips below – Stein contends that rigid Darwinists are silencing their critics in academia, which the film explores, and discusses how ID ideas are helping in cancer research and similar work.

Really? ID creationism cures cancer! Please, Ben Stein, tell us how!

Hello?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Apparently no one’s home. As is typical of creationist asshats, he makes wild claims and then never bothers to back them up.

Yet the ID research that could potentially produce medical breakthroughs, says Stein, is also being undermined by Darwinian scientists who don’t want ID research viewed as legitimate.

According to Ben Stein, there is cancer research being stifled by Darwinists because of some sort of philosophical agenda. I agree that would be bad. But apparently it’s OK to stifle stem cell research because fundies don’t like it. Yeah, Ben. Real consistent.

Now we get into the actual interview between Cybercast News Service (CNS) and Stein. In the interests of brevity, I will only excerpt parts of the longer answers. (You can go to the article to see that I’m not quote mining):

Stein: Science should always be in the business of attempting to disprove itself. Neo-Darwinian science is exactly in the opposite business of endlessly trying to rationalize itself – and reprove itself, you might say – reprove that it’s right without any kind of test.

Science is in the business of attempting to disprove itself. He is mischaracterizing modern biology, and not providing any support for his allegations. He also suffers from Kevin Wirth syndrome. He’s so fixated on Darwin that he has blinded himself to the advances in evolutionary theory that have happened since. No wonder he thinks evolution is outdated. He’s using a 150-year-old definition.

CNS: What sort of separation do you see or perhaps don’t see between creationism, on the one hand, and intelligent design? Stein: I believe in God and God created the heavens and the earth and all the life on the earth. But what other people, who are intelligent design people, think, I could not characterize.

At least he’s honest about his own motivations. Apparently old Ben isn’t above mischaracterizing others on his own side, though. Intelligent design is creationism, just a different flavor.

CNS: …[N]eurosurgeon, Michael Egnor, and another scientist, Jon Wells, who indicate that given how the cells are put together, with eye toward intelligent design, and with the idea that animal cells have tiny turbines – or if viewed as tiny turbines – he was able to formulate a theory that said in the event these things malfunction and don’t properly shut down and could break apart, this is the first step on the way to cancer.…

First of all, that isn’t a theory. It’s a hypothesis. Second, intelligent design creationism is irrelevant here. Viewing the organelles inside the cell as turbines may be useful, but ID creationism is not needed. If proponents are lumping this into their pile of breakthroughs resulting from ID creationism, they’re just plain cheating.

CNS: …He doesn’t explicitly say ‘a cure for cancer,’…

Wait. Is this the great big scientific breakthrough in cancer research that these retards alluded to earlier? It’s not even connected to their “theory”!

Stein: [T]here is this big issue about RNA and DNA, and whether RNA and DNA can respond to changes in the world around them. I think we say it can respond to changes in the world around them and that neo-Darwinians say it can only do that by random chance…

Again, Stein shows his colossal non-grasp of science. Evolution isn’t random. The mutations are random, but they are acted upon by the environment.

Stein: …We say the cell may have the possibility of doing itself in an intelligent way that there may be some intelligence in the cell itself…. We believe there’s some possibility the cell could have an intelligence of its own.

Ben Stein thinks that the cells can intelligently respond to the environment and reprogram their DNA accordingly. That’s pretty far-fetched, but we should never rule anything out. If it’s true, and they’ve yet to provide any data that it is, the mechanism would be naturalistic. If it’s naturalistic, then it isn’t intelligent design!

Stein: I was just overwhelmed by the fact, at least as I am told, that Darwinists have never observed natural species being originated…

Lie.

Stein: There’s not even a clear definition of what a species is…

Another lie, although nature doesn’t fit into clean boxes. There are always things at the edges that don’t quite fit our definitions.

Stein: …and the Darwinists have no theory whatsoever about the origin of life, none whatsoever, except the most hazy, the kind of preposterous, New Age hypothesis.…

A completely irrelevant separate issue.

Stein: …And I think our theory that there is a creator strikes even some people, even Dawkins very possibly, as more likely than it all happened by total chance.

Now Stein even knows what Richard Dawkins thinks!

Stein: [Richard Dawkins’] idea that there is a complete rock solid consensus [in favor of evolution] is completely wrong.

And Ben Stein is clearly more qualified to make that assessment than Richard Dawkins.

CNS: Why do you think the very idea or suggestion of intelligent design is so antagonistic to scientists who claim they have evidence? Stein: That’s a deep question.… One, if they are Darwinists and they owe their jobs to being Darwinists, they are not going to challenge the orthodoxy because that would challenge the whole basis of their jobs and their lives. So they are not going to challenge the ideology that has given them lush positions in real life.

Hey, Ben! Where are all of these Darwinists you’re always talking about? I’ve never met any.

Secondly, the whole point of science is to challenge itself. You made this unfounded claim before that there is some sort of conspiracy to retain a set of beliefs against all outside attacks. The only place I’ve seen that behavior is at the Discovery Institute.

Stein: Second thing, once people are locked into a way of thinking, they are unlikely to change.

OK. There is truth to that statement, but that refers to individuals. There are so many scientists out there looking at new things that there is no stagnation in science.

Stein: Third is, if they acknowledge the possibility of intelligent design and that intelligent design is God, then they may think God has moral expectations of them and they may be falling short of those moral expectations, and they may be worried about some sort of judgment upon them.

Holy crap! What a pile of holy crap! So Ben Stein knows that scientists cling to evolution, because they’re afraid of God’s judgment!

Stein: There is a very powerful Marxist establishment within the intelligentsia that does not allow questioning of its premises.

I give up. That’s so batshit crazy I can’t even respond to it.

Stein: [T]his to us – at least to me…- is a bit like the Civil Rights movement. You want to have freedom, where our goal is freedom. We want freedom. We want all our rights, not some of them, all our rights to free speech. We want them here in America, and we want them now.

Martin Luther King!!

Thurgood Marshall!!

Ben Stein??