Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity

eldavojohn writes "Painting the current scientific community as just as bad as the Spanish Inquisition, an extended trailer of Ben Stein's "Expelled" has a lot of people (at least that I know) talking. It looks like his movie plans to encourage people to speak out if they believe intelligent design or creationism to be correct. In the trailer he even warns you that if you are a scientist you may lose your job by watching 'Expelled.' Backlash to the movie has started popping up and this may force the creationism/evolutionist debate to a whole new level across the big screen and the internet." adholden points out a site called Expelled Exposed, which asserts that 'Expelled' "is simply an anti-science propaganda film aimed at creating controversy where none exists, while promoting poor science education that can and will severely handicap American students."

Comments

Great.

[pathological liar]

It was bad enough when it was just Moore being a pompous blowhard, but now we get to look forward to this kind of drivel from both sides of the aisle?

About time...

[munik]

It's about time we challenge the presuppositions behind evolution on a larger scale.

Why not political correctness instead?

[elrous0]

Forget this ancient debate. No one has ever made a movie seriously critiquing political correctness on college campuses. Now THERE is a student freedom subject worth tackling.

And, no, "PCU" was not a serious critque.

Re:One point...

[CRCulver]

Even the Vatican accepts Evolution is perfectly compatible with Christian belief.

While certain churches believe evolution is compatible with Christianity, they nonetheless believe that evolutionary changes occured through the will of God. This idea, that evolution is ultimately directed by a higher power, not just some meaningless progression of chemical states, is supressed in academic discourse.

Re:Which do you believe?

[jav1231]

*sighs* - I bet he's skeptical about anthropomorphic climate change too (there seems to be an extraordinarily high overlap between the two groups). WTF does that have to do with anything. Oh and notice how clever that it's now called "climate change" since the last 10yrs the average temp of the Earth has actually cooled. Seems even climate theory can evolve.

The Earth's climate is changing. Guess what? It always has. And will despite mankind.

Re:Which do you believe?

[hahafaha]

Just to set the record straight:

I am both a strong atheist and an ex-Christian. From everything I've read, I am compelled to say that Jesus probably did exist, but much of what is said about him is not true (not just the supernatural, but a lot of the events, too).

The reason that someone can dislike that which Jesus teaches (at least, according to the Bible) is plenty:

First of all, he forgives people's sins. This is an incredible concept, and one that I hadn't even considered until reading Christopher Hitchens' incredible book God is not Great (http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807). If you consider the incident with ``let the sinless throw the first stone'', you are advocating a society in which guilt is determined only by those who are not, themselves, guilty. That is ludicrous, particularly if Adam's original sin is taken into account.

Second, Jesus is advocating a quasi-communistic, merchant-less society. This is prevalent throughout all of his writings. ``Go sell all you have'', the incident in the Temple, etc. etc. Again, this is naive and ridiculous.

Third, Jesus is remarkably self-centred. He is saying that we must leave our families and follow him; if any of our friends or family says something against Jesus, we should leave him.

Fourth, Jesus has caused innumerable amounts of death and suffering. Perhaps he did this involuntarily, but it still happened.

There are many other reasons, but I am too tired to list them.

Re:Which do you believe?

[AKAImBatman]

Amazing. A +5 for going completely off the topic. What was the topic? Did Jesus exist. A: Resounding yes from all parties.

Now that we have that settled, the mods are still abusing their mod points. Shame on them.

Re:Which do you believe?

[AKAImBatman]

And for the record, Maxo-Texas, it's nothing against you. It's just a pet peeve of mine when the mods abuse their powers. It's perfectly acceptable for you to think what you want to think.

But when the mods decide to silence someone who points out that historians agree on the existence of a historical figure? Well, that's the exact OPPOSITE of good science. The exact sort of behavior that I imagine those mods are angry at religious fanatics for.

Re:Which do you believe?

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree- and I responded to the parent poster in part because I thought the "Troll" moderation was unfair. I commented sardonically on the way that slashdot moderation is goofy some times.

"Mods" are a community-- some are pro M$, some are pro linux, some are anti-religion, some are pro-religion, some are reasonable, some are pissed off this morning about something, some even misread and mis-mod.