Ben Stein is not giving people the opportunity to win his money these days [Re: TV series “Win Ben Stein’s Money” Aired 1997-2002]. Instead, he is making a documentary designed to spread ignorance and false information about intelligent design theory to the public. He is trying to convince viewers that intelligent design is a suppressed theory because scientists, especially evolutionary biologists, are atheists with some sort of agenda. Hopefully, he will fail at doing so, for the sake of true scientific research.
“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead?this attack on scientific freedom was so egregious that it prompted a congressional investigation,” said Ben Stein.
Ben Stein is essentially correct in the first part of this quote. Science follows the evidence where it leads. Much to Ben Stein’s chagrin, however, it does not lead to creationism.
Science has had hundreds of years to model neo-Darwinist evolution, and none of the evidence requires a creator in the model. Still, that has not stopped creationists from infiltrating our schools and museums in the attempt to show an “alternative viewpoint”.
The attack actually comes from the creationists, in their attempt to inject religious doctrine into a scientific discipline without any evidence. Since creationists do not provide a verifiable model of creationism, it cannot be accepted as science.
Ben Stein also says that “the theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the ‘apparent design’ in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations.”
This is not actually the goal of intelligent design. If it were, those who support the intelligent design theory would be forced to reject it, noting that there is no way to empirically detect a Creator. Ben Stein has inaccurately reduced evolution here into a “simple” process and then behaves like having something behave simply is a bad thing.
“Humans are alive, therefore life must be complex,” says Stein. This quote clearly reflects an issue of his own ego.
He continues, “I’ve been on a mission in terms of trying to get people to think more about the role of God in their lives for a while.”
And there you have it folks. It turns out Stein is not interested in conducting pure research in order to find out scientific truth “wherever it may lead”. Stein is only interested in answers that lead him to a deity. Since science cannot provide these answers, he accuses it of being biased.
Creationists are angry at evolution, because it does not conform to the answers they expect or want.
Scientists have experience in getting negative results, of experiments not working, etc. Creationists cannot empirically test their ideas and have not experience a verification of their model. People, this is simply not science, and do not let anyone tell you that it is.
Stein argues, “Darwinism does not take into account DNA, microbiology, the Big Bang, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or the human genome.”
Clearly, this man thinks that evolutionists are still trying to prove Darwin’s work right out of the “Origin of Species”. He also does not know that evolution does not need to consider the Big Bang or Relativity (or a lot of correct theories). What it does take into consideration include the human genome, DNA and microbiology.
Ben Stein obviously does not understand modern evolutionary theory, yet he is trying to replace it with creationism. Clearly we need to “expel” Ben Stein’s ideas from our minds, in search of higher scientific truth.
