This clip from Ben Stein’s interview on Trinity Broadcast Network includes his amazingly stupid, misinformed crackpot idea that scientists murdered Jews during World War II.
I had always assumed it was Nazi soldiers “following orders.” My bad.
Watch it and weep. Someone took Ben Stein’s brain.
Actor/commentator Ben Stein appeared on the Trinity Broadcast Network on April 24 to discuss the anti-evolution flick Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Excerpts of the half-hour interview with Paul Crouch Jr. are now on YouTube.
In this clip, Stein talks about how the faithful can combat the Darwinist agenda of suppression and atheism, completely misinterprets the Kitzmiller v. Dover court decision, and relates the “crashing” of a private screening of the film by an Orlando film critic. He also spins the filmmakers’ expulsion of biologist PZ Myers from another private screening in Minneapolis, missing the irony that the producers of a film alleging suppression of ideas should expel someone from seeing the film.
Then, Stein states that science teachers should “teach the evidence” about the origins and development of life, and ask students to decide whether evolution or Intelligent Design provides the better explanation. “The role of science is to disprove itself,” Stein says in one jaw-droppingly stupid moment.
Finally, he alleges that “Darwinists” refuse to consider alternative theories, because it would mean the loss of their jobs and comfortable pensions, and makes ridiculous connections between evolution and atheism and communism.
Ben Stein, the “star” of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed reveals his appalling lack of scientific understanding in this excerpt from his appearance on Paul Crouch Jr’s show on TBN April 24.
Stein, who interviews several scientists in the anti-evolution movie, asserts that Darwin’s evolutionary theory cannot explain the complexity of living cells nor can it explain how life began. He continues by discussing his own religious beliefs and his comfort with the concept that there is evolution within species, but not with the evolutionary prediction that new species arise from existing ones.
In this excerpt of Ben Stein’s appearance on Paul Crouch’s TBN program, Stein talks about his involvement with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and his dismay “Darwinists” are restricting “academic freedom” by suppressing anti-evolution scientists.
Stein, who is Jewish, also reveals his interest in the connection between Darwinism and Nazism, and asserts that Darwinism/evolution has become a religion for some in academia.
Part 2 of 5, from YouTube:
Late last month, actor/economist/commentator Ben Stein appeared on Paul Crouch Jr.’s TV show on the Trinity Broadcast Network to talk about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stein made some incredibly stupid comments during the half-hour show, some of which have made it onto the ‘Net.
Most of the program featured three excerpts from the anti-evolution film, which is showing nationally in about 650 theaters. TBN has it in its entirety, but excerpts are now available on YouTube in five parts.
In this part, Crouch introduces Stein and invites him to summarize the movie and the reasons behind it. Stein repeats the movie’s assertion that “Darwinists” are restricting academic freedom.
The attempts of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to blame the Holocaust on the Darwin and his theory of evolution “is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry,” the Anti-Defamation League said yesterday.
In a press release, the civil right organization accuses the makers of the anti-evolution film of misappropriating the Holocaust and its imagery to support its attempts to discredit evolution, Darwin and biologists that accept the theory.
The movie, which was released April 18, claims that Adolf Hitler used Darwinism as an excuse to murder millions of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals during the Nazi regime. Images of Nazi Germany and the concentration camps appear in the film.
The ADL’s press release says, however, “Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.” Anti-semitism was prevalent in Germany and in Europe generally for centuries before Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859.
Meanwhile, the “star” of the movie, Ben Stein, who is himself a Jew, had the chutzpah in a recent interview on the Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network to accuse scientists of leading victims of the Holocaust to the gas chambers. Here are some excerpts, courtesy of someone with a stronger stomach than mine to tolerate such shit.
As part of the media blitz associated with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the creators of the movie provide a background “Leaders Guide” for school and church teachers. Like the movie, the guide pretends to be unbiased but is far from it. So, I have decided to analyze the document for the benefit of anyone who intends to use the guide.
Page 2: Introduction:
Guide:
The banner over the page reports results from a Newsweek poll: 91% of Americans believe in God and 78% believe that God created human beings on our present form or guided an evolutionary process that led to our present form. On the right is a pullout quote from none other than Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species
“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”
Below that are details about the 78% results and about the number of Americans (69%) that want both the theory of evolution and the evidence against it taught in schools.
Comments:
The figures quoted are legit, from professionally conducted polls in 2006 and 2007. The Darwin quote from his introduction to Origin is out of context, as Darwin was referring specifically to possible weaknesses in his own work. A fuller quote is:
The Ben Stein movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” champions academic freedom, purporting to demonstrate how faculty who believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism are being forced from their jobs by some kind of “evolutionist” hegemony.
The movie, which I have not seen, supports the opinion that someone who does not accept the theory of evolution cannot debate or question the theory in the classroom without fear of reprisal. The rights of anti-evolution faculty and students must be protected, the movie’s creators claim.
It’s another version of the “teach the controversy” canard that IDists and creationists have been passing around for the last few years. First, they create a false controversy (many people doubt evolution is valid). Second, they contend that “evolutionists” are forcing this “controversial” theory down students’ throats. Then, they insist that other theories must be given “equal time” somehow in the classroom to give students a full education.
This strategy to introduce ID and creationism in the public school classrooms failed miserably in Dover, Penn., after a federal judge (a Republican appointee) ruled that ID was just another form of creationism, that is, it was religion. Therefore, he said, ID cannot be taught in a public school without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
So now the ID/creationist tactic is to focus on the “academic freedom” to question evolution. The plan is to appeal to the public’s sense of fairness and belief in free speech rather than to concoct a controversy from whole cloth.
