Ben Stein thinks that his law degree allows him to argue that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific endeavor, but that BIG SCIENCE is trying to hold him back.



http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed

Man he is a huge douchebag.

And a horrible human being who is trying to bribe schools into forcing kids to see his movie:

The "Expelled Challenge"

In order to promote the film, the website "GetExpelled.com"[67] launched "The Expelled Challenge"[68] which offers to pay schools up to US $10,000 to send students to see the movie. In what Wesley R. Elsberry described as "a kickback to school administrators",[69] the programme offers between $5 and $10 for every ticket stub submitted by the school within the first two weeks of the release of the film.[70] Elsberry noted that at the upper end of the range, the value of the reward is probably greater than the actual ticket price.[69]

The programme also recommends a "school-wide 'mandatory' field trip" as "the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential"[70][71] Elsberry criticises this as a call to "take children away from classrooms, fill their heads with obnoxiously delivered misinformation, and profit off of it".[69]

What else does he blame Big Science for?

The film blames the theory of evolution for a range of things the film portrays as societal ills, from Communism to Planned Parenthood, while failing to define or explain either evolution or its supposed alternative, intelligent design.[11] The evidence that this scientific theory is responsible for social problems does not exist[13] and within the scientific community the theory of evolution is accepted by scientific consensus[14] and intelligent design is not considered to be valid science,[15][16][17] but is viewed as creationism.[18]

. According to Whipple, the film charges that intellectual freedom of intelligent design supporters is being restricted, but he was not able to find much substance in these claims when he investigated further. After the first half hour, Whipple reports that the film launches into a condemnation of evolution, blaming it for "Communism, the Berlin Wall, Fascism, the Holocaust, atheism and Planned Parenthood."

This is a documentary, so I'm going to move it to film media.

intelligent design is a legitimate endeavor, but not a scientific one, and there is no way it should ever be taught in any highschool class. and there is the argument for this topic

Behe, who is briefly mentioned in the article, is a professor from a shitty college around here. I've spoken with him, and the guy is a huge idiot, and he acts more persecuted and gets insulted easier than your 13 year old reborn atheist

also

However, Stein claims that the film presents evidence that scientists do not have the freedom to work within the framework of believing there is a God.

3 out of 5 of my biology professors were religious christians. 1 of the two remaining established himself as non-religious, and the other was unknown. one of the christian biology professors actually had a debate with Behe about his ID shit

Wait what the hell, in the site's blog the intelligent quote of the day is:

"And, yes, Ben, it is idiocy. You parrot every creationist talking point, from science supposedly "suppressing" intelligent design to that jaw-droppingly dumb thing you said in one of the trailers about scientists "not even being allowed to think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator."

bueller...... bueller......

What a faggot only faggots have opinions.

The movie itself doesn't annoy me, but paying schools to make kids watch this movie?  That's kind of fucked up.  I never imagined Ben Stein to be the kind of guy who would do this, but I never really knew anything about him.

I've got a theory:

Because everything he says is monotone, Ben Stein thinks he can say whatever he wants and be taken seriously.

I have to admit though... If I had that kind of power myself, I would do the exact same thing with it. (I could be the posterboy for the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" theory!)

Either that, or Scientology has a hold of Stein and are putting him in covert position to assist in undermining any theistic conjectures not based on Scientology. (If this one is true, there's no telling how many others they've got on the case)

What a faggot only faggots have opinions.

It's not that he is pro-intelligent-design (I think ID is a perfectly valid philosophical argument) but rather the obnoxious, immature, misleading and whiny way in which he is promoting his argument... and the way he blames evolution for the Holocaust, Communism, etc. without a shred of backup. I'm willing to bet he thinks the Khmer Rouge is due to evolution. The paying schools thing is nothing short poorly-budgeted school extortion.

I have actually seen this documentary in a pre screening with my church.

It was pretty bullshit imho but it was rather funny to see ben stein make richard dawkins look retarded. 

It does show though that there is a bit of idiocy in the scientific community regarding this though, it does show that a shocking amount of professors and well respected scientists losing jobs and all crediablity for simply mentioning ID in a paper or off chance mentioning in a classroom or merely suggesting it may be a viable theory.

It does show though that there is a bit of idiocy in the scientific community regarding this though, it does show that a shocking amount of professors and well respected scientists losing jobs and all crediablity for simply mentioning ID in a paper or off chance mentioning in a classroom or merely suggesting it may be a viable theory.

That's the thing though, in the scientific world intelligent design isn't a theory. It's a hypothesis.

1) Ask a question: Was the universe created by an intelligent designer?

2) Do background research: Religious texts outline how intelligent design could work.

3) Construct hypothesis: I think the universe could have been created by an intelligent designer.

4) Test with an experiment: As it stands, it is impossible to perform tests that would verify that the universe was intelligently designed.

5) Analyze results and draw conclusions: Impossible without an experiment

6) Hypothesis is true, false, or partially false. If false, go back to step 3. Hypothesis cannot be tested.[/i]

7) Report results. No scientific results to report.[/i]

It does show though that there is a bit of idiocy in the scientific community regarding this though, it does show that a shocking amount of professors and well respected scientists losing jobs and all crediablity for simply mentioning ID in a paper or off chance mentioning in a classroom or merely suggesting it may be a viable theory.

I'm willing to bet most of the claims the ID people make of people losing positions, etc are either higher exaggerated, misrepresented, or are in fact people stepping completely over the line. I haven't seen the movie though so I can't comment on Stein's particular examples.

The "scientific community" is just as politically based as the "religious community" and the government.  When you get MEN together they argue over bullshit and put themselves in positions of power and it's totally and completely ridiculous.  My old high school had this massive debate about whether or not they should allow children to learn about abstinence and their argument was "abstinence is completely religious and church and state are supposed to be seperated."

NOT HAVING SEX is religious... (according to my old school).  What the fuck is that shit?  No point in me mentioning that the teacher who wanted to instruct the abstinence class was a devout atheist and it was going to be taught side by side with proper condom use.  In my freshman year, a teacher was put on suspension because he went way too "indepth" with luddites and some student complained that he was forcing a religious view on him.  Our school was also the first in the country to herald the "you don't have to stand up for the pledge" and we had the first citizens who rallied about removing god from our money (and Virginia is a conservative state so I have no idea how this shit works).

Uh... my point?  People will do anything to get someone else to listen to them and people are willing to discredit each other if it furthers their own goals.  I see this as two evils.  On one hand, he is giving money to public schools which is great because they're still poorly funded.  On the other hand, he is practically forcing these kids to go which goes against every tennant in my book.  If this were a volunteer act where every person who watched the movie contributed money to their school I'd be fine with it, but mandatory field trips to see these dude prattle on?  No thank you.

I'm willing to bet most of the claims the ID people make of people losing positions, etc are either higher exaggerated, misrepresented, or are in fact people stepping completely over the line. I haven't seen the movie though so I can't comment on Stein's particular examples.

No, from what I saw they weren't but, I can't really explain it all to well.  There was one teacher who said in her class that some people believe in ID but never said another thing on it and got fired for it.  Its almost like some taboo to mention it apparently.

But besides that it was pretty much a crock of bullshit that tried to play up the emotion card and failed miserably by coming off as pretentious which is funny because they were portraying the evolutionists as pretentious too so if you watched the movie you ended up hating both sides. Ha.

EDIT:  there was the particularly lovely shot of a park with people in and some country singer singing the background music saying "Evolution is just a theory" and I almost cracked up but refrained from doing so because there were many people who may have taken offense to it.

oh dear!!!!

god forbid the former speechwriter of richard nixon do something to tarnish his good name!!!!

ben stein is one of those totally useless people that exists in our minds for totally unfathomable reasons. why do we know who this guy is? should we know? i guess we were fortunate that we got many years of BEN STEIN THE INCREDIBLY USELESS TELEVISION PERSONALITY and not BEN STEIN THE RENEGADE UN-SCIENTIST

You guys sure this isn't an elaborate to make Creationists look bad? Kind of like Colbert Report tries to play it straight

Also I hijacked Hundley's sig

fuck christians, jesus christ how could you be so fucking stupid

No, from what I saw they weren't but, I can't really explain it all to well.  There was one teacher who said in her class that some people believe in ID but never said another thing on it and got fired for it.  Its almost like some taboo to mention it apparently.

where's the court case? where's the proof? a few people in a documentary saying they got fired for NO REASON but it was ID yep is nothing.