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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (246838)	4/22/2008 9:49:11 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793799

With Stein's excellent polemical skills he could easily produce an anti-ID film that would have you leaving stunned. That however is an over served market. He has identified a market opportunity and is positioning himself to take the money off the table. I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.

To: KLP who wrote (246838)	4/22/2008 12:03:30 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793799

Everyone should take the opportunity to see "Expelled" — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it's far more than that. It's a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little. I saw Expelled Sunday and highly recommend it (I know, I know, a movie reco. from Alan Smithee is by its very nature suspect...). It's a very thought-provoking examination of how the mainstream scientific establishment stifles any discussion whatsoever of discussion of ID. Stein comments that America is founded on freedom - freedom of thought, speech and inquiry, high on the list. That freedom is being taken away and stifled in the name of PC liberalism. He uses the Berlin Wall throughout the film as a metaphor for what is happening in science. Just as the Soviets put up the wall to keep out western influence and ideas, so too has the scientific establishment erected its own Berlin Wall. If you're on the right side of that wall, you're free to do your science unimpeded. If you cross over to the other side, and dare mention ID (or by extension, question Global Warming), then you will be shut out, ostracized, lose grant funding, be denied tenure and lose your job. Go see the movie. I haven't been to a movie in years where the audience clapped at the end.

To: KLP who wrote (246838)	4/23/2008 1:17:43 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793799

Ben Stein uses the standard straw-man argument here. This statement is true: It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. But that doesn't actually mean that "Intelligent Design" has any credibility. Again I would recommend Steven Pinker's "the Blank Slate". It is the best book on modern philosophy that I have ever read. He explains that in today’s academic circles that anyone who is out of step with the established thinking in an area is ostracized and scorned. Especially when the subject is near and dear to the “progressive” mindset and the “progressive” view of the direction that society should be moving towards. And it is true that academics view religiosity as a primitive belief system that has been supplanted by science and the scientific method. To say you believe otherwise will cause you to be scorned by your academic peers. But, So what. You can argue that that their behavior is wrong. And you can argue that our universities should be more accepting of diverse view points and opinions (and I would agree with those arguments). However none of this bad behavior by academics means that Intelligent Design is any more true than Heaven or Hell are real places. But when Stein suggests to Dawkins that he's been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests — not that Stein is wrong, but that he's being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Sound about right to me. Did Stein present anything that disputed this statement?