Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Ben Stein Provokes the Liberals' Wrath

The funniest part about his latest movie, "Expelled," is the hysterical way the liberals are trying to discourage people from seeing it

From "Ben Stein Provokes the Liberals' Wrath" by Phyllis Schlafly, posted 5/7/08 at ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com

Ben Stein is known to many as an actor on Comedy Central. But the funniest part about his latest movie called "Expelled" is not any clever lines spoken by Stein but the hysterical way the liberals are trying to discourage people from seeing it.

Stein's critics don't effectively refute anything in "Expelled"; they just use epithets to ridicule it and hope they can make it go away. However, it won't go away; even Scientific American, which labeled the movie "shameful," concedes that it cannot be ignored.

The movie is about how scientists who dare to criticize Darwinism or discuss the contrary theory called Intelligent Design (ID) are expelled, fired, denied tenure, blacklisted, and bitterly denounced. Academic freedom doesn't extend to this issue.

The message of Stein's critics comes through loud and clear. They don't want anybody to challenge Darwinian orthodoxy or suggest that Intelligent Design might be an explanation of the origin of life.

Stein, who serves as his own narrator in the movie, is very deadpan about it all. He doesn't try to convince the audience that Darwinism is a fraud, or that God created the world, or even that some unidentified Intelligent Design might have started life on Earth.

Stein merely shows the intolerance of the universities, the government, the courts, the grant-making foundations and the media, and their determination to suppress any mention of Intelligent Design.

The only question posed by the movie is why, oh why, is there such a deliberate, consistent, widespread, vindictive effort to silence all criticism of dogmatic Darwinism or discussion of alternate theories of the origin of life? Stein interviews scientists who were blacklisted, denied grants, and ostracized in the academic community because they dared to write or speak the forbidden words.

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