Where Are All the Smart Apologists?

Recently I read The Screw Tape Letters, a series of letters written by C.S. Lewis. The letters purport to be from an old demon giving advice to a young demon. Lewis is a smart, funny and talented writer. What the demon Screwtape says is as revealing and clever as what he does not say. This is not the only great work of apologetics by Lewis. Why are there no great Christian apologists like Lewis today?

Lewis is far from perfect. Lewis gave birth to one of the most annoying apologetic arguments, the Trilemma. However, even there his intelligence and originality shine through. I have not seen any contemporary apologist produce any argument that isn’t a tired repackaging of pre-existing arguments.

Who are the major apologists today? There really aren’t any in the influential way that Lewis was. But if one had to identify those who today continue the tradition of Christian apologetics, one would probably list Ray Comfort, William Demsbki, and Alister McGrath.

Do any of these people measure up to C. S. Lewis? No. Consider these writers individually:
Does Ray Comfort stack up to Lewis? No way. Ray Comfort is an idiot and an ignoramus. He’s the man who most famously tried to claim that the modern shape of the banana was evidence for a divine creator. Yes, the banana, a fruit that has been heavily modified by extensive breeding by humans, a fruit whose wild form is a nasty hard thing full of seeds.

Does William Dembski stack up to Lewis? Wililam Dembski isn’t an idiot like Comfort. He has a real PhD in mathematics. But this also is a man who, after intelligent design failed in the courts, was reduced to teaching apologetics at a second rate seminary while giving course credit to students for trolling pro-evolution websites. I can’t see C.S. Lewis doing that. Moreover, Dembski’s writing ability resembles that of a 7th grader trying to sound like he’s really bright and well read. I should know. I used to write like Dembski when I was in 7th grade. Demsbki also seems to spend most of his time fighting with other Christians. (He really, really doesn’t like theistic evolution.)

Does Alister McGrath stack up to C. S. Lewis? Now we are getting closer. McGrath is a respected theologian who also has a degree in biophysics. He’s bright. He’s willing to accept both science and religion. He has on occasion made cogent arguments. But there are two problems: First, he’s a dreadfully boring writer. I have trouble staying awake when I read anything he writes. Someone needs to get Ben Stein to do a book on tape of one of McGrath’s books. It would be the ultimate sleep aid. Or maybe it would be a weapon of mass destruction as just playing it nearby would cause individuals within a hundred mile radius to fall into irreversible comas. This brings us to the other issue with McGrath: The subjects and titles of his books are equally dreadful. His two most well known books are "The Dawkins Delusion?" and "Dawkins' God." Ok, Alister. We get the point. You don’t like Richard Dawkins.

So why are there no great apologists for Christianity today? Here are four possible explanations:
First, perhaps great apologists are simply rare and C.S. Lewis is a great outlier. This isn’t a satisfactory explanation. I could compare the modern stock of apologists with G. K. Chesterton and they would still not match up.

A second argument is that Christianity is not the common belief among intellectuals that it was fifty or sixty years ago. Since a smaller fraction of intellectuals today are deeply Christian and since apologetics is valued less today as it has been in the past, intellectuals are much less likely to go into apologetics.

Third, the state of the evidence has changed over time to make belief in Christianity less probable. This argument is almost certainly wrong. The major modern controversies implicating Christianity and Judeo-Christian religions in general have existed for a very long time. The Documentary Hypothesis and similar theories about other Biblical texts have been around for more than a century. So has evolution. Thus, the need to address these issues (either by reconciling Christianity with them, or by refuting them) has existed for a long time.

Fourth, the modern focus of apologetics has been the watchmaker analogy and variations thereof. The watchmaker analogy is an argument for the existence of God based on an analogy to a watch found in the desert which one would immediately realize had a designer. It is no coincidence that the three apologists listed above, all have arguments that revolve around the watchmaker. Ray Comfort uses a particularly stupid form of the watchmaker argument. William Dembski uses a particularly obfuscated form of the watchmaker argument. And Alister McGrath doesn’t really use the argument itself but rather spends most of his time arguing that Richard Dawkins hasn’t sufficiently refuted the watchmaker argument and that if Dawkins is fallible God must then exist.

This focus is understandable: The watchmaker argument and other teleological arguments for the existence of God are some of the hardest to refute. However, the focus of all contemporary apologetics on a single argument has left the industry stagnant and uncreative. In such circumstances, it isn’t surprising that apologetics fails to attract many intellectuals. Moreover, the focus on the watchmaker argument has caused much of modern apologetics (and thus many of modern apologists) to go head to head with much well-established science. C. S. Lewis in contrast was open to the possibility that evolution was correct. If the entire apologetic system revolves around attacking basic science, one shouldn't be surprised that not many bright, educated people are willing to lead it.

I’m not completely satisfied with any of these explanations. However, the decline of contemporary Christian apologetics needs explanation.

Creationism and Intelligent Design in Great Britain

In the comments thread to my last post Lautreamont pointed to a recent study about belief in creationism and intelligent design in Great Britain. The study showed that over 80% of the people in Great Britain reject intelligent and creationism. A larger percentage (89%) rejected intelligent design than those which rejected creationism(83%). Given the big-tent nature of ID this is surprising. This rejection may be explained by definitional issues since some theists will accept "creationism" as the general idea that God created the world but reject "intelligent design" in the sense that they consider this belief to be exclusively theological rather than scientific in nature. There are also some young earth creationists who reject intelligent design as not having enough explicit emphasis on the Bible. Without a more thorough examination of the study and the phrasing of the questions it is hard to say. Note also that the percentage who are rejecting creationism is much higher than in the United States where approximately half the population are young earth creationists.

Razib over at Gene Expression has also blogged on this story and has some analysis on the geographic breakdown of belief. He raises two points that are worth noting: He notes an unusally high percentage of creationists in London and suggests that this may be due to Muslims living in the city. The study's authors speculated in contrast that this may be due to the relatively high Pentecostalist presence in London. Razib also discusses the high percentage of creationists in Northern Ireland and speculates that this may be due to the internecine religious fighting creating a general push towards more extremist views.

There are two paragraphs specific paragraphs from the article that are also worth noting:

The poll also revealed some extraordinary views on more recent writings, with 5% of adults thinking Darwin wrote A Brief History of Time, a bestseller on the science of spacetime, which was written by the Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking and is widely regarded as the most popular science book never to be completed by its readers.

A further 3% of those surveyed thought Darwin wrote The God Delusion, by the arch-atheist and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, while 1% thought Darwin was the author of The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver.

It could be worse. We could have people who thought that Darwin, Dawkins and Hawking wrote the Bible.

Vaccination, Autism and Hasting-Cedillo: A Lesson from Kitzmiller

As many readers are likely aware, a decision was made in last week in the Hastings-Cedillo case. This case was the test case for claims that vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine caused autism and could thus get compensation under the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. To many people watching the case, the issue of whether vaccines contribute to autism was more important than any issues of legal redress. For a long time, the scientific consensus has been that there is zero evidence that vaccines contribute to autism and if anything the evidence strongly suggests that they are not related. The court's decision came down strongly on the side of the scientific consensus:

The petitioners in this case have advanced a causation theory that has several parts, including contentions (1) that thimerosal-containing vaccines can cause immune dysfunction, (2) that the MMR vaccine can cause autism, and (3) that the MMR vaccine can cause chronic gastrointestina dysfunction. However, as to each of those issues, I concluded that the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ contentions. The expert witnesses presented by the respondent were far better qualified, far more experienced, and far more persuasive than the petitioners’ experts, concerning most of the key points. The numerous medical studies concerning these issues, performed by medical scientists worldwide, have come down strongly against the petitioners’ contentions. Considering all of the evidence, I found that the petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction, or that the MMR vaccine can contribute to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction. I further conclude that while Michelle Cedillo has tragically suffered from autism and other severe conditions, the petitioners have also failed to demonstrate that her vaccinations played any role at all in causing those problems.

The conclusion is even more blunt:

This case, however, is not a close case. The overall weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to the petitioners’ causation theories. The result of this case would be the same even if I totally ignored the epidemiologic evidence, declined to consider the video evidence, and/or excluded the testimony of Dr. Bustin. The result would be the same if I restricted my consideration to the evidence originally filed into the record of this Cedillo case, disregarding the general causation evidence from the Hazlehurst and Snyder cases. The petitioners’ evidence has been unpersuasive on many different points, concerning virtually all aspects of their causation theories, each such deficiency having been discussed in detail above. The petitioners have failed to persuade me that there is validity to any of their general causation arguments, and have also failed to persuade me that there is any substantial likelihood that Michelle’s MMR vaccination contributed in any way to the causation of any of Michelle’s own disorders. To the contrary, based upon all the evidence that I have reviewed, I find that it is extremely unlikely that any of Michelle’s disorders were in any way causally connected to her MMR vaccination, or any other vaccination.

In short, this is a case in which the evidence is so one-sided that any nuances in the
interpretation of the causation case law would make no difference to the outcome of the case.

In reading the opinion, I could not help but compare it to Kitzmiller v. Dover in which intelligent design was found by a federal court to simply be repackaged creationism. The circumstances are similar; the existence of an issue in which the scientific consensus went one way and popular opinion often went another. A court looked at the issue and agreed with the scientists. The decision is not as well-written as the Kitzmiller decision but the result is similar.

We can learn from the impact of Kitzmiller to hypothesize what this decision will have. After Kitzmilker, intelligent design is still going strong, and many people still believe that ID is distinct from creationism and that ID is a scientific theory that should be taught in our public schools. The Cedillo decision will almost certainly not have a substantial impact on popular opinion. If anything, Cedillo will likely have even less impact than Kitzmiller had. With intelligent design, the main conflict occurs from proponents attempting to add ID into our public school biology classes. Kitzmiller set a precedent that teaching ID is unconstitutional and that trying to do so makes a school board lose time and money. Such a precedent has real weight when communities consider adding ID to the school curriculum. However, with vaccination, the issue of monetary compensation for families with autistic children has always been a side issue. The direct conflict occurs primarily with new parents debating whether they should have their children vaccinated. A legal decision such as Cedillo will not have as much impact on peoples' behavior. If the general public is to be convinced that vaccines are safe, they must be convinced through education, not legal decisions.

Expelled and Quote Mines

A “quote mine” is a quote which has been taken out of context. A quote mine is distinct from a generic out of context quote in that a quote mine is generally taken from a famous person. Thus, quote mining makes an implied argument from authority. Frequently, the individual whose quote is mined is not a reputable authority on the subject in questions Purveyors of pseudoscience and other fringe ideas they frequently quote mine scientists. Creationists are very fond of quote mining.

One of the most famous quote mines is Charles Darwin’s comment about the human eye. The quote mind is:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

This quote is from the sixth chapter of The Origin of Species. Immediately after this quote, Darwin goes into great detail describing just how the eye could in fact have formed by natural selection. This is thus an excellent example of a quote mine; it is both out of context and relies on an argument from authority. Like many quote mines, the authority in question is poor; in this case, Darwin died over a century ago. Given the nature of scientific progress, it is laughable that this 100 year old quote is persuasive evidence.

Quote mines are common occurrences in creationist circles. There are entire books of quote mines including Andrew Snelling’s The Revised Quote Book. Snelling’s book includes quotes from modern biologists; the implication is that biologists readily admit the failings of evolution when they are only talking to other biologists in their obscure journals. Many of Snelling’s quotes are either misquoted, woefully out of context or unpersuasive for other reasons.

Why do people engage in quote mines? Many people who have discussed this issue think that quote mines are attributable to malice and deliberate dishonesty.[i] This view is inaccurate. While some quote-mines may be due to dishonesty, there are three causes which are more common: poor reading comprehension, sloppiness, and differing epistemological premises. This last is the least well-recognized cause of quote mining.

Proof-texts are short passages or snippets from a holy text (typically the Bible) used to substantiate some proposition. They frequently have little connection to the general context of the passage. Many different religions including many forms of Christianity and Judaism use proof-texts. If someone comes from an epistemology where proof-texts are a valid way of using holy texts, then quoting with little regard to the general context for other documents is an understandable next step.[ii] Thus, if we wish to stop quote mining, we need to explain to people that science operates under a different epistemology.

Why am I thinking about quote mines? As readers may recall, I reviewed Ben Stein’s Expelled when it was in theaters. Recently while I was in Blockbuster, I saw that Expelled was on sale. I had already seen the movie and saw no good reason to buy a copy. But then a note on the cover caught my attention. The DVD came with a free book of quotations. Of course, I had to buy a copy.

The book does not disappoint. The book, entitled, “The Wonder of the Universe,” is more of a small pamphlet than an actual book. Each page has a single quote in the middle of the page with the rest of the page blank. The entire content could fit on a single sheet of 8 ½ by 11 paper if both sides are used. The quotes are poorly formatted with occasional errors of punctuation and no details of citation other than the author’s name.

What is really interesting is the authors of the quotes and their content. Slightly under half of the quotes in the book come from the Founding Fathers of the United States or from other respected US politicians such as Abraham Lincoln. There is a dearth of quotes from scientists. The most modern scientist quoted, Steinmetz, died in 1923. He is in fact the most recent author cited.

The quotes themselves fall primarily into two broad categories, quotes trumpeting the importance of free exchange and quotes arguing for the existence of God using the standard argument that “X is complicated so X must have been designed by God.” X is life, the stars, or various other entities. Examples of the first type include a quote from Steinmetz that “No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.” An example of the second type is a quote attributed to George Washington stating that “It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being.”

I’m not sure I understand what Stein and his compatriots intended with this book. The point of the quotes about free inquiry is clear, given Stein’s repeated claims that ID proponents are subject to censorship. I am however puzzled how he thinks that George Washington’s opinion is at all relevant when Washington was not a scientist or even a philosopher, but rather a general and President.

I’m forced to conclude that Stein or whichever of Stein’s colleagues compiled this book thinks that the Founders of the United States were so intelligent and saintly that ideas held by them must be given special weight. This is a bit odd since the book also includes the standard quote from Galileo that “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

Ben: Please make up your mind. Do authorities matter or does reasoning?

A few quotes and authors stand out particularly. There is a quote from Marquis de Vauvenargues. This attempt to appear erudite by quoting a somewhat obscure author fails when one notices that there is another quote from de Vauvenargues. One gets the impression that the compiler used some preexisting book of quotations, skimmed through and saw that there was not one, but two quotes that he could use from de Vauvenargues.

One of the two quotes from de Vauvenargues is that “Great thoughts come from the heart.” This quote does not fit either of the two categories of quotes. However, it reinforces the idea suggested by Alan in the comments thread to the Expelled review that the makers of Expelled object to science because they dislike reason and logic; Stein and his colleagues want appeal to emotion, not reason. This is reinforced by producer Walt Ruloff’s admission that he and others involved in Expelled’s production found attempts to incorporate more science into the movie to be “boring.” Stein and Ruloff: You are welcome to find science boring, but then don’t try to interfere with what the scientists are doing, and don’t whine when the scientists look down on you. And I’m not even going to bother discussing how this attitude also contradicts the earlier quote from Galileo. Consistency is not this book’s strong suit.

One quote from John Locke stands out: “We cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower. Nor is it intended that we should.” This attitude in nutshell is why scientists object to ID as a showstopper. This attitude is an objection to the entire scientific enterprise. Science tries to understand the world around us. And it does a very good job of it. Indeed, since Locke died, we’ve developed a very detailed understanding of flowers. We understand their water uptake. We understand their cells in great detail (cells were not discovered until centuries after Locke). When Locke died, oxygen wasn’t even known, so the basics of plant metabolism were unknown. We’ve done a very good job understanding flowers, thank you very much. If this quote does anything at all, it undermines claims that science cannot succeed, that it cannot develop models and explanations for the wonders of the universe.People who make absolute claims otherwise are frequently proven wrong.[iii]

The age of the quotes is also puzzling. Either Ben Stein was unable to find any quotes from scientists in the last hundred years who support what he has to say or he has some sort of inverted view of how science works, where the older the statement the more authoritative it is. If that is the case, Ben should have just gone and quoted Psalms 53:1 where David says that, “The fool has said in his heart `There is no God.’” That’s about 2000 years older than John Locke or George Washington. Therefore, it is much more authoritative.

Ben, I’m disappointed. I was hoping when I picked up this book that it would contain quotes from modern biologists like those favored by Snellings. I’d have to go and track down the original quotes to find the correct context. But this isn’t even worth it. Even if this book contained any specific claims about biology or cosmology or any branch of science (which it doesn’t), they’d be irrelevant given their great age.

If great thoughts come from the heart, this book is definitely from somewhere else.

Update: The quote attributed to Locke by the book is not due to Locke but rather to John Ruskin. See Glenn Branch's remark below. Apparently Ben did not even manage to attribute claims to the correct authors.

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[i] See for example the discussion at the Talk Origin Archive’s Quote Mine Project.

[ii] Not all groups fond of quote mining necessarily come from a religious background (for example HIV-AIDS denialists) but there are likely similar implicit misunderstandings of how science functions.

[iii] I will resist making a direct comparison between Ben Stein and Locke because that is an insult to Locke’s memory. Locke’s comment was made at the beginning of the scientific revolution. Ben Stein’s claims about evolution are made after biologists have spent a hundred and fifty years researching evolution in great detail.

One step forward, one step backwards

There have been two developments connected to intelligent design in the last few days. One is heartening; the other is disappointing. William Dembski, one of the chief proponents of intelligent design, has announced that he will stop spending time running the Uncommon Descent blog and spend more time doing "technical research." This is a good thing. Whether or not there is any scientific merit to intelligent design, the desultory attempts by ID proponents to produce any scientific work about intelligent design has not helped intelligent design in the eyes of the scientific community. It is likely that the lack of scientific merit of intelligent design has forced the proponents to engage in the wastes of time that they have. However, on the off chance that there is any minimal scientific merit to their ideas, Dembski has some chance of finding it.

The second development is that Catholic philosopher Francis Beckwith, a former Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a professor at Baylor University, has forcefully come out against intelligent design. In the past, Beckwith has spoken sympathetically about ID so this comes as a surprise. Unfortunately, he now opposes intelligent design for the wrong reasons:

Despite my interest in this subject and my sympathy for the ID movement’s goal to dismantle materialism and its deleterious implications on our understanding of what is real and what counts as knowledge, I am not, and have never been, a proponent of ID. My reasons have to do with my philosophical opposition to the ID movement’s acquiescence to the modern idea that an Enlightenment view of science is the paradigm of knowledge. By seeming to agree with their materialist foes that the mind or intellect cannot have direct knowledge of real immaterial universals, such as natures, essences, and moral properties, many in the ID movement seem to commit the same mistake as the one committed by the late medieval nominalists such as William of Ockham, who gave us what is often called “Ockham’s razor,”...

I imagine some readers are sputtering a bit as they read that. The complete context of Beckwith's remarks does not cast Beckwith in a better light. Beckwith's remarks are disturbing for a great many reasons, but I will only focus briefly on two of them.

First, as one friend cogently asked what is an "Enlightenment view of science? Newton's? Bacon's? Hume's? Paley's? Whewell's?" One would like to think that a tenured philosophy professor such as Beckwith would be more precise with language.

Second, many if not most scientists would agree that science has no essential monopoly on on all knowledge. Moreover, many proponents of intelligent design would also agree even as proponents of ID frequently attempt to push the bounds of what science can reasonably talk about. Thus, Beckwith's objection is either to some sort of extreme strawman or Beckwith's objection is to the entire notion of science as a separate epistomological method. Indeed, Beckwith goes on to claim that "According to many scholars, the practical consequence of “Ockham’s razor”[sic] is that claims about a thing’s nature, purpose, or intrinsic dignity—universal properties it shares with other things of the same sort—are “unnecessary” for our scientific investigation of the world because they don’t add anything of explanatory importance to our direct empirical observations." It appears thus that Beckwith does object to the entire scientific method. This is the opposite of something like non-overlapping magisteria. This is aside from the fact that archaeologists engage in trying to find artifacts' "purpose" all the time. I have no idea how science would incorporate the "intrinsic dignity" of objects.

I've paid some attention to Beckwith in the past and knew he had reservations about intelligent design. For a long-time I suspected that his stated reservations were for rhetorical effect while he argued for the constitutionality of teaching ID in public schools. In my naivete I never would have thought that Beckwith's objection was to science as a whole.

Beckwith appears to be objecting to ID, not because it drags us back a few centuries, but because it does not drag us back far enough. As William Dembski takes a step to join the 19th century, Beckwith is trying his hardest to join the 10th.

Don McLeroy Jenkins: Epic failure by the creationists. Again.

Some readers may be vaguely aware that Texas is going through their aperiodic burst of anti-evolution sentiments from their school board. Don McLeroy, the current Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education has managed to effectively lay the groundwork for any possible legal challenge by his opponents.

First a bit of background: The creationists used to try to teach creationism next to evolution. The federal courts said that was unconstitutional because of that whole First Amendment thing. It can be so pesky and inconvenient sometimes. Then suddenly a mutation showed up and they started to teach “creation science” which was completely different from “creationism.” The Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard ruled that this was nothing more than thinly disguised creationism.[1] Then miraculously, a new mutation occurred. Now, there was “intelligent design” which had nothing to do with that unconstitutional “creation science” thing. Not all. (Actually it wasn't a single mutation but a series including a well-preserved transitional form). In Kitzmiller v. Dover, this new variation was ruled unconstitutional. The latest version is “teaching the controversy.”

However, McLeroy has gone and shot himself in the foot. In a recent editorial, he justified teaching the controversy by saying that, under the new proposed curriculum “claims about evolution … will be challenged by creationists.” Oops. He said the c-word. I can see his legal allies carefully planning a case in front of a federal judge to explain how what they want has nothing to do with creationism at all. And then he arrives, running into the courtroom screaming “McLerooooy Jennnnkins! Creationism!”

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[1] If one does have opportunity to read this decision, I strongly recommend reading Scalia’s dissent as well. It gives one real appreciation for Scalia’s intelligence and thoughtfulness and raises serious issues that are worth thinking about.

William Demsbki and long-term memory.

William Dembski, one of the chief proponents of intelligent design, seems to have a surprisingly poor memory. In a post from his blog he talks about how the proponents of theistic evolution are attacking intelligent design. (Theistic evolution is the idea that evolution occurred as scientists describe it but that there is some overarching deity who set things in motion in an essentially non-testable way. In TE the deity is often credited with adding souls into humans) Dembski as well as the commentators at his heavily censored blog seem to be under the impression that this was some sort of attack launched with no provocation by the TE proponents against innocent ID. Dembski seems to forget that as early as 1995 he said "Design theorists are no friends of theistic evolution." And that isn't his only comment of that sort. For example, Dembski has also said ""As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is American evangelicalism's ill-conceived accommodation to Darwinism." (I'm not going to bother addressing the issue that the prominent proponents of TE are generally Jews and Catholics more than evangelicals).

Oh, and while I'm at it: it isn't that complicated why proponents of TE think that ID is undermining Christianity (one of the things you complain about in your post) I'm not even going to bother trying to have fun with the massive hypocrisy based on the many comments by you and other ID-proponents complaining that evolution undermines good ol' Christian, American values. TE proponents think it undermines Christian values because they think ID involves lying. You know, that whole don't bear false witness thing that the ID proponents ignored at the Dover trial and elsewhere? Furthermore, ID like its close creationist cousins forces people to make a choice between science and religion. Understandably that gets TEists upset.

Possible contempt of court by Premise Media?

I'm becoming more convinced that for policy reasons, if not as a matter of jurisprudence, Expelled's use of Imagine should constitute fair use. As you may recall, Ben Stein's Expelled used a short clip of Lennon's Imagine without permission. Yoko Ono is now suing while Stein and the production company, Premise Media, is claiming that their use constitutes fair use. Wikipedia has a good article on Expelled which discusses this issue in some detail. (Disclaimer: I've helped write some of it). There is a temporary injunction to prevent new distribution of the movie.


I'm having trouble seeing how this article isn't talking about a failure to follow the injunction against continued distribution of the movie. The article talks about how Expelled is about to run in a new theater in central Iowa. Given that the injunction allows places that have the movie to continue showing it but prohibits new distributions of the movie I'm puzzled as to how this can done consistent with the injunction which as of Monday's hearing still stands.

My take on Expelled. Now with Extra Praeteritio!

I saw Expelled. It was atrocious. For those who haven't been paying attention, this movie is a documentary starring Ben Stein in which he claims that intelligent design has been discriminated against in academia and that evolution is responsible for most of the horrors of the 20th century.

I'm not going to spend time addressing the most serious factual problems in the movie. So I'm not going to talk about how they lied and omitted relevant data about what actually happened with Richard Sternberg. Nor am I going to address the truth about Guillermo Gonzalez's tenure denial. Nor am I going to address any of the myriad other claimed examples of persecution in the movie which suffer from serious holes.

I'm also not going to talk about the allegations of plagiarism and copyright violations.

I'm also not going to spend too much time talking about the heavy-handedness of the movie other than to say that there are only so many comparisons Stein can make to the Berlin wall and so many images of Nazis before one's boredom overcomes how offended one is.

Finally, I'm not going to talk about Stein's attempt at semantic juggling to claim that ID isn't creationism since it doesn't explicitly endorse a literal interpretation of Genesis.

I am going to instead focus on three details that summarize how completely and irredeemably awful this movie was.

First, Ben Stein at one point says that the world population is eight billion. When we saw this we all talked about maybe we had missed when it had gone beyond seven and it now rounded up. Nope. All sources say that it is now about 6.6 billion. Stein cannot even claim this was due to a rounding error. When you cannot even get that basic facts correct I'm at a loss to understand why Stein expects anyone to take this movie seriously. And is this evidence that Win Ben Stein's Money was just a fraud?

Second, some of the people interviewed as ID proponents expressed skepticism that speciation occurs. That's particularly interesting because at this point the evidence for speciation is so overwhelming that even the major Young Earth Creationists acknowledge that speciation happens.

Third, there was a section where Stein was interviewing people about abiogenesis and scientists were to a large extent acknowledging that we do not know much about how life started. Now, I'm not going to address the issue that how life started isn't actually all that relevant to whether evolution is correct or not. However, there were two ideas discussed where Stein's response was interesting. The first idea, directed panspermia, one might be right to criticize (certainly I think Imre Lakatos would criticize it as not being a fruitful research program). Of course, Stein's criticism consisted solely of showing clip scenes from old science fiction movies. Hardly an example of an intellectually sophisticated criticism.

The second idea discussed was when one chemist who mentioned the possibility that a possible precursor of life might have been self-reproducing chemicals in a crystalline matrix (I may have the details slightly wrong. It was only mentioned briefly). Now here's the fun part: the movie switches to a black-and-white clip (they like to do this a lot) of a stereotypical fortune-teller looking at a crystal ball. Stein voices over "Aliens? Crystals? I thought this was science!" (this may be a slight paraphrase).

Now, I'm genuinely puzzled as to what he thinks is not scientific about crystals. The best explanation I can come up with is that he associates them with New Age nonsense and does not understand that crystals are in fact chemically and geologically interesting objects. The level of anti-intellectualism in Stein's statement is appalling. And frankly, I'm a bit shocked that apparently no one who saw early versions bothered trying to tell Stein that there wasn't anything unscientific about studying crystals.

This entry is getting long but I must end it with an important disclaimer:
I don't think that criticizing this movie or Ben Stein is a valid ad hominem attack of the type discussed in my previous entry. Someone with the same resources could easily make a more convincing movie. Furthermore, Stein is not in general a major originator or proponent of ID and many of his ideas (such as that ID is all about God) are in direct contradiction to what some of the major ID proponents have said (the fact they are likely lying is somewhat besides the point). Overall, this is a terrible movie and Ben Stein at best comes across as a stupid ignoramus and a failed demagogue. But it doesn't really say much about Intelligent Design.