Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Daily Douchebag: Ben Stein
DOB: November 25, 1944
Occupation: lawyer, law professor, Nixon and Ford White House speechwriter, comedian, Darwin hater
Hometown: Washington, DC
Current residence: Malibu, California and Sandpoint, Idaho
Douchebaggery: I'd like to start by saying that I've always liked Ben Stein. He seems smart and I enjoy his dry sense of humor. Up until now, I've never had any issues with Ben Stein. However, I just saw an ad for his new documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Initially I thought this was going to be a film about Ben Stein making fun of academics being assholes. So I went to his blog. I was seriously annoyed at what I read:
I’m Ben Stein – many of you know me from the classic film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or from my Comedy Central show “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. Still others of you may know me as a speechwriter, for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. You may even have read my books, attended one of my lectures at The American University, Washington DC, or seen me on the talk shows.
I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.
A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.
Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.
Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.
Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.Since when has Ben Stein appointed himself the honorary Kansas Board of Education anti-evolution spokeswhore? Granted, I thought the whole "Bueller...? Bueller...?" was genius, but his portrayal of a public school teacher didn't make me think that he was qualified to tell them what to teach.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often … and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ben Stein
I agree with Ben that freedom is the essential American tenet, and that freedom of inquiry is one of the most basic aspects to human advancement. I also agree that this is essential to science. However, when he gets into complaining about the "anti-religious dogmatism" aspect of his argument, I start to roll my eyes. While Ben Stein is surely knowledgeable in matters of law, political speechwriting, and conservative economics, I absolutely disagree that any kind of religion has any place in the realm of science or science education.
I am a scientist. In spite of what people might think about my sex life or my ridiculousness or my attention whorishness or my writing, my actual job is experimental science. I know my shit and I am good at it. I have been working in a lab since I was sixteen. That's almost FOURTEEN YEARS at the fucking bench. I think that, in spite of my unfortunate tendency to generate negative data since I've gotten into the mouse business, I am very proficient at this task. I respect my PI, and I know that he would not have welcomed me into his lab or tolerated my many non-scientific scandals if he didn't think I was a competent and talented scientist who would be a credit to his legacy. My competency is inexorably linked to my ability to design and execute experiments effectively.
I am also a religious person. I am Catholic, and though I wasn't confirmed and I'm tremendously lousy at living up to church rules (particularly those regarding sexuality), I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth and all that dogmatic crap. I believe that God is the ultimate creator, and life would not be here without God.
That said, there is no way that God can be tested experimentally. Ben Stein might bitch that scientists might not be able to get grants addressing the role of the divine in creation, but has this fucker ever tried to get a RO1 grant? It's almost impossible to get a damn grant in this current economy and NIH budget even with the most direct, promising project. My PI is such an expert in his field that he wrote a damn textbook. He did his postdoc with a very famous Nobel laureate, he has the distinction of being the first in his field to achieve a major milestone when he cloned and sequenced a virus in the late seventies, and you ought to see his Wikipedia page. He is an endowed full professor at Columbia and nonetheless, he had trouble securing his last grant. Grants are hard to come by these days thanks to the Bush administration's emphasis (or lack thereof) on supporting scientific research. How on earth could a review committee (or "study section," in NIH parlance) justify a grant addressing the role of a higher power in creation? How do you design experiments to test something like that? If anyone has any ideas as to what controls you could include in such an experiment, I would love to hear them. Einstein, Newton, and Galileo may have been men of faith, but that doesn't mean they incorporated their religious beliefs into the methods they used to evaluate their theories experimentally. Just because Einstein, Newton, and Galileo believed in God doesn't mean they included that in all the ball-dropping or stargazing or number-crunching that characterized their greatest scientific achievements.
I went to Catholic school for twelve years. In high school, I was taught both the theory of evolution and scientific creationism (this was before "intelligent design" was employed to give the latter more intellectual credibility). We were taught that they aren't incompatible. Catholics don't interpret the Bible literally, so it's not like I'm bound by my faith to believe that the world was created in seven days exactly as the Old Testament says. I definitely do not think that the theory of evolution excludes the possibility of a divine creator. I can (and do) believe that evolution was God's means of creating life as we know it. However, I have no idea how I could go into lab and test this hypothesis. Science is a method for understanding the physical truth of our world. Science is not a substitute or a competitor for religious faith, and it's irresponsible to suggest that a religious element needs to be added to science education in public schools if only because it distracts from teaching kids about the scientific method as the divine falls outside the realm of testable hypotheses.
Ben Stein is smart when it comes to economics and political commentary and making fun of dumbasses. However, until he throws on a lab coat and executes a well-designed, properly-controlled experiment, he needs to quit bitching about "Big Science" conspiring like Big Tobacco to systematically eliminate God from the classroom. Science doesn't exclude the possibility of God, and operating under any kind of assumption about the influence of the divine isn't "intelligent" or faithful to the rational methods of inquiry that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein themselves employed. Stick to awarding titles like "America's Most Smartest Model," Ben.
Labels: Daily Douchebag, Dear God, movies, retard rage, science
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