Critics of 'Expelled' protest too little
Michael Scott's op-ed "Intelligent Design lacks testable theories" (May 2 commentary) is the fifth irate review of the Ben Stein movie "Expelled" that I've read. As a biologist who is not opposed to evolution, I found it amazing that the five reviewers all failed to mention the climax.
There, Richard Dawkins, the reigning champion of atheism, admits he believes (like Nobel laureate Francis Crick) that intelligent design by space aliens (but certainly not God) is plausible. What a hoot!
The reviews simply miss or reinforce the movie's take-home message, that opposition to intelligent design has a large component of Christianphobia.
CHARLES WILLIAM PUTNAM
CHRISTIANSBURG
That speaks for itself. Good show, Mr. Putnam!
Richard Dawkins didn't admit "he believes that intelligent design by space aliens is plausible".
ReplyDeleteThat was a hypothetical answer that was taken out of context to suit Ben Stein's agenda.
Opposition to intelligent design (creationism, and you know that) has nothing to do Christian-phobia. It has to do with defending the scientific methodology that intelligent design proponents so disgracefully discard.
Religion must stay out of science because it cannot explain natural phenomena through natural means.
Is this so hard to understand?
Stay well!
Haha, it's so funny when people take that Dawkins bit from Expelled and then proclaim "Dawkins believes aliens created life!". The fact is that Ben Stein prodded him into giving some hypothetical example of how intelligence may have been behind the origin of life.
ReplyDeleteDawkins goes on at length on this topic at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dawkins18apr18,0,2798612.story and http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins.
How eager cdesign proponentsists are to misunderstand even the simplest of things such as the difference between a hypothetical scenario and one's beliefs. The irony is that the "aliens created life" is no more absurd than what Christians claim and is many orders of magnitude more plausible.
You know, i need to get off my duff and go see the film for myself. Good points both of you.
ReplyDelete