Friday, October 26, 2007

Time for a Ben Stein thread   posted by Herrick @ 10/26/2007 09:30:00 PM
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Couldn't find a thread on this yet: Actor/Politico/Author Ben Stein has apparently become a "You can't handle the truth"er. He appears in a documentary on the persecution of the intelligent design movement *yawn* but here's his key claim:

...[Stein] said in a telephone interview that he accepted the producers' invitation to participate in the film not because he disavows the theory of evolution - he said there was a "very high likelihood" that Darwin was on to something - but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth.

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called "From Darwin to Hitler."


So it's not that he doesn't believe in evolution, it's (partially) that he doesn't trust the masses with the knowledge. There, he could be onto something.....

Related: I'm in the middle of reading Watson's very entertaining Avoid Boring [Other] People, and he notes that at his 1946 U Chicago commencement, the university president said the only hope of avoiding disasters like WWII was to believe in the "brotherhood of man," a belief that was supposedly impossible without a parallel belief in the "fatherhood of God." Watson has a lot of great things to say about religion so far--no surprises, but still fun.

He also has a lot of good academic career advice in handy numbered lists at the end of each chapter (e.g., "Have friends close to those who rule," "Channel rage through intermediaries," "Extend yourself intellectually through courses that initially frighten you," etc.,).

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