Ben Stein Tries to Make Darwin America’s Enemy

I saw a provocative ad in the NY Times a week ago, and tonight read a review on MSNBC…it was for a movie made by pundit Ben Stein called ‘Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed.” At first blush, and even after watching a trailer, I didn’t get what the movie was about until I read this inciteful review by a professor at Penn. The movie is an attack on the evils of evolution. Huh?

Arthur Caplan, the director of the Center for Bioethics there, comes down hard on Stein, for his absurd movie and the notion that somehow Darwin was responsible for Nazism.

The movie is a case for Intelligent Design, this has been espoused by Bush and the far right…it’s a little step back from creationism but mostly, throws great doubt on evolution because it doesn’t allow credit for the hand of God.

Caplan’s blistering attack on the movie focuses on Stein’s notion that if we keep teaching Darwinism in our schools then somehow the next step will be ‘state directed murder of mentally ill, political dissidents and radical ‘inferiors.’ This premise is laughable and commendably, the prof attacks the ‘frighteningly immoral narrative’ by citing many countries where belief in Darwin’s theories led to no political ideology at all.

I’ve watched Stein’s commentaries on CBS Sunday morning, but now I am going to view them in a much different light, since this movie proves he is a fool.