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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Ben Stein

“Religion shall stay 500 feet from science.” – Judge on The Simpson

When I was in high school, my best friend, who just turned 17, journeyed down to a bar on Main Street and got his first experience with brown bottle flu. As glass after glass somehow ended up empty on the counter of the bar, he began to develop beer muscles. This was great entertainment for everyone present as my friend was a skinny, pretty boy who had never been in a fight in his life. For some unknown reason, he began to pick a fight with a Vietnam vet, one of those guys that probably ate barbwire out of a dirty ashtray for breakfast and washed it down with a gallon of kerosene.  Now there are few things sweeter that watching an idiot have his head handed to him, but when the possibility of a guy in a white coat pulling back the sheet and asking you to identify the body becomes a reality, a person gets their friend out of harm’s way as quick as possible.   

Christians often show the same stupidity when they try to impose their faith on the scientific process. If fundamentalists stroll onto Science’s playground and pick a fight, there is going to be blood on the ground and it is not going to be Science’s. Why? While I can marvel at God’s handiwork, it belongs in the realm of philosophy or theology, not science. Science tells us everything about life, except what makes it worth living. In the laboratory, there is no place for concepts like good and evil, right and wrong, and beauty and ugliness. Love cannot be found on the table of the elements. God cannot be put into a test tube. Loyalty cannot be discovered under the lens of a microscope. Science’s sole concern is the material that can be described and measured.  It is a realm in which men and women of different faiths, nationalities, political and social outlooks can agree on objective facts or conclusions.  It explains the events of nature in a reproducible way and as such is cold, unemotional, and a closed system.  The supernatural has no place in a field that is solely concerned with that which is natural.

Does that mean that a scientist cannot come away from his studies of the universe with awe and wonder that he or she can only attribute to God?   No, many of us are moved by the music of the universe to conclude that there is something greater than ourselves out there. But when a person is moved like this, he or she leaves the realm of science and enters the playground of poetry, theology, philosophy, or art, those disciplines in which you find meaning in life.  Why you ask?  Because God, who on a scientific level becomes merely  like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, cannot be proven to exist in any kind of repeatable, objective test. Another person can look at the same information and can conclude there is no God, no ghost in the machine. What one person sees as an intelligent designer is merely a God chained and bound by natural laws, a divine clockmaker, not the mighty God of Abraham and Isaac, not a God who can have anything to do with a believer’s daily life.

Many Christians view evolution as just godless materialism and that is exactly what it is.  It is scientific godless materialism that has given us all the electronic toys, pills, and advances that we love so much. In many ways this modern Christianity’s war against science is like the man eating a hamburger who claims that he does not believe in cows. Modern Christians enjoy the benefits that this godless materialism, a.k.a. science, has brought them, but don’t like how the steak is being made in the kitchen and for the most part it does not matter.  Whether you, I, or that hillbilly with his Bible in his hands believes that Neo-Darwinism happened is most of the time something that does not affect our lives.  We have jobs and lives where belief or non-belief in such things matters little. I can believe that magical elves makes my car go forward and gets me here and there so long as I have a good mechanic who understands how an internal combustion engine works.  Yet, good Christians, because they don’t understand what science is or why evolution is important to their daily lives, are fighting to keep evolution out of their schools and are helping others to needlessly die. While this sounds over the top, it is true. It is only with a proper understanding of evolution that we can study how disease, viruses, and bacteria like TB, AIDS, and even the common cold can mutate and change. Many of the diseases we thought we had achieved victory over with the miracle drugs like penicillin have become resistant, e-v-o-l-v--e-d. In order to declare final victory, we must design drugs that will make the bacteria and viruses take centuries of mutations and evolving before they can be come immune to them. I don’t think a proponent of intelligent design will be of much help in the wake of a plague like the one that swept this nation in 1918.  It is only through a proper understanding of evolution that we will be able to rid ourselves of birth defects and our other ancient foes to good health. To make a human being choose between a materialism that helps humanity and a belief in God, thereby fighting evolution, is a sin.  I cannot scientifically prove it, but a sin all the same.

Since the time of Billy Sunday and Dwight Moody ministers have claimed that acceptance of evolution will lead to an eroding the nation's moral foundations.  That children will soon be giving into their passions and lusts, but if this was true, scientists would be a hell of a lot more fun to party with than they are. The laboratory has not become a hotbed of murder, child molestation, rape, graft and other vice.  In fact, these learned men and women are among the most morally upstanding segments of our society.  I would dare say, and statistics back me up, they represent the Christian ethical ideal more than the average churchgoer.

It is Ben Stein’s turn to throw rocks at the theory of Neo-Darwinism.  It is clear from the beginning that Stein, a former White House speechwriter, actor, game-show host, and writer, does not understand what science is and does not give one bit of information on how adding the supernatural into the study of the natural is going to help science.  Instead he is here to promote intelligent design, which he never defines in any detail, and claims that there is a nation wide conspiracy to keep scientists who promote intelligent design out of the laboratories and classrooms of this land. Like Moody and Sunday before him, Stein blames the theory of evolution for a myriad of social ills.  Aided by the Discovery Institute, Stein claims that the scientific establishment is Communistic in its outlook, and will destroy any brave rebel who disagrees with them. Who are his victims?  Richard Sternberg of the scientific journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington who published Stephen C. Meyer’s article on intelligent design went through a review committee which later stated that his paper  "does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings" and would not have been published had usual editorial practices been followed, Iowa State University’s Guillermo Gonzalez who did not receive tenure after promoting intelligent design in his book The Privileged Planet, and biologist Caroline Crocker whose contracts was not renewed at George Mason University after she introduced intelligent design into her cell biology class. While shading the facts in each of these cases, Ben Stein states that there are "people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God”.  And you know what, thank God for them, and if there is a God, I am sure he is blessing those people for keeping that firewall up there because one of my father’s four rules to a good marriage is to remember that “not all battles are worth fighting” and our marriage to this materialistic discipline called science has been a good one.

Christians need to ask themselves if this is war worth fighting. In other words, does belief in Darwinism exclude you from heaven? Is a war against Darwinism central to the faith? Does it help science in any way, shape, or fashion to throw your God or gods into it? If not, let it drop. Round one, you read your Bibles and concluded that the world was flat and on columns. Science blooded your nose. Round two, your Old Testament reported that the Sun revolved around the earth. You scored some early points by torturing some astronomers, but science made a comeback and knocked you to the canvas. (Have you ever noticed that the people who say if the Bible says it, it must be true, get very quiet when confronted by the fact that the Hebrew Bible twice mentions that the sun revolves around the earth?) Round three, the Scopes monkey trial.  The Christians win the trial but take huge body blows with their champion dying five days after the trial’s conclusion. You barely make it back to your corner. Mickey wants to throw in the towel because science is just getting warmed up. Are you going to go back out there?

Verdict: Pass