38 I don’t think I would ever have gone to see a movie with Ben Stein in it, since I find his voice incredibly irritating. But since watching the trailer for his latest documentary, I suddenly find myself annoyed at the cocksucker for more reasons than just his obnoxious drone.
“Ben Stein is Expelled” is an unreleased movie that deals with the “political witch-hunt” in science against persons who vocally support Intelligent design. But Stein’s movie doesn’t appear to appeal to the scientifically minded (as it is unreleased, I cannot tell you exactly what’s in it) it appears to be appealing to the emotionally damaged. But what I can read is his blog and apparently, Darwin inspired Imperialism and Nazism. And I quote:
Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.
Yikes! What a fucking moron. In his post he goes on to say Darwin facilitated (or at least was the world’s best salesman of) imperialism, and then he contrasts Darwin to Carl Marx and evil communist dictators. (It’s even more mind numbing that imperialism existed before ships could safely transverse the Pacific. He went to Yale like Bush went to Harvard. Keep that in mind.) He then muses how long “Darwinsism” will last, since Marxism fell and, you know, Das Kapital bored 1000’s of people to death in the early 20th century, and all social policy fails eventually. Since natural selection is a social policy before natural law…? (I quote again)
Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.
It’s seriously just tin-foil-hat quackery. He doesn’t use fact to support his claim. He uses emotion. Why else would multiple images of Hitler, the ovens that burned the Jews and concentration caps come up in a movie trailer about something to promoting Intelligent Design? 
It’s exploitive and unsavory to immediately jump to Hitler. I mean… there’s an order. FIRST you call them fat and dumb THEN you compare them to Hitler. Jesus Christ. Go back to middle school.
But this does remind me of what I said in my past foray into religious topics.
I asked myself if people that believe in creationism should be allowed to teach science, after I stated, very matter of fact, that they shouldn’t. I’ve concluded that, they should, of course. It was a bit bigoted of me to say they shouldn’t, in retrospect. It’s not especially relevant that they have these opinions, so long as they aren’t trying to pass it off as fact or science since it most certainly is neither. I can’t say I have any qualms with people believing things they choose to believe, regardless of how bizare it is. Thus, I would like to take this time to write a formal apology to Jim Tour:
Dearest Jim Tour,
I’m really quite sorry about saying you shouldn’t teach science. That was horribly rude of me. Your opinions on evolution have an insignificant weight on chemical education. No, seriously, I’m sorry. Nevertheless you’ll still be answering to the many angry arms of Vishnu for your “Nanoputiens.”1
With all my love,
Kyle
UPDATE: Here is a blog that discusses the filmmakers’ unethical conduct. Here is a blog that bunks some fictitious points in the film. Whats-his-nuts on Panda’s Thumb got duped into filming for them.
1Actually, I recognize the education benefit of the retarded “Nanoputian” thing and understand it was funded with a grant to create educational shit. We shall undoubtedly be beating the influxing hoards of undergrads off with sticks (any minute now). I actually harbor no ill feelings about the Nanoputians… but I would like you to refund me the tax dollars spent on it by purchasing one of my fine T-Shirts (the profits of which will be re-donated to Wikipedia).
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which is which?
oh, i can’t post images. ignore these comments.
IMHO, this shirt is pretty far from nice, way worse than your other merchandise, which I like. Not because it’s related to religion, but because it looks ugly. As all Tour’s molecules. But full-sized now.
WRONG! Recant and die, heretic.
I wonder if Kali could do more damage than Vishnu. At the least, she’d have more fun in the process.
If those triple bonds were reduced, could the head aromatic group get down to the para-methyl for some hot nanoputian auto-fellatio?
Ha!
“Actually, I recognize the education benefit of the retarded “Nanoputian” thing and understand it was funded with a grant to create educational shit.”
Fuck that. I can think of 100 actually useful educational things that we can do with grant money.
Yawn, who cares about intelligent design?
We should worry about people that do care for aberrant ideologies and wish to force them upon us and our children in the name of secular science. You should care.
Try to be a little less short sighted.
Ostensibly Ben Stein’s movie is about discrimination against people who believe in ID. If the ID/evolution debate is impertinent to someone’s line of work, then I care more that that sort of person is treated fairly. I recently got accused of being misogynistic and was trampled upon by a group of people who stuffed cotton in their ears and screamed ‘la-la-la I’m right’ without bothering to understand my arguments (essentially that I consistently treat both men and women like objects, and that women are welcome to treat me like an object).
But whatever, these people were in academia and, despite being English Literature students are potentially the type of person that might be able to and would block appointments, advancement, et cetera.
I am more worried about this than intelligent design being in textbooks with a “you decide” clause. But then again, I am very self-centered.
While you may have had a strong reaction to Stein’s movie and his claim that we should discard Darwinism because of its checkered past as an adhoc social theory, you are absolutely incorrect to belittle the concept of social Darwinism. Stein is right that people with severe emotional defects or giant sticks up their butts (take your pick) used the concept to justify reprehensible acts of racism and xenophobia. This is certainly part of the negative legacy of evolutionary theory. Where Stein goes off track is to claim that Darwin himself or the *biological* theory he created are directly responsible for this application. On this point you and I agree. Finally, Stein is actually a bit late, as social Darwinism (the “Darwinism” he is referring to) was discarded some time ago.
Social Darwinism was not only used by Nazis, it was used in the United States by proponents of greater free market capitalism in the 20th century. The stock market was the ultimate ’survival of the fittest’ battleground. I wonder what Ben Stein thinks of that with regard to his own political views?
Well, seeing as he was letting you win his money if you knew more trivia than him a few years back, I’d say he seems like a big proponent of social darwinism.
If knowing trivia equated to evolutionary success, I’d be Genghis Khan.
Ben Stein was also one of Nixon’s speechwriters, so he is apparently well acquainted with the uses of dishonesty to defend morally questionable positions.
Let’s be honest – you’re just pissed off because you never got a chance to win any of Ben Stein’s money.
It’s not true. I was never impressed with Ben Stein and I don’t find his credentials particularly appealing – but he seems to be quite impressed with himself since he repeats them often enough.
I’ve also suddenly become very disinterested in money. I’m wondering if my apathy toward it is some sort of outward expression of the emotional damage this has done to my simple little brain.
Hitler’s camps did 11 million meat puppets. Nobody pisses and moans about culling cripples, retards, queers, gypsies, and Russians. Some 80% of processed Jews were rural fundie horrors singing the Schma as they were ablated. Yahweh must have been otherwise occupied. Nobody (especially city Jews) missed them; their neighbors enthusiastically sent them in. There were no uprisings in the camps. It was the most extraordinarily ratio of keepers to kept in history.
City Jews mostly fled West. Here’s your Darwinism: Take a shunned race that survived by its portable wits for a millennium (land ownership prohibited). Beat on them to keep that edge sharp, Inquisition and pogroms. Internally have the most intelligent males intensely educated as rabbis then married to and bred with merchants’ (brains there, too – money speaks) daughters, all females needing to be literate to pray. Now, kill off the bottom 90% of an anomalously intelligent herd (2/3 sigma IQ above the general European population).
Voila! Master Race. OTOH, the Russian Revolution was Jewish. Having a big engine doesn’t mean you know the route.
Ben Stein was a Federal economist (snigger). He worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, DC. He beat the crap out of Vegematic as a Federal Trade Commission laywer. Ben Stein is Liberal scum in wolf’s clothing, jullienne or otherwise.
The difference between a racist and a Liberal is that the racist pays for his snit out of his own wallet, the Liberal out of yours.
Take a shunned race that survived by its portable wits for a millennium (land ownership prohibited). Beat on them to keep that edge sharp, Inquisition and pogroms.
In other news, gays are also smarter then you. Film at eleven.
no, just european gays.
American gays too, who, as we all know, emigrated from France.
Funny, I don’t remember Christianity being used to justify the killing of Jews or anyone else – well, other than the Spanish Inquisition, Eurpoe in the plague years,…yet Darwin’s theory wasn’t around for any of this. I know Stein’s not appealing to anyone who’s seems to be using their brain, but doesn’t the presence of mass killings of “undesirables” before Darwinism (by people who were/are nominally Christian, in some cases under the aegis of churches) imply that getting rid of Darwinism won’t make the mass killings of “undesirables” go away? Considering history, the more advanced tools for killing we’ve acquired, and the outcomes of thought-free arguments, purging Darwinism on this basis would likely make things worse.
I realize I’m necroposting, but I’ve been away…
Stein is referencing the “Imperial” period in Europe, when the European leaders decided that they were better than the dark-skinned savages of Africa and would thereby “civilize” them by conquering them and teaching them to cover their nudity. Check out King Leopold II of Belgium (one of those stunning, shining stars of foreign policy, according to my old boss who was, coincidentally, Belgian) in case you wanted to know more about the “civilizing of Africa”. Or just read Heart of Darkness. It’s short. Boring, but short.
How that relates to the Nazis…I’m not sure. Germany got into the carving up of Africa game late, so maybe that’s why they invaded France. Twice. Or perhaps Hitler just wanted some baguettes, and social Darwinism stated that the French had the best bread around, and the Germans deserved it.
From what I understand, it’s a terribly flawed argument on Stein’s part. He should go back to giving out his money and looking for Truants in the Chicago suburbs.
Nah. Africa had nothing to do with the way the Africans acted, only how they produced. It was better for colonial powers to control them via fear and justify it via race, but economics, as always, proved the motivating factor behind the savagery of Imperialism, not race. Race was an issue, not the purpose, cause or catalyst for any of this. After all, the English had no remorse about shitting on the Irish, who were just as white as they were.
“stunning, shining stars of foreign policy”?
Was your advisor by any chance sane? From what I know (from World’s Most Dangerous Places, I think) Leopold conned Europe into thinking he was doing civilizing work while using the residents as his personal slaves (supposedly cutting off limbs and villagers’ lives if they did not reach production quotas). I guess he wanted Belgium to be the second coming of Portugal in the colonization field, and an important training ground for future Sierra Leonian mutilators. Unless your advisor was either 1) confusing normal citizens with graduate students (albeit with slightly reduced compassion and safety regulations) or 2) an adherent to the (currently popular) “kill ‘em all and let God sort it out” school of foreign policy, Leopold isn’t really someone to admire and emulate.
There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of reasons to justify subjugation of peoples for their valuables, and even if Stein was arguing from a particular historical view, the intentional ignorance of history both pre- and post-Darwin is either really stupid or really dishonest (and considering his past history and the current history of his project and its adherents, I would bet strongly on the latter).
Stein is using a typical retarded argument, blaming a philosophy because of those who used a warped and completely fantasy-based version of it to promote crackpot views. Yawn, give us something new you pig-headed prick.
Kyle, you’re all about gonzo bad taste. Gotta love it. But that T-shirt is really in poor taste. You stay classy.
It’s true, Mr. Klug, it is in really poor taste. I asked my wife when I saw your comment and she agrees. It must really say something about me if I still don’t see why it’s in such bad taste.
But I guess if I made a NanoMuhammad, I’d be in a bit more trouble than just a scolding and suggestion to stay classy….
Thanks for the agreement; I get where you’re coming from — really, I do.
As someone who practices (or tries to) a religion, I try to step lightly around religious icons of any sort. I tend to think of it like “no holy ground” rule from Highlander: The Series. Of course, perspective is everything and you can always get silly and the rules do seem like Calvinball sometimes. Nevertheless, the central image of a major world religion seems like a no-no. Just sayin’.
[Besides, the terminal methyls of NanoJesus are not bonded to the cross. You got it wrong.]
They are hydrogen bonding to the aromatic rings. I’m sure if you looked at the NMR spectra, you would see the terminal methyls around -1.0 or so.
The hillarious thing is I guess I actually expected Christians to buy the shirt thinking it was cool… I mean… hmmm. I should find religion.
Forget about making a nanomohammad. Don’t even think of naming your nanoteddy nanomohammad.
Mo ligation chemistry would do it. Stable carbenes are fashionable. Lose orbitals justify discussion of the beard of [Mo(hammad)]. Metal oxidation state (rearside oxidative insertion is a bonus!) and complex ion charge are negotiable. It’s an Angew. Chemie natural – and I’m taking cover!
It’s “Karl Marx”, not “Carl Marx” (4th paragraph)
Hilarious rant, great read. I want one of those tshirts, but I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to wear it in public.
If you won’t wear it, then all hope is certainly lost.
Not at all… just because I’m vehement in my worldview doesn’t mean I like to offend. That’s your job, and a damn fine job you do!
He uses all emotion and no fact. I’m surprised he didn’t blame the tenure loss on Nick and Jessica or talk about the brave men or the real heroes. He mish moshes everything. The professors “lost” tenure (the ones in his film) because of other infractions and nothing to do with the teaching of Darwinism. One need only do a brief Google search and the evidence is overwhelming. Stein is just doing another one of his moronic comparison pieces except in a movie. Oh, and if you write him a letter–like the woman named Annette in I Served website you will get sanctimony and arrogance and nastiness. He might even say…as he did in response to my letter…KEEP COMING BACK. Very scientific.