Ben Stein and Mike Gallagher should be Expelled

UnrepentantSinner

A post by Alan Smithee
UnrepentantSinner
Joined
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A year or two ago I posted a thread about a local Dallas talk radio host who happened to be a fairly devout Christian that ambushed and absolutely devestated John Edward when he had him on as a guest. Quite a number of JREFers took it upon themselves to contact him with kudos. I'm hoping to orchestrate a similar e-response to the pain inducing segments I heard on another local talk show this morning.

Unfortunately I feel constrained when it comes to streaming audio or podcasts because I don't access things like that at work and, because of dial-up at home, cannot. Hopefully someone with time and broadband can produce a transcript of the intellectual abortion I was witness to during my commute home.

Mike Gallagher was promoing his upcomming shillfest with Ben Stein for the latter's "Expelled" movie and set the stage by raising the ugly spectre of James Watson's comments about blacks. When he came back from the :45 minute commercials he kept referrring to Watson as "this guy", a typical reactionary tactic where one does not even refer to the name of somone they wish to destroy. Doctor Watson's unfortunate remarks have nothing to do with evolutionary theory any more than comments by Darwin, Huxley, Dhobzanski, Gould or Dawkins. The science either stands or falls on it's own.

I used to love Ben Stein despite our political differences - and I wrinkled my nose at the crappy ad homs about him on the Exposed movie blog I'd been participating in, but his comments this morning have turned me off for good. He opened by suggesting that "Darwinism" is nothing more than an expression of Victorian Imperialism and leads ultimately to Nazism. Never once did he try and address the science, he just kept referring to "Darwinism", a concept that exists only in the minds of Creationists.

Near the end of the segement Gallagher abandoned all pretense and went after atheism. Stein responded that is must terrify leftists that if there is a God and therefore they are responsible for their actions - everything goes is not an option and they hate that. They then went on to discuss Christopher Hitchens, who Gallagher described as a darling of the right, which he was totally confounded about and Stein went on to say he was an anti-Semite.

I haven't read GOD Is Not great, but I don't recall evolutionary theory, much less "Darwinism" being a central argument for the book so I have no idea why Hitchens would be mentioned at all in a discussion that ostensibly was about Evolution and ID.

Hopefully somone with broadband can flesh out my recollections and hasty notes and others of you will be motivated to e-mail Mike about his irresponsible broadcasting. My only request is that, if you do, you keep it polite.
 
Of course blacks aren't inferior because evolution says so -- they're inferior because the Bible says so because they're from Cain's tribe or something asinine. And even if they weren't, God's fine with slavery, so what's the diff, man?
 
Looks to me like you have to pay to hear the content on the internet, so I'll pass.
 
Beerina said:
Of course blacks aren't inferior because evolution says so -- they're inferior because the Bible says so because they're from Cain's tribe or something asinine. And even if they weren't, God's fine with slavery, so what's the diff, man?
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I realize the appeal of the immediate knee jerk reaction, but my OP was less about what James Watson had to say or engaging in tu quoque than seriously addressing what Gallagher and Stein had to say logically and unemotionally.

Not that what they said was logical or unemotional but we should take the high road.
 
I do think they have a point when they say that the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" can lead to social Darwinism, which can lead to things like the holocaust. But history confounds that linkage in my mind, because genocide predates Darwin by thousands of years, and is endorsed time after time in the Bible and the Quran, where it comes in the guise of "kill the infidels." Frankly, I'd argue that genocidal demagogues probably get a bigger boost by having God's endorsement than doddering old Darwin's.
 
bokonon said:
Looks to me like you have to pay to hear the content on the internet, so I'll pass.
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Bah, I didn't notice that. I won't pay for access to that stuff either.

bokonon said:
I do think they have a point when they say that the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" can lead to social Darwinism, which can lead to things like the holocaust. But history confounds that linkage in my mind, because genocide predates Darwin by thousands of years, and is endorsed time after time in the Bible and the Quran, where it comes in the guise of "kill the infidels." Frankly, I'd argue that genocidal demagogues probably get a bigger boost by having God's endorsement than doddering old Darwin's.
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I don't agree precisely for the reasons you mentioned. The Holocaust happened for a number of reasons, and due to a number of influences, evolutionary theory hardly constituting one of them. Nietschze's "untermench" writings had more direct influence than Darwin did. Eugenics even predates the influence of the Abrahamic religions on Europe - male Spartan babies underwent their own selective breeding program. And everyone who knows anything about history understands why there is a Southern Baptist Convention and why Jim Crow persisted into the 1960s... and it wasn't due to "Darwinism."
 
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
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Has Ben been dating Ann Coulter in recent years?
 
I have an awfully hard time reconciling the Ben Stein I admired for his wit and intelligence and good nature (from what I saw of him), with the buffoon who has sold out to hateful ignorance. This sudden 180-degree turnabout is inexcusable and just plain creepy. I seriously suspect some sort of age-related mental decline, or brain tumour or something. Somehow, he has lost his mind.
 
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Tumblehome said:
I have an awfully hard time reconciling the Ben Stein I admired for his wit and intelligence and good nature (from what I saw of him), with the buffoon who has sold out to hateful ignorance. This sudden 180-degree turnabout is inexcusable and just plain creepy. I seriously suspect some sort of age-related mental decline, or brain tumour or something. Somehow, he has lost his mind.
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He has joined Dennis Prager and Michael Medved in that his cherished position as right-wing Jew emeritus makes him subservient to his Christian theocrat masters.
 
Ben Stein has been a nutjob for years and years... he's just been better at hiding it. He also thought America would roll straight through Iraq and into Iran. The crybaby "everyone is picking on us" nonsense is part and parcel of the larger right-wing delusional mindset.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
Nietschze's "untermench" writings had more direct influence than Darwin did.
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Citation? Blaming Nietzsche for for the holocaust is about as valid as blaming Strauss for Iraq. For that matter, it's also about as valid as blaming Darwin for the holocaust - i.e, not valid at all.
 
D'rok the Lacone said:
Citation? Blaming Nietzsche for for the holocaust is about as valid as blaming Strauss for Iraq. For that matter, it's also about as valid as blaming Darwin for the holocaust - i.e, not valid at all.
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Thank you for making me dig deeper and correct my misconception. Before deferring completely to your objection, I have to make one objection - you seem to be taking that single sentence out of context. As I stated there were a number of perverted influences that facilitated the Holocaust and I wasn't "blaming" Nietzsche for it, I was merely noting his writings (incorrectly upon further investigation) contributing tho it.. along with the bad archeology, traditional German Catholic and Lutheran anti-Semitism and the other factors I noted in the post you quoted.

Admittedly, by digging "deeper" I mean checking the Wikipdedia entry for Untermensch but there I did discover this citation showing how Nietzsche's language was perverted just as Darwin's was by the Eugenicist movement and to a much lesser extent the Nazis.

Although usually considered to have been coined by the Nazis themselves, the term "under man" in the above mentioned sense was actually first used by American author Lothrop Stoddard in the title of his 1922 pamphlet The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man. It was later adopted by the Nazis from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).[1] The German word "Untermensch" itself had been used earlier (not in a racial sense), e.g. in a 1899 novel by Theodor Fontane. Since most writers who employ the term do not address the question of when and how the word entered the German language (and therefore do not seem to be aware of Stoddard's original term "under man"), "Untermensch" is usually back-translated into English as "sub-human." A leading Nazi attributing the concept of the East-European "under man" to Stoddard is Alfred Rosenberg who, referring to Russian communists, wrote in his Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930) that "this is the kind of human being that Lothrop Stoddard has called the 'under man.'" ["...den Lothrop Stoddard als 'Untermenschen' bezeichnete."][2] Quoting Stoddard: "The Under-Man -- the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives.

However, it is possible that Stoddard constructed his "under man" as an antipode to Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch (or superman) concept. Stoddard doesn't say so explicitly, but he refers critically to the "superman" idea at the end of his book (p.262). Wordplays with Nietzsche's term seem to have been used repeatedly as early as the 19th century and, due to the German linguistic trait of being able to combine prefixes and roots almost at will in order to create new words, this development was even somewhat logical.
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See the rest of the article for more. So the Untermensch concept comes not from Nietzche's writings, but from a perversion of it... which does nothing to deminish my original point that Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled are wrong in citing Darwin's writings as the focus and cause of the Holocaust.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
Thank you for making me dig deeper and correct my misconception. Before deferring completely to your objection, I have to make one objection - you seem to be taking that single sentence out of context. As I stated there were a number of perverted influences that facilitated the Holocaust and I wasn't "blaming" Nietzsche for it, I was merely noting his writings (incorrectly upon further investigation) contributing tho it.. along with the bad archeology, traditional German Catholic and Lutheran anti-Semitism and the other factors I noted in the post you quoted.

Admittedly, by digging "deeper" I mean checking the Wikipdedia entry for Untermensch but there I did discover this citation showing how Nietzsche's language was perverted just as Darwin's was by the Eugenicist movement and to a much lesser extent the Nazis.



See the rest of the article for more. So the Untermensch concept comes not from Nietzche's writings, but from a perversion of it... which does nothing to deminish my original point that Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled are wrong in citing Darwin's writings as the focus and cause of the Holocaust.
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Damn your reasonableness! I wanted to fight about it! :p
 
hgc said:
He has joined Dennis Prager and Michael Medved in that his cherished position as right-wing Jew emeritus makes him subservient to his Christian theocrat masters.
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Joe Ellison said:
Ben Stein has been a nutjob for years and years... he's just been better at hiding it. He also thought America would roll straight through Iraq and into Iran. The crybaby "everyone is picking on us" nonsense is part and parcel of the larger right-wing delusional mindset.
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Well, he did a good job of hiding it from me, though I only know him from his game show and a few non-political interviews. It's hard for me to accept that someone of his intellect actually believes the diarrhea he's spouting. My instinct says he doesn't believe it, but sold out to the neocon overlords and is being paid to spread ultra-right hatred on their behalf. But either way, it's reprehensible. If only there really was a supreme power that he'd have to answer to.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
Near the end of the segement Gallagher abandoned all pretense and went after atheism. Stein responded that is must terrify leftists that if there is a God and therefore they are responsible for their actions...
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Of all the smear tactics that the Religious Right uses against atheists, I find their insistent "red-baiting" to be the the most disgusting. If it's unfair for the Dawkins and Hitchens of the world to paint even moderate adherents to religion as crypto-fantatics or enablers of theocracy, then why is it any better for average Christian (and in this case, Jewish) conservative to paint people who don't trust religion or believe that a supernatural tyrant rules the universe as 'liberals/socialists/communists/Marxists/etc.?" The conservatives I've known hardly like it when Leftists compare them and their policies to the Nazis, why should it be any different for the atheist who is often accused of being the intellectual heir of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Pol Pot?

Yes, I know more than a few "godless commies." I get plenty of e-mail on daily basis from them via the local "atheist and freethinker" Yahoo group calling for Bush's impeachment, the end of "fascist" capitalist system, the repeal of the PATRIOT act (well, I agree with them on that), and other causes that would send Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh into a conniption fit. I'd be willing to admit that a majority of non-theists do support left-wing politics of one shade of another. But is that the rule? My friend Steve is an open atheist, and he often complains about "liberals" and their policies. When I was a College Republican back at UW-Milwaukee, I knew serveral members who admitted to be atheists in private though they tended to keep in very quiet about their disbelief, especially during club functions involving local GOP politicians.

Was Ayn Rand a Leftist? True, she might not have been a model example of non-belief due to her rather obvious hypocrisies (e.g. an alleged champion of individualism who demanded slavish devotion from her followers), but she was an out-spoken atheist who was a ardent supporter of free market economics. She was hardly a "liberal." What of magician-comedians Penn & Teller? Both are hard-core atheists, but they are also noted libertarians who have tweaked American liberals with their defense of private gun ownership, public smoking, and property rights as much as they have conservatives on issues like sexual freedom, drug legalization, free speech, and evolution? Again, they'd only be "socialist" if your view of the political spectrum was cranked so far to the Right that anyone slightly to the Left of Pat Buchanan would be considered to be a the stereotypical "bleeding heart."

What about me? I'm an ex-Catholic/born-again atheist who supports gay rights, "abortion-on-demand," and wants the "wall of separation between church and state" figuratively reinforced with battleship armor, surrounded by land mines, and topped with razor wire and machine gun nests. Yet, I keep a cabinet full of firearms that you'll have to "pry from my cold, dead, fingers." While I would never vote Republican again I would never consider voting for the other party unless they made some major changes to their economic policies. I also tend to prefer the efforts entrepreneurs and the private sector than those of government bureaucrats. Am I a "Leftist?" I don't think I'd be comfortable among most liberal-leaning individuals when the topic of politics came up, or they with me.

All of these people I've cited might not be "right-wing" but they're certainly not Leftist. I would submit that there are probably far more non-Leftist non-theists than the religious conservatives would care to admit. However, if atheists are truly quicker to embrace left-wing politics than most, I would say that it's only because the Right hasn't exactly rolled out the welcome mat for non-theists. Would you want to join a club that wouldn't have you as a member? If Republicans were willing to tell their bible-beating allies to get lost and stop pretending that capitalism is the official economic system of Christianity, then perhaps you'd have more non-believers consider taking part in conservative politics and free-market economics. Until then, conservatives have no right to act surprised if atheists decide to stay on the other side of the political fence.

Here's something else for Stein/Gallagher to consider: All of the Democratic U.S. presidential candidates I've seen are more than willing to invoke religion on the campaign trail. If one them wins, I'm pretty sure they'll have "so help me God" tacked onto their oath of office and swear on a Bible, they will keep "In God We Trust" on our currency, and they'll attend to the annual White House Prayer Breakfast and perhaps attend Sunday services. Has it ever occurred to Stein or Gallagher that "liberals" like Rodham-Clinton, Obama, Edwards, et al might actually believe in a god despite the godless lefty caricature? Yes, their public pronouncements of faith might be a cynical pandering for votes (they are, after all, politicians), but that still doesn't mean they don't believe in private. Back in 2000, an article in The New Republic wondered if Howard Dean was too secular to run for the Oval Office and feared that his lack of religious rhetoric would turn away Caucasian blue-collar and minority Democratic voters; two groups who largely cling to religious belief. That year, the nomination went to John Kerry, an open Catholic (of course, not Catholic enough for some).Two of the most highest profile American liberal activists, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, are protestant ministers. While the Left's brand of religiosity isn't the harsh and bigoted variety held by their right-wing opponents, it's still a belief in a supernatural being never the less. Yet, you don't hear anyone seriously complaining about the rise of the "Christian Left" and their attempts to dominate American politics.

I wonder why?

UnrepentantSinner said:
- everything goes is not an option and they hate that.
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Stein and Gallager's vilifying atheists as amoral (thus implying that they are therefore capable of murder, rape, torture, robbery, genocide, etc.) just as fallacious as claiming they're all closet Bolsheviks. The Right's mutilation of the concept of "moral relativism" plays on the ethical uncertainties in this increasingly complex society and the desire many people have to be sure what their doing in life is "right." Religious conservatives are either unable or unwilling to entertain the notion that morality is situational and mutable to circumstance, that there are some "moral questions" that shouldn't be up for ethical consideration at all (Especially what goes on between consenting adults in the bedroom.), and that the our moral impulses come from (for right or for wrong) humans themselves and were not handed down to us from on high by an invisible, unquestionable, unaccountable supernatural being.

The Right tends to love authority figures, thus the idea of a cosmic sheriff--a celestial Chuck Norris or Ah-nold--dealing out "justice" (i.e. punishment) to those who step out of line appeals to them greatly. Apparently, flawed and limited human justice, is not good enough for them. They want the "bad guys" to get an ultimate comeuppance in the hereafter. The trouble is, a lot of those "bad guys" are good folks who haven't actually harmed anyone and whose only crime was to upset the Right's bigoted moral compass.
 
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