baruch web design certificate
[strings playing"all along the watchtower"] male announcer: ladiesand gentlemen, welcome. today it ismy distinct pleasure to introduce a manwho is recognized-- the battle over evolutionis only one skirmish in a much larger war. science simply makes no useof the hypothesis of god. ask yourself, what hasintelligent design given us?nothing. we cannot acceptintelligent design
as an alternativescientific theory. they will never acceptthat we have a better argument. they just pester us,and they waste our time. announcer: ...varietyof topics, ranging fromeconomics, civil rights, to how not to ruin your lifein ten easy steps. today, ben is speakingon the topic that has becomeincreasingly importantto him over recent years. while ben has always beenan ardent supporter of science, lately he has noticedan alarming trend
in the scientificestablishment that could havedire consequences for every american. without further ado, please join mein giving a warm welcome for mr. ben stein. [audience applauding] ben stein: thank you. thank you very much.thank you very, very much.thank you.
thank you very much,everybody. thank you very much,gangstas. thank youvery, very much. freedom isthe essence of america. we're talkingabout freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from fear,freedom of religion. martin luther king said, "america isessentially a dream,"
and he said it is a dreamof freedom and equality. freedom is the wayto equality. and america simply wouldnot be america without freedom. in every turning pointin our history, the decision has alwaysbeen about freedom. [stein narrates]freedom is what makesthis country great. freedom has allowed usto create, to explore, to overcome every challengewe have faced as a nation. but imagine if these freedomswere taken away.
where would we be?what would we lose? well, unfortunately,i no longer need to imagine. it's happening. we are losing our freedom in one of the most importantsectors of society-- science. i have always assumed that scientists were freeto ask any question, to pursueany line of inquiry
without fear of reprisal, but recentlyi've been alarmed to discover that this is not the case. it all began when i met evolutionary biologistrichard sternberg in washington, d.c. his life was nearly ruined when he strayedfrom the party line while serving as editorof a scientific journal
affiliatedwith the prestigious smithsonian museumof natural history. your officewas over there? that's correct. this hereis the west wing. directly ahead of usis the west wing of the natural historymuseum. so now you'renot there anymore because you werea bad boy.
no, i'm not.no, i was exiled. you were a bad boy. you questionedthe powers that be. [typewriter clacking] what wasdr. sternberg's crime? he dared to publish an articleby dr. stephen meyer, one of the leading lights of the intelligent designmovement. the paper igniteda firestorm of controversy
merely because it suggestedintelligent design might be able to explainhow life began. as a result,dr. sternberg lost his office, his politicaland religious beliefswere investigated, and he was pressuredto resign. the questioningof darwinism was a bridge too farfor many. the mentioningof intelligent design that occursat the end of the paperwas over the top.
and i thinkthe intelligent designproponents have raised a numberof very important questions. and you wanted to getthose questions brought up and discussed. - placed on the table.- placed on the table. people were so upsetabout it. they were so upsetthat you could see their-- they had a physicalemotional reaction. wow.
they were saying that stephen c. meyeris a well-known christian, that stephen c. meyeris an intelligent designproponent, that stephen c. meyeris a republican. it was all couchedin terms of religion, politics,and sociology. the way the chairof the department put it is that i was viewedas an intellectual terrorist. terrorist?
because ofgiving the topic of intelligent designsome modicum of credibility. what happenedto dr. sternberg was terrible, but surely it wasjust an isolated case. i was stillpretty skeptical, so naturallyi checked in with the head of the skeptics society,michael shermer. so i can't provethere is no god, or yahweh in your case,
any more than i can provethere is no isis, zeus, apollo, brahma, ganesha,mithras, allah, or for that matter,the flying spaghetti monster. and think about justone thing: why would the alienslook like this? - these are bipedal--- king: who drew that? shermer: skepticism...it's not a position you take. it's justan approach to claims. this one's calledthe borderlands of science:where sense meets nonsense.
is intelligent designnonsense? well, it's unproven, so in that senseit's nonsense. so i would put itin the sort of shaded areas between good, solid scienceand total nonsense. you know, it's sort ofthree quarters of the waytoward the nonsense side. stein: but you think,nevertheless, people should beallowed to speak about and publish papersabout it.
they are free to writeand publish and be heard in public forumsand go to conferences just likeeverybody else does. what if a personpublished something,say, at the smithsonian in favorof intelligent designand lost his job over it? i mean, it had beenpeer-reviewed and published and then he lost his jobover it anyway. what aboutthat situation? well...i thinkthat particular situation,
there was something elsegoing on. - what was going on?- i don't know. i mean, i don't knowbecause i don't know, but i think there hadto be something. people don't get firedover something like that. you roll up your sleeves,you get to work, you do the research,you get your grants, you get your data,you publish, and you workyour butt off,
and that's how you getyour theories taught-- what if you try and tryand roll up your sleeves and go to workand work your butt off, and they say,"we're going to fire you if you even mention the wordintelligent design"? i don't think that's happened.where is that happening? filmstrip narrator:george mason university-- throughoutits 50-year history, our missionhas remained clear--
to prepare a diversepopulation of students to think and to grow in a climate of unbridledacademic freedom. stein: after dr. carolinecrocker simply mentioned intelligent designin her cell biology class at george mason university, her promising academic careercame to an abrupt end. my supervisor invited meinto his office. he said,"i'm going to haveto discipline you
for teaching creationism." and i said, "i mentionedintelligent design "on a couple of slides, but i did not teachcreationism." he said, "nonetheless,you have to be disciplined." at the end of the semester,i lost my job. not only didthis well-loved professor lose her jobat george mason, she suddenly found herselfblacklisted,
unable to finda job anywhere. so whenever iinterviewed for a job, i would be offered itusually on the spot. since this has happened and since peoplecan google my name, i'm finding that wheni send my credentials, i do get interviews--i get many interviews-- but i never getoffered a job. i don't tell themabout my--
about my, uh,"science sin." [bell tolling] i was only trying to teachwhat the university stands for, which is academic freedom. egnor: there's nothingto be learned in neurosurgery by assumingan accidental origin for the parts of the brainthat we work on. stein: it wasn'tjust biologists who were feelingthe darwinist wrath.
when neurosurgeonmichael egnor wrote an essayto high school students saying doctors didn't needto study evolution in order to practice medicine, the darwinists were quick to try and exterminatethis new threat. a lot of peoplein a lot of blogs called me unprintable namesthat were printed. [laughs]
there were a lot of very,very nasty comments. other people suggested that people callthe university i work at and suggest that perhapsit's time for me to retire. i realized wheni kind of went public with my doubtsabout the adequacyof darwin's theory, you know, that i wouldencounter criticism. what has amazed meis the viciousness and the sortof baseness of it.
i'm an old guy.i have tenure. i'm academically safe. but the young people and whatis happening to themin america right now because of thisscientism gulag is really terrible. apparently professor marks was not as safeas he thought. a few monthsafter this interview,
baylor university shut downhis research web site and forced himto return grant money once theydiscovered a link between his workand intelligent design. in order to attract grants,you have to market yourself. so you put up sitesand call yourself "labs" and "groups"and things like that in order to getvisibility. and in my entireexperience in academia
i never wentto any superior and asked themany permission to put upany of these labs. so the fact thatthis was singled out, let alone shut down,is jaw-dropping.it's astonishing. i have never been treatedlike this in my-- about 30 years in academia. shut up, you freak!i said shut up! [echoing]it's a madhouse!
if you peel backthe onion, i think thatthere's no doubt that the centerof this is my work in what some would callintelligent design. dr. gonzalez:people really getemotional about this. whenever you say"intelligent design"in a room of academics, them's fighting words. creationists! astronomerguillermo gonzalez
found himselfin a fierce shootout with iowa state university, following the publicationof his book arguing that the universeis intelligently designed. despite a stellarresearch record that has ledto the discoveryof several planets, his applicationfor tenure was denied, putting his careerin jeopardy. i worried about my tenurea little bit in 2005
when the petitionwas being circulated because i viewedthat as a strategy of hector avalosand his associates to try to poisonthe atmosphereon campus against me because he knew iwasn't tenured yet and i wasvery vulnerable. i have little doubt thati would have tenure now if i hadn't doneany professional workon intelligent design. dr. gonzalez hadthis advice for scientists
who might be thinkingabout following his example. if they valuetheir careers-- [laughs]they should keep quiet about theirintelligent design views. we know there are timesand places to be quiet and other times and places when we can make noiseif we want to. - filmstrip narrator:will you show us?- of course. boys and girls,
how would you like to show some of the ways we knowof being quiet? man #1: it's the kind of thingwhere you just learnto keep your mouth shut. stein: in additionto those scientists who were willingto appear on camera, we encountered many morewho didn't dare show their face for fear of losingtheir jobs. man #2: you usean intelligent designperspective to get the research done,
but you're not allowedto talk about it in public. man #3: and so there isdefinitely incentive,if you think about it, for people to remainwithin the mainstream. man #4: you know,"what's he up to? what is he thinking?is he one of them?"that kind of thing. man #5: if i write"intelligent design," they hear "creationism," they hear "religious right,"they hear "theocracy." so it appears mr. shermer,the self-styled skeptic,
was wrong on this one. intelligent designwas being suppressed in a systematicand ruthless fashion. but maybe intelligent designshould be suppressed. i didn't likewhat was happeningto these scientists, but on the other hand, we don't wantour kids being taught that the earth is flat or the the holocaustnever happened.
it was time to askthe scientific establishment what was so badabout intelligent design. intelligent design peopleare not genuine scientists. intelligent designis a racket. it's just propaganda. the only intelligentthing about it is to have got peopleto call it that. it's reallyvery stupid, as well. everybody knowsscience education
in americais appalling. what we don't needat this time is intelligent designin the classrooms. to presentintelligent design stunts theireducational growth. it stunts theirintellectual growth. but what i don't understand is how these animalscould've been on earth millions of yearsbefore man
when the bible saysthe whole earth was createdin only six days. it wasn't justthe educational aspectsof intelligent design that had scientistsconcerned. many suspected the movementmasked a much larger agenda. intelligent designis a set of excuses to squeeze creationisminto the classrooms. get intelligent designin the schools today, and we can haveschool prayers tomorrow. chorus: hallelujah
hallelujah stein: any other complaints? can you imagineanything more boring? the boredom attachedto id is supreme. it is so boring that i can't even botherto think about itmuch any more. it's just utterly boring. john paul young: love is in the air everywhere i look around
love is in the air every sightand every sound stein: love wasin the air, all right, but none of it was directedtoward intelligent design. there seemed to bea lot to hate about id, and nearly all of that hatredwas focused on one place. the people in the--from the discovery institute-- the people who are doingthe intelligent design-- they're all varnishand no product.
the discovery instituteis a propaganda mill. it's a--it's an institution designed to suck in moneyfrom religious investors and turn it into a sanitized,somewhat secular version of the creation storyto get it into the schools. if they have a wayof understanding nature that's superiorto the one that we all are making lots ofdiscoveries using, great. - bring it on.- [rings]
[norman greenbaum's"spirit in the sky" plays] we are really,really lost. i think it's on third. i think it's on third.i think it's down there. i have no ideawhere this place is. i guess i justkeep walking. do you have any idea wherethe discovery institute is? have you ever heardof that? - never heard of it.- stein: okay, thank you.
- man: hey, ben.- how are you, sir? - man: i'm good. yourself?- good. - not a clue.- discovery institute? - thank you, it's very kindof you to offer--- welcome to seattle. thank you, sir. it's gotta bethis whole building. yes, where isthe discovery institute,please? discovery institute--on the eighth floor,suite 808. when i dieand they lay me to rest
gonna go to the placethat's the best okay, very good. when i lay medown to die goin' upto the spirit in the sky aha, success at last. aha, we found you. are you bruce chapman? - i am.- how are you?i'm ben stein. - welcome.- kind of you to have me here.
delighted to meet you. can i look aroundand see your offices? absolutely. do you just havethis floor, or do you have severalother floors as well? - chapman:no, this is it.- this is it? you've madean awful lot of trouble for being sucha small office. i thought it was goingto be like the pentagon.
we're likethe little boy that saidthe emperor has no clothes. and he didn't havea big organization either. when you go aroundand raise funds, your people arenot saying to them, "by the way,we're going to get "all these scientistsout of the classroom and put christ backin the classroom?" well, i don't knowthat christ has ever beenin the science classroom.
this is nota religious argument. this is somethingthat people-- we have fellowswho are jewishor agnostic or various other things. there are--there aremoslem scientists. there are peopleof all kinds of backgrounds who agreethat darwin's theoryhas failed. so why would you bringreligion into it? you don't need religion.this is a red herring, ben.
people who don't havean argument are reduced to throwingsand in your eyes. if the discovery institute could get its wishabout this subject, what would your wish be? well, on this subject,as on others, we'd like peopleto be able to have a robust dialogueand even a debate where the best evidence--
in this casethe best scientific evidence-- is made available to people. surely no one questionsthere should be a debate. oh, yes, they do. - they do?- they say the debatehas been settled, - that the issue's settled.- when was the debate settled? ben, i'd like you to talkto the scientists. you don't want to getyour science from me. mr. chapman claimed id hadnothing to do with religion,
so why was my first stopbiola university, formerly knownas the bible instituteof los angeles? [johnny cash's"personal jesus" plays] your own personal jesus someone to hearyour prayers someone who cares nelson: string theorywill be a footnotein the history of science. the inference thatstonehenge was causedby intelligence... your ownpersonal jesus
someone who's there stein: how much moneyhave you ever gottenfrom jerry falwell? uh, zero dollars. how aboutpat robertson? zero. are you a minister? no. - are you a priest?- no. - pastor?- no.
- youth pastor?- no. i did teachsunday school once. hasn't this allbeen resolved? aren't we alldarwinists now, except for a fewcranks like you? well, it's a funny thingthat questions that aren't properly answereddon't go away. this questionis loaded with all kindsof political baggage, but one-on-oneat a scientific meeting
after the thirdor fourth beer, my experience has been that manyevolutionary biologists will say, "yeah,this theory's gota lot of problems." so you mean to tell me that there really isa debate among scientists about whether or notevolution occurred? well, "evolution"is a kind of funny word. it dependson how one defines it.
if it means simplychange over time, even the most rock-ribbedfundamentalist knows that the historyof the earth has changed-- that there's beenchange over time. if you define evolutionprecisely, though, to mean the common descentof all life on earth from a single ancestor via undirected mutationand natural selection-- that's textbook definitionof neo-darwinism--
biologists of the first rankhave real questions. but the modern theoryof intelligent design is just microwavedcreationism. i don't thinkthat's the case. creationism,properly understood, begins with the bibleand says, "how can i fit the bibleinto the data of science?" intelligent designdoesn't do that. intelligent designis the studyof patterns in nature
that are best explainedas a result of intelligence. so intelligent designersbelieve that godis the designer. not necessarily. intelligent designis a minimal commitment, scientifically,to the possibility of detectingintelligent causation. dr. nelson didn'tsound like a crazy person, but i still suspectedid was nothing butreheated creationism. my next stopdidn't seem like
it was goingto alleviate those fears. male country singer: didn't crawlout of the ocean i didn't comefrom no monkey but science tendsto forget evolution's just a theory they present itin the textbooks and on animal tv like it's fact but tell mewere you there
12 million b.c.? evolution is a--from an intelligent designperspective, is perfectly acceptableif the sense is that "how did the designget implemented?" the issue is, is therea real design there and are thesematerial mechanisms, like natural selection, are these adequateto account for everything we see in biology?
and our argumentis no, it's not. but darwin producedall this evidence from his travelsand his studiesat the galapagos that evolutionexplained things. if you lookat the history of science, people often havea good idea, and then they decidejust to run with it. and they say, "we're goingto apply this everywhere." so darwin takes his ideaof natural selection
and says,"i'm going to explainall of life with it. physics used to benewtonian physics. newton was physics. and then you gottalook to einstein,general relativity. it's not newton is enough. i think, likewise,what we're finding with darwin is that he hadsome valid insights, but it's notthe whole picture. okay, darwinism may not bethe complete picture,
but what madethese guys think they hadthe missing pieces? i put this questionto dr. stephen meyer, author of the paperthat originally got dr. sternbergin so much trouble. stein: it's hard to believethat this little town is the headquartersof giant microsoft, which enabled mr. gatesto become fantastically rich. maybe that's whatsteve meyer's doing here.
maybe this is somehowgoing to make himfantastically rich. we'll pin him down like a butterflyon a butterfly board-- a butterflyon a killing board. coffee shopstraight ahead. stein: newton is buriedin the genius's corner at westminster abbey,right? that's correct, yeah. darwin is also buriedin westminster abbey.
right. and so is darwin. - right, right.- right near each other. and you're here in redmond in a little buildingwithout a sign, right? and you're obviouslyan incredibly smart guy, but how dare you challenge someone who's buriedin the genius's corner next to newtonat westminster abbey. well, it may seema little cheeky,
but it's what scientistsare supposed to do. when i was in cambridge, one of my supervisorsoften advised us to beware the soundof one hand clapping, which was a way of sayingif there's an argumenton one side, there's bound to bean argument on the other. what i found in studyingthe structure of the argumentin the origin of species is that for everyevidence-based argument
for one of darwin'stwo key propositions, there is an evidence-basedcounterargument. well, but--is it a debate? there's just youand a couple of other guys in a dinky little officedowntown, say, on one side, and there'sthe faculties of all the great universitiesin the worldon the other side. speaking with a great, uniform,and authoritative voice. yes, right.
well, in any case,the debate really isn't going to besettled by numbers. it's going to be settledby the evidenceand the arguments. while i was stillin bill gates country, dr. meyerrecommended i check in with molecular biologistjonathan wells. what kind of namesdo they call you? - uh, creationist.- what do you sayback to them when they say you'rea creationist?
well, i usually don'tget the opportunity. what's at stakefor you, personally? first of all,i love science. i thinkthe way darwinism corrupts the evidence,distorts the evidence, is bad for science. well, the other scientistswill tell you to just shut upif you love science, okay? because you're sort of beinga bomb thrower into science.
i am upsettingthe applecart. i think it deservesto be upset in this case. why? because the evidenceis being distorted to prop up a theory thati think doesn't fit it. was darwinismreally that bad? perhaps a change of scenery would give mea fresh perspective. [man singing in french]
mr. berlinski,i assume? - ben stein,what a pleasure to meet you.- how are you, sir? so, where are youfrom originally? i was born in new york,spent 31 years in manhattan. - yes.- and i spent a lot of timein california, too. and tell meall the various universities where you've studiedor taught. i was at princeton,then i had a professorshipat stanford. then i left stanford,and i taught at rutgers.
i left rutgers,and i taught at the city collegein new york. i left the city collegeof new york. i taught at the baruch college,i taught at san jose-- what did you teachat baruch college? anything they wanted.come on in. thank you, monsieur. what an old building! wow. it's the oldest in paris.
you're kidding. merci, monsieur. - ah, je vous en prie, monsieur.- merci. stein: wow,this is fabulous. berlinski:let's put it this way. before you can askis darwinian theorycorrect or not, you have to askthe preliminary question "is it clear enoughso that it could be correct?" that's a verydifferent question.
one of my prevailing doctrinesabout darwinian theory is, man, that thingis just a mess. it's like looking intoa room full of smoke. nothing in the theory is precisely, clearly,carefully definedor delineated. it lacks all of the rigor one expects frommathematical physics, and mathematical physicslacks all the rigor one expectsfrom mathematics.
so we're talking abouta gradual descent down the levelof intelligibility until we reachevolutionary biology. we don't even knowwhat a species is,for heaven's sakes. so his theory is smoke,but elegant smoke. there's a certainelegance to it, but i think einstein hadthe appropriate remark: he preferred to leaveelegance to his tailor. a room full of smoke?
that certainly wasn'twhat i was hearing from prominent darwinistslike richard dawkins. evolution is a fact. it's a fact which isestablished as securely as essentially any other factthat we have in science. richard dawkinsis so confident that evolution is a fact and that thereforegod doesn't exist that he has devotedhis entire life
to spreadingthe evolution gospel. i'm an atheist with respectto the judeo-christian god because there is nota shred of evidence in favorof the judeo-christian god. it is completelyright to say that since the evidencefor evolution is so absolutely,totally overwhelming-- nobody who looks at itcould possibly doubt that if they were saneand not stupid--
so the only remainingpossibility is thatthey're ignorant, and most people whodon't believe in evolutionare indeed ignorant. but the people i spoke withweren't ignorant. they werehighly credentialed scientists. so there had to besomething else going on here. so you think the whole theoryof evolution is false or just certain parts of it? well, again, "evolution"is a slippery word. i would say minor changeswithin species happen.
but darwin didn't writea book called how existing specieschange over time. he wrote a book calledthe origin of species. - he purported to showhow this same process--- huh, i see. ...leads to new species--in fact, every species-- and the evidencefor that grand claim is, in my opinion,almost totally lacking. how does darwin--or darwinism--say life began? well, he didn't know.and, in fact, nobody knows.
so darwinism,strictly defined, starts afterthe origin of life and deals onlywith living things. how can there bea theory about life without a theoryabout how life began? well, a grand, overarchingevolutionary story, of course, does includethe origin of life. darwin's theorydoesn't begin until you havethe first cell.
does someone have a theoryabout how life began? [explosion] man: this is the storyof a small planet in space called earth. stein: for a typicaldarwinian explanation of how life originated, dr. wells directed metoward this documentary. man: the chemical elementsessential for life-- hydrogen, oxygen,carbon, and nitrogen--
were now in place. what was needed wasa way of combining them. perhaps the energycame from lightning. - whatever it was--- [film pauses] stein: excuse me? - [film resumes]- man: whatever it was, energy managed to arrangethese chemical ingredients in just the right way. stein: "whatever it was"?
i was hoping for somethinga little more scientific. the most popular idea has been that lifeemerged spontaneously from primordial soup. in 1953, stanley miller mixed water, methane,ammonia, and hydrogen to simulatethe early earth's atmosphere. then he ran electricitythrough it in an attemptto jump-start life.
it's alive!it's alive! it's alive! it didn't work. while the initial resultsseemed promising, 50 years latermost serious scientists have abandoned this approach in favorof alternate theories. prominent darwinistmichael ruse attempted to explainone of them to me.
he wasn't kidding. how did we getfrom an inorganic world to the world of the cell? well, one populartheory is that it might have started offon the backs of crystals. my crystal ball. molecules piggybackedon the back of crystals forming, and that this ledto more and more complex-- but of course the nice thingabout crystals
is that every now and thenyou get mistakes--mutations-- and that this opens the wayfor natural selection. but--but at one pointthere was nota living thing, and then there wasa living thing. how did that happen? well, that's just a--i've just told you. i don't see any reasonwhy you shouldn't go from very simpleto more and more complexto more and more complex-- i don't either.
but i don't knowhow you get from mud to a living cell.that's my question. yes, well, i've told you.i'll try one more time. you think it was onthe backs of crystals. on the backs of crystals isat least one hypothesis, yes. so that's your theory,and you think thatis more likely and less far-fetchedthan intelligent design. i think it is. i wouldn't putben stein's money
on dr. ruse'sjoyriding crystals, but it did make me wonder what were the chances of lifearising on its own? bradley: it's beenspeculated that probably there would have to be a minimum ofabout 250 proteins to provideminimal life function. um, if that'sreally true, then i think it'salmost inconceivable
that life could've happened in some simple,step-by-step way. okay,so the simplest form of life requires at least250 proteins to function. what's so difficultabout that? [1950s school filmstripmusic plays] filmstrip narrator:welcome to the casino of life. who wants to spinfor a chance to win? oh, sure.i'll give it a shot.
what do i win? take a look at this. - [man in audiencewolf-whistles]- huh? how 'bout the world'sfirst single-cell organism? this perfectly alignedstring of proteins could be yours. now, take a spin. - [bell rings]- i won! tina, tell himhow many times
he needs to do thatto win the prize. two hundred and fifty. - [audience boos]- show host:that's right, folks. and allin the correct order. but that's impossible. [laughs] we'veheard that before, haven't we, richard? [like dawkins] come on,mother nature, do your thing. [machine buzzes]
you stupid machine!i hate you. we're talking about somethingthat's staggeringly improbable, roughly one in a trillion,trillion, trillion, trillion,trillion, trillion. let all of life chosea million, a trillion, a trillion trillion-- the number isessentially zero. something has to skew natureto chose the ones that work. so, in the game of life, it looksas if the house always wins.
luckily, some seriousscientific minds have figured out a wayto beat the odds. [man readsin ominous voice] stein: when faced withthe overwhelming problem of the origin of life, nobel prize-winnerfrancis crick proposed this theory-- that lifewas "seeded" on earth, which basically meansaliens did it.
crystals?aliens? i thought we were talkingabout science, not science fiction. we don't know whatcaused life to arise. did it arise by a purelyundirected process, or did it ariseby some kind of intelligent guidanceor design? and the rules of science are being appliedto actually foreclose
one of the twopossible answers to that veryfundamental and basicand important question. so the rulesof science say we will considerany possibility - except one that is guided.- exactly. no matterhow life began, on the backs of crystals or in the test tubeof some intelligent designer, everyone agreesit started with a single cell.
but what is a cell? - let me ask you a question.- yeah. darwin wrotethe origin of speciesin 1859-- published it in 1859. he had an idea of the cellas being quite simple, correct? yeah, everybody did. okay, if he thought ofthe cell as being a buick, what is the cell now in terms of its complexityby comparison?
a galaxy. if darwin thought a cell was, say, a mud hut, what do we now knowthat a cell is? more complicatedthan a saturn v. so what is in a cellas far as we know now? a world that darwinnever could've imagined. i needed someone who could give me a glimpseinto this world,
so we went to molecularbiologist doug axe. axe: think of a cellas being a nanofactory, a factory where,on a very small scale, digital instructionsare being used to make the componentsof the factory. here we have the famousdna double helix. you can seethe two helical strands that are intertwinedand wind around each other on the outsideof the molecule.
this is the materialthat stores all of our geneticinformation. in higher life forms,this would be the equivalent of something likea gigabyte of information stored in the molecules that formthe individual chromosomes, all packedwithin the nucleus, which is a tiny fractionof the entire cell size. so what does dna do?
well, the information in dna ends up providingthe information for sequencing the amino acidsto make protein. we have informationin a one-dimensional form that provides the informationfor a three-dimensional form. [whooshes] [liquid gurgling] [fluttering] i'm finallyjust beginning to grasp
the complexity of the cell. are there systemswithin the cell that go well beyonddarwinian evolution, some typeof cellular technology that drivesadaptation, replication, quality control,and repair? what if these new mechanisms have massive designimplications? well, i say so be it.
the cell really is likenothing we've ever seenin the physical world. that's got to befirmly grasped. that's not somethingwe can just say, "oh, well, it's justa little bit more ofthe same old, same old. it's notthe same old, same old. what we are findingis that there's information that's in the cellthat cannot be accounted for in terms of theseundirected material causes, and so there's some other--
so there has to bean information source. so one of the key questionsfaced by modern biology is where do you getinformation from? well, darwin assumed that the increasein information comes fromnatural selection. but natural selectionreduces genetic information, and we know this fromall the genetic manipulationstudies that we have. where is the new geneticinformation gonna come from?
well, that'sthe big question. so when we find informationin the dna molecule, the most likely explanation is that it, too,had an intelligent source. we need engineeringprinciples to understandthese systems, okay? it's only becauseof our advancementsin nanotechnology that we can even beginto appreciate these systems. but using intelligent design
didn't seem to stopthe scientists i spoke with. so why all the controversy? suppose we find,simply as a matter of fact, that our scientific inquiriespoint in one direction. which is that there isan intelligent creator. why should we eliminatethat from discussion? streng verboten?how come? why? streng verboten.very good. what does streng verbotenmean, "strongly forbidden"?
strongly forbidden. you've gottwo possible hypotheses. you've got a wallthrough the middle-- through your brain, in effect--through your thinking. you say, well,you can't consider anythingon this side of the wall. only hypotheseson this side of the wall are permissiblefor consideration. what aboutacademic freedom? i mean, can't wejust talk about this?
their reply is that scienceis not a democratic process. oh, really? and that there isa consensus view and that we are to subscribeto the consensual view. wait a second.darwin challengedthe consensus view, and that's howwe got darwinism. if darwin wanted to challengethe consensus today, how would he do it? science isn't a hobbyfor rich aristocrats anymore.
it's a multibillion-dollarindustry. and if you wanta piece of the pie, you've got to bea "good comrade." man: scientific ideas-- how we get themto you, the people. every idea must be inspectedto ensure that it is safe. all theories must pass througha series of checkpoints. first--the academy. stein: gettinga controversial theory
through the academycan be dangerous. few people know this betterthan congressman mark souder. he uncovereda targeted campaign led by individualswithin the smithsonian and the national centerfor science education to destroydr. sternberg's credibility. if you want peer reviews,if you want to be published, if you want to goto respected institutions, the core view does nottolerate dissent.
there's kind ofa "this is the way it is," and anybody who's a dissentershould be squashed. are you going to beon my side if i let you up? sure, chick, sure.i'm on your side. just let me up.i'll do anything you say. souder isn't the only onewho has witnessedthe academy's tactics. journalist larry witham has seen similar behaviorduring his 25 years of coveringthe evolution controversy.
once you're thickin science, you can't questionthe paradigm. but if you wantto get grants, if you want to be electedto high positions, if you want to get awardsas a promoter of public educationof science, people cannot be trustedto form their own opinions. this business aboutopen-mindedness is nonsense. why isthe scientific establishment
so afraid of free speech? there is this fear that if one aspectof a theory is closely scrutinized, there's going to bean unraveling. who are you? oh, uh-- i am the greatand powerful... [weakly] ...wizard of oz.
i intervieweddozens and dozensof scientists, and when they'reamongst each other or talkingto a journalistwho they trust, they'll speak about, um, you know,"it's incredibly complex," or "molecular biology'sin a crisis." but publiclythey can't say that. man: keeping a keen eyeon the academy are variouswatchdog organizations.
stein: listen to eugenie scott of the national centerfor science education. the ncse has beenat the heart of virtuallyevery evolution controversy over the past 25 years, vigorously defendingthe darwinian gospel. scott: we have hada lot of business, unfortunately, at ncsein the last few years because virtuallyevery state
in which scienceeducation standards has come upfor consideration has had a big fight about the coverageof evolution in them. scott: ncse wasstarted by a group of scientistsand teachers who were very concerned because in the late '70sand early '80s there were a lotof attempts to pass
"equal timefor creation scienceand evolution" laws. clearly, this is somethingthat neither scientistsnor teachers liked. it wasn't exactly "help, help,the creationists are coming," but, you know, kind ofalong those lines. most scientists justthrow up their handsand say, "creationists!they drive me crazy.you handle it." we've worked a lotwith science educationorganizations. the most important groupwe work with is membersof the faith community,
because the best-kept secretin this controversy is that catholicsand mainstream protestants are okay on evolution. are you sureabout that, eugenie? liberal christianshave been fighting with conservative christiansfor so long that they'll sidewith anybody againstthe fundamentalists. and eugenie scott says,"well, welcome over." there's a kind ofscience defense lobby
or an evolution defense lobby,in particular. they are mostly atheists, but they are wanting to--desperately wanting to be friendly to mainstream,sensible, religious people. and the way you do thatis to tell them that there's no incompatibilitybetween science and religion. but is there reallyan incompatibility? can't we believein god and darwin? implicit in mostevolutionary theory
is that eitherthere's no god, or god can't haveany role in it. so, naturally, as manyevolutionists will say, it's the strongest enginefor atheism. if they called meas a witness, and a lawyer said, "dr. dawkins,has your beliefin evolution-- has your study of evolutionturned you towards atheism?" i would have to say yes.
and that's the worstpossible thing i could say for winning that--that court case. so people like meare bad news for the science lobby,the evolution lobby. by the way, i'm beinga hell of a lot more frank and honestin this interview than many peoplein this field would be. man: working hardto keep ideas in check are our friendsin the media.
morning paper!paper, mister? the tendencyof the media is to sidewith the establishment because they inherently agreewith the establishment. abrams: eugenie scott,my understanding is that there is not a singlepeer-reviewed article out there that supports intelligentdesign. am i wrong? you are not wrong.you are correct. i believe thatwe get coverage, but we always get coveragelike we're the outsider,
not like it'san even debate. filmstrip narrator:but instead of merelyreporting news, he analyzes it,often expressinghis personal opinions. we constantly dealwith reporters who refuse even to report the correct definitionof intelligent design. they, over and over again,talk about "life is so complex,god must've done it." - meyer: let me explain--- abrams: admit it,it's religion.
- it's very simple.- you can't--it's religion. it's a wanton distortionof our position. [phone rings] city desk. i've gota hot story here. you can look atassociated press stories, and the same sentence willappear in those storiesfor 10 years: "intelligent design saysthat life is too complex." it's called a boilerplate.
and the reporternever reports any more or gets any new waysto say it, so the public understandingnever advances. but what happensif a reporter decides to takea more balanced approachto intelligent design? there might be remarkablepressure on that reporter not to side againstthe evolutionists. i thought i told youto kill that story. few reportershave learned this better
than author and journalistpamela winnick. when she refusedto take sides in an article she wroteabout intelligent design, the darwinistsfound a new favorite target. number one--i wasn't christian,i was jewish. number two--i wasn't religious. number three--i was not taking a position in favorof creationism. i was writing aboutintelligent design.
and it didn't matter. after i wrotethat one piece, everything i wroteon the subjectwas scrutinized. there were hate letterscoming into the newspaper. if you give any credenceto it whatsoever, which meansjust writing about it, you are just finishedas a journalist. other journalistswe spoke with told similar storiesbut didn't dareappear on camera.
filmstrip narrator:and now the pressesare ready to roll. man: when all othercheckpoints fail, there's always the courts. we have spentan enormous amount of time trying to proveto the court what everybodyalready knows, that intelligent design is a particularreligious belief. but i thoughtscientific questions
were settledby the evidence, not by taking peopleto court and suing them. how do other countriesdeal with such disputes? dr. marciej giertych,a population geneticist who now represents polandin the european parliament, was able to shedsome light on this topic. giertych:the censorship of teaching criticismof evolution is and always wasmuch stronger in,
say, your country,the united states, than it ever wasin poland. why? why wouldthe censorship-- that is because you havea political correctnessin your country. these issuesare brought to court, and the court says what you canand what you cannot teach. we want to knowwhat you teach, what books you use,how you teach it.
we never hadthat sort of way of decidingscientific issuesin poland. we never hadthe courts involved. so you are saying that as far as the teachingof science is concerned, poland is freer academicallythan the united states? i think--in thisparticular issue of evolution,i think this is true. but how effectiveare the courts
in deciding such matters? what aboutthe general idea thatintelligent design is doomed as a resultof several recentlegal setbacks? i think court casesdon't decide anything. if you look atthe scopes trial,who won that trial? it wasn'tthe evolutionists.it was the-- the tennessee law was upheld,barring evolution, and yet in the popularimagination, scopes is the hero.
inherit the wind--that movie-- which is really bogus historybased on the scopes trial, has carried the day. these issues go much deeperthan any decision by a judge. the evolution debate does seem to run much deeperthan the courts, much deeper eventhan science. to generatethis level of hostility, id must threaten somethingat the very core
of the darwinianestablishment. filmstrip narrator:the entire globe is today the siteof a momentous conflict. it is the challengeof ideas. i'm edward r. murrow. for a little while, i would like to reviewwith you the great conflictof our times, one which demandsand must get
the attentionand the involvement of each one of us. this conflict over the principlesof evolution has becomea religious war. it really is no longerabout scientificinvestigation. it is total competitionwith an antagonist who is putting into it everythingwithin his capability.
the situationhas reached a point where manyof evolution's top apologists have switchedfrom defending darwinism to attacking religion,in what they see as a bid to stamp outintelligent designat the source. richard dawkinsis the best example of this. his recent book,the god delusion, has sold overone million copies worldwide. the god delusion
is my long-expected,long-worked-on, full-frontal attackon religion. to me, science is abouttrying to explain existence, and religion is abouttrying to explain existence. it's just that religiongets the wrong answer. but is dawkins correct? are science and religionreally at war? for an appraisalof this continuingand protracted conflict, we can go to a reporter
who has watchedthe growing conflict with the perception ofa trained military observer. oxford professoralister mcgrath, author ofthe dawkins delusion, seemed like the ideal personto answer my question. mcgrath: richard dawkinshas a charming and very, i think,interesting view of the relationshipbetween science and religion. they're at warwith each other,
and in the end,one's got to win. and it's goingto be science. it's a very naive view. it's based ona complete historicalmisrepresentation of the wayscience and religionhave interacted. dawkins seems to thinkthat scientific description is an anti-religiousargument. describinghow something happensscientifically somehow explains it away.
it doesn't. but the questionsof purpose, intentionality, the question why, still remain thereon the table. i think it was justa catastrophic mistake to have someone likedawkins address himself to profound issuesof theology, the existence of god,the nature of life. he hasn't committedhimself to
disciplined studyin any relevant areaof inquiry. he's a crummy philosopher. he doesn't havethe rudimentary skills to meticulously assesshis own arguments. genius guy, though. very smart guy. little bit of a reptile,but very smart guy. the opposing point of viewin this conflict rests on a fundamentallydifferent vision of man.
if you have twodistinguished scientists-- and, in fact, you can rangemany more on each side,as you know-- saying exactlyopposite things, that's telling methat the conflict is not between scienceand belief in god. otherwise you'd expectall scientiststo be atheists. but it'sa worldview conflict. it's between scientistswho have different worldviews. you've got twocompeting explanationsof the evidence.
one says design,one says undirected processes. both of them havelarger philosophicalor religious or anti-religiousimplications. so you can't say thatone of those two theoriesis scientific and the otheris unscientific simply becausethey have implications. both have implications. people who tell you, for example,that science tells you
all you need to knowabout the world or that science tells youthat religion is all wrong or science tells youthere is no god, those people aren't tellingyou scientific things. they are sayingmetaphysical things, and they have to defendtheir positions for metaphysical reasons. what is being presentedto the public is first comes the science,
and then comesthe worldview. i would want to argue thatthat may not be the case, that it may actually bethe other way 'round, that the worldviewcomes first and is influencingthe interpretationof science. my deep regretis some people are so deeply entrenchedin their own worldviews that they will simply notcountenance alternatives. i'm actuallya person of the left,
and not even a particularlyreligious person. i think of myselfas kind of humanist. and i think it's sendinga very bad message to religious peoplewho are interestedin science that in some sense, in order to doscience credibly, they have to leavetheir religious beliefsat the door. the foundersof early modern science-- sir isaac newton,robert boyle,
johannes kepler,galileo-- most of theseearly scientists all not onlybelieved in god, but they thoughttheir belief in god actually made iteasier to do science. you can bereligiously motivated and you cando good science, and they have moreoften gone together than not gone together.
admitting our biases is the best way towardsrational discussion, which i would welcome. rational debateis a nice thought, but it's nearly impossiblein the current climate. i'd seen the chilling effect that this unquestioningdevotion to darwinism has had on science... but were thereother consequences?
no gods,no life after death, no ultimate foundationfor ethics, no ultimate meaningin life, and no human free will are all deeply connectedto an evolutionary perspective. you're here todayand then gone tomorrow, and that'sall there is to it. stein: dr. will provine, professorof the history of biology
at cornell university, gave us anotherdisturbing glimpse into where darwinismcan lead. oh, i was a christian, but i never heardanything about evolution because it was illegalto teach it in tennessee. dr. provine's first biologyprofessor changed all that. he started talkingabout evolution as if it had no designin it whatsoever.
and i came up to him,and i said, "you left outthe most important part." and he said,"if you feel the same wayat the end of one quarter, "i want you to stand upin front of the studentsin this class and tell themthis deep lackin evolution." and i read that bookso carefully, and i could findno sign of there being any design whatsoeverin evolution. and i immediatelybegan to doubt
the existenceof the deity. but it starts by giving upan active deity. then he gives up the hope that there'sany life after death. when you givethose two up, the rest of it followsfairly easily. you give up the hope that there'san eminent morality. and finally, there'sno human free will.
if you believein evolution, you can't hope for therebeing any free will. there's no hope whatsoever of there being anydeep meaning in human life. we live, we die,and we're gone. we're absolutely gonewhen we die. dr. provine is no strangerto the prospect of death. nearly a decade ago, he was diagnosedwith a large brain tumor.
let's supposemy tumor comes back, as it almost certainly will. well, i'm notgoing to sit around like my older brotherdid last year. and he was dying of als,lou gehrig's disease. he wanted desperately to die,but we couldn't help him die. i don't want to dielike that. i'm going to shoot myselfin the head long before then. i'm going to dosomething different.
i hope theseare empty words from my frienddr. provine, because shortly afterthis interview was recorded he learned his brain tumorhad returned. provine: i don't feelone bit bad about holdingthe views that i do. there's not anythingin the views i hold that makes me, "oh,i wish i had free will," or "oh, i wishthere were a god."
i don't ever,ever wish for that. dr. provine'sde-conversion story was typical amongstthe darwinistswe interviewed. biologist p.z. myers, who runs the pro-darwin,anti-religion blog pharyngula, says science erodedhis faith as well. i never hated religion. i found religionquite comfortable, and i likedthe people in it.
what led to the atheism waslearning more about science, learning moreabout the natural world, and seeing these horribleconflicts with religion. and it was then,when i discovered evolution, when i discovered darwinism, that i realized there'sthis magnificently elegant, stunningly elegantexplanation-- which i didn't quiteunderstand to begin with-- but when i didunderstand it,
then that finally killed offmy remaining religious faith. after hearing these stories, i was not surprisedto discover that most evolutionarybiologists shareprofessor dawkins' views. it appears darwinismdoes lead to atheism despite what eugenie scottwould have us believe. and if you separate outthe ethical messagefrom religion, what have you got left?
you've got a bunchof fairy tales, right? i think that godis about as unlikely as fairies, angels,hobgoblins, etc. religion--i mean,it's just fantasy, basically. it's completely emptyof any explanatory content... and is evil as well.[chuckles] half the people in this countrythink that drugs is what you have to regulateto make us safer, and half the peoplethink guns--
that's whatyou gotta regulateto make us safer. but i always thinkthat if you'regoing to regulate one thing that hasthe most potential to cause deathand destruction--religion. you gotta startwith religion. [audience applauds] religion is an idea thatgives some people comfort, and we don't want to takeit away from them. it's like knitting.people like to knit.
we're not going to taketheir knitting needles away. we're not going to take awaytheir churches. but what we have to dois get it to a place where religion is treated at the levelit should be treated. that is, something fun that people get togetherand do on the weekend and really doesn'taffect their life as much as ithas been so far.
stein: so what wouldthe world look like if dr. meyers got his wish? greater science literacy, which is going to leadto the erosion of religion, and then we'll getthis nice positivefeedback mechanism going, where as religionslowly fades away, we get more and more scienceto replace it. and that will displacemore and more religion, which will allowmore and more science in,
and we'll eventuallyget to that point where religion has takenthat appropriate place as a side dishrather than the main course. stein: but willeradicating religion really leadto a modern utopia? hmm. let me try to imagine that. and let's let historybe our guide. berlinski: in part,i think matthew arnold
put his hands on itwhen he spoke about um, the withdrawalof faith. there is a connectionbetween a society that has at leasta minimal commitment to certain kinds oftranscendental values and what human beingspermit themselves to do one to the other. that got me thinking. what other societieshave used darwinism
to trumpall other authorities, including religion? as a jew, my mind leapt to one regimein particular. the connectionbetween hitler and darwin is of course historicallya difficult connection because they were separatedby a good many years. one was english,one was german. nonetheless,if you open mein kampfand read it--
especially if you canread it in german-- the correspondencebetween darwinian ideas and nazi ideas justleaps from the page. of course you have to addevery historical caution. not everyone who read darwinbecame a nazi, obviously not. no one is making that case. darwinism is nota sufficient condition for a phenomenonlike nazism, but i think it's certainlya necessary one.
this was a connectioni had to explore personally. [church bells tolling] filmstrip narrator:american officers arriveat a nazi institution seized by first army troops. under the guiseof an insane asylum, this has beenthe headquarters for the systematic murder... [filmstrip audio fades] stein: so, whatis this place?
duringthe second world war, 15,000 peoplewere killed here. why were they killed? they were killedbecause they werepeople with handicaps. why kill them?what's the pointof killing them? people who werenot able to work, people who were not ableto live by themselves, that they were"useless eaters." "useless eaters."
and "lifeunworthy of living." george: this ideagrew up in the '20s, so long beforenational socialism, biologists,anthropologists, they thought thatmaybe mankind could-- or the governmentcould interfere - into the growthof the population.- stein: i see. and they had the...utopia? - utopia.- utopia...
that they wouldhave a society without illnessand without handicap. [man speaking german] so this wasa darwinian concept. - yes.- and alsoa malthusian concept, very much malthusian. - malthusian?- thomas malthus, who said that there wasa shortage of resources. english philosopher,said there was a shortage--
yes, but the nazis,they relied on darwin. - they relied on darwin.- yes, darwinand german scientists. patients were leddown this hallway to nazi doctors, who decided who would liveand who would die. they were accompaniedby 15, um, 15 nurses. - nurses.- nurses. male and female nurses. so nurses were helpinglead them to their doom.
yes. so, were the prisoners toldthey were taking a shower? yes, they weretaking a shower, and here wasone or two showers. so, how many people werebrought into this room? sixty to seventy. so, what is this? this isthe dissection table. do you ever thinkto yourself
the sane oneswere the ones lying here havingtheir brains removed-- the insane one wasdr. gorgass and allthe other people--? no, no,i don't think that because i thinkthose people who killed here, they were very sanebecause they hadtheir purposes. they had purposes? yes. i don't thinkthey were insane. - they hadtwo crematory ovens.- i see.
and they killedabout 70 people. - a day.- a day, so they had-- that's barely enough time.they had their work-- they only killed frommonday to friday, so... because the people whowere doing the killing needed to havethe weekend off. if you met dr. gorgass today,what would you say to him? i don't know. i don't think thatit's my--my role
to--to tellhim something. it's difficult to describe how it felt to walkthrough such a haunting place, to know that these coldstone and tile walls were the last thingsthe victims of hadamarever saw. i wanted to explorethis connection further, so i met with the authorof from darwin to hitler, dr. richard weikart. hitler and manyof the physicians
that carried outthis program were very fanaticaldarwinists and particularly wanted to applydarwinism to society. [hitler speaking german] many of these peoplein the 19-teens, 1920s who were putting forward someof these ideas about racism were consideredthe leading scientists. these were darwinistswho were taken seriouslyby fellow academics. it's not to saythat all academicsbelieved it.
these leading academics,were there any of themwho were americans? there were plentyof americans who were sayingsimilar kinds of things. not only were americanssaying such things, they were pioneersin this fledging science known as eugenics. they thoughtthey could helpevolution along by sterilizingthe so-called feeble-minded and prohibiting themfrom getting married.
physicians whoare aware of the history of 20th-centuryamerican medicine harbor some bad feelingstowards darwinists because of eugenics. and eugenics-- which was an attemptto breed human beings-- it was the darkest chapterof american medicine ever. there were 50,000 peopleinvoluntarily sterilized because they were deemedunfit to breed, basically.
stein: eugenicsisn't just history. the spirit of the movementlives on today. weikart: margaret sanger was the headof planned parenthood. she was very fanaticalin her promotion of eugenics. in fact, planned parenthoodwas all about birth control for the impoverishedand lower classes to try to help improvethe species. from hadamar,
i traveledwith dr. weikart to dachau, where the nazis appliedthe ideas of eugenics on a massivemechanistic scale. when it wasa fully functioningconcentration camp, uh, what wasthe purpose of it? i mean, part of itwas to represspolitical enemies. what was the restof the purpose? well, beyond the repressionof the political enemies, which was its purposeat the very beginning,
then later on it transformedinto repressing racial enemies. and sometimesthose categories overlapped because sometimesthey thought that these peoplewere political enemies because they wereinferior biologically. the war itselfwas part of the darwinian strugglefor existence, for hitler. and he saw thatextermination of the jews as one of those frontsto this warfare going on,
as this darwinian strugglefor existence. would you saythat hitler was insane? no, i wouldn't sayhe was insane. i think he had imbibedsome very, very wrong ideas, and, in fact, i think he took the logic of themin certain ways that broughthim to take very radical solutionsfor them. would you sayhe was evil?
oh, i'd definitely sayhe was evil. is there sucha thing as evil? oh, i think there is. and is there sucha thing as good? oh, definitely. and...evil can sometimesbe rationalized as science. oh, sure. and evil can sometimesbe rationalized-- when it's rationalizedas science,
and i thinkwhen it was rationalizedin this particular way, i think hitler thoughthe was doing good. he thoughthe was doing good? oh, i think so. he thought he wasbenefiting humanity by driving evolutionforward and creatinga better humanity. before leaving dachau, i stopped by the memorial
commemoratingthe thousands of jews who were killed therein excruciating conditions. i know that darwinism does not automaticallyequate to nazism. but if darwinisminspired and justified such horrific eventsin the past, could it be usedto rationalize similar initiatives today? there's a goodgerman expression,"so faengt es immer an."
i mean, "always beginsin the same way," something to rememberin the context of the united states' discussionsof euthanasia and abortion. it always beginsin the same way. there seems to bean excellent argument for getting ridof useless peopleby killing them. or at leastit seems excellent to the peopleadvancing the argument. it's the love affairwith death
and, you know, the euthanasiaand this movement going on, which i find appalling. and the idea is that,you know, immediately rid our society of anybodywho might be a drain and think of peoplein economic terms, and i think that'swhere some of the darwinfits in, actually. it's just a devaluingof human life. first of all,if you take seriously
that evolutionhas to do with the transitionof life forms and that life and deathare just natural processes, then one gets to be liberalabout abortion and euthanasia. all of those kinds of ideas, seem to me, followvery naturally from a darwinianperspective, a de-privilegingof human beings,basically. and i think that peoplewho want to endorse darwinism
have to sort of takethis kind of viewpointvery seriously. and when we see an elite--and it is an elite-- an elite thatcontrols essentially all the research moneyin science, saying, "there is nosuch thing as moral truth; science will not berelated to religion." i mean, it's essentiallyofficial policy of the national academyof science that religion and sciencewill not be related.
i mean, hey, that cuts offa lot of debate, doesn't it? what's going to happenif this doesn't change? i think we're watchingit happen, aren't we? i needed time to think, so i traveledto the birthplaceof this idea. "with savages,the weak in body or mind "are soon eliminated. "we civilized men,on the other hand, "do our utmost to checkthe process of elimination.
"we build asylumsfor the imbecile,the maimed, and the sick. "thus the weak membersof civilized societies "propagate their kind. "no one who has attendedto the breeding "of domestic animals "will doubt that thismust be highly injurious "to the race of man. "hardly anyoneis so ignorant as to allowhis worst animals to breed."
--charles darwin,the descent of man, 1871. meyer: throughoutthe cold war in germany, there was this wall erectedto keep ideas out. it was erected by peoplewho held an ideology, that were afraidof a competition from other ideasthat would comeinto their society. and what we're seeinghappening in science today is very much like that. but i think that'sjust a strategy
for protectinga failing ideologyfrom competition. america didn't becomethe great nation that it is by suppressing ideas. it progressedby allowing freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. thomas jeffersongot it right when he wrote, "we hold these truthsto be self-evident, "that all menare created equal, "that they are endowedby their creator
"with certainunalienable rights, "that among theseare life, liberty, and the pursuitof happiness." hundreds of thousandsof americans have given their livesto protect these values, but now they'reunder threat once again. it wasn't just scientistswho were being expelled. it was freedom itself, the very foundationof the american dream,
the very foundationof america. if we allowed freedomto be expelled in science, where would it end? the darwinian establishment is so massiveand so entrenched it appears impenetrable. i couldn't bring it downmyself, but i could at least confront those who'd expelledthe scientists i'd met.
what would you sayif you had eugenie scottsitting next to you? what would you say to her? i would ask herby what authority does sheand those like her presume to declare what isand is not science. he's sort of made himselfmartyr of the day. they've gotten a lotof mileage out of, you know,poor rick sternberg.
and we got lip service from the leadershipof the smithsonian, but i didn't feel theyever followed through. we went into the smithsonianlooking for answers, but we raninto the same stone wallas congressman souder. you're not authorizedto do this here, so stop. [overlapping chatter] he said, "nonetheless,you have to be disciplined," and i lost my job.
we did get an interview with a spokesmanfrom george mason, but it was impossibleto knock him off his script. her contractwas not renewed. it was simply, um,not renewing her contract, which she satisfied. it had nothing to dowith the controversy of that topicof intelligent design. we receiveda similar receptionat baylor university.
they refused to admit that what had happenedto dr. marks had anything to dowith id. certainly the conversationsi've had, this has not-- the intelligent designsituation has not been the thrustof the conversation. it was a procedural issue, and that's the waywe dealt with it. funny, that's nothow dean kelley put things
in his original e-mailto dr. marks. i'm not mixing my religionwith my science. the questions that i ask in my intelligent designresearch are perfectly legitimatescientific questions. at least the top gunsat iowa state were willing to own upto their actions. what we wanted to stop isthe use of the name of isu to validateintelligent design.
and we did succeed. i really thinka lot of guillermo.he's a great guy. so that's why i'mkind of disappointed. he should've justleft this alone, in my opinion, should'vejust left it alone. dr. hauptmanelaborated further on his great regardfor gonzalez. man: uh, this is quotingan e-mail from youto mr. avalos. you say, "sometimesit is just bestto ignore idiots,"
in referenceto guillermo. and then,"the religious nutcases should be challengedat every opportunity." yeah, because,for example, you--[chuckles] in that case,i'm thinking more of, say, the creationist crowd,who claims that god put all the animalson an ark, and that's it. that's whereall of our animalscame from today.
that's crazy, okay? you shouldn'tbe insulting even children withthat kind of thing. so these arethe idiots, all right? they've always been around. going after the perpetratorsin each of these cases wasn't getting me anywhere. so i reconnectedwith dr. berlinskiand dr. schroeder to see if they hadany advice.
berlinski:there's a boundary to what sciencewill accept right now. i think the parallelis exactly this wallcoming down. ask any berlinerfrom the east side what it meantto have the wall come down. if it is possible to makea break in the wall, that would allow academia to ask these fundamentalquestions that exist and allow themin the science classroomsas well.
it'd be nice to seethe scientific establishment lose some of itsprestige and power. it'd be nice to seeother questionsbeing opened up. above all,it would be nice to have a real spiritof self-criticism penetratingthe sciences. stein: what can i doto bring down the wall? is there anythingi can do? make it apparentto the world
that a wall exists. there are vast numbersof persons who talk aboutacademic freedom, and there isacademic freedom as long as you'reon the correct sideof the wall. but if you'reon the wrong sideof the wall, as you mentioneda few moments ago, you lose tenure,and that's a given. i took dr. schroeder's wordsto heart.
obviously i couldn'ttake down the wall myself, but i could confrontone of its modern architects. hello, professor dawkins.how are you? i'm ben stein,i'm so sorryto keep you waiting. - how are you?- fine, thank you. you have--you have written that god isa psychotic delinquent invented by mad,deluded people. no, i didn't sayquite that.
i said somethingrather better than that. oh, well, please tellus what you said. well, i would haveto read it from the book. no, please. "the godof the old testament "is arguably the mostunpleasant character "in all fiction-- "jealous and proud of it, "a petty, unjust,unforgiving control freak,
"a vindictive, bloodthirstyethnic cleanser, "a misogynistic,homophobic, "racist, infanticidal,genocidal, filicidal, "pestilential,megalomaniacal, "sadomasochistic, capriciouslymalevolent bully." - so that'swhat you think of god.- yeah. how about if peoplebelieved in a god of infinite lovingnessand kindness
and forgivenessand generosity, sort of likethe modern-day god. why spoil it for them? - oh, um--- why not just let themhave their fun and enjoy it? i don't want to spoilanything for anybody. i write a book.people can read itif they want to. i believe that it isa liberating thing to free yourselffrom primitive superstition. so religion'sa primitive superstition?
oh, i think it is, yes. so, uh, you believeit's liberating to tell peoplethat there is no god. i think a lot of people,when they give up god, feel a great senseof release and freedom. why do you think that? - you're a scientist.what's your data?- well, i... well, i've had a lotof letters saying that. there're eight billion peoplein the world, dr. dawkins.
yeah, i know,i know... how many lettershave you had? no, i--that's quite true. professor dawkinsseemed so convincedthat god doesn't exist that i wondered if hewould be willing to puta number on it. well, it's hard to puta figure on it, but i'd put itas something like, you know, 99% againstor something-- well, how do you knowit's 99% and not, say, 97%?
i don't. you asked meto put a figure on it, and i'm not comfortableputting a figure on it. i think it's--i just think it'svery unlikely. but you couldn't puta number on it. no, of course not. so it could be 49%. well, it would be--i mean, i think it's unlikely, and it's quite farfrom 50%. how do you know?
i mean, i putan argument in the book. then who did createthe heavens and the earth? why do you usethe word "who?" you see,you immediately begthe question by using the word "who." then how didit get created? well, um...by a very slow process. well, how did it start? nobody knowshow it got started.
we know the kind of eventthat it must've been. we know the sort of eventthat must've happened - for the origin of life.- what was that? it was the origin of the firstself-replicating molecule. right, and how didthat happen? i've told you,we don't know. so you have no ideahow it started? no, no.nor has anybody. nor has anyone else.
what do you thinkis the possibility might turn out to be the answer to someissues in genetics or in evolution? it could come aboutin the following way. it could be thatat some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kindof darwinian means
to a very, very high levelof technology and designeda form of life that they seeded onto,perhaps, this planet. now, that is a possibilityand an intriguing possibility, and i suppose it's possiblethat you might findevidence for that. if you lookat the detail-- details of biochemistry,molecular biology, you might find a signatureof some sort of designer. wait a second.
richard dawkinsthought intelligent design might bea legitimate pursuit? and that designercould well bea higher intelligence from elsewherein the universe. - well--- but that higherintelligence would itself have hadto have come about by some explicableor ultimatelyexplicable process. it couldn't have just jumpedinto existence spontaneously.that's the point. so professor dawkinswas not againstintelligent design,
just certain typesof designers, such as god. so the hebrew god, the god ofthe old testament-- he doesn't existin your view? uh, certainly. i mean, that would bea very unpleasant prospect. and the holy trinityof the new testament-- no, nothing like that.
do you believein any of the hindu gods? - like vishnu?- how can you asksuch a question? - you don't, right?- how could i? i mean, why would i, given that i don't believein any others? you don't believein the moslem god. no. why do youeven need to ask? i just wantedto be sure. so you don't believein any god anywhere.
any god anywherewould be completelyincompatible with--with anythingthat i've said in-- i assumed, i justwanted to make sure you don't believein any god anywhere. - no.- what if after you died,you ran into god. he said, "what haveyou been doing, richard? "i mean, what haveyou been doing? "i've been tryingto be nice to you. "i gave youa multimillion-dollarpaycheck
"over and over againwith your book, and look what you did." bertram russellhad that point put to him, and he saidsomething like, "sir, why did you take suchpains to hide yourself?" but if the intelligent designpeople are right, god isn't hidden. we may even be able toencounter god through science if we have the freedomto go there.
what could bemore intriguing than that? [at podium]we take freedom for granted here in the united states. freedom is whatthis country is all about. and a huge part of freedomis freedom of inquiry. but now,i'm sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in scienceis being suppressed. behind me stands a wall that encirclesthe free sectors of this city,
part of a vast systemof barriers. there are peopleout there who want to keep sciencein a little box where it can't possibly toucha higher power, cannot possibly touch god. those barrierscut across germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs,and guard towers. if you believe in god
and you believethat there is an intrinsic orderin the universe and you believe thatit's the role of science to try to pursueand understand betterthat order, you will be ostracized. i'm frightened by this, but i'm not goingto let it stop me from investigatingor from speaking. the wall cannot withstandfreedom.
what i'm asking foris the freedom to follow the evidencewherever it leads. my hope is thatthere'll be enough independent-thinkingscientists who don't like to betold what to think. people on both sidesof the argument being preparedto talk and listen, and, above all,a willingness to keepthese dialogues open.
it might allow a lotof very good scientists to be scientists, who aren't allowedto be scientists right now. i don't care what theyend up as being. i don't care if theyend up being religious or young-earthcreationists. if they havethought their way through the issuesand get there, i'm all for them.
and why do i thinkwe're going to winin this struggle? because truth crushedto earth will rise again. to find out what's truehas a value all of its own. if it has additionalgood consequences, so be it. because no liecan live forever. i believe that sciencegives us one perspectiveon the world, and our religious insightgives us another perspectiveon the world. by putting the two together, then we'll seemore deeply and more truly.
and if we will stand upfor freedom... freedom is the victor. if we all do that,we will overcome. [the killer's "all these thingsthat i've done" plays] all these thingsthat i've done yeah, you're gonna bringyourself down i've taken a first step by speaking outon this issue. but if the wallis to come down,
we all have to do our part. some of youwill pay a heavy pricefor speaking out. you may even lose your job. i guarantee youyou'll get hate e-mail. but if you don'tget involved, will anyone be leftto carry on the struggle? anyone? i got soul,but i'm not a soldier yeah, you knowyou got to help me out
yeah, oh don't you put meon the back burner you knowyou got to help me out you're gonna bringyourself down over and in last call for sin while everyone's lost,the battle is won with all these thingsthat i've done
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