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Friday, April 18, 2008
Brent Bozell :: Townhall.com Columnist
Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists
by Brent Bozell
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I confess that when the producers of Ben Stein's new documentary "Expelled" called, offering me a private screening, I was less than excited.

It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay "rights." Abortion "rights." On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism's power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia, and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.

Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates. We know the concept of Intelligent Design is stifled in academic circles. An entire documentary to state the obvious? You can see my reluctance to view it.

I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.

Ben Stein's extraordinary presentation documents how the worlds of science and academia not only crush debate on the origins of life, but also crush the careers of professors who dare to question the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution and natural selection.

Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God? He assembles a stable of academics -- experts all -- who dared to question Darwinist assumptions and found themselves "expelled" from intellectual discourse as a result. They include evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg (sandbagged at the Smithsonian), biology professor Caroline Crocker (drummed out of George Mason University), and astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez (blackballed at Iowa State University).

That's disturbing enough, but what Stein does next is truly shocking. He allows the principal advocates of Darwinism to speak their minds. These are experts with national reputations, regular welcomed guests on network television and the like. But the public knows them only by their careful seven-second soundbites. Stein engages them in conversation. They speak their minds. They become sputtering ranters, openly championing their sheer hatred of religion.

PC liberalism has showered accolades on atheist author Richard Dawkins' best-selling book "The God Delusion." But when Stein suggests to Dawkins that he's been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests -- not that Stein is wrong, but that he's being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book: Continued...

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About The Author
Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America.
 
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Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists
dear mr stein i meant to ask you how did your movie do? i didnt go see it, icouldnt find anyone to go with and didnt want to go to the movies alone. but, although i hate to admit it, i did hear you and michael medved discuss it, i believe on the day that it opened. both of you were very enthusiastic, especially Michael, I missed one pooint, did he say it was opening on 110 screens or that you expected a total attendance of 1100.

?

Sorry Alby

"At no time does evolution ever attempt to explain how life STARTED. All it does is show how SPECIES DIVERGE."



http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/origsoflif e_01

"Evolution encompasses a wide range of phenomena: from the emergence of major lineages, to mass extinctions, to the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals today. However, within the field of evolutionary biology, the origin of life is of special interest because it addresses the fundamental question of where we (and all living things) came from."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/04/980402074305.h tm

"How did life begin on Earth? University of Chicago geophysicist Joseph V. Smith, in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published Tuesday, March 31, provides a theory for how small organic molecules may have been able to assemble on the surfaces of minerals into self-replicating biomolecules--the essential building blocks of life."


It sorta seems to me that, yes, evolution does, in fact, try to answer how life began. But that is no surprise to me. How about you?
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