Ben Stein produced a movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" lamenting how teachers who teach creationism face termination in high schools and universities. Then he created a blog where folks could comment on the movie's content. I was told about it and read it. Holy shit. These two side really hate one another. Religious fundamentalists are nuts and Darwinists and smug and condescending (and generally not that well informed). So naturally, I had to put my 2 cents worth in. Either people have grown tired of Steins blog and no longer read it, or those that do don't want to comment on my statements, which follows...........
I don’t want to detract from Darwin’s massive achievement for a guy in his twenties. But one has to be realistic. It ain’t an all-or-nothing deal here. Darwin rushed through his Origin of Species to beat other writers to the publishers. He maintained that Origin of Species was in effect meant to be a draft and that any problems with it would be ironed out later. I’m not familiar with his Descent of Man, but I do know that evolutionists took Origin of Species and ran with it.
One of Darwin’s contemporaries, highly-regarded anthropologists Alfred Russell Wallace, wrote an article challenging Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. When Darwin read it, he just about crapped his pants. But he couldn’t answer Wallace’s biggest question. Darwin’s opinion was that natives of tropical archipelagos were less advanced on the evolutionary scale than European whites. He maintained that they were mentally inferior. Wallace, after studying these natives first hand, asserted their brains were not less developed than European whites. Now, pay attention. Natural Selection has maintained that any living creature or organism will advance, mutate, improve, or evolve only as much as necessary to be able to just survive…not one iota more. The creature or organ is prodded into that change by its surrounding environment. Adjust or die. But Wallace demonstrated that the mentality of these “jungle savages” were developed beyond the needed capacity. They had the mental capacity even though their surroundings did not require such mental capacity for them to survive in warmer, more friendly climates. And that was one of the strongest arguments against Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. Wallace asked “How then was an organ developed so far beyond the needs of its possessor?” Darwin could not explain. He just stabbed his pen into Wallace’s article and scrawled “NO”. Well, 150 years have passed and Jared Diamond wrote “Guns, Germs, and Steel” and got the ’98 Pultizer Prize for his hugely popular anthropological research book which absolute affirmed what Alfred Wallace maintained.
As an aside, and in line with what Ben Stein maintains, Darwin’s Natural Selection gave Darwin a “favorite son” status among the European governments and their wealthiest citizens. It provided “indisputable scientific evidence” that non-whites of undeveloped regions were sub-human. That justified European dominance over these other countries, It was natural to put a white jacket on a little black man, have him serve you tea and call you “Massa” or “Bwana”, while you called this man “Boy”.
Anyway, back to the topic. Not only was Wallace more astute than Darwin in this one example, and Wallace’s view affirmed a century and a half later by Jared Diamond, there were other scientific contradictions to Darwin’s Natural Selection. However, I’ve searched through my library for the story of the “Sphex Wasp”, but I can’t find it. But I’ll just say that Darwin had many friends and friendly colleagues that brought studies to his attention that were contrary to his theory. His inability to rectify these contradictions bothered him. He was not an arrogant fellow. He was less authoritarian, and less smug about his research than most of his proponents today. Now, if high school and college teachers who insist on teaching Darwinism are not familiar with these issues, then they are not qualified to be teaching this topic.
Since I’m getting tired of writing about this, I won’t go into some really fascinating stuff about--according to paleontologists--how the human head (it’s current size and larger brain capacity) seemed to appear almost over-night.
It’s too bad that our brains operate under this crippling principle of antithesis (If “A” is true, then “non-A” must be false). That’s the same principle that computers operate with and look at how infuriating they are. Actually the ancient Greek philosophers touted it like it was some kind law, where it became known as “Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction.” Too bad he wasn’t forced to drink hemlock, too. But because of these principles, the issue has become “either Darwin is right, or the creationists are….period”. The Fallen Angle vs. The Risen Ape. “Let’s get ready to rumbllllle!”
Ben Stein is right. There is a real danger that accompanies the arrogance found in the scientific community: When science becomes an authoritarian institution with curious puritanical overtones. Don’t get me wrong…if it weren’t for those people with scientific tendencies, you’d be reading this in some cave somewhere while freezing your ass off. As a species, we abhor the inexplainable. As a species, we cannot resist the compulsion to self-examine. But in doing so, we reduce man to a machine, made of lots of little component parts. The next step of course is to tinker. Tinkering is okay. Tinker away cancer the way small pox was tinkered away. Great. But if you come to believe that Man is nothing more than the sum total of the chemical components that make up his body, then you’re missing the point; a really big point about this “upright heaven-facing speaker.”
