The Maudlin Press

From a Ukrainian design firm psyho.ua made as promotional items. These are awesome..

Well, interesting series of events today. On my post about the upcoming Ben stein movie, I got a comment from someone over at TheScroogeReport. It is basically nothing more than a link to their post about the movie taking a pro-Ben pro-ID stance.

Now, as I am all about free speech, I approved the comment. I also posted a comment linking back to this site. Lets see if they return the favor. From their post:

The opposition to the Intelligent Design school of thought is so strong that not only have jobs been placed in jeapordy, but censorship reigns free.

The movie’s exposition of censorship in the educational system should no longer be a stretch in anyone’s mind. Those of you that peruse the internet, blogging and chatting, should already know about the ID hate that is out there.

Fair enough. Everyone can have their opinion. Calling the pursuit of legitimate science over mythology “censorship” may be stretching the facts a bit.

I believe the word “Censorship” generates an immediate visceral reaction from most people. We have been trained to perceive it as an especially evil activity, and to fight tooth and nail against it. The use of “Censorship” in regards to ID therefore is purely inflammatory, and not a proper use of the term.

Creationism and intelligent design are not legitimate, provable scientific theories. They have no factual basis beyond the unshakable belief of their proponents. There are no supporting facts and no provable experiments or mathematical formula to support the idea. All evidence provided up to now has proven to be overly broad, vague or highly discredited.

For this reason, its not science. It does not belong in a science class. I support the teaching of ID in mythology, philosophy or any of the other format where the story is not perceived to be delivered as fact.

Not teaching ID in science class isn’t censorship anymore than not teaching it during drivers ed would be. its placing the relevant information into proper context. You can believe what you want, but do not present your unsupported beliefs as science. The fight is not against the idea of ID, its against presenting that idea as something its not.

*sigh… I used to be a fan. You were funny and apparently highly intelligent. Not so much now…

Ben has a movie coming out called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” in which he states (basically) that Intelligent Design is a valid theory that is under relentless persecution in the scientific community. For those not in the know, Intelligent design is (via Wikipedia):

Intelligent design is the assertion that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer as a method to avoid scrutiny from the courts. Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, believe the designer to be the God of Christianity. Advocates of intelligent design claim it is a scientific theory, and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations.

There is absolutely no evidence that stands up to the scientific method to support this theory. Its widely considered an effort by the Christian right get creationist theories into classrooms and pushed into the minds of our kids.

Ben’s movie has already been picked to pieces and widely discredited.

I think this DIGG comment says it all:

I have lost a lot of repsect for Ben Stein just because of this movie. It is nothing but a media attention grabber designed to stir up “controversy” and get free publicity. This movie will make huge amounts of money just because people want to see its controversial nature, even though almost everything in it has been refuted or is pure conjecture. The mere mention of Darwin causing the Holocaust is enough to make me want to punch Mr. Stein in the dick.