Expel Intelligent Design!

If you are looking for a good laugh... oh, well perhaps I better use Kenneth Burke's wonderful phrase "dancing with tears in my eyes," check out Ben Stein's website and trailer for his paean to Intelligent Design: Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed. The movie will no doubt produce more converts to the anti-science camp, not to mention to the conspiracy-minded folks out there who believe science is suppressing dissent. For such is the classic move of this movie and other intelligent design supporters out there (thankfully not all).

The classic persecution argument that the movie plies (see the trailer, read the site) generally hops along these themes:

1) Legitimate scientific controversy and alternative theories are being suppressed;
2) Scientists that believe and claim intelligent design in nature fear saying anything (they might lose their jobs, experience backlash...);
3) "We" (as in intelligent design supporters and "the people" in general), are oppressed (and persecuted) in common -- a powerful and elite minority in the Sciences (and politics) are our common oppressor. If "we" unite and push for a consideration of ID as scientific theory we can overcome this oppression;
4) Scientists that allow no Intelligent Design are not just "Darwinists" but "Neo-Darwinists" (a few strategies here of reducing the theory of evolution and its supporters to only one position -- mischaracterized, suspect by the almost ad-hominem, truncated to only one "character," ideologically on the rise, etc.);
5) Teaching ID is a matter of academic freedom! (Academic Freedom in Junior High and in High School? there is no such thing, not as I understand it. But, if there were, forcing ID in the Science classroom would not be a move that would extend academic freedom), hence it belongs in the classroom as a matter of intellectual freedom and balance (this gets academic freedom quite wrong).

The problem lies not necessarily with the idea of design...

Michael Ruse points in his various writings how nature appears as if it were designed. Moreover, the point of this cultural battle is not design per se. That is a disingenuous move by Intelligent Designers. The point and problem here is supposed design by an all powerful creator whom many worship and want to inject into our educational system -- particularly into the science curriculum. Intelligent Designers do not like to entertain the notion of a powerful alien civilization having "created" us and all other living beings on this planet (they'd still have to worry about who created these aliens). They also reject the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) (in fact, they pretty much don't speak of a designer without a particular "ahistorical" and moral profile in mind since that would posit a creator empty of moral content). Most of the time their move is to speak of that designer in fairly ambiguous terms so that religious folks will feel free to insert their deity into that space. In my estimation, religious folks should feel free to insert whomever they want into their notion of origins. They just should not try to pass it off as science.

One thing is right: you'll have to give your money to Ben Stein if you want to stay informed and be able to critique and engage those who will take the film as gospel. But hey, didn't the Buddha say there was suffering in the world? The task is to transform it into something good.