John Derbyshire on Ben Stein’s new film Expelled and the nonsense that is so-called Creation Science:
Western civilization has many glories. There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.
And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear. China, India, the Muslim world, all had fine cities and systems of law, architecture and painting, poetry and prose, religion and philosophy. None of them ever accomplished what began in northwest Europe in the later 17th century, though: a scientific revolution. Thoughtful men and women came together in learned societies to compare notes on their observations of the natural world, to test their ideas in experiments, and in reasoned argument against the ideas of others, and to publish their results in learned journals. A body of common knowledge gradually accumulated. Patterns were observed, laws discerned and stated.
(…)
The .intelligent design. hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization. It is an appeal to barbarism, to the sensibilities of those Apaches, made by people who lack the imaginative power to know the horrors of true barbarism. (A thing that cannot be said of Darwin. See Chapter X of Voyage of the Beagle.)
And yes: When our greatest achievements are blamed for our greatest moral failures, that is a blood libel against Western civilization itself. What next, Ben? Johann Sebastian Bach ran a slave-trading enterprise on the side? Kepler started the Thirty Years War? Tolstoy instigated the Kishinev Pogrom? Dante was a bag-man for the Golden Horde? Why not go smash a few windows in Chartres Cathedral, Ben? Break wind in a chamber-music concert? Splash some red paint around in the Uffizi? Which other of our civilizational achievements would you like to sneer at? What else from what Waugh called .the work of centuries. would you like to .abandon . for sentimental qualms.? You call yourself a conservative? Feugh!
For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.
And that’s from the pages of National Review, folks.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:38 am
“And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear.”
Advanced astronomy was developed independently by the ancient egyptians and mayans. The Muslim world was centuries ahead of Western civilization in terms of mathematics during the 12th-15th centuries. In fact, it was the seat of advanced thought during that point. Although the final point still stands, that the great and lasting scientific revolution began in Europe at that point.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Wait a minute… you mean science is the foundation of Western Civilization? You mean that science, not religion, lead Christians to build the first hospitals? That an amoral scientific deduction required the first police force to be created in New York? That the passion for unrestricted practice of science led the pilgrims to leave England?
That’s a belief that requires some faith.
Stein is not saying “this happened and because you don’t believe it you are going to hell.” The point of the movie is that the entire concept of divine creation is absent from western educational systems even though it permeated the core of the individuals who created those systems. If the scientific community seeks to be honest about its craft it would at least acknowledge that divine creation is a possibility.
Saying that western civilization is founded explicitly on the scientific findings of the last 300 years fails to account for the knowledge gained by the Socratics, Gnostics, Muslims, and even the eastern societies (Chinese) whose knowledge was brought to the west via trade and war.
The idea that “None of (these prior renaissance) ever accomplished what began in northwest Europe in the later 17th century, though: a scientific revolution” is valid on its face, but the subtext of it is that the largest percentage of these early scientists we Christians. I do not believe that science must be separated from faith, or that the two cannot be at odds. I am however alarmed by any athiestic person who claims that a higher power cannot exist, even though they cannot disprove it any better than they can prove a scientific meta-phenomenon like evolution or the Big Bang.
My kids will study classical science as I did but they will also learn the creation stories of as many religions as possible in order to better understand their world.