Monday, May 05, 2008

 

Over the River


Stony Brook University is the home of Dr. Michael Egnor, the brain surgeon who disproves the trope that "it ain't brain surgery" properly refers to an activity requiring the opposite of great intelligence. That and the fact that the University is nearly in my back yard makes it particularly sweet when the student newspaper, the Stony Brook Independent, nails Intelligent Design Creationists for their disingenuousness:

Stein is portrayed as a courageous and daring figure standing up against the tyrannical actions of the scientific community. He travels around the country interviewing "scientists" who have felt the [wrath] of his conceived assault on free speech. ...

There are, however, significant differences between what was portrayed in the film and what actually happened. In the film, an editor for a scientific journal, Richard Stenberg, was demoted because he approved a publication of an essay associated with intelligent design. What Stein doesn't tell you is that he already had plans to step down from his position before he even approved the publication. Also not mentioned is the way in which he published the essay; he self-approved the publication, bypassing the necessary process of peer review. These are two significant details Stein failed to mention, a reoccurring trend in the film. ...

The film points the finger at evolution as the cause for the holocaust. A woman being interviewed conveys that Hitler was an atheist who, in her opinion, was not insane, but he was simply a product of evolutionary ideology. Hitler, however, was not an atheist -- he was a Roman Catholic. It is well documented that Hitler had multiple psychological disorders. There is also not a single mention of Darwin, or his theory, in Hitler's Mein Kampf.
... which is why David Klinghoffer has to go around saying weird things like Hitler "used transparently Darwinian arguments," instead of being able to trace a real connection between Hitler's crazed beliefs and Darwin's science.

Keep up the good work budding journalists ... but you might want to watch out for spell checker induced typos a bit harder in the future.
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Comments:
You know your arguments need work when student newspapers are two dozen orders of magnitude above you.

We'll really know Expelled's in trouble when the Journal of Home Lobotomists takes them down with superior brain power.
 
We'll really know Expelled's in trouble when the Journal of Home Lobotomists takes them down with superior brain power.

Ohhh! There's a line I'll be borrowing!
 
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