God’s Got The Biggest Balls Of Them All
Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meetings for ‘Expelled’?
INT. PRODUCER’S OFFICE
The DIRECTOR and the WRITER are shown in. The PRODUCER motions for them to be seated.
PRODUCER: Hi guys. Coffee? Mineral water? Something else?
DIRECTOR: Coffee would be nice.
WRITER: Coffee. Thank you.
PRODUCER (buzzing intercom): Sasha, be a doll and bring us two cups of coffee … cream and sugar?
DIRECTOR: Yes, please.
WRITER: Just a splash of soy, please.
PRODUCER: Cream and sugar in one, splash of soy in the other. Thanks, babe. Okay, fellas, what have you got for me?
DIRECTOR: Okay, it’s a comedy …
WRITER: About Intelligent Design.
PRODUCER: But you repeat yourself.
Awkward silence.
PRODUCER (buzzing intercom): Sash, hold those coffees until further notice.
Awkward silence.
DIRECTOR: We open with Ben Stein dressed as a little schoolboy …
PRODUCER: Get the fuck out of my office.
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE PRODUCER’S OFFICE
DIRECTOR: We could always self-finance.
WRITER: Indeed, this is central to my point.
Hanxxors: Moxie in comments.
WTF I always thought Stein was smarter than that. In fact by wingnut standards he’s a genius. I hope this is just a cynical ploy to hustle the nitwits.
Yeah. Oddly, it is disturbing to imagine an intelligent person honestly believing in ‘Intelligent Design’, but amusing to imaginge a scammer taking advantage of fools.
Read Stein’s blog on the ‘Expelled’ site. I’ve got through the first two posts, the gist of which are that Darwin created his theory to justify his personal racism and Britain’s Imperialist designs.
Oh, my. I SO wanna believe this. But I dunno. Somehow, I look at the refrigerator/cell phone/DVD buying public and I think the producer’s gonna say “Damn, we can reach those people. Let’s do a whole Mini Series!!”
Hope you’re right….
mikey
From the site:
But Science is different. In Science, there is no room for dissent, for dissent is dangerous. That is why we at Big Science simply refuse to allow it. Like dancing, “dissent” can lead to other things.
Yes, people who can prove things never catch a break in science.
Darwin created his theory to justify his personal racism and Britain’s Imperialist designs.
I wonder what the motives were for Alfred Wallace’s theory of evolution.
In Science, there is no room for dissent, for dissent is dangerous.
The guy is projecting better than Lawrence Olivier.
I see, so the old God created forrests and train stations and peaceful waterways, but this new god, Darwin, is responsible for carnivorous predators and people not getting the respect they deserve.
Boy, next election this Darwin is toast.
You’re not funny.
Ben Stein: 1
Sadly, No: 0
FTW!!!!1111!!!1
Ben Stein is an asshole.
.
I think AC/DC (or is it just Angus?) has a case of infringement on their hands….
Ben Stein: 1
Ben seems determined to start from negative three billion so there’s a ways to go.
mcdreamy, I know who you are. Meet me behind McDonalds’ in twenty minutes.
Ooh, let me guess, Angelina. Is it Sagabastamesulryionchristbooger?
PRODUCER (buzzing intercom): Sash, hold those coffees until further notice.
I think that there’s a serious mockumentery hiding around here somewhere.
Until the late 1980’s when the generic “President’s Day” became the official holiday that subsumed them, America used to celebrate the birthdays of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
As a result, “Darwin Day” has now supplanted Lincoln’s Birthday in the popular imagination; both men were born on February 12, 1809.
Ah, yes, “Darwin Day.” How I remember those parades every year: kids on Galapagos turtles, 18 finches released to the winds, and a life-size H.M.S. Beagle float “sailing” down main street. Then the reading from “The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits.” Heady stuff, here in the heartland on Darwin’s Day.
For Chrissakes, Ben, President’s day is the holiday where the rightwing fusses about Negro usurpations, not scientific ones.
Ooh, let me guess, Angelina. Is it Sagabastamesulryionchristbooger?
NIo, I just said that so he’d go out, get some air, maybe pick up some fries and a shake. The fellow was getting overwrought.
You can read Ben Stein’s periodic, informationless drooling on Yahoo’s finance page.
If you’re into that kind of thing.
Poking an icepick up your nose is more profitable, imho.
A link on that site leads to another just as good; Draft Ben Stein 4 President.
Ben has officially jumped the shark, and is no longer cute.
Yes, you can just tell how Darwin’s Day has supplanted Lincoln’s Birthday in the popular imagination by the fact that no one can fucking remember it unless it gives you the day off.
Also, if I remember the plot of Footloose right, dancing was banned by a bunch of Christians. Similarly to evolution in Inherit the Wind.
Wow. From the why Ben page
You’ve got to love the inherent contradiction in the first two.
# That no one likes to be pushed around, and that there is nothing in The Constitution that says men and women of faith are the punching bags for people of no faith.
I lost three teeth to a roving gang of atheists!
That the military needs to be a lot bigger so we don’t use up the brave men and women who are in it with endless deployments.
Couldn’t we just make the wars smaller?
…never mind, dunno what came over me…
Jebus. The trailer for the movie starts off with a shot of a door that says Biology 101, because they name lecture halls according to the classes held within them.
At least it makes clear this is a movie about academia for people who’ve never been to school.
That janitor sure showed “Big Science” a thing or two by cleaning the blackboard. You’re next Geometry!
Ben Stein is not only an asshole as mentioned above, but a first rate idiot.
Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. It is still warranted on faith.
And if ones faith in God is shaken by evolution or other scientific findings that challenge magical thinking, then maybe its not such a strong faith after all.
Wow. I guess Ben Stein needed money. The trailer is monstrously dumb. At one point, Ben talks of the “dangers” of “Darwinism”, and they show a pic of a Nazi concentration camp. Later he conflates allowing ID to be taught in science classes with freedom of speech as a clip of MLK plays.
It’s just pathetic.
Email exchange between Ben Stein and someone even more whacky.
The fact is, if MLK were alive today he would have devoted his life to fighting Darwinism.
I lost three teeth to a roving gang of atheists!
I picked them up after you staggered off and they were all abscessed anyway. We won’t even send you a bill!!
mikey
Not to quibble, Bubba, but shouldn’t that be “I lotht three teeth to a roving gang of atheithtth”?
Jutht thayin’.
Jutht thayin’.
My face-typing has actually improved thanks to these gaps. Bless you bloodthirsty atheist ruffians!
The fact is, if MLK were alive today he would have devoted his life to fighting Darwinism.
But would he have the time, Gary, with all the work he would surely be doing to lower the corporate tax rate, keep Gitmo open, legitimize torture, defend warrantless spying on American citizens, foment war, disappear the capital-gains tax, deport brown children, champion a unitary executive, protect industrial polluters, swift-boat liberal political candidates and ‘accidentally’ lose Presidential records?
I mean, really! The man was incredible, but there’s only so much one Movement Conservative can do!
Until the late 1980’s when the generic “President’s Day” became the official holiday that subsumed it, America used to celebrate the birthdays of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Until 1954, when ‘Veterans Day’ became the official holiday that subsumed it, America used to celebrate Armistice Day as a day to honor the cessation of war:
November 11, 1919: President Wilson proclaims the first Armistice Day with the following words: “To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…” The original concept for the celebration was for the suspension of business for a two minute period beginning at 11 A.M., with the day also marked by parades and public mettings.
Sorry, Gary, but MLK believed that science and religion could co-exist and that one did not negate the other.
“The fact is, if MLK were alive today he would have devoted his life to fighting Darwinism.”
Yup, because I know that I treat ministers and developmental biologists as being on the same level when discussing science.
ID is nonsense; it’s religion for people too weak to stand up for their own faith. Faith which has no place in a science curriculum.
# That the military needs to be a lot bigger so we don’t use up the brave men and women who are in it with endless deployments.
No, we don’t want to ‘use up’ our soldiers, we just want to see MORE of them put in harms way. Christ, this sentence is so bad in so many ways that it hurts.
Mean ol’ Big Science.
First they came for the Flat Earthers, then the anti-Gravitational Theory people, now this. Where will it end?
I fear they will be after me and my Invisible Holy Sperm Theory of the Virgin Birth of Mary Mother of God next. And all because I can’t prove it, it’s so unfair.
That’s only because the punching bag hadn’t been invented yet. But I’m pretty sure it says that men and women of faith shall be subjected to the strappado by people of no faith, and by three-fifths of Negroes.
Yeah, well MLK was a socialist. I don’t think that will go over well with conservatives. Especially his whole affirmative action plan. That’s the problem with using authority figures- you get the whole bag. For example some people trace conservativism (in Europe at least) to Edmund Burke. Not the sort of guy you’d want to hang a party line by. Anti-democracy, prochurch, antifreedom… he’d fit in perfectly at the Hoover institute!
As for Wallace he sort of went onto a tangent and got all involved with mysticism and seances… a little nutty. He isn’t remebered a well because of that and because Darwin was older and wrote the books.
Right now there are many scientists and science teachers who, for all intents and purposes, openly believe in Ingelligent Design. They practice various religions, or say that they believe in God. Therefore I assume that they believe their God had a hand in starting the universe. But they totally ignore this belief in performing their professional activities because the belief doesn’t suggest any scientific hypotheses that can be tested, and they, unlike Ben Stein, are smart enough to know it.
It would add nothing to scientific literature for them to publish an article about how DNA, or string theory suggests that there might be a God. Suppose they do publish such an article. Then what? Somebody reads it and says, “I can’t disprove your hypothesis. It’s untestable. It doesn’t suggest any scientifically fruitful possibilities for further research. Why is it taking up space in a science journal rather than a religious publication?”
How does Stein think the scientific body of knowledge would change if every scientist and student of science said tomorrow “God might have done it?” If they let it change anything about their assumptions, there would be no common basis for evaluating the results of experiments. After all, God might have done it all a minute ago, creating us with thoughts in our heads and laptops on our desks. God might have nudged the rats through the maze. God might have caused the heart attacks in the patients taking the new drug rather than the new drug being toxic. Once you let the supernatural into the picture as an undetectable cause, where do you stop?
Once you let the supernatural into the picture as an undetectable cause, where do you stop?
The Bible. Get with the program, sinner.
Hopefully he will explain in further depth how Visine gets the red out; that piss-poor, two-slide power point presentation on the truncated commercials aren’t cutting it.
In Science, there is no room for dissent, for dissent is dangerous.
In religion, on the other hand, dissent is always warmly welcomed and throughout history heretics and freethinkers have been treated with courtesy and respect.
Ye Gods!!!
A little warning please? As in “Danger! Link leads to content that cannot be unseen!”
That’s just not a vision I really needed to have.
So, is Ben all “The Jew is the white male of liberal fasc… Wait… The male is the white Jew… No… The liberal is the white fasc… I’M SO CONFUSED!!!”
From the ‘Ben Stein for President’ ad:
Sane people everywhere are giving up hope.
That sentence really captures the feel of the Bush era, doesn’t it?
“Hopefully he will explain in further depth how Visine gets the red out; that piss-poor, two-slide power point presentation on the truncated commercials aren’t cutting it.”
Well, duh… Vising is clearly made from holy water; it literally prays the red out.
As Dawkins notes, ID as a “scientific” theory falls apart at the point where you ask, who created the creator? As hard as the concept of evolution resulting in sentient beings may be for the fundamentalist mind to grasp, it’s a much greater leap to assume a sentient being that just poofed into existence and then made other sentient beings by magic.
The ID’ers do not have an impossible task. They merely need to produce the skeleton of a dolphin that lived amongst the trilobites in the Burgess Shale. So get cracking, ID’ers!
Ben Stein is one stupid motherfucker. He reminds me of David Horowitz, but with more hair on his head and less on his face.
Remember when Ben Stein was sorta smart and fairly genial? I think that was before Mark Felt was revealed to be Deep Throat and Stein condemned all those nasty people for not liking Nixon.
Lighten up! Can’t anyone spot a spoof.
I don’t know why this is so funny.
But it is.
Maybe it’s just seeing wingnut and genius so close together. In the same sentence even.
Hee hee.
By wingnut standards he’s a genius.
Is that what attracts people like Thomas Sowell to the conservative banner? The ease with which you can be a genius?
It’s like that old joke:
Dude! That was just MEAN.
How would you like it if someone compared YOU to David Horowitz?
The producers of this film interviewed several scientists under false pretences, including PZ Myers
Oh Boy.
I was raised by fundies. Amway fundies. Just to give a time frame,I was born in 1960,my parents got into all this stuff when I was about 9 or 10. The Amway cult thing came when Dad lost his job at United Steel and had trouble finding work. Which is one of the more insideous things about Amway,but that’s a whole other post. ( I met Rich DeVoss and Jay VanAndel once,they actually came to our house because Mom and Dad were one of Amway’s first Diamond Distributors. It’s really a wonder I managed to escape that madness,yipes. )
I was also in love with science,still am,though alot of things are over my head. I studied geology,fossils,shells,insects and astronomy as a kid,in depth. Being a kid,I didn’t get lots of say in religion and the like,so I went to the churches my parents made me go to. I read all those awful Hal Lindsey books,went to Bible study groups ran by people who had no business teaching kids anything and dealt with life by hiding in my books and school work. I got good grades and did lots of self education/independant study,I still do. I was encouraged to be intellectually curious.
Until these creationism dolts showed up on the scene(I refuse to use “intelligent design”,it’s a bullshit term used to make creationism sound all science-y), never once was there a conflict between science and God in my household. In my mind as a kid,I just figured science was a way to figure out how all of God’s creation worked,the details the Bible didn’t (and shouldn’t have even tried to) explain. God also gave us brains and not to use those brains was a waste.
My younger siblings weren’t as lucky as I was (brother 5 yrs younger,sister 10 yrs younger). By the time they were young teens,the schools were dumbed down considerably.
Anyhoo,if science threatens your faith in God,it’s a fucking personal problem you have no business inflicting on others. Don’t want your kid taking science classes? Pull them out of public schools,they’re overcrowded anyway.
Don’t forget about all those “Darwin Day” sales at furniture stores and car dealerships. I’m going to take advantage of the Darwin Day sale tomorrow and get 30% off a four piece dinette set.
The best bit is where Stein says that while these beliefs are “expelled” now, it wouldn’t have been a problem during Galileo’s time. Oh really? Galileo’s views on heliocentrism and science in general were anything but welcomed by the Church. Pope Urban VIII asked him to include for and against arguments in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo didn’t, but did note the Pope’s opinion on the matter). The Church tried to stamp out Galileo’s theories because it didn’t like them, hmmm that sounds familiar…
Look, like a lot of people, I have my own personal belief in God; but as “anangryoldbroad” eluded to, if this stuff makes you question your faith, maybe your faith isn’t as strong as you think it is…
Left this at eXpelled’s blog:
# Pink Torpedo Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Excellent! It’s like “Spinal Tap” for the scientific community.
# That the military and the military family are the backbone of the nation and deserve to be treated a lot better than they are.
# That the military needs to be a lot bigger so we don’t use up the brave men and women who are in it with endless deployments.
Which is why Mr. Stein has angrily denounced the Bush administration for failing to call for a draft, for cutting the budget of VA hospitals, for the abysmal state of Walter Reed hospital, for demanding that disabled soldiers pay back their enlistment bonus if they were injured before their initial enlistment period was up, for cutting mental health treatment for soldiers, and for referring to veterans’ benefits as “gratuities”.
Oh…wait…
Can we just culturally slice away everything about Ben Stein except his voiceover work? Have they invented Culture Trimmers yet?
Nimrod – As long as we can keep Ferris Bueller as well…
“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?…”
I assume you all spotted the Ferris Bueller reference at the end of that trailer for Expelled? Anyone? Anyone?
Good lord. I used to think Ben Stein was a reasonably smart, politically misguided entertainer. Now I don’t know what to think. Would someone from the Darwinist Central Committee please transmit the proper thought codes to me? Thanks.
“Ben Stein: 1
Ben seems determined to start from negative three billion so there’s a ways to go.”
No, no, as a determined ID-backer, that’s negative 6000, nothing less (or would that be “more,” since we’re dealing with a negative here — and I mean the years, not anyone’s IQ).
Two things about ID — I once asked my physics teacher about the Biblical interpretation of how the world works, and he said, “The Bible tells us why; science tells us how.” So I have always thought it easy enough to compartmentalize.
Second thought — If required to teach ID, I would introduce my science class to ID on the first day:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are studying the science of biology in this class. Some say that God created the earth and all that is in it. I am required by the School Board to say that this is true. ‘This is true.’ The remainder of the semester will be devoted to the science that tells us how He did it.”
Ed
from ifthethunderdontgetya’s link
As opposed to the non-functioning alcoholic we have in office now?
(Plus, Gary, you do know that Darwinism was around when MLK was alive?)
“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?…”
In Ferris Bueller, Stein played a very very bad teacher. How prophetic.
“Something, d-o-o economics.”
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said,
February 11, 2008 at 6:02 Ben Stein is an asshole.
Ben Stein is a sad little asshole.
Conservatives should be encouraged to be as inbred as much as possible to prevent any future evolving on their part.
in re the producer in our little play:
look, i’m more liberal than the next guy, but when someone offered me a meeting with tim lahaye to talk about doing straight-to-dvd movies of his next…offerings…
i hesitated.
i won’t lie to you. this job is fucking hard, the money is good or disappears completely for long periods of time, and fuck it, if i don’t make the damn things someone else will. and i could add various snark, i was thinking, maybe some sadly-nocon or even better, fallcon (if you don’t know don’t ask) leavened in amongst the insanity and the christopher walken dialogue.
but what little standards i have left (and i started with a small pile, to be honest) managed to overcome my desire to make some money. good money at that.