SciAm: Never You Mine: Ben Stein's Selective Quoting of Darwin

Posted 18 April 2008 by PvM

Steve Mirsky from Scientific America reports on Never You Mine: Ben Stein's Selective Quoting of Darwin

One of the many egregious moments in the new Ben Stein anti-evolution film "Expelled" is the truncation of a quote from Charles Darwin so that it makes him appear to give philosophical ammunition to the Nazis. Steve Mirsky reports.
— Steve Mirsky

Podcast Transcript: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. Hi, Steve Mirsky here. I’m going over our usual one minute. By now, you’ve probably heard of Expelled, the new Ben Stein anti-evolution crockumentary. It officially opens today as I speak, that’s April 18th. Because of my job, I’ve had the misfortune of sitting through this film twice now. As least I was getting paid. The film tries very hard to connect Darwin with the Holocaust. Toward the end, Stein reads the following quote from the book Descent of Man: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” That’s the end of the quote. And when he finishes reading the quote, Ben Stein intones the guilty verdict by naming the source: Charles Darwin. Oh my, it sounds like Darwin actually did provide a rationale to the horrific practices of the Nazis.

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10 Comments

raven · 18 April 2008

Here is the end of the quote. Not too surprising, the Expelleds lied again. Quote mining like that is just flat out lying.

Charles Darwin: So here’s Charles Darwin again, from Descent of Man: “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.”

wheyghey · 18 April 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3wSuSF8-hI

Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed

Karen · 18 April 2008

wheyghey, If humans come from storks why are there still storks?

MelM · 19 April 2008

Over on the "Atheist Media Blog", there's YouTube audio of a meeting between Mark Mathis and some Scientific American editors. SciAm editors vs Mathis. One might think EXPELLED would send their science adviser to SciAm for the private showing.

ellazimm · 19 April 2008

What if Mark Mathis IS their scientific advisor?

James F · 19 April 2008

ellazimm, if he is, that would explain a lot.

Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 19 April 2008

If humans come from storks why are there still storks?

Or worse, as Dawkins point out in the video: if babies have to come from storks, what do storks come from?

Frank J · 20 April 2008

While everyone is chuckling over the stork questions, just remember this:

Classic creationism, in all its mutually contradictory YEC or OEC versions, has testable models that appear to rule out "storkism." In "stork" contrast, ID, which Dembski admitted can "accommodate all the results of 'Darwinism'," doesn't rule out anything, including "storkism."

Henry J · 20 April 2008

How did storks get that gig, anyway? It's pelicans that have some extra cargo space. :p

Henry

Nigel D · 21 April 2008

Henry J: How did storks get that gig, anyway? It's pelicans that have some extra cargo space. :p Henry

Probably something to do with migratory patterns (you know, storks pass by at the same time as all the babies arrive*). Do pelicans migrate? *, Yes, OK, so now people have babies throughout the year, but I suspect that there was once a time when the preponderance of births occurred in a particular season.