Two Thumbs Up

Although I was young, during my foray into evangelical Christianity as a child, I could not shake my doubt and critical thinking. “This doesn’t sound right,” I’d think often, but I mostly kept my thoughts to myself. I went along with it because my best friend, a fundamentalist Baptist, was into it. (I didn’t really feel like a fraud or hypocrite, though. I’ve always sort of kept part of myself under wraps. I would give up part of who I was to have friends or boyfriends. I’ve tried to stop doing that these days.)

This month, Roger Ebert writes a review of Ben Stein’s “Expelled.” But it’s not exactly a review, it’s more of a smackdown. Reading Ebert’s post made me remember when my friend sent me some Creationist materials from some presentation she saw. Amongst other things, it said that evolution was a lie made up by the devil and that it influenced, and was supported by, the Nazis. Huh. Interesting how we never hear about the latter from anyone but Creationists, perhaps because it’s not true. It sure does seem to be a staple of anti-evolution beliefs, though, a slippery slope from evolution to atheism to becoming Hitler (who identified as a Christian, but whatever):

Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it “From Darwin to Hitler.” He finds a Creationist who informs him, “Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.” He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment.

He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.

However, I have a couple bones to pick:

• Mr. Ebert missed a chance to educate readers on what “theory” means in a scientific context. Most Creationists don’t understand a meaning other than by its layperson definition. In science, a theory is knowledge based upon observable evidence. So for example, evolution is both a theory and a fact. By saying, “Evolution is just a theory” you could just as well say, “Gravity is just a theory.” Yet most Creationists don’t take issue with accepting gravity as the reason why things fall down.
• He also missed a chance to explain how evolution does not cover how life originated on Earth; that study would be abiogenesis.