Counterbalance posts substantial response to “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”

Now that the shouting has died down (it has, hasn’t it?), maybe we’ll start to see some substantial, thoughtful, “balanced” assessments of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Perhaps we’ll read some perspectives that don’t stoop to cheap Michael-Moore distortions and antics.

Counterbalance has just posted a substantial contribution to the dialogue and debate. I recommend you check it out.

Dr. Jeff Schloss addresses questions like these:

• Is Evolution Wedded to Atheism?
• Do “anti-science bigots…censor scientists and stifle science”?
• Are ID advocates being expelled?
• Should ID advocates be expelled?
• Did Darwin lead to Hitler?

Here’s a clip from the introduction, before they get specific in very helpful ways…

Producer Ben Stein concludes, “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science.”

Over the course of this increasingly polarized battle, and especially in the bitter criticisms and umbraged defenses of the film, each side contends that the other not only is wrong, but also is committing the destructive error of the above proverb. [It was taken, by the way, from the famous discussion by Nobel laureate biologist Konrad Lorenz of “militant enthusiasm” - the feverish group think in which “rational considerations, criticisms, and all reasonable arguments...are silenced” by being made to “appear not only untenable but base and dishonorable.”] For many of us who value science, biblical faith, and civil exchange, it is very tempting to echo Mercutio’s lament at the tragic consequences of feuding Montagues and Capulets: “A plague on both your houses!…I was hurt under your arm.” Indeed, our students, and the fabric of social discourse, and the very intellectual questions that have been central to western civilization all appear to have been injured “under the arm” of this feud.