Excellent film, poor critique
|
|
I attended Ben Stein’s film, “Expelled,” in Lawrence April 19 and found it a brilliant documentary working forward from one logical point to another. The linkage it establishes between Darwinism and Nazism was already familiar to me from Robert E.D. Clark’s “Darwin: Before and After” (1966). According to the film, this book has been superseded by a later one on the same subject and theme.
Stein’s climactic interview with Richard Dawkins was especially revealing. Belief in Intelligent Design has been greatly strengthened by the modern discovery of vast complexity in even the simplest living cells. Dawkins’ attempt to explain cell complexity was incredibly illogical. He suggests that our world was “seeded” with complex cells by alien invaders through an advanced technology. Asked how these superior beings came to be, he fell back on natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, a Victorian who knew nothing of cell complexity.
After appreciating the film, I was appalled to find a cruel misrepresentation of it published in the Lawrence Journal-World April 25. The source was an unnamed critic at some national news agency. His critique served as a sad commentary on media bias toward the Darwinist consensus quite apart from logic or evidence. The critic rated the film as “awful” and described it as a cynical attempt to paint all Darwinists as Nazis. This hopelessly biased critique showed media bias in favor of the entrenched Darwinist consensus no matter what the evidence or logic. The critique was never answered by a more balanced view at the Journal-World; and I have been assured by two editors there that it never will be.
— John Pilkey, Ottawa
|
|
