There has been a lot of discussion recently around the internets about Ben Stein’s new anti-science movie, Expelled. If you haven’t heard about how certain people who are actually in the movie were accused of gatecrashing it, then you ought to give this a look. Let’s see, you can be interviewed in the movie, but you can’t go see it in a theater. Sounds like an intelligent design to me. You can also read about how the producers stole copyrighted material. And you can also listen to this podcast about how the producer and star misrepresented themselves (and also behaved very oddly) during the interview process.

Perhaps the dumbest thing in this anti-science movie (and that’s a pretty high bar) is the trotting out of the old chestnut argument that atheism, and specifically Darwinism, paved the way for Hitler and the Holocaust.

Yes, it’s perfectly obvious that the problem with Hitler was his excess of scientific knowledge.

When one thinks of Hitler, or for that matter, Stalin, Lenin, Chairman Mao or Kim Jong Il, all in the throws of their most brutally fascistic modes, one can’t help but think of reasonable people using logic and science to make rational decisions.

That is, if your name is Ben Stein.

The great thing about science is the self-correcting mechanism inherent in the process; so that mistakes, miscalculations, incorrect assumptions and unwarranted conclusions are eventually found out and discarded. Irrationality, and one of its offspring, religion, has no such mechanism. So that, when the Pope finally admits, in 1950, that there is something to evolution after all, it is not because of any irrational process like prayer or divine inspiration; it is because of science and reason. Were it not for the rational discovery of truth, Pius XII would never have been forced to admit anything in 1950, and the church would have continued to promote ideas that are simply factually incorrect. The same goes for the well after-the-fact reversal (359 years too late) about Galileo. The only reason they ever had to admit their mistake was because they were proven wrong, not because their divine deity or their sacred texts or their faith told them to.

Hitler, contrary to Stein-ian doctrine, used whatever means or arguments he could find to promote his agenda, not the least of which were paranoid, irrational fear, bigotry, and even religion. For instance, from the end of volume one, chapter two of Mein Kampf, our ‘atheist’ Adolf capped off a lengthy anti-Semitic rant with this gem:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

The problem with megalomaniacal, fascistic dictators is not that they turn to science or reason to arrive at their worldviews, it is that they turn to anything they can use, whether it be science or religion, to manipulate others.

And therein lies the real problem.

In my mind, it is far too easy to point to a handful of bad individuals and say that they were entirely to blame for the bad things they inspired others to do. In truth, North Korea allows Kim Jong Il to persist because many North Koreans, quite irrationally and ignorantly, believe in his right to control their country any way he chooses. Or at least, they are not concerned enough about him to overthrow him. Hitler was, himself, elected democratically, and scores of Russians accepted the actions of Lenin or Stalin for a variety of irrational reasons, like overt nationalism or simple apathy.

One cannot also help but point out that we, the American people, have not only elected George W. Bush President twice, but we have also allowed him to get away with several overtly illegal (and ethically questionable) activities. He ought to be held responsible for those things. But how can we blame him for actions that we apparently aren’t concerned enough to do anything about ourselves?

And the real question is, why are human beings so easily manipulated into either overt or docile acceptance of bad ideas and bad people? Is it because of their excess of rationality, their dogmatically skeptical and scientific mindsets? Do human beings allow atrocities to occur because they are too smart, or too well informed? Does a thorough understanding of Biology lead directly to a life of unmitigated barbarism?

Um, no.

If Ben Stein and others want to argue that science is fascistic, and that college professors are being fired or aren’t getting tenure because of their religious beliefs, he and they are free to do so. If they wish to argue that religion is the source of all truth, knowledge and good in the universe, they are also free to do so. The irony I guess they don’t get, however, is that the only reason they have the freedom to make those arguments openly is because of the concepts of intellectual and personal freedom; concepts found nowhere in either the Bible or Koran, but which are the very foundation of reasonable and scientific inquiry.

And so, if you wanted to evaluate the claims made in the movie Expelled, to see if they are accurate and honest, how would you do that? Prayer and meditation? Reading sacred texts? Or might you use some other method? And if there are any factual errors in this movie (if?), will it take the producers 359 years to admit it?

I only hope that our (apparently) excessively scientific society can last long enough to find out.