Fight For The Freedom Of Other Peoples’ Stupid Ideas

There’s a video on the site that is having a strange impact on me. It’s a “shoe-is-on-the-other-foot” kind of feeling and I don’t like it.

The video promotes a documentary called Expelled: The Intelligent Design School Of Thought. It is narrated by Ben Stein, who famously played the laconic economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, renowned by slackers of a certain age.

If I’m being honest, and that’s what I’m trying to be here, I don’t think it’s really a documentary at all, at least according to the Random House Dictionary definition, which is: “based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements: a documentary life of Gandhi.”

I think “Expelled” is really propaganda, which is defined so: “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.”

“Expelled” is a Michael Moore kind of documentary, in which the filmmakers try to persuade you with what looks like the truth but is really a skillfully composed argument promoting their side of the story, leaving out a lot of information that weakens their argument. And in this case, good old Ben Stein serves as the front man – he’s a nice unassuming guy, the kind of guy you can trust, right?

The point of “Expelled” is this: many people, including many scientists, believe that life, nature and the universe must be the product of an intelligent designer – God or some super-intelligent godlike being – because Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection just doesn’t cut the mustard, or explain the intricacies of the mustard on its own.

And the real point of “Expelled” is that the mainstream scientific community is persecuting scientists who believe in intelligent design. I’ve only seen the trailer so far, but I recognize many of the figures as people I consider to be stooges of the intelligent design movement. And I expect that when the film is released here this week, and I go and see it, all the usual intelligent design friends and foes will be featured.

I’m also sure I’ll see the eminent biologist Richard Dawkins, who is public enemy number one as far as the intelligent design forces are concerned, condemn the whole gang as a threat to science and freedom of thought.

But wait a minute.

That’s what these intelligent design advocates are worried about in “Expelled”! In a very clever way, they’re turning the freedom of thought argument around and using it to their own advantage. Condemned by the science community as fundamentalist luddites and right-wing reactionaries, the forces of intelligent design now argue that mainstream science, the science of Darwin and natural selection, is trying to suppress their freedom of thought.

"What are you guys so worried about?" they ask. "Is there something wrong with your Darwin that makes you sensitive to competition and criticism?" This is much the same argument that Dawkins et al have used to fight back what they see as the threat – the religious right’s effort to teach intelligent design in schools, which they see as a thinly veiled attempt to squelch real science because it inevitably leads impressionable minds to question the existence of God.

What's going on here is no less than the battle of the Enlightenment versus the Reformation in a 21st century context. For the Enlightenment, you have Darwin, who – in my opinion – proves that natural selection is the means by which human beings have acquired minds to reflect on the nature of their own existence, versus the forces of religion who want everyone to believe in a Cosmic Dad and the conclusion that follows: when you die, it’s not all over.

That’s what all this is about, really. The fond hope or wish that we’re not like all the creatures we devour and destroy thoughtlessly day in, day out, in our ravenous quest to stay alive ourselves. That for us, there’s life after death and the welcoming arms of our Cosmic Dad.

Well, I choose to believe, nice as that thought is, there’s no actual evidence for it, so if it turns out to be true, terrific, but that should not prevent us from trying to find out what’s really going on. Fairy tales are nice, but not in science class. If Ferris Bueller believes in intelligent design, he must have skipped science class.

But what Ben Stein is saying in “Expelled” is that Darwin’s army has become so powerful, the shoe is on the other foot. Darwinists, who despite all their whining about persecution, actually control the system and are now persecuting the advocates of intelligent design, and they can’t think out loud or publish without perishing. The oppressed, once again, has become the oppressor. If you're a Darwinist and you want to see the enemy, look in the mirror.

For someone who believes in enlightenment, that is a very disturbing idea. At the end of the trailer, Ben Stein warns us that the very act of viewing “Expelled” could be dangerous. Educators and scientists could lose their jobs. I hope that’s just scare-mongering, but I suspect he at least has cause for concern. The irony is itself cosmic: at least since Galileo was persecuted for reporting what he saw with his own eyes, that the planets revolve around the sun – and that the whole universe does not revolve around the planet Earth – religion has installed itself as the Divine Censor. Now, it seems, there’s a secular sheriff in town.

So I’ll see Expelled, and I’ll defend the intelligent designers’ right to produce propaganda, or whatever they call it. Because it doesn’t matter if they are wrong. Or even if they are the opposite of intelligent, i.e.: stupid. You have the right to be wrong-headed; you have the right to be stupid. And as long as your recognize my right to be stupid, too, we’re going to be okay.

Because that’s how we learn. We learn through trial and error. We learn by asking questions, and it doesn’t matter how upsetting those questions are. We learn if we have the freedom to learn. Freedom to think and freedom to talk about it.

And that’s what Orato.com is all about. Think what you want. And say what you want. Just respect the rights of others to do the same.