Washblog

Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism's Manufactroversy

[Recommended. A.R.]

Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn't follow the scientific method; it doesn't allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.

Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.

One week from today, the new movie, Expelled, attempts to turn creationist complaints into mainstream media. Featuring Ben Stein, one of the conservative right's biggest whiners, the film makes several plaintive appeals: There's a conspiracy among big government and big science, and it's not fair! All we ask is for our perspective to get equal time! (Read: we lost, so let's split the prize.) All we want is for teachers to "teach the controversy"! This is all about academic freedom. Americans like freedom, right?

The whiners actually have spent millions of dollars on the movie, and even more on the marketing of it. You have to give them credit: by bundling Creationism with freedom, they have created a sophisticated strategy. Of course, Americans like freedom! More importantly, both democracy and scientific progress depend on intellectual freedom -- the freedom to ask questions and, unencumbered by ideology, to follow the answers where they lead. After centuries of heresy trials and book burnings, for biblical creationists to position themselves as the champions of academic freedom is a brilliant Orwellian move.

University of Washington professor, Leah Ceccarelli has pointed out that their "teach the controversy" strategy depends on a very specific sleight of hand: blurring the difference between scientific controversy and manufactured controversy or Manufactroversy.

You can say you first heard it here, well, if you haven't heard it already on MySpace or Facebook: Manufactroversy -- a made up word for a made up controversy. There's even a new website, Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net that aggregates articles and blog posts about this manufactroversy and some other pretty famous ones as well.

Scientific controversy exists only when the jury of relevant experts is out on whether a new finding meets the standard of evidence. The debate and evidence gathering still are in process. A manufactroversy is when someone motivated by profit or ideology fosters confusion in the public mind long after scientists have moved on to the next set of questions. Think tobacco and lung cancer. Think Exxon and global warming. Now think Ben Stein and evolution.

The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted.

The tobacco industry in the 1960's wasn't anxious to part with its profits just like the oil companies of the 1990's had no desire to walk away from theirs. So they manufactured controversies, paying scientists to publish papers they knew would distort the issue.

In the case of creationism, the a vast preponderance of evidence, conflicts with traditional mythos. What possible explanation but that the scientists are colluding, corrupt, and biased. But, of course, they're not. The proponents of intelligent design can't gain credibility among hard scientists because their evidence is pathetic. So what do they do? Follow in the footsteps of the tobacco and oil companies and spend millions in an effort to create public doubt. They plea for their side to be told, they imagine vast conspiracies and they cry out for fair play, but the reality is much simpler.

The mountain of evidence supporting mainstream biological science is overwhelming. The paltry evidence for "insurmountable gaps" and "irreducible complexity" is actually shrinking. Evolution should be taught as science and creationism, in its many guises, as religion, including the rich pre-scientific stories about origins from many cultures and traditions. So why not just ignore the whiners and hope they will go away? Because they won't until we force them to stop their marketing of religious beliefs as science. We're still fighting the tobacco industry to this day. Oil companies still fund global warming deniers.

Besides, how long has it been since the famous Scopes trial? How long have creationists been talking about "Darwinism" as if no one but Darwin had noticed the fossil record or the DNA code in the last 100 years? It does get tiresome, responding to their ever evolving anti-evolutionary rhetoric. But we need to expose the bizarre supernaturalist agenda behind all the sudden whining about academic freedom. And somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven't been expelled from school, they flunked.

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Around here we do things by the Book:  

Compared to my generation and those before me, our young at heart in America seem to have available a much smaller span of mythical images with which to relate to contemporary society. Yet there are some images which, almost by contemporary definition, must be inseparably linked to the medium through which they are best absorbed.

One sample of 20th-century myth-making - received via dark, popcorn-&-pepsi theater settings - comes to us as famed entertainment.

One ponders that perhaps entertainment is the only venue from which can come any holistic view of human spirituality. It's is a holistic need that goes beyond the scientific and logical literalism that seems to focus our attention and learning span.

This literalism permeates contemporary perception for all of us. Precisely through media propaganda weaponry, modern shallow moralists market their mental products and push us towared dependence on outside sources to tell us what to think, how to belong, how/why to conform and how not to bear any nuisance of personal independence and freedom.

"Trust the force, Luke!"

In the original Star Wars film the climactic scenes are defined only after that the spiritual prompting voice of Skywalker's mentor can be heard. Subsequent group salvation thru the hero's triumph is achieved only after the young prophet lets go of doing things by the Book.

I suspect that though perhaps not a conscious awareness, our youngest adult generation today has an internal grasp of that particular concept.

We need more of that and less spiritual literalism that looks mostly like the old Simian Prophet who asserts and flexes his authority based on long-term social programming in the film Planet of the Apes.

We have Old Fartis the senior scholar/priest  constantly quoting a historical lawgiver who no longer needs creditiliby established because  of long-term social programming. It is heretical to question the validity of the ancient lawgiver as told through contemporary old-fart-tales!

In knee-jerk fashion the lawgiver's contemporar minions demand submiission to the get-back-in-line social orthodoxy that authorizes those in charge to irrevocably remain in the driver's seat.

"Luke, don't you ever turn off your scripture machine, you can't trust the force!" is the suggestion of those who worship in idol of inerrant scripture that was never the intent of Christ.

Jesus was never the "lawgiving" autocratic authoritarian described by those who walk around dragging a leather-bound lawgiver's manual to justify the dumbest and most useless letter-of-the law notions that plague us today.

Such is not and was never Jesus' intended use of the Bible.

Why isn't that mythical image of letting go the biblical training wheels and trusting the spirit the integral part of raising children to become spiritual adults rather than future aged children afraid of deeper waters?

The Bible is not useful as a literalist construct of "shoulds, should'nts" or rewards-&-punishments that gets dragged around in a knuckle-scratching manner by strutting simian/human demagogues who are afraid of deep waters.

"Stay here in the shallow end of the pool kids, where we're in charge and you can have fun splashing without ever having to risk deeper waters. Sure the shallow end of the pool doesn't have much room to explore, but you don't need to explore since your pulpit pounders will tell you - by the Book - all the important stuff you need to know.

Luke, don't you ever turn off your scripture machine, you can't trust the force!"

Liars

Arthur
You sure you ain't staking too much on yer theories? Not enough common sense?

by Arthur Ruger on Sat Apr 12, 2008 at 04:33:41 PM PST

* 1 none 0 *


for example -

there is a bottle cap on my desk which I KNOW is the source of all intelligence and all life on the planet -

if this biblical whackjob can sell his snake oil fantasy, I want to sell my bottle cap reality!

Send me 10% of your earnings for the next 5 years, OR, 10% of your net worth if it is over $500,000.00, and I'll send you a jpg of my inspirational bottle cap.

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Sun Apr 13, 2008 at 10:06:13 AM PST

* 2 none 0 *


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