BEN STEIN´S "EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED"
Kazmer Ujvarosy
March 10, 2009
After abstaining from movies for many years, finally I took the risk of parting with $10.50, and went to see "Expelled."
No regrets. It was money and time well spent.
"Expelled" convincingly documents how people in academia are shunned, ridiculed, blacklisted or fired if they happen to question the parroted fables of inorganic and organic evolutions of complex systems from simple beginnings.
The testimonies of victims leave no doubt that there is no freedom of speech in scientific circles when the validity of nature´s Darwinist interpretations are questioned or challenged.
At the same time we learn about the magnitude of ignorance and delusion both sides display.
In spite of the fact that the nonexistence of life has never been demonstrated, and in spite of the fact that the principle of biogenesis has never been falsified, Ben Stein wants to know what caused life to arise.
The principle of biogenesis, as we find in the Oxford Dictionary of Biology (4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2000), states: "biogenesis: The principle that a living organism can only arise from other living organisms similar to itself (i.e. that like gives rise to like) and can never originate from nonliving material."
So in essence Ben Stein is asking a stupid question because absolutely no demonstrable evidence exists that at one time no life existed at all, or that life is the product of some kind of cause, be that God or nonlife. No doubt, Stein and other believers in life´s origin should keep in mind what Peter T. Mora wrote: "How life originated, I am afraid that, since Pasteur, this question is not within the scientific domain" (Nature, July 20, 1963).
No doubt Ben Stein believes that God is responsible for life. He seems to be unaware of the fact that life´s existence is prima facie evidence of life´s eternity because it stands uncontradicted for as long as it is overcome by contrary evidence. Above all, Ben Stein should know better that God is life itself. But if he believes that life is created, then most irrationally he believes that the Creator himself is created, because we are told that God is the highest form of life that exists.
Even David Berlinski, who intellectually outshines practically all of the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), has the delusion that an unspecified "designer" is responsible for the origin of life. He thinks that ID is an alternative scientific theory for the explanation of life´s origin and it should not be expelled from scientific discussions. Hopefully sooner or later Berlinski will arrive at the realization that no rational explanation exists for the origin of life simply because what is everlasting has no origin, being itself the origin of all things created.
The headquarters of the Intelligent Design movement is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Bruce Chapman is its president.
Chapman correctly points out that the complexity of life cannot be the result of imagined Darwinian processes. But Chapman himself believes that an intelligent cause designed life. He has this delusion in common with the rest of the ID fans. They fail to see that whereas the discernible features of the cosmic system are best explained by an intelligent cause, the discernible features of life are not explainable by an intelligent cause. Life itself needs no cause beyond itself, simply because life itself constitutes the intelligent cause of the universe. Life, in short, is the cosmic system´s input and output. Being the cause of the universe, life is supernatural relative to the universe it generated for the reproduction of itself.
Evidently Chapman is following the logic of Discovery Institute´s Stephen Meyer. Meyer argues that, whenever we trace information back to its source, we always come to an intelligent agent. So when we find information in life then it is rational to postulate that the information content of life similarly had an intelligent source.
Sounds rational? Not really. If we pay attention to Meyer´s reasoning we find that he is mixing up cause with effect. Because he can trace the source of an ancient hieroglyphic to an intelligent agent, namely to human intelligence, he believes that he can trace the same human intelligent agent to an intelligent source, which imaginary source or "designer" necessarily must exist beyond and above human intelligence. What Meyer fails to notice is the fact that whereas the cause of any effect needs to be identified, it makes absolutely no sense to identify the cause of the cause, simply because a cause is not an effect. In short, an effect has a cause, but the cause itself cannot have a cause. The universe has a cause, but that ultimate cause has no cause, because otherwise it could not be a cause but simply an effect.
In the final analysis Stephen Meyer and others like him are just as irrational as Richard Dawkins who likes to ask the stupid question, "If God created the universe, who created God?" ID fans similarly ask the stupid question, "If human intelligence created the ancient hieroglyphics, who created human intelligence?"
The fact that human intelligence is viewed by ID proponents as an effect of a cause that exists above and beyond human intelligence demonstrates that they believe in a super-human intelligence that to the best of our knowledge has no demonstrable existence. As a matter of fact not even the Bible implies that intelligence exists above and beyond human intelligence.
When we read in Genesis that the Creator generated the universe for the production of man in his own image, we are faced with one unknown agent only, namely with the question of the Creator´s identity. Because man is clearly identified as the climax or output of creation, and the universe as the system which produces that output in the input´s image, based on that information it is rational to propose that man constitutes the cosmic system´s initial input as well.
Indeed, the theory that man constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system´s input and output, is reinforced by the teachings of Jesus Christ.
When in Revelation 22:13 Christ discloses, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," he identifies himself as the cosmic system´s input and output. Note also John 10:30 where Christ identifies himself as the Creator, parent seed, or Logos spermatikos of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
Ironically, many theologians and evolutionists are in the habit of assuring us that the accounts of creation in the Bible are not fact-based, but faith-based. However it is beyond any doubt that this is a misconception. Even Philip, Christ´s disciple, demanded tangible evidence for the Creator´s existence. Christ, without hesitation, presented the Father´s body for Philip´s examination. In John 14:8-9 we find this exchange of words:
Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ´Show us the Father´?"
Paul in his letter to the Colossians also assures us that Christ is the Creator of the universe, and not something what is intangible or empirically not verifiable:
By Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible …; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Logically Christ, being the generative seed of the universe, is everlasting. The universe has no power whatsoever to act upon the initial cause of its own origin, just as a tree has no power to act upon its own parent seed.
At this point the argument may be raised that man is not the cosmic system´s input and output, or pinnacle of all life forms in the universe. Indeed, whether it is true or not, we can´t be absolutely certain. Precisely for this reason the theory of creation is tentative, just as scientific theories are supposed to be.
In any case just because we are not absolutely certain that man constitutes the existing highest form of life does not mean that the theory of creation is not fact-based but faith-based.
Man´s existence is an undeniable fact. What is faith-based is the speculation that a being superior to human life exists, which superhuman being is reproductively isolated from human beings. But if either ID proponents, evolutionists or creationists keep insisting – in the total absence of evidence – that human life is not the pinnacle of life forms in the universe, then they are the ones who irrationally believe in the existence of superhuman beings.
As a matter of fact Christ never told us that anything superior to his own being exists. He only affirmed his own existence and his identity with the Father, but never the existence of a being beyond and above himself. Being the Creator of the universe, he is most qualified to know that no being superior to himself ever existed.
The main point is that whereas amusingly Intelligent Design theorists refuse to specify the inferred designer´s identity, the Most High´s identity doesn´t remain unidentified in the Bible: Christ identifies himself with the existing highest form of life, i.e. with the parent seed of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
The cosmic system, stated in a nutshell, is best described as a heuristic system that involves a process by which the parent seed of the universe or input program improves its performance by learning from its own human output as a result of information feedback in the form of prayers.
When evolutionary cosmologists attribute to nonlife the creation of the universe and life, and evolutionary biologists seek to derive from a primitive life form the complexity and richness of life, they irrationally seek to derive from simple causes most complex effects. Getting from a simple cause more than what it has is contrary to reason.
The record is clear that when Darwin and his deluded disciples advocate evolution from a simple beginning they actually advocate hocus-pocus. As Tryon Edwards (1809-94) remarked, such ingrained delusions are "rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic."
As science is, above all else, about cause-and-effect relationship, the true test of a theory or explanation in science is the central question: "Is the proposed cause of a phenomenon sufficient to bring about the effect attributed to it?"
Because we know that complexity´s evolution from any kind of inferior cause is irrational, therefore it is rational to propose that the initial cause of the universe is no lesser in qualities than the qualities we find in the universe. Thus this logical inference from a highly complex effect to a cause greater in complexity than the effect itself points in the direction of the existing highest form of complexity or intelligence.
To summarize, whereas Darwinists posit common descent from a simple beginning, rational scientific minds posit common descent from the existing highest form of life or intelligence. As we have no confirmable evidence that intelligence superior to human intelligence exists, we are constrained to propose tentatively that human intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image or likeness.
Thus, whereas in modern cosmology a human being is incorrectly considered to be part of the universe, in traditional cosmology a human being is considered to be the seed of the universe. This scientific theory of creation by human intelligence is labeled "religion."
This brings us to the so-called "Anthropic Principle."
Contemporary cosmology just can´t get over the discovery that our universe is ingeniously bio-friendly, i.e. that the cosmological parameters are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of human beings.
In our experience the parameters or determining characteristics of plant and animal systems are delicately fine-tuned for the production of reproductive cells because those systems are reproductive cells unfolded. We find, in other words, that the parameters of a hen are fine-tuned for the production of eggs because an egg generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. Also we find that the parameters of an apple tree are fine-tuned for the production of apples because an apple seed generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. So when we find that the parameters of our universe are fine-tuned for the production of human beings, then the rational explanation seems to be that it is so because intelligence akin to our intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image.
Needless to say, in Expelled none of the proponents or critics of Intelligent Design came even near to this conclusion.
Richard Dawkins, who established a foundation ironically called "reason and science," and claims to be "clear-thinking," argues that even if life was seeded by intelligent designers on this planet the alien beings would themselves have to have evolved from lesser and lesser complexity. He is absolutely convinced that organized complexity or any designing intelligence comes late in the universe and cannot exist at the beginning. To illustrate, Dawkins believes that because an oak tree yields the highly organized complexity of acorns later than the rest of the tree, therefore no acorn existed and played any role in the tree´s generation. In essence he denies that the oak tree´s parent seed ever existed, and similarly denies that the Parent Seed or Creator of the universe ever existed.
So what´s so wrong with Dawkins and the rest of the evolutionists? The diagnosis seems to be that they are incapable of discriminating between cause and effect. If we tell them, intelligence is the cause and the universe is the effect, then they ignorantly ask, "What caused intelligence?" In other words they ask, "What caused the cause?" Faced with this stupid question we can only give this answer: "Nothing caused the cause. Only an effect can have a cause. A cause is necessarily without a cause because it is not an effect."
George Washington wisely observed:
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
No regrets. It was money and time well spent.
"Expelled" convincingly documents how people in academia are shunned, ridiculed, blacklisted or fired if they happen to question the parroted fables of inorganic and organic evolutions of complex systems from simple beginnings.
The testimonies of victims leave no doubt that there is no freedom of speech in scientific circles when the validity of nature´s Darwinist interpretations are questioned or challenged.
At the same time we learn about the magnitude of ignorance and delusion both sides display.
In spite of the fact that the nonexistence of life has never been demonstrated, and in spite of the fact that the principle of biogenesis has never been falsified, Ben Stein wants to know what caused life to arise.
The principle of biogenesis, as we find in the Oxford Dictionary of Biology (4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2000), states: "biogenesis: The principle that a living organism can only arise from other living organisms similar to itself (i.e. that like gives rise to like) and can never originate from nonliving material."
So in essence Ben Stein is asking a stupid question because absolutely no demonstrable evidence exists that at one time no life existed at all, or that life is the product of some kind of cause, be that God or nonlife. No doubt, Stein and other believers in life´s origin should keep in mind what Peter T. Mora wrote: "How life originated, I am afraid that, since Pasteur, this question is not within the scientific domain" (Nature, July 20, 1963).
No doubt Ben Stein believes that God is responsible for life. He seems to be unaware of the fact that life´s existence is prima facie evidence of life´s eternity because it stands uncontradicted for as long as it is overcome by contrary evidence. Above all, Ben Stein should know better that God is life itself. But if he believes that life is created, then most irrationally he believes that the Creator himself is created, because we are told that God is the highest form of life that exists.
Even David Berlinski, who intellectually outshines practically all of the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID), has the delusion that an unspecified "designer" is responsible for the origin of life. He thinks that ID is an alternative scientific theory for the explanation of life´s origin and it should not be expelled from scientific discussions. Hopefully sooner or later Berlinski will arrive at the realization that no rational explanation exists for the origin of life simply because what is everlasting has no origin, being itself the origin of all things created.
The headquarters of the Intelligent Design movement is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Bruce Chapman is its president.
Chapman correctly points out that the complexity of life cannot be the result of imagined Darwinian processes. But Chapman himself believes that an intelligent cause designed life. He has this delusion in common with the rest of the ID fans. They fail to see that whereas the discernible features of the cosmic system are best explained by an intelligent cause, the discernible features of life are not explainable by an intelligent cause. Life itself needs no cause beyond itself, simply because life itself constitutes the intelligent cause of the universe. Life, in short, is the cosmic system´s input and output. Being the cause of the universe, life is supernatural relative to the universe it generated for the reproduction of itself.
Evidently Chapman is following the logic of Discovery Institute´s Stephen Meyer. Meyer argues that, whenever we trace information back to its source, we always come to an intelligent agent. So when we find information in life then it is rational to postulate that the information content of life similarly had an intelligent source.
Sounds rational? Not really. If we pay attention to Meyer´s reasoning we find that he is mixing up cause with effect. Because he can trace the source of an ancient hieroglyphic to an intelligent agent, namely to human intelligence, he believes that he can trace the same human intelligent agent to an intelligent source, which imaginary source or "designer" necessarily must exist beyond and above human intelligence. What Meyer fails to notice is the fact that whereas the cause of any effect needs to be identified, it makes absolutely no sense to identify the cause of the cause, simply because a cause is not an effect. In short, an effect has a cause, but the cause itself cannot have a cause. The universe has a cause, but that ultimate cause has no cause, because otherwise it could not be a cause but simply an effect.
In the final analysis Stephen Meyer and others like him are just as irrational as Richard Dawkins who likes to ask the stupid question, "If God created the universe, who created God?" ID fans similarly ask the stupid question, "If human intelligence created the ancient hieroglyphics, who created human intelligence?"
The fact that human intelligence is viewed by ID proponents as an effect of a cause that exists above and beyond human intelligence demonstrates that they believe in a super-human intelligence that to the best of our knowledge has no demonstrable existence. As a matter of fact not even the Bible implies that intelligence exists above and beyond human intelligence.
When we read in Genesis that the Creator generated the universe for the production of man in his own image, we are faced with one unknown agent only, namely with the question of the Creator´s identity. Because man is clearly identified as the climax or output of creation, and the universe as the system which produces that output in the input´s image, based on that information it is rational to propose that man constitutes the cosmic system´s initial input as well.
Indeed, the theory that man constitutes the seed of the universe, or the cosmic system´s input and output, is reinforced by the teachings of Jesus Christ.
When in Revelation 22:13 Christ discloses, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," he identifies himself as the cosmic system´s input and output. Note also John 10:30 where Christ identifies himself as the Creator, parent seed, or Logos spermatikos of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
Ironically, many theologians and evolutionists are in the habit of assuring us that the accounts of creation in the Bible are not fact-based, but faith-based. However it is beyond any doubt that this is a misconception. Even Philip, Christ´s disciple, demanded tangible evidence for the Creator´s existence. Christ, without hesitation, presented the Father´s body for Philip´s examination. In John 14:8-9 we find this exchange of words:
Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ´Show us the Father´?"
Paul in his letter to the Colossians also assures us that Christ is the Creator of the universe, and not something what is intangible or empirically not verifiable:
By Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible …; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Logically Christ, being the generative seed of the universe, is everlasting. The universe has no power whatsoever to act upon the initial cause of its own origin, just as a tree has no power to act upon its own parent seed.
At this point the argument may be raised that man is not the cosmic system´s input and output, or pinnacle of all life forms in the universe. Indeed, whether it is true or not, we can´t be absolutely certain. Precisely for this reason the theory of creation is tentative, just as scientific theories are supposed to be.
In any case just because we are not absolutely certain that man constitutes the existing highest form of life does not mean that the theory of creation is not fact-based but faith-based.
Man´s existence is an undeniable fact. What is faith-based is the speculation that a being superior to human life exists, which superhuman being is reproductively isolated from human beings. But if either ID proponents, evolutionists or creationists keep insisting – in the total absence of evidence – that human life is not the pinnacle of life forms in the universe, then they are the ones who irrationally believe in the existence of superhuman beings.
As a matter of fact Christ never told us that anything superior to his own being exists. He only affirmed his own existence and his identity with the Father, but never the existence of a being beyond and above himself. Being the Creator of the universe, he is most qualified to know that no being superior to himself ever existed.
The main point is that whereas amusingly Intelligent Design theorists refuse to specify the inferred designer´s identity, the Most High´s identity doesn´t remain unidentified in the Bible: Christ identifies himself with the existing highest form of life, i.e. with the parent seed of the universe: "I and the Father are one."
The cosmic system, stated in a nutshell, is best described as a heuristic system that involves a process by which the parent seed of the universe or input program improves its performance by learning from its own human output as a result of information feedback in the form of prayers.
When evolutionary cosmologists attribute to nonlife the creation of the universe and life, and evolutionary biologists seek to derive from a primitive life form the complexity and richness of life, they irrationally seek to derive from simple causes most complex effects. Getting from a simple cause more than what it has is contrary to reason.
The record is clear that when Darwin and his deluded disciples advocate evolution from a simple beginning they actually advocate hocus-pocus. As Tryon Edwards (1809-94) remarked, such ingrained delusions are "rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic."
As science is, above all else, about cause-and-effect relationship, the true test of a theory or explanation in science is the central question: "Is the proposed cause of a phenomenon sufficient to bring about the effect attributed to it?"
Because we know that complexity´s evolution from any kind of inferior cause is irrational, therefore it is rational to propose that the initial cause of the universe is no lesser in qualities than the qualities we find in the universe. Thus this logical inference from a highly complex effect to a cause greater in complexity than the effect itself points in the direction of the existing highest form of complexity or intelligence.
To summarize, whereas Darwinists posit common descent from a simple beginning, rational scientific minds posit common descent from the existing highest form of life or intelligence. As we have no confirmable evidence that intelligence superior to human intelligence exists, we are constrained to propose tentatively that human intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image or likeness.
Thus, whereas in modern cosmology a human being is incorrectly considered to be part of the universe, in traditional cosmology a human being is considered to be the seed of the universe. This scientific theory of creation by human intelligence is labeled "religion."
This brings us to the so-called "Anthropic Principle."
Contemporary cosmology just can´t get over the discovery that our universe is ingeniously bio-friendly, i.e. that the cosmological parameters are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of human beings.
In our experience the parameters or determining characteristics of plant and animal systems are delicately fine-tuned for the production of reproductive cells because those systems are reproductive cells unfolded. We find, in other words, that the parameters of a hen are fine-tuned for the production of eggs because an egg generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. Also we find that the parameters of an apple tree are fine-tuned for the production of apples because an apple seed generated that system for the purpose of self-reproduction. So when we find that the parameters of our universe are fine-tuned for the production of human beings, then the rational explanation seems to be that it is so because intelligence akin to our intelligence generated the universe for the production of human beings in its own image.
Needless to say, in Expelled none of the proponents or critics of Intelligent Design came even near to this conclusion.
Richard Dawkins, who established a foundation ironically called "reason and science," and claims to be "clear-thinking," argues that even if life was seeded by intelligent designers on this planet the alien beings would themselves have to have evolved from lesser and lesser complexity. He is absolutely convinced that organized complexity or any designing intelligence comes late in the universe and cannot exist at the beginning. To illustrate, Dawkins believes that because an oak tree yields the highly organized complexity of acorns later than the rest of the tree, therefore no acorn existed and played any role in the tree´s generation. In essence he denies that the oak tree´s parent seed ever existed, and similarly denies that the Parent Seed or Creator of the universe ever existed.
So what´s so wrong with Dawkins and the rest of the evolutionists? The diagnosis seems to be that they are incapable of discriminating between cause and effect. If we tell them, intelligence is the cause and the universe is the effect, then they ignorantly ask, "What caused intelligence?" In other words they ask, "What caused the cause?" Faced with this stupid question we can only give this answer: "Nothing caused the cause. Only an effect can have a cause. A cause is necessarily without a cause because it is not an effect."
George Washington wisely observed:
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
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