Thursday, May 08, 2008

Baleful quote of the day

"[S]cience leads to killing people." - Ben Stein

Ok. How about construction leads to killing people? Constuction workers must have built the Nazi death camps, so this is obvious logic, right?

Or how about: transportation leads to killing people. Trains transported people to the camps, so trains are a slippery slope to the Holocaust.

Edit - And since Nazis shot people with guns, I no longer believe Newtonian physics is valid science. Instead, we should teach Intelligent Motion theory.

Update: Kenneth Miller reviews Expelled (h/t Lippard Blog)

[B]y far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells Stein that the Nazis were practicing "Darwinism," and that's that. Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us), the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, the ghettoes and murderous pogroms in Christian Europe centuries before Darwin's birth. No matter. It's all the fault of evolution.

Why is all this nonsense a threat to science? The reason is Stein's libelous conclusion that science is simply evil. In an April 21 interview on the Trinity Broadcast Network, Stein called the Nazi murder of children "horrifying beyond words." Indeed. But what led to such horrors? Stein explained: "that's where science in my opinion, this is just an opinion, that's where science leads you. Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place. Science leads you to killing people."

According to Stein, science leads you to "killing people." Not to cures and vaccines, not to a deeper understanding of nature, not to wonders like computers and cellphones, and certainly not to a better life. Nope. Science is murder.

No comments: