Ben Stein on Expelled- "I would have had more on the Holocaust"

Ben Stein sat down with the National Post on June 23rd and talked about the movie Expelled- No Intelligence Allowed, and in the interview he was asked if he would have done anything different.

"So would Stein have done anything differently had he been given more creative control?

"Yes," he said. "I think I would've had more about the Holocaust and less about contemporary Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.

What does this guy think he is doing? As far as I can see there are no links between Darwin and the Holocaust.

What does everyone else think? Should there have been more on the links to the holocaust in the movie?

National Post Article

Yeah, why not.

Take the reductio ad Hitlerum to the extreme. Would have made it much more convincing...

...to a certain group of christofascists, of course.

lol indeed, though I think that at least if he had focused more time on the connections to the holocaust then he might have actually found out that there were no connections!!

Of course, the sheeple would not be able to go 'oooh Darwin= Hitler, Hitler= bad' if the evidence were presented clearly.

I call BS (and no, it doesn't stand for Ben Stein.) It seems that Stein is attempting to link Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to the Holocaust, which is completely out of context.

The theory of evolutuion did not bring about the Holocaust, a mad German dictator did. The fact that this connection is even being made by the intelligent design movement is absolutely appalling.

To even equate a philosophical point-of-view, which ID is, to legitimate science is bad enough. Talk about grasping at staws.

Originally posted by Mantys
Of course, the sheeple would not be able to go 'oooh Darwin= Hitler, Hitler= bad' if the evidence were presented clearly.

Heh, got to remember that this is the film where the producer (or whoever) said he didn't use the christian evolutionary biologist, Ken Miller, because it would have complicated matters.

I hear it's currently destroying brain cells in your local cinemas. Flopping dreadfully apparently.

Look I am not about to say Darwin is personally responsible for the Holocaust or the Nazis. And the movie "Expelled" does not say that either. I saw it just a week ago it is fresh in my memory. They interviewed a historian and he said something like"Darwin is not responsible for Hitler - but Hitler would not have been Hitler without Darwin" which is an accurate assessment.

Hitler used Darwin's ideas and decided he would just speed up natural selection himself by eliminating the weak and inferior. Thus he was evolving the human race a a rapid pace. It is a completely a Darwinian idea. melatonin has told me - "so what?" Yes he has a valid point it was just a hypothesis after all, not a license to kill, - I agree Hitler was crazy to implement it.

I liked the movie but I disagree he should have spent more time on the holocaust. I think he is letting his Jewish heritage cloud his judgment a bit.

However, there is a very valid point in that when you change the status of man from "made in the image of a divine creator" to the status of an animal you have cheapened human life.

reply to post by Bigwhammy


...as has been said and proven over and over and over, the concept of artificial selection (good examples of which are dogs and agriculture) and the ideas of eugenics precede darwin and evolutionary theory

the holocaust could have happened with or without darwin coming up with evolutionary theory, as the other ideas were still there