No, it's wrong of you to accuse him for being a far-right extremist who just spreads nothing but lies about everything.
Edited by seminoles8Go look up "lie of omission" in the dictionary. Quote-mining and deliberately leaving out contradictory evidence = lying. Not to mention the Hitler Ate Sugar crap.
Edited by StarSwordLook, I now know that it was wrong for Ben Stein to try to play The Hitler Card in the documentary, but it's not right to say that Ben Stein in the film was always quote-mining and was lying when trying to present his case of how Intelligent Design can be valid enough as a scientific theory. And I actually did look up "lie of omission" in the dictionary but I don't ever recall knowing that Ben Stein is always dishonest.
Intelligent Design doesn't meet the definition of a scientific theory, it is simply a bunch of wishful thinking. Stein did engage in a fair amount of quote-mining and lies of omission (well, it doesn't matter if Stein was the speaker, anybody following that script would have been doing the same thing) when attempting to present a case for Intelligent Design.
For professors being denied tenure over supporting Intelligent Design, yes, that does happen. Usually (if not always) because said professor isn't publishing enough (or publishing enough notable works) because they are frittering away time on pointless ID "research".
Yes, Steinberg (the editor in the PBSW flap) was villified amongst his co-workers for doing what he did. Kinda expected, if you make a public ass of yourself, your co-workers won't necessarily like you very much anymore. Especially if what you are supporting is anti-thetical to your job. (Same thing as if I said $EMPLOYER blows monkey chunks, or a NASA employee gave a prominent moon-landing-denial & flat-earth lecture.)
Both the prof at U Iowa and Steinberg made the mistake of crapping where they ate.
Is it THAT Ben Stein?
Edited by Azaram Hide / Show Replies