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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 2008 Tom Flannery
715 words

TRUTH-SEEKING SCIENTISTS GETTING "EXPELLED"

By: Tom Flannery

The theory of evolution is a proven fact.  Evolution answers such critical questions as how life emerged from non-living materials.  And evolutionists are true scientists interested in free inquiry and open debate.
 
These three absolute falsehoods are just a few of the popularly-held beliefs that are completely annihilated in Ben Stein's brilliant new documentary "Expelled."  And I do mean annihilated. 
 
Stein -- who has been a speechwriter for U.S. presidents, hosted his own game show and is perhaps best known for one of the most famous movie scenes of the 1980s (his brief but hilarious turn in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off") -- puts evolution under the microscope and finds a collapsing theory propped up by the ruthless and totalitarian tactics of its proponents. 
 
The documentary exposes one of the great (and until now underreported) scandals of our time -- how so many undeniably brilliant and accomplished scientists who were once in good standing with elite universities and prestigious institutions like the Smithsonian, have been subjected to the most vitriolic campaigns of intellectual intimidation and outright character assassination imaginable.
 
Their great crime against science and society?  They became convinced by the scientific evidence that Darwinian evolution doesn't sufficiently answer the questions regarding origins, particularly in a world where we find a mind-boggling amount of information written out in an understandable language at the cellular level.  It turns out Darwin's "simple cell" was actually a world so complex he couldn't have even imagined it back in the middle of the 19th century.  And needless to say, information and language are not the byproducts of chance explosions or chemical reactions.   
 
Consequently, these "renegade scientists" embraced the theory of Intelligent Design (ID), which proposes that the extraordinary complexity we find in various life forms and the universe at large can only be explained as the work of an intelligent designer.  In short, they had the audacity to think for themselves, a trait that just so happens to have characterized history's greatest scientists and spurred scientific discovery itself for hundreds of years. 
 
But no longer.  These days, giving any credence whatsoever to ID is a potential career-killer for scientists, educators, even objective journalists, forcing them to put their jobs and reputations on the line if they go public with their views.  Indeed, the independent-thinking scientists, educators and journalists profiled in Stein's documentary (and many others) have been fired from positions, been denied tenure, banned from publishing peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, blacklisted from future employment, and so on.  They have been "expelled." 
 
In such a fascist state as the scientific community has become, it's amazing that any scientist would risk everything by ever going public, even for such a noble cause as preserving scientific and intellectual freedom.  That, in and of itself, shows just how far the theory of evolution has fallen, and how viable the ID approach to origins has become in the minds and work of so many reputable scientists.
 
Not that the Darwinists are overreacting.  They are shown in their interviews with Stein to be as tolerant of critical thinking as any scientist should be as they accuse the IDers of being stupid, dangerous and evil.  At least they don't toss in that their mothers wear combat boots.
 
Needless to say, they also treat the whole idea of ID as something akin to a fairy tale.  Yet when they are questioned by Stein about how the first life form emerged, they admit they have no idea.  Some believe it was lightning striking a mud puddle, despite the fact that Pasteur proved about a century ago that it is impossible for life to emerge from non-living materials.
 
Their two top competing theories seem to be that life started on the backs of crystals or that it was "seeded" here by alien beings.  So, God is a fairy tale but little green men are entirely plausible.  No wonder God says of such people that "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22). 
 
True science is not the relentless drive to prove a presupposition.  It is not the tireless persecution and vilification of anyone who dares to question or challenge that presupposition.  It is the method of following data to their logical conclusion, regardless of where that takes you.  And of never having to worry about being "expelled" for doing so.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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