Expelled

According to Wikipedia, “Godwin's Law…formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990…states: ‘As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.’”

In his recently released cinematic diatribe, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein demonstrates that Godwin’s Law also applies to documentary films, as about halfway through, Stein implies that the target of his polemic, members of the “scientific establishment” who support Darwinian theory, have—at least—an intellectual kinship with Nazi eugenicists, if not, when all is said and done, essentially the same attitude about the value of humans as Hitler himself.

I made the mistake of paying to see the movie rather than sneaking in at the multiplex as others have advised, but since I assigned it for students in my philosophy of religion class to see, I guess it’s just as well I entered it on the up-and-up.

The film had its moments—notably when end credits began to roll—and if it’s really true, as Stein argues, that serious scientists are being unjustly censored by their colleagues, then he has a point, but in any case, to me, his whole schtick is undermined by the following two glaring gaffes.

First, he commits the very same error in reasoning that David Hume pointed out way back in 1750 or so in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: that it’s a mistake to infer anything about any sort of designer of nature from nature itself; just as (I say) we can’t really imagine what the Eameses were like from looking at their ottoman, we can’t conclude anything about God from looking at DNA.

Second, he makes the silly suggestion popularized by Dostoevsky that “without God, anything is permissible.” But that’s true only if things are made impermissible by hellfire and brimstone; if, on the other hand, things are made right or wrong by reference to the here and now, then we can make ethical judgments about all sorts of things—maybe even cheesy documentaries—without God’s help.