My wish for Ben Stein was granted: A bore-free evening at home

Apparently, comic Ben Stein had to cancel some commencement speech in Vermont, on account of his involvement with Expelled.

The former host of Comedy Central's "Win Ben Stein's Money" quiz show, Stein has drawn fire previously for criticizing evolutionary theory and speaking in favor of intelligent design. That view holds that life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.

Stein told the Burlington Free Press that he was not "anti-science" as some critics have labeled him.

"I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists," Stein wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper. "I want all scientific inquiry to happen not just what the ruling clique calls science."

Just think of all the stupid bores Stein didn't need to flatter and laud... Wow, there IS a God ... Like, if I had been wavering, now I know. There IS a God.

The Dino-Bird lands ... again?

A friend directs me to this hilarious huff by Bill Allen of National Geographic:

"Let's say this as clearly as possible: There is no debate among reputable scientists as to the fact of evolution. It is the underpinning of modern biology and has been proven over and over again with every new discovery."

Actually, the underpinning of biology is evidence, not evolution. Put another way, show me a kangaroo and I will believe that marsupials exist. Otherwise, arguments about what evolution might have caused are a worthless paper war among academics.

Which reminds me, another friend note that Allan was the bench editor responsible for the ridiculous Archaeoraptor (= dino-bird) fossil scandal, at his National Geographic magazine.

(Note: I do NOT normally quote Wikipedia as a source in these matters, and do so now only because they are so biased that if they tell you it is a fraud, well, it surely is one, okay? Don't hawk the house to buy a dino bird fossil. Actually, don't hawk the house to buy anything whatever from current materialist science.)

Attempt a zillion and six to exonerate Darwin of racism

More fantasies here about the old racist Charles Darwin. Allegedly motivated by a desire to rid the world of slavery.

The reality, as I mentioned to friends recently, is more like this:

Darwin was a racist, pure and simple. Why can’t people just accept that fact, and get past it?

I have become increasingly suspicious of efforts to excuse it by saying that the old boy was also anti-slavery. Lots of racists are anti-slavery. That was true thousands of years ago, by the way.

Slavery is a bad social institution because it disrupts normal social ties. For example, a man can have two sons, one by his wife and one by a slave girl he rapes. He can lavish the best on the first son and sell the second down river to some horrible fate* – without thinking he is doing anything wrong.

That unfits men for normal relations with women – which are (under natural human circumstances) always negotiated relationships. (You want me? Why me? Why not my older sister? Have you spoken to my father? What are you offering? And, have you ever been married before? What happened?)

Over time, slavery leads to stupid immorality, brutality, and the downfall of the societies that sponsor it. It is not hard to see why.

(*By the way, that fact alone pretty much disproves Dawkins’s selfish gene thesis.)

A person can be a racist and be anti-slavery quite easily. Efforts to pretend otherwise are doubtless aimed at exonerating people like Darwin from being racists - which they were.