elfs | Conservative writer John Derbyshire explains Expelled better than anyone else yet.

For those of you coming to the party late, Ben Stein (a wealthy, elitist, old-money right-wing New York Times columnist with a law degree and an economics degree, and a career that includes writing speeches for Nixon, selling Visine, being a game show host and appearing in Ferris Beuller's Day Off) has hosted a documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which accuses American academia of "expelling" from its ranks those biologists and other scientists who would argue that certain aspects of reality are so apparently contrived that there musts be a contriver. The accusations are false or misleading (just ask Paul Davies or Ken Miller), but what makes the affair so odious is that the film attempts to link Darwin's discoveries with the policies of the Third Reich, and paint all biologists with the tar of eugenics.

Ben Stein's demonstrated vileness, wherein he says "Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people," which completely ignores the reality that science is more adept at saving lives than prayer, and Love of God has often led people to very inglorious fates, has been noticed by none other than conservative (we're talking National Review Online!) writer John Derbyshire.

Derb calls Stein's accusations "a blood libel on our civilization," which is probably the most concise damnation of Stein's activities I've yet seen. But Derb also goes one step further and completely and totally nails what's wrong with the entire sordid enterprise:

The creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that. We are a nation of pressure groups, and one more would hardly notice. However, since parents who want their kids religiously educated already have plenty of private and parochial schools to choose from, and since current jurisprudence regards tax-funded religious instruction as unconstitutional, creationists are a pressure group without hope, if they campaign openly for the thing they want.

Understanding this, the creationists took the morally fatal decision to campaign clandestinely. They overhauled creationism as "intelligent design," roped in a handful of eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories, and set about presenting themselves to the public as "alternative science" engaged in a "controversy" with a closed-minded, reactionary "science establishment" fearful of new ideas. (Ignoring the fact that without a constant supply of new ideas, there would be nothing for scientists to do.) Nothing to do with religion at all!

I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It's by no means all of them, but it's enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.

Really, read it all.