If you want to see just how ignorant and downright comical Ben Stein is, watch the series of videos of his interview with RC Sproul (another science genius). The interview is one ridiculous argument after another, a mixture of recycled creationist canards, and more original howlers. One in particular caught my ear. Around the 1:48 mark of the third video, he uncorks this whopper:
"If Darwinism is correct, and if we're all just accidents, and if we're all just haphazard descendants of a mud puddle, then Hitler was right. And Hitler was totally right; You can kill six million Jews, it has no moral significance at all, any more than wiping mud off your shoe would have."
Stein is lucky he has the Intelligent Design Quote Mining Team on his side, or else he'd be seeing a lot of quotes that looked like this:
Ben Stein said, and I quote, "...Hitler was totally right; You can kill six million Jews, it has no moral significance at all, any more than wiping mud off your shoe would have.
However, even in context, it deserves some attention. After all, Darwinism (meaning in this case modern evolutionary theory) IS correct, so does that make Ben a holocaust supporter? Imagine if Flat Earther Stein had said "If the earth is round, then it would be perfectly fine to lynch blacks"? Would that not deserve condemnation as racism? It certainly seems to support it. So why should Stein get a free pass on his insensitive and borderline anti-Semitic comments?
Any time Ben Stein appears to speak before a group he needs to be confronted with this quote. He needs to be asked if he is REALLY so sure of his anti-evolution position that he is willing to condone murdering 6 million people if he's wrong. What he said is absolutely outrageous and beyond all decency.
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The question should be, "Does Ben Stein think?"
On the basis of no evidence at all, I would surmise that Stein neither really believes, nor really cares, whether or not acceptance of evolution is a necessary condition of the Holocaust.
Instead, I'd wager that he says things like this because (a) he's an actor, and that's what he's been trained to say, and (b) he knows that there are a lot of people who are aching to hear their own unsupportable assumptions echoed back to them by someone with status within popular culture.
Considering that Stein is an old Nixon crony, nothing he says should really surprise us.
I agree with Mr. Sachs.
I agree gentlemen, and if all he was saying was that there was a happy grandaddy in the sky, I'd not see it as worth any attention. But the language he used goes way beyond being excused by being an actor in the culture war.
Dear Avenger:
You'll love this. Fox News own website is carrying a review panning Expelled.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348468,00.html#2
" (Stein) needs to be asked if he is REALLY so sure of his anti-evolution position that he is willing to condone murdering 6 million people if he's wrong."
CONDONE: to give tacit approval to: "By his silence, he seemed to condone their behavior." (dictionary.com)
Since Stein would never condone such a thing, I suspect he'd suggest you pick a verb that is more reflective of his thinking.
It is by his words, not his silence, that we see what Stein condones. If you say "If A is true, then B is OK, so its good I don't believe A", you are indeed condoning B if you are wrong about A. Further, you are telling people who DO believe A, that B is logically justifiable from their POV.
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