Darwin’s purse strings

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to be on a press
release conference call with Ben Stein, Walt Ruloff, president of Premise Media, and Paul Lauer,
founder and President of Motive Marketing, as they
discussed the movie Expelled, opening in April of 2008. Paul lead the discussion, feeding
questions to Ben and Walt. Apparently Walt first approached Ben about the idea,
and after looking into the issue, Ben realized that there were many shortfalls
in the theory of evolution that somehow were not coming to light. A little more
investigation, and he concluded that the information was indeed suppressed. As
for Walt, his background is computer technology. He spoke of how rapidly this
science has advanced in the last few decades, and he attributes this to the fact
that "everything can be questioned," and therefore tested, alternatives
explored, and new discoveries made. He then contrasted this with biological
science, where questions are only allowed if they conform with the existing
paradigm–Darwinian evolution. Yes, many discoveries have been made in biology
in recent decades, but not because the theory of evolution compels them. And
compared with computer technology, where there is no such baggage, biological
advance is a snail’s pace. In their research they have found scientists who were denied
grants by NIH and NSF simply because they suggested empirical investigation of
alternatives to naturalism. Their conclusion is that the constraints are not
scientific but political, and therefore the fix must be political–a law
protecting scientists from scientists. They fell short of mentioning the Academic Freedom Act,
but the movie will obviously set the stage.

This entry was posted on January 23, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Culture & society, Politics, Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.