An Open Letter To Ben Stein

[athelind]

My daily perusal of BoingBoing exposes me to a wide range of "wonderful things" -- and, occasionally, the horrific as well. On a rare occasion, something I find there will drive me to delight and elation -- and others, to tears of indignant outrage.

This is not an example of the former.

This evening, the monotone maw of Ben Stein, star of stage, screen, and Nixon speechwriting, graced us with the following:

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Mr. Stein, I will not attempt a rebuttal. I have no need to do so. Thirty-five years ago, Jacob Bronowski said everything that need be said in his magnum opus, The Ascent of Man, in a scene filmed on the site of those very atrocities you evoke so wryly, as the ashy remains of his own family members and yours flowed through his fingers:

It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. This is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashed of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: 'I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.'

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Which of us, Mr. Stein, claims to know the Mind of God?

Comments

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

That was an epically beautiful speech. And Mr. Stein was incorrect- the scientists were not telling them to go into the gas chambers, they left that up to orderlies and SS officers.

I digress. Mr Stein is an idiot.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that Stein fellow is becoming a real talking-head pundit these days. :p Everything that seems to come out of his mouth is filth and utter tripe. And what is it with people always resorting to bringing up the Nazi's when they want to say they're right and we're wrong?

[araquan.livejournal.com]

This is what I keep trying to tell some of my more... dogmatically-minded associates now and then when they start yapping about wanting God in every classroom. I ought to send them the links to this...

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Because the Nazis are one of the few groups just about everyone in the West doesn't dare support, agree with, or even be seen to not be disagreeing with strongly enough if they want to be seen as a reasonable human being.

Therefore, to invoke comparison with Nazi philosophy is to subject any supporter of a position to the accusation of being a Nazi sympathizer, which is untenable. Thus the invocation is meant to make everyone denounce the position in question, whether it's correct or not.

See also: Reductio ad Hitlerum

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

I like Ben Stein, I really do. But I've learned a few things about him that have irked me, and this...well, when I saw the preview for Expelled, I started to just shake my head. I realize he's trying to inform people of these horrors, but really...John Hersey and yes, Jacob Bronowski as well, informed people long ago what man can do with such power, and without taking up the mantle of God, either.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

Doesn't like science, does he. I presume he would rather that we were all still named Mug and Ugg, banging the rocks together and cutting out our childrens' livers on the altar of Baal.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Bookmarked. Thanks for sharing! :)

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

What a ... words (printable ones anyway) fail me.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Ben Stein is not "trying to inform people of these horrors".

Ben Stein is prostituting the corpses of the relatives to whom he alludes to forward a politial/dogmatic agenda.

Or possibly just to make a quick buck.

Commentary on Jewish stereotypes is left as an exercise to the reader.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

My usual response to such a demand is, "Which god?"

[wingywoof.livejournal.com]

Mr. Stein is an amazing example of duality; how one can be both learned and completely fucking ignorant at the same time.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds about right. :p

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That degree of willful ignorance MUST be learned. It cannot come naturally.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Gozer, of course. }:>

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I had the entire speech typed out (from the 1973 copy of the companion book my grandmother left me) before I thought of doing a YouTube search for "Bronowski Ascent Auschwitz".

My grandmother was a woman of profound faith and profound reason. I think she'd look upon the current neoconservative appropriation of religion as a justification of anti-intellectualism as a personal affront.

[wy.livejournal.com]

Godwin's Law works just as well IRL.

[drakegrey.livejournal.com]

And the day he needs open heart surgury, or just wants to send email, he'll use the best science money can buy.

This isn't hypocracy, or willfull ignorance. This is insanity. I'm wondering now if Heinlein's "Year of the Jackpot" or Pohl's "Brain Wave" might be fact...

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I think part of the disgust a lot of people feel toward Stein for involving himself in this project is down to confusing actor with role.

Ben's made a career out of portraying an intelligent, erudite gentleman (with, yes, a somewhat grating monotone). Many people, myself included, seem to have assumed he actually had something going on upstairs.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Have you been touched by his sticky, marshmallowy appendage?

Cancel NASA While You're At It.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

The Nazis also had huge ambitions for rocketry. There was talk of space platforms and everything.

That just proves that any talk of space, both exploration and theory, is completely wrong, and totally tainted. Any godly person would know that we are at the center of the universe and anything worth mentioning is right here on earth. The Bible doesn't mention a single thing about anything else than earth and God's kingdom of heaven and we should focus completely on that. Besides, we don't have any reputable evidence that all those intellectual egg-heads didn't just fake the moon landing.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Stay-Puftiliciously holy.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The difference here is, Bronowski invoked the Godwin Topic in this argument thirty-five years ago, and WON.

Golf clap!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Well said.

Re: Cancel NASA While You're At It.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

See Drake's comment above, re: open heart surgery and so forth.

These guys sure like science when it lets them reach a larger audience, all right.

[richardf8]

I just got back from an exhibit called "Deadly Medicine" on Eugenics and the Holocaust. What I saw was junk-science aiding a political agenda. Science and Politics make deadly bedfellows, I think because politics has a way of tainting science.

It was the absolute utilitarian attitude of the Nazis combined with the pseudo-science of eugenics that led to the situation Mr. Stein describes.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

My boilerplate response in these cases isn't far from this.

"So, you say that evolution is bullshit; that it's a baldfaced lie and there's no evidence for it. Alright then. We'll be over here with the antibiotics that we engineered with knowledge that we had to pry out of bacteria's convoluted DNA. You go farm some dirt. Get back to us later."

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

The Trick is Making your end result match up with your original idea rather than the other way around.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Better yet:

"Evolution is bullshit. Evolution doesn't happen. Okay, fine. You keep taking the antibiotics that most strains of bacteria have already evolved a resistence to. Let me know how that works out."

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

There was an line on NPR not too long ago, about how mixing politics with religion was like mixing manure with ice cream: it doesn't seem to do the manure much harm, but damn, it screws up the ice cream something terrible.

I think "religion" can be safely replaced with "science", here.

Of course, replacing religion with science is what gets the Discovery Institute's panties in a wad in the first place, isn't it? Ba-dum-ching.