Baby with the bathwater

Recently, I have seen two very different documentaries on two very controversial topics.

Tony Kaye's 2006 Lake of Fire is a harrowing, 2 1/2 hour black and white take on abortion, a great piece of work. It manages to be convincingly balanced, giving time to many different voices, from crazies advocating the murder of abortion providers to Jane Roe herself to Pat Buchanan, Dershowitz and old man Chomsky, as well as to a number of mere mortals, and lesser creatures, such as Randall Terry. It's tough going, with graphic images of abortions and relentless craziness, no matter what your personal beliefs. Dershowitz and loony Chomsky are very amusing, at points, and right on target, of course. The film is worth seeing for its clarity and compassion for all its subjects - it will make you stop and consider your own attitudes more closely. I am curious to know more about how the final scenes were constructed - whether some events were restaged or if multiple cameras were used - but either way, a serious, thought-provoking documentary.

Also provocative, though I know not what of, is Nathan Frankowski's Ben Stein starrer Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a well-shot but smug and disappointingly boneheaded film about academic freedom vis-a-vis Intelligent Design. Sadly, for him, Stein is also credited as a writer. The film makes an important point about the dangers of squelching academic freedom - in this case, in the way that (according to the film) many scientists have been ostracized, even to the point of ending careers, for the sin of expressing an open mind toward Intelligent Design - which is that science must always be willing to question its own assumptions, no matter how entrenched. Scientists must be willing - and have the freedom - to be wrong, in the name of seeking truth.

Scientists seek what we might call natural truth. Evolution by means of natural selection is such a natural truth; an accepted law of biology. Biologists who do not accept this are heretical, and few, but this is not necessarily a reason to fire them. However, religious faith is not in conflict with biology. There are plenty of religious Darwinists (the film's perjorative term for anyone who believes in evolution) who have no trouble whatsoever balancing these two worldviews. Indeed, I think most people are capable of holding multiple views on a single topic without feeling that they have to choose only one. This is what makes the extreme views on the topic of origins so perplexing - atheists who categorically insist on the non-existence of God and fundamentalists who insist that, I don't know, the earth is actually a six thousand year old walnut.

What Stein and Company do here is skate over the surface of an issue that could really use a compassionate, clear-eyed exploration, as in Lake of Fire. Instead, Expelled is hideous propaganda in sheep's clothing; I mean, for the love of Jesus H. Christ, by the end Stein is literally comparing proponents of evolution to Nazis. You see, the Nazis used eugenics theories based on Darwinism to justify the murder of the Jews. So that's where Darwin's theories lead. In other words, if some crazy-evil bastards twist science-based ideas beyond recognition to further their crazy evil, we should question the validity of the science? That's as stupid as the argument that says we should be atheists because bad things have been done in the name of religion. That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And, disturbingly, Stein goes to Dachau to make this argument. Look what evolution did! It killed 6 million Jews. Watch out, lest evolution do it again! Stein is Jewish, but he has no trouble trading on this unspeakable horror perpetrated against his own people to argue a totally unrelated and truly fatuous point.

There was a time when I respected Ben Stein. I thought he was a smart guy, even if I didn't always agree with him. But this film shows that he's just one more shallow, opportunistic conservative media whore. Now he's doing commercials for Comcast. Can he sink any lower?