Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism's Manufactroversy

The religious right has launched yet another wave of efforts this spring to get creationism into science classes. Their new strategy is to talk about academic freedom, "teaching the controversy" and allowing all ideas to be weighed on their merits. They allege that “big science” is keeping dissent out of the laboratory and out of the classroom. It’s all so Orwellian that it’s positively dizzying. Please help the public understand that their controversy is manufactured. After reading this article, please weigh in at MySpace and Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net as well as in the comments here at Debunking Christianity.

Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn't follow the scientific method; it doesn't allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.

Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.

One week from today, the new movie, Expelled, attempts to turn creationist complaints into mainstream media. Featuring Ben Stein, one of the conservative right's biggest whiners, the film makes several plaintive appeals: There's a conspiracy among big government and big science, and it's not fair! All we ask is for our perspective to get equal time! (Read: we lost, so let's split the prize.) All we want is for teachers to "teach the controversy"! This is all about academic freedom. Americans like freedom, right?

The whiners actually have spent millions of dollars on the movie, and even more on the marketing of it. You have to give them credit: by bundling Creationism with freedom, they have created a sophisticated strategy. Of course, Americans like freedom! More importantly, both democracy and scientific progress depend on intellectual freedom -- the freedom to ask questions and, unencumbered by ideology, to follow the answers where they lead. After centuries of heresy trials and book burnings, for biblical creationists to position themselves as the champions of academic freedom is a brilliant Orwellian move.

University of Washington professor, Leah Ceccarelli has pointed out that their "teach the controversy" strategy depends on a very specific sleight of hand: blurring the difference between scientific controversy and manufactured controversy or Manufactroversy.
You can say you first heard it here, well, if you haven't heard it already on MySpace or Facebook: Manufactroversy -- a made up word for a made up controversy. There's even a new website, Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net that aggregates articles and blog posts about this manufactroversy and some other pretty famous ones as well.

Scientific controversy exists only when the jury of relevant experts is out on whether a new finding meets the standard of evidence. The debate and evidence gathering still are in process. A manufactroversy is when someone motivated by profit or ideology fosters confusion in the public mind long after scientists have moved on to the next set of questions. Think tobacco and lung cancer. Think Exxon and global warming. Now think Ben Stein and evolution.

The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted.

The tobacco industry in the 1960's wasn't anxious to part with its profits just like the oil companies of the 1990's had no desire to walk away from theirs. So they manufactured controversies, paying scientists to publish papers they knew would distort the issue.

In the case of creationism, the a vast preponderance of evidence, conflicts with traditional mythos. What possible explanation but that the scientists are colluding, corrupt, and biased. But, of course, they're not. The proponents of intelligent design can't gain credibility among hard scientists because their evidence is pathetic. So what do they do? Follow in the footsteps of the tobacco and oil companies and spend millions in an effort to create public doubt. They plea for their side to be told, they imagine vast conspiracies and they cry out for fair play, but the reality is much simpler.

The mountain of evidence supporting mainstream biological science is overwhelming. The paltry evidence for "insurmountable gaps" and "irreducible complexity" is actually shrinking. Evolution should be taught as science and creationism, in its many guises, as religion, including the rich pre-scientific stories about origins from many cultures and traditions. So why not just ignore the whiners and hope they will go away? Because they won't until we force them to stop their marketing of religious beliefs as science. We're still fighting the tobacco industry to this day. Oil companies still fund global warming deniers.

Besides, how long has it been since the famous Scopes trial? How long have creationists been talking about "Darwinism" as if no one but Darwin had noticed the fossil record or the DNA code in the last 100 years? It does get tiresome, responding to their ever evolving anti-evolutionary rhetoric. But we need to expose the bizarre supernaturalist agenda behind all the sudden whining about academic freedom. And somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven't been expelled from school, they flunked.

Creationist Fatally Stabs Evolutionist

The life of a Scottish backpacker and Evolutionist was cut short by an English Fundamentalist Christian Creationist. The Creationist took a stab at dissecting the evolutionists argument earlier in the evening, however, failed by his rapier wit, the Creationist decided to drive his point home the only way he could. Evolutionists everywhere should be more cautious as the the debate is getting dicier as time goes on.
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A bizarre row about evolution versus creationism led to an English backpacker fatally stabbing a Scottish backpacker during a fruit-picking trip to earn money for their travels.

Alexander York, 33, from Essex, was sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail yesterday for the manslaughter of Rudi Boa, 28, a biomedical student from Inverness.

Christian McDumb Defends Creationism

Christian McDumb, attorney at law, may seem like just another dime-a-dozen litigation lawyer from the South, but he’s much, much more! Author of “One billion and one reasons why Archaeopteryx is just a bird and Lucy is just an ape,” “The Face of Jesus on Mars,” and “The Verdict Is In: T-rex was on the ark,” McDumb holds a “BS” degree in precisely that. He is making waves in the world today. As a proud defender of the Intelligent Design Movement (a.k.a. creationism), he donates his time and abilities to skillfully bootlegging his Lord Jesus Christ into the classrooms of America through the court systems of our land.

McDumb’s greatest joys are when states like Kansas (which happens to be his favorite state) accept creationism, and when science textbooks have disclaimers put in them that deride evolution and science. McDumb boldly writes “scientific” pamphlets that use big, scientific-sounding words, like “probability,” “hypothesis,” “postulate,” and “irreducible complexity,” and he is always careful to leave the word “God” out of these pamphlets so that they have a better chance of being seen as scientific by an infidel judge.

McDumb was crushed, devastated in fact, when the ID movement suffered a great setback in Dover, Pennsylvania in 2005. He and his best friend Pat Robertson didn’t know what to do with themselves when that dark, dark day came over our nation. Handkerchiefs in hand, they stood united and strong, pronouncing God’s judgment on the wicked city of Dover. And McDumb keeps on fighting the good fight. He is stubborn and has a gift from God for not knowing when to quit.

He is a smooth operator. He says things like, “Teach your children they come from monkeys and they will act like monkeys.” He makes arguments against evolution, like, “If evolution is true, why are monkeys still around today?” He understands perfectly well that evolution must be fought, for if not combated, it will lead to homosexuality, the most heinous and blasphemous sin in the eyes of all his friends—churchgoing Republicans over the age of 45.

When McDumb gets wound up, it’s hard to slow him down. He’s a sharp cookie, making powerful arguments in debate. Atheists run from him like Mercedes-driving sophomores from Virginia Tech. He tells them: “You haven’t found the missing link yet!” Then he asks tough questions like, “What good is half an eye?” McDumb knows his stuff, especially about halves and monkey-men. “Show me an ape/man, Mr. Evolutionist! You can’t, can you?” He knows that if evolution were true, there would be half-ape/half-men everywhere…and also half-mosquitoes/half-elephants, half-crocodiles/half-zebras, and half-gnats/half-brontosauruses. This subject is deep for McDumb and it took him the better part of a year to struggle through the issue of why there isn’t a half-broccoli/half-pregnant woman, but I suppose that’s another matter. So the next time you DON’T see a half-mollusk/half-eagle, you’ll know why! It’s because God created everything in wholes. If the cosmos had evolved, there’d be halves of every combination of things in the universe!

McDumb is open-minded too, just as he is intellectually keen; he goes before a judge and argues passionately that ID is not about God or religion in any way, and then he stresses that the designer of the universe could have been anything…but not an alien race or any non-eternal entity because that only begs the question of who created them, so he’s right back to assigning God as the creator! So McDumb is trying to get God into the classrooms, even though he says he’s not but is only trying to teach an alternative scientific theory!

Now McDumb says he’s open-minded, but he can’t be too open-minded; he tells the judges and the large audiences he addresses that he just wants all sides of the debate to be heard, that he wants more information put out there so that everyone can make an informed decision about their origins, but when asked if he’d like Astrology to be taught in schools alongside Astronomy, he declined because that doesn’t agree with his beliefs.

Well, OK, so maybe McDumb isn’t always fair or consistent, but God loves the McDumbs of this world—the McDummies, as they are called. McDummies are not ashamed to defend The Nazarene through devious means. They are good soldiers for Jesus. They’ll tread right into the heart of enemy territory to bring victory for the Lord, so they really don’t care if anyone likes them or not, especially non-churchgoing scientists in white coats with real degrees.

As for McDumb, he will persevere. The spirit of Michael Behe carries him on. He sleeps with a copy of Darwin’s Black Box under his pillow at night. McDumb’s other heroes, Sean Hannity and Michael Medved, pave the way for him. What would Jesus do without the McDummies of this world?

(JH)