What We Know for Sure and the Difference it Makes

Ben Stein’s movie Expelled, Bill Maher’s Religilous and Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure stand in stark contrast to one another. Many spiritual people believe that religion and science are both founded on faith. Here’s some things we know: The earth isn’t flat. At some point in our history we didn’t know this for sure; The Theory of Evolution is indisputably true in the same degree as The Theory of Relativity; Dinosaurs existed on the earth millions of years ago and they survived for millions of years in one form or another; The earth is 4 to 5 billion years old; The moon is a satellite that orbits the earth; Atoms exist; Gravity exists; Human beings have a propensity for violence; Civilizations have been around for some 30 to 50,000 years; Smoking cost human beings on mean about 7 years in longevity; We all die; We all want to be immortal; None of us ever wants to be tortured; America is using torture on its POWs.

Here are some things we don’t know for sure even after all this time: Whether or not there is a supernatural reality or something which created things intelligently? What created life at all? Whether humans will survive? What took God so long to produce this profoundly poor end result? (After all the universe is 13 to 14 billion years old). How come a religious elective nation, often opposed to science, can justify torture in the name of security? How come extreme religion and ideology finds comedy so hard?

All three movies were created and hosted by ideologies with an obvious agenda and are targeted to specific audiences. The best one without a doubt was Standard Operating Procedure. It documents America’s darkest moment of this new century. It has nothing to do with religion. Or does it? Religilous, was both funny and preachy. Expelled was exceptionally fraudulent. It simply made a case that doesn’t exist and so misrepresented the science of evolution and Darwin as to be embarrassing to common sense. Intelligent Design is a philosophy, not a science. It might even hold some future truth if it can be measured scientifically. The oppressed scientists portrayed in Expelled haven’t actually done real science, experiments or measurements, they’ve philosophized. Mind you, they didn’t seek jobs in philosophy, but in research in molecular-biology departments and were outraged to discover that they weren’t wanted in fields doing actual research in molecular-biology. Who would have guessed?

George Bush’s favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. The trouble is, Jesus wasn’t a philosopher, he was a mystic, (if he existed at all). Shame on Ben Stein for producing Expelled. That’s the trouble with conservatives uniting with religion. It keeps diminishing the fine political philosophy of Economic Conservativism as espoused by so many competent thinkers. Religion has envenomed everything on the Right. There is a good argument to keep political philosophy and religion separate, (and the Evangelicals have inadvertently made it). The religious literalists have it right: science does contradict the bible and both Darwin’s Evolution and Einstein’s Relativity do have conflicts with biblical cosmology. Science is a thorn for the fundamentalists of every stripe all over the world. God may be on their side, but he blessed them with faith and not reason.

The average church is just like the average guy when you get right down to it. If all the churches that preached stupidity disappeared, human folly would still be prevalent; we’ve seen that with Marxism, Nazism and most atheistic cults. A charge exists out there that Bill Maher is a bigot similar to someone who makes fun of people with special needs, or of a certain gender, race and things which no one has control over. However, religion falls into the category of conscious decisions like politics, philosophy or science. We freely decide what to believe, some use magic, feelings and faith as the arbitrator to decide, some reason. Those with scientific knowledge in their court are allowed some freedom of expression to the purveyors of these alleged ways of knowing. They use no evidence for beliefs, but assert second-sight, intuition, instinct, blood or other non-rational means. If they come out with some kooky stuff, surely the rationalists can laugh at them. Expelled is a fraud. Religilous is somewhat funny. Standard Operating Procedure is worth your time. It comes strongly recommended.