R.C. Sproul with Ben Stein on "Expelled"

The movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is coming out a week from tomorrow, and I don't suppose the tension (to put it lightly) between both sides is going to get better anytime soon.  But it could be a good opportunity for some constructive dialog with my creationist brothers and sisters.  (We'll see - 

"constructive" is not something that either side has demonstrated very well.)

"Expelled" is narrated/hosted by Ben Stein (above right).  From what I understand, "Expelled" is basically an expose' about how some university professors have been shunned, harassed, fired, etc., for advocating Intelligent Design (ID) and/or questioning evolutionary theory.  One of the other major things I've heard about the movie is that it implicates the theory of evolution in things like the World War II-era Jewish holocaust.  [This is so outrageously offensive to scientists and anyone who may have a loved one or ancestor that was lost in (or survived) the holocaust that I can hardly believe it.  I'll comment more below.]

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't comment directly, but I have done some thinking about the creation/ID/evolution topic and also have exposed myself to lots of audio and print material on the subject.   With such a large volume of words and skilled rhetoric (on both sides) flying around out there, it's actually a really hard topic to get a good handle on.  I'll try to give you my take on it real quick, but I most likely won't do justice to the issue and won't provide anything you couldn't get better somewhere else.  Also, in a real treatment of this issue, I would start with a large amount of ground work and defining of terms; we don't have that luxury here.

One thing I listened to recently was an interview of Ben Stein on R.C. Sproul's Renewing Your Mind program (thanks, Andrea!).  I'll use that as a springboard, as it hits on some of the major philosophical sleight of hand that this issue beguiles us with.  Actually, that's the interesting stuff, but there's lots of really tiresome stuff too, like the fact that many of the people on each side are intellectuals and/or academics and therefore LOVE to characterize the people on the other side as ignorant, illogical, unreasonable, closed-minded, etc.  At this point, both sides can put a self-satisfied smirk on their face and spin it to convince themselves (and like-minded onlookers) that the other side is as stupid as they want them to be.  This ends up just being a sophisticated version of "I know you are but what am I?" and gets us nowhere.  And, as Christians, let's not forget that how we treat people is more important than being right or winning an argument.

Back the philosophical stuff.  Time and time again, I hear the issue characterized in the following way: Evolution says that everything came about by random chance without supernatural involvement, so you can believe that or you can believe that everything was designed and created by an intelligent God, which is patently obvious as we look at the complexity around us, and is also stated in the Bible, which we know to be the inerrant word of God.  There are so many layers of interesting discussion wrapped up in that, but it gets chopped up (in some ways that I feel are inappropriate) and the sausage that gets churned out is - Christians believe the latter, and atheistic nihilists believe the former.  Can we delve more into the complexity?  I just realized this is getting long, so I think I'll start a new one to trick you into thinking you are reading multiple blog entries instead of just one really long one.  If only I could just keep it as short and sweet as some.