Ben Stein Misses the Point

Ed Morrissey at HotAir says Ben Stein misses his own point.

Stein misses the target by a mile when he says this at about the 28-minute mark:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. 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.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Science does not lead to Dachau; ideology perverting science led to Dachau. The Holocaust occurred when raving anti-Semites and materialists latched onto scientific theory as a philosophy, making it into a rationalization for what they would have done regardless.

The Intelligent Design movement happens to oppose all of science as it's currently carried out. The Wedge document blames "materialism" for a multitude of social ills, and seeks "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies". While cultural materialism leads to bad things, you can't do science in any way except materialistically. When you're trying to pin down the materialistic rules that govern things, you're not allowed to bring in non-material causes. Period.

As soon as you do that, you're no longer doing science.