Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Expelled: Again

In World Magazine's Human Race section, they report that Ben Stein
withdrew as the University of Vermont's spring commencement speaker after the school received a flood of complaints, including one from evolutionist Richard Dawkins.

Curiously, Stein's main point in "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" was that proponents of Intelligent Design are kicked out of the establishment and marginalized for their views rather than debated in the marketplace of ideas, which is exactly what happened here. He may have spoken on economics, but the dissenters insisted on proving his point.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, what happened here was that Ben Stein was called out for his anti-science and anti-academia views. A person like Ben Stein had no business ever being allowed to speak at this university in the first place. It would have been a tremendous embarrassment for the school offensive to many of the students.

Of course, this would also be true just for his idiotic (and just plain wrong) economic predictions and advice.

John Mahan said...

Ok, even if that is true, it still feeds his thesis that dissenters are marginalized rather than debated.