Ben Stein: Only in the U.S. would a creationist give financial advice in Forbes

Seeing that Ben Stein wrote some type of column for Forbes – I believe the nut graph of the whole thing was “If Ben Stein can get a loan, things aren’t so bad,” or something – I wondered in what other nation would a raving creationist also be getting column inches in a major financial mag?

I was thinking about seeing Stein’s flick on creationism (Intelligent design, creationism, whatever) called “Expelled” but it seems Jason at Unsought Input has done a fine job summarizing it:

The movie Expelled, in a sense, is nothing new. It follows the established tactics of the creationist / intelligent design crowd, trying to fight the “materialistic” “darwinists” in the court of public opinion rather than in the labs or peer-reviewed journals. It’s yet another attack on science.

“And what’s so wrong with that,” you might ask, “this is a democracy after all.”

We don’t do science by popular vote for the same reason that we don’t design bridges and perform heart surgery using a jury of our peers. The value of a scientific theory can only be judged by it’s correspondence to reality and it’s predictive power.

And PZ Myers adds:

Oh, and putting Ben Stein in short pants and playing “Bad to the Bone” does not make him a rebel. He’s a Republican apologist, and he’s not “cool” at all.

So Stein is simultaneously pimping creationism while giving people feel-good economics’ help. And it seems as though he has the same faith-based opinion on both. Only in the U.S.

–WKW

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