I saw a promo site for the upcoming movie "Expelled" written and starring Ben Stein. The movie is openly ID, and basically cries foul that intelligent design is not given a fair hearing in the scientific establishment.

I decided to post a comment on Ben Stein's blog.I am so bad. I know better than to bait creationists, but sometimes the temptation to lash back is too great. At least this is a better format than the time I lost my temper in public at a street preacher who was yelling those of us trying to politely wait at a bus stop, about the evils of abortion and how we were all going to hell (my argument that not all of us believe in heaven and hell, that not everyone is Christian or even cares to be, or even worries about what might or might not happen after one's body expires, was met with a frighteningly blank stare. Freaking pod man, abdicating his free thought for the contents of a single, ancient, badly translated, heavily edited book).

Anyway, since my comment is one of a thousand (mostly people pinging back and forth well tread minutiae of the ID/evolution argument), here it is:

The premise of the film seems interesting - even though I am a dyed-in-the-wool atheist I'll probably rent it on DVD. I am deeply concerned when anyone cries foul over lack of freedom of speech. The deep rift between scientists who adhere to ideas of evolution (and may I mention, M Theory) and others who prefer to bring in religious dogma, is indeed damaging to free speech. When anyone of any stripe feels they are not listened to equitably, anger flares and even fewer ears listen.

In the trailer Ben Stein mentioned that he surmised the reigning scientists wouldn't listen out of fear. That is definitely true - scientists do have a lot to fear from the intrusion of religious dogma. Galileo learned that the hard way after defying the Church with the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

The scientific "establishment" has won some hard fought battles over the untested ideas of religious dogma, and will fiercely defend what has been won so that science may progress further. Again, I'll bring up M Theory, which isn't yet even on the radar of intelligent design advocates. Without the complementary progress of ideas in evolution, chemistry, and quantum physics, an idea as revolutionary as M Theory could not have arisen (and just to note, as opposed to evolutionary theory, which is well tested, and is "theory" in the sense that music theory is "theory", M Theory is a largely untested hypothesis, though is extremely promising and explains more than any other competing idea on how our particular universe in the multiverse came to be). M Theory will likely prove to be a gateway to tremendous scientific progress in the next few centuries, wiping out any remaining notions of an active "hand of god", though ironically, still leaves open the possibility of a supernatural origin (it still doesn't answer the question "why is there anything?", it just answers "how did the universe come to exist?")

In essence, the supernaturalists (of any religious or ID stripe) by definition, are not scientists. Scientists concern themselves with explaining and understanding how things work in the natural world. By definition, scientists have nothing to do with, or care about, anything that may be supernatural. Therefore, god, gods, God, chi, Thetans, the ghosts of dead ancestors, or what have you, are strictly supernatural concepts, and have absolutely no place in actual science. Got it?