Monday, April 28, 2008

Hey Hey, Ho Ho   [John Derbyshire]

Some readers of today's column are upset / angry / scornful that I have presumed to pass comment on the Expelled movie without having seen it.

As Barack Obama might say: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In any case, I am not reviewing the movie. What I am doing is, heaping well-justified abuse on the heads of people who, for "sentimental qualms" and from a position of ignorance, trash scientific method, the greatest achievement of our civilization.

And uniquely of our civilization. A mature scientific theory is as much a glory of our civilization as is a cathedral or a university; and it is uniquely of ours. Other civilizations had temples, universities, systems of government, literature, philosophy; but only we of the West came up with scientific method, and the whole world owes the innumerable fruits of that method to us.

I am a huge fan of Western civilization. Thus, when people — well-educated people, who ought to set an example for the general — sneer at and spit on these majestic creations of the human intellect, I get mad. They are taking sides with barbarism. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Ben Stein ought to be ashamed of himself. And no, I won't sit through his wretched movie.

04/28 12:27 PMShare