Then he has not read the February issue of Discover magazine (only the most recent of hundreds of publications).

“This decidedly is NOT maligning science!”

Of course it is. These “debates” are political. There is no scientific debate about evolution. (Evolution, of course, has nothing to do with the “origin of life” – two entirely different subjects that Ben Stein would love to confuse you about.)

The double irony is that Dawkins’s second encounter with Ben Stein is perhaps the high point of the film. Dawkins, speaking with refreshing frankness, comes across as not in the slightest bit confused or caught off guard. He allows that science knows nothing about the origin of life, and that, yes, the Darwinian message is antithetical to religion. He surprises us, too, by allowing that if life really was designed, the designing must have been done by intelligent beings elsewhere in the cosmos who themselves evolved by naturalistic means. Their designs were then somehow transported down to Earth. (Francis Crick of DNA fame took the same view in the 1980s.) Cornell’s Provine was also excellent, pulling no punches in telling how his own youthful faith did not long survive his instruction in the Darwinian catechism.

Refreshing to see and watch and I think “caught off guard” is a telling explanation for tenure seeking guilds we call “scientists”! This decidedly is NOT maligning science! Debates are what we have when probability is what we observe. Eliminating a debate is rich in irony for someone who has “facts” on their side!