Ben Stein has accomplished his goal — he has people talking about how we decide what will be taught and studied as science. If he has accomplished the feat of getting people thinking and listening as well, that will be a great achievement.
The problem is that the people at the farthest reaches of the two approaches to the issue are not just not listening; they are not speaking the same language. One side says: science is about what we can test, measure, and prove according to settled and established principles of the scientific method. The other side says: we think that should include the idea of Intelligent Design. One side says it would be like teaching French in geometry or going to a pizza parlor and ordering a car. The other side says that those distinctions are not important. Both sides feel impatient and not listened to.
Ben Stein is trying to make the argument about freedom of speech instead of the scientific validity of the concept. He says that Intelligent Design might be right or wrong, but why not include it in the conversation? The science community says that there are many ideas we do not teach in science: astrology, phrenology, alchemy. For them, this is not an issue of freedom of speech. Intelligent Design is not excluded because people do not like the idea. It is excluded because it cannot be tested according to the scientific method. Intelligent Design is deduced from the complexity of biological structures and the unresolved areas that science has yet to (and may never) reach. Until it can be tested, measured, and proven according to the same protocols that all of science is constantly subjected to, it is excluded. Not every exclusion is an act of censorship. Sometimes it is the exercise of judgment based on the merits. As Valerie Tarico (raised as a fundamentalist, now a writer for exchristian.net, the Huffington Post and other publications, said, “somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven’t been expelled from school, they flunked.”
Or, as noted in the Kitzmiller decision:

hile ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science.
They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and
(3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

Intelligent Design supporters might like to change the scope or definition of science, but until they do, or until they find a way to subject Intelligent Design concepts to the kinds of tests required by the scientific method, they will not be able to call it science.
Both the people in the movie and the people criticizing the movie have taken some extreme positions. Stein tries to tie Darwin to the Holocaust. The twisted minds behind Nazi genocide perverted any ideas they used. Some on the side of science go to extremes in arguing that because science cannot prove there is a God, the concept is a “delusion.” These are a distraction from the real question and only show that the issue is one that can inspire a lot of emotion.
The real question is not whether Intelligent Design is true or even whether it is an idea worth studying and discussing. The only question at issue here is whether it is science, and both science and law have determined that it is not.
One thing that troubles me in particular is when people dismiss the other side by name-calling, most absurdly claiming that Judge John E. Jones III, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case (finding that Intelligent Design is not science) is a liberal activist who parroted (one commenter even said “plagiarized from”) the ACLU because they do not like his decision. Jones is a Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush. As all judges do, he relied on the materials submitted by the parties to draft his decision. It is activist judges who depart from the filings made by the parties to create their own arguments in a judicial decision.
Another thing that troubles me is the inability or unwillingness of some people on both sides to state the other side’s position in a way that is acceptable to them. That is an indispensable element of making a credible argument. You can tell a great deal about the validity of an argument and the credibility of the person making it by how he or she treats the other side. Sarcasm? Insults? Distortion? Generally indicators of uncertainty and emotion triumphing over logic.
As I noted in my comments, I do not see a conflict between the scientific understanding of the origins of life and Intelligent Design. To me, one picks up where the other leaves off. Scientists admit that they do not know what force was behind the origin of life and are unlikely to find out — using the scientific method. Intelligent Design is one way to think about what the possibilities are. One is science and one is religion, philosophy, and metaphysics. Put it this way: Whether God created life is the subject of philosophy and religion. Why God created life is the subject of philosophy, religion, political science, literature, anthropology, and more. Science is not about the whether and the why of creation but the how.
We are not going to settle the argument here. But I ask the people who care so much about this issue to think carefully about what it means to know something and how we choose what and who we believe. And I ask them to remember that it is easier to listen to those who express their views with kindness, patience, and respect.

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I have very much enjoyed reading all of the comments (more than 70!) on my review of the Ben Stein documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
I am going to comment on the comments and the controversy over the movie shortly, but for now I will begin by reprinting one of my Chicago Tribune columns, which deals with the key issue of how we know what we know, how we determine the difference between fact, spin, bias, faith, and especially competing theories.
Help children learn critical thinking skills
By Nell Minow
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published March 9, 2005
Columnists get paid to promote Bush administration initiatives; bloggers expose the mistakes in a network news broadcast; and young people are more likely to get their headlines from the self-described fake news of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” than from newspapers.
These days, it seems like we all could use some extra guidance in telling the difference between data, reporting, opinion, advocacy and advertising. Developing this life skill is part of growing up, and parents can help kids practice how to evaluate the validity of what they read, hear and watch.
Even the youngest child can learn to think critically about the data they digest. As a starting point, watch for characters in books and movies who test the information they are given to make sure that it is accurate.
In current movies, for example, characters in “Pooh’s Heffalump Adventure” jump to conclusions about someone who is “not like us” until Roo figures out that the Heffalump just wants to make friends. Opal, the little girl in “Because of Winn-Dixie,” finds out the local “witch” is just a nice lady who doesn’t go out much because she can’t see very well.
Families who see these movies together can talk about how Roo and Opal learn the importance of making judgments based on facts and how they decide which facts are more important than others.
Slightly older children need special discussions about truth and the Internet, because that’s where they turn for so much information.
When we did our homework, my generation used reference books and encyclopedias that had been carefully fact-checked before they were published. But today’s schoolchildren run to Web-based search engines such as Google to point them to the answer for any question from the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly to the highest score in the history of the World Series.
The Internet is wonderful for finding things out, but kids need to realize a site that turns up on a search engine isn’t guaranteed to be trustworthy or authoritative, and information they find on the Internet isn’t necessarily correct.
Reliable ones near the top
One reason Google is so popular is it uses a formula for ranking search results that is likely — though not guaranteed — to put the most reliable ones at the top. Google also gets points for putting its “sponsored links” — sites that pay to be listed — off to the side and labeling them clearly so that users can tell they are ads.
But not all search engines play by those rules, and children need to know that. They also need to understand that no search engine guarantees the information it points to is factual or even unbiased.
The same applies to some popular online reference sites like the Internet movie database at The Internet Movie Database, and Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. The entries in both are written and assembled by amateurs and volunteers — which doesn’t mean the entries are wrong, but it doesn’t mean they are right, either.
Skepticism is an important research skill, and parents should make sure even the youngest children learn to ask “Who says so? How do they know? Are they fair?”
Middle school children are old enough to join in debates about opinions and the way information is presented. Current topics might include banned books, “intelligent design” (a theory designed to get Bible-based theories classified as science) and the Focus on the Family objections to the “We Are Family” video message about tolerance featuring SpongeBob SquarePants and other characters.
Parents may also want to discuss recent news stories about Buster the bunny, a cartoon character who makes video postcards about different communities and cultures he visits for his friends back home. On his PBS show, Buster has met such diverse families as Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians. However his visit with a group of children whose parents included lesbian couples was controversial enough for some PBS stations to keep it off the air.
Teenagers are natural challengers of authority, so adults can help them sharpen their skills at sizing up information before they use it.
A good point of discussion with teens as well as younger children who use the Internet for research is how a Web site establishes credibility. One place to start: Look on a site’s main page for a link labeled something like, “about us.”
On Wikipedia, the link “About Wikipedia” is at the bottom of the home page. It takes readers to a detailed, annotated page that explains the Wikipedia project, among other things.
A more sophisticated discussion is how an organization or individual uses the Internet to answer critics. The Nizkor Web site links to the claims of those who deny the Nazi Holocaust occurred and refutes them, point by point. Similarly, Michael Moore’s Web site offers detailed responses to the people who challenged his presentation of the facts in the film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Parents and older children can debate whether these techniques make the Web sites more believable, and why.
Teens also are sophisticated enough to understand the value in recognizing a Web site’s point of view — and using it. The Democratic National Committee’s page and the Republican National Committee’s page are unlikely to agree on much, but reading both for information about a proposed law will give a teen more insight than one without the other.
Backing it up
Similarly, the Heritage Foundation, a self-styled politically conservative think tank, does a good job documenting its perspective on current events — as does the Brookings Institution, which describes itself as independent and nonpartisan.
Consulting an array of views helps a teen better understand an issue and form his or her opinions.
There’s no substitute for a child learning to develop and apply his own judgment. Parents can show their children that Web sites, television shows, even newspaper articles are just the starting point for finding an answer, that information is not just the accumulation of data but requires sifting, analysis and a sense of proportion.
Giving children the skills they need to evaluate what they see and hear will help them from feeling so overwhelmed that they don’t trust anyone.
The best way to keep them from being cynical is to train them to be skeptical.