Why Wasn't This Guy in "Expelled"?: Thoughts on I.D.

NPR's Science Friday recently featured Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller talking about his new book Only a Theory which takes on the intelligent design/evolution battle. Miller, of course, believes in the theory of evolution, but is also-- dun dun dun-- a practicing Roman Catholic. I don't know if I agree with everything Miller says, but the interview is good and, at one point, Miller takes on a caller who argues with him about the fossil record and the probability of proteins forming accidentally. To hear this part of the interview, simply skip to the middle.

My point in bringing this up in relation to the movie Expelled, is that I believe movies like Expelled, and this whole faction of the Intelligent Design movement, are just as extreme as people like Richard Dawkins. According to this article in Scientific American (yes I know, they're supposedly the "bad guys," but until someone proves their analysis false, from what I've read and heard, it rings very true) Expelled links the theory of evolution with the holocaust by taking quotes completely out of context:

"Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes."

It's funny to me that the same people who despise Michael Moore will flock to a film that uses his same kinds of tactics. So for the same reason I never saw Farenheit 911, I probably won't ever be seeing Expelled.

Why didn't Expelled feature people like Ken Miller, Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, John Polkinghorne or Alister McGrath who are all Christians and take the Bible and their faith seriously, yet are also scientists who believe in evolution? Why did it only feature extremist atheists like Dawkins, who, interestingly enough, didn't even know what movie he was being interviewed for? Why are the I.D.ers so hell-bent on trashing the theory of evolution? I would say that it's because a very specific interpretation of Genesis, but Ben Stein, to my knowledge, isn't a Christian and there are many other people who aren't Christians that support ID-- people who believe aliens created the world, for instance. Technically, I, and the scientists I named above, could be under the I.D. banner, because while we believe mainstream ideas about evolution, we believe that evolution was how God created, hence the design we see in the universe. But I could care less about having theistic evolution taught in the classroom. Why? Because the second God, or anything that cannot be measured using the tools of scientific inquiry enters the picture, then we aren't talking about science anymore.

Ultimately, most of the people that support I.D. believe that evolution leads to atheism, and that's why they're so militant. But, fortunately, as evidenced by myself and a gazillion others, that's a bunch of BS. So how bout this: teach your kids creationism, I.D., evolution or whatever, and let them decide what they think. Just don't teach them that if they believe evolution then they can't believe in God, because that's just not true. If people would just understand that, then maybe we could focus on more important issues.