Mr Stein threw his hat into the ring with Creationists some years ago, filming a bunch of pro-Intelligent-Design things - most notably the documentary, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". I remember this because I got banned from an internet forum shortly after the film's release, for starting a thread entitled "Ben Stein is an Asshat".

I don't believe anyone won his money; from what I gathered, that show was predicated on a lie, and he did not put up any of his own cash. He's also not even all that rich - like Donald Trump, he's an actor first, a businessman/ richer/ (in Ben's case) academic, very very distant second. Ben Stein was extremely good at portraying vaguely Jewish, vaguely intellectual, culturally aloof rich people on TV, but IRL he was only ever notable for being a two-bit speechwriter, and has never been worth more than a few tens of millions of dollars, tops.

Ben sort of confuses me. I'd always figured him for the saner kind of Republican and then he went full-on Creationist Darwin-caused-Hitler. Was he always that way, and just good at coming off as a moderate? Did he go senile? Did he do it for the money? Anyone know?

It's important to note that in order to get Dawkins to appear in Expelled, Stein and the producers had to lie to him (and a few other people) about what the documentary was about.

It would seem from his overall behavior, he earnestly believes what he preaches: the nonsense lie about how science has suppressed criticism of evolutionary theory and how Darwinism somehow inspired Hitler (even though Hitler specifically talked about rejecting evolution as it would imply the master race did not actually come from Atlantian he-men who founded the Aryan race)

People like Stein love to confuse social Darwinism with actual Darwinism, even though they know it's bullshit. (Darwin was still alive when the concept of social Darwinism came about and he totally rejected the application of his science to that kind of shit)