Go See “Expelled” - The Movie
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
My wife and I went and saw the newly released movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” last night, and I’ve got to say it is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. We had not heard about it before yesterday, and we knew very little about what it was about. It just sounded more interesting than anything else playing. It turned out to be not only interesting, but also entertaining, thought-provoking, and it actually draws you in like a good drama with a compelling plot and interesting characters. Yet, it’s a documentary!
Ben Stein is a well-known actor, comedian, speech writer, syndicated columnist, economist, lawyer, professor and TV game show host, author, commentator and financial adviser - to name just a few of his accomplishments.
In recent years Ben has taken on “Big Science” and what he calls the Darwinian Evolutionists establishment, charging them with suppressing free and open scientific inquiry, and persecuting those who do not toe the line in the politically correct academic environment.
As Ben writes on his blog: “America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.”
Of course there are critics in the media and in the scientific community who claim the movie is propaganda, or just a sleazy cover for creationism. This will no doubt continue as the film gains more viewers in the coming weeks and months.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Richard Dawkins, John Lennox and Alister McGrath because of my personal connection with Oxford, England having studied there with the Zacharias Trust in the summer of 2006. I heard lectures from both Alister and John, and heard other lectures in a lecture room down the hall from Richard Dawkin’s office.
My hunch on this film is that most people who have thought about these issues before will either love the film or hate it depending on their pre-existing worldview. However, I think there is a large number of people in the middle, who are not aware of there being a growing “issue” with Darwinian Evolution, nor the growing Intelligent Design movement within the scientific community. This movie will be the first exposure to the issue for most people. For this reason alone, I personally think it is fantastic… even if all it does is get people aware and thinking about it, and asking questions.
The scientific method is based upon free, open and honest inquiry. I don’t see how anyone who understands this should have a problem with an open debate between Darwin’s theory of Evolution, and the proponents of Intelligent Design. Let’s have an open, fair fight and may the best theory win!
Watch the official movie trailer:
All I can say is to go see the movie and draw your own conclusion.
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April 23rd, 2008 at 8:54 am
So… Kara and I went to see the movie with two other friends, and I’m sorry to say that I did come away with the same impression of this being a great movie. A great topic? Yes. Very good points about the hypocrisy of scientists (”scientific method requires us to keep an open mind about everything and see where the evidence leads… except xyz!”). Entertaining? Yes.
However, I just don’t think it made its points very well. A person who attends the movie as a convinced darwinian evolutionist finds no material to suggest that they should reconsider. Many of the scientists in the movie make allusions to how darwinian theory is “insufficient”… but that’s as far as it goes. I left the movie with no greater understanding of why I should challenge darwinian theory than when I entered (and, by the way, I’m probably closer to the ID camp, but not convinced that it is the “best” way to factor divinity into explanations of creation).
The movie starts off by positing that the ID movement is being unfairly accused of trying to create a “holy war” between ID and evolution (on this basis can therefore be ignored). It rightly suggests that this is not the point of ID. However, the last 20-minutes or so of the movie are spent trying to expose the darwinian movement as a war against God (and how ID might point us to God)… drumming up the very holy war they tried to distance themselves from at the beginning of the movie!
I was also distracted by the fact that he used two illustrations based on Germany: the Berlin wall as metaphor for the barrier placed against free thought in the darwinian/ID debate, and Naziism as an illustration of how far one might go if they take “survival of the fittest” to its logical extreme. I assume that the filmmakers were not trying to conflate the two issues, but still… poor Germany didn’t fare very well and I found myself mixing the two metaphors despite myself.
I also found that the movie scolded the scientific establishment for lack of openness to scientific investigation, but at the same time tossed aside a few scientific explanations as “just sounding too wacky” rather than actually dealing with them. There is a scene that I watched with dismay, where Ben Stein makes fun of an increasingly frustrated scientist who is explaining his theory of how life-supporting cells were formed. The explanation sounds very odd (something akin to “on the backs of crystals”) but there is nothing inherently impossible about this explanation from a scientific perspective. It is dismissed without investigation, just because the words sound weird. Shame on them! The filmmakers also dismiss a number of ideas because the statistical probabilities are so infinitessimal that to the average non-statistician they seem impossible. This is a logical leap (”improbable” does not equal “impossible”). In both cases, the filmmakers may be correct, and I suspect that they are correct, but the means of the argument (outright dismissal) serve only to inspire cheers from the choir, and will only fuel the annoyance of the unconverted.
I just found that the movie left me hanging. It kept saying “hey, maybe there’s something going on here” and left it at intrigue. Perhaps it’s my logical bias, but I really missed any exploration of debate. OK, you have a problem with darwinism: the only reason to dismiss a scientific theory is that it does not adequately predict observed outcomes… and we did not really learn anything from the movie about why we should be considering an alternate to darwinism. I think there’s real meat there to be explored, but I left the movie hungry.
April 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I also saw the movie a few nights ago and have had some time to think about it. Like Greg, I found myself also wanting to hear more scientifically based criticisms of Darwinian evolution. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more clearly I see that Stein really wanted to address the cultural and social implications of Darwinian evolution.
I had no trouble with his usage of the Holocaust, because he got into the history that led up to the Holocaust, which probably would not have occurred were it not for the darwinian based ideology of eugenics - a topic that very few people today seem to be aware of. He also made it clear that there were many advocates of eugenics right here in the U.S. and in the U.K., so I actually felt that he was saying, “let’s not pile on the Germans here - we have some complicity here.”
I found the interview with Richard Dawkins fascinating - especially when Dawkins displays curious hope that a “signature” will be found in our DNA, possibly giving us some evidence of a higher life form that created us. Only after he says this does he seem to acknowledge that he has admitted the possibility of Intelligent Design - so he painfully pleads with Stein that these higher life forms must have “evolved by mechanistic means”. I found his logic stunning - and was reminded that when man tries to explain life without God, he becomes a fool.
April 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I’m going to see it again tonight, with another couple.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:47 am
W.r.t your comment on Pharyngula, you sir, are a fool.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Wow this blog is terrifying. “When man tries to explain life without God, he becomes a fool.” Um, are you kidding me?
Expelled is a propaganda film and it lacks substantial scientific criticism of evolution because THERE ISN’T ANY. Also, eugenics = artificial selection, which we’ve been doing for thousands of years by breeding animals. The theory of evolution was NOT required to make the jump to the awful idea that we could breed humans (or, in this case, eliminate undesirables from the breeding pool) to have the characteristics we prefer. I won’t argue that the ideas of evolution are impossible to abuse, but eugenics does not logically follow from the theory of evolution.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Please see http://www.expelledexposed.com/
May 12th, 2008 at 9:35 am
“The scientific method is based upon free, open and honest inquiry. I don’t see how anyone who understands this should have a problem with an open debate between Darwin’s theory of Evolution, and the proponents of Intelligent Design. Let’s have an open, fair fight and may the best theory win!”
Open and honest being the key words. Ben Stein is neither. We’ve had the open, fair fight. The best theory (actually the only theory since ID has no real theory) did win.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Derek, that’s interesting, because some time before Darwin, a certain author wrote down his ideas on just the same topic you mentioned, about disallowing people to breed based on certain undesirable characteristics. his name was Plato, not sure if you’ve heard about him. also, there’s an another famous author who wrote a seminal work called “on the jews and their lies”, and was a raving anti-semite. does the name of Martin Luther ring any bells?
May 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
http://www.expelledexposed.com/
Go there and make your own conclusions as well. If the hypocrisy of scientists does it for you, the hypocrisy of this movie and Stein will make you reconsider this movie as a source for your thoughts. There are far better places than this movie, for both Intelligent Design and for Evolution.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:26 am
It seems that ever since I posted a simple question to PZ Meyers on his blog “Pharyngula,” there has been a trend of comments on this blog about this particular post - and a few others. The three responses above are just a few that didn’t use profanity and were the most “civil.” I find the responses very revealing. The point of “Expelled” about freedom and open dialog and pursuit of truth is simply being amplified by the vicious, negative and uncivil responses to it.