Movie Review: "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"
I'll always remember Ben Stein first, of course, as the monotonous high school teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but Stein's resumé is far more extensive. He is also a trial lawyer, economist columnist, and professor who served as a speech-writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford before breaking into the entertainment industry. In a way, then, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed seems like the natural culmination of his collective pursuits in the academic and entertainment arenas.
Expelled is a documentary primarily about the issue of academic freedom. In our country's schools and academic institutions today, the theory of neo-Darwinism—also known as macro-evolution or simply Evolution with a capital 'e'—is taught as incontrovertible fact, even though it has many inconsistencies. Anyone who dares to so much as question particular aspects of the theory—much less its validity in general—is ostracized and faces other serious consequences to their career and reputation. In Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Stein presents the stories of professionals from a number of scientific disciplines who received unfair treatment apparently simply because they gave credence to the possibility that Darwin didn't offer the best and only explanation for the origin of life. Stein allows his trademark dry wit to shine through and the result is a documentary that is anything but dull—a few moments even had me laughing out loud.
Initially, I was somewhat disappointed by the fact that Expelled didn't really get into many of the arguments for "Intelligent Design." The film did, however, make absolutely apparent the gaping holes in Darwinist and neo-Darwinist theory—for example, where did the first living cell come from to begin with? Darwin's theory explains evolution on a small scale [read: adaptation], but does nothing to explain how one species could beget an entirely new one. We also learn that, from a scientific standpoint, Darwin was too vague and nebulous with how he defined things and how he draws his conclusions for his theory to even be considered viable. Clocking in at only 90 minutes long, though, I realize that adding more would have risked compromising the succinctness which which Stein makes his point. The film accomplishes exactly what Stein intended, as stated in the conclusion: he successfully sheds light on the existence of the "wall" that prevents people from even challenging Darwinism, and how absurd it is that this wall exists, when considered from the standpoints of both freedom and good science. Had he really gone further and delved into the actual evidence for ID and against Darwinism, the documentary's length could've stretched into days.
Toward the conclusion of the film, Stein builds his case against the suppression of Intelligent Design ideas by interspersing stock footage of Nazi Germany and the Communist regime that followed. I was a bit offended, at first, by the fact that the filmmakers chose to capitalize on such affective events by making the comparison. I soon realized, though, that the type of totalitarian control that Stein refers to always begins with the suppression of ideas which challenge to the establishment. While I certainly don't feel that there is as devious a conspiracy at work as the implication here might be, Stein does indeed make a powerful metaphor of the Berlin Wall. "Scare tactics"—as some might see them—aside, the film makes a good case for Stein's argument while giving ample time for the most prominent and well-respected neo-Darwinists, including Richard Dawkins, to make their case. As Stein himself states during the course of the film, he simply wants the case reopened and freedom of thought returned to the academic and scientific arenas—he leaves the actual investigation largely to the viewer, after giving some enticing evidence to motivate us. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed leaves the audience with a desire to delve further into the issue, and begs the question: after watching this film with an open mind, can anyone offer a good reason why the case of the origins of life and species shouldn't be reopened?
"Anyone? Anyone?"
If you'd like to learn more about Intelligent Design, here are a few places to begin:
- Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe
- Intelligent Design 101: Leading Experts Explain the Key Issues by Michael J. Behe et al.
- The Biblical Basis for Modern Science by Henry M. Morris
- Institute for Creation Research online archives: http://www.icr.org/archives/
2 comments:
I believe that you can be a Christian and a Darwinist, too. However, to me, one is science and the other is faith and they each have their place in life, one in a class room, the other in a church. If ID is truly a valid scientific theory then win the debate within the scientific journals through peer review not in the court of public opinion (and please don't give me that nonsense that the ID proponents lost their jobs, that was basically a Michael Moore liberty if I ever saw one.) This is how science advances and why should the mechanism change just because proponents of ID have lost the debate years ago? This is not about free speech, this is about science. To date, the arguments of irreducible complexity are not enough to allow ID to stand as a valid scientific theory. And even if it was what can you do with it as theory? What predictive models will come from ID other than to ask us to marvel at god’s handiwork?
Here's a quote from my www.millenniumwriting.com site that Jason provided from St. Augustine:
"For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]“
Erik John Bertel
Author of Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot
I do agree that one can be a Christian and a Darwinist, but I simply don't see any good evidence that Darwin's theory proves anything about the origin of life or species beyond adaptation within species. I strongly disagree with your statement that Christianity has its place only "in church." If you're leaving your faith at the door of the church when you walk out on Sunday morning, what is it worth?
If the "proponents of ID... lost the debate years ago," it's only because of the suppression and stifling of their objections to Darwinism; this is exactly the point that Stein makes with this film. Stein took this case to the court of public opinion because of the loss of that liberty, and the loss of opportunity by many scientist to have their work peer-reviewed simply because it challenged the Darwinian orthodoxy.
Neo-Darwinism has many problems beyond irreducibly complex biological systems--the complete absence of anything in the fossil record to point to the theorized "Cambrian Explosion," for example, and the origin of life itself, for another. That being said, I take exception to your insistence that "the arguments of irreducible complexity are not enough to allow ID to stand as a valid scientific theory." The champion of the anti-ID movement himself, Richard Dawkins, has described biology as "the study of complicated things that have the appearance of being designed for a purpose." Quite simply, irreducible complexity implies design, and design implies a designer. I don't feel that it's at all "scientific" for one to rule out that theory simply because one doesn't want to face the possibility that the origin of life may not have a naturalistic explanation.
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