Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

I felt that this movie was so well-done, and very eye-opening to many troubling things going on with our education system and our government. I think everyone should see it, regardless of what they believe. I was stunned at the answers to many of his questions, presented by people who are regarded as geniuses in the field. Open your mind and watch it.

What can you say, Ben Stein asks all the right questions. The importance of ID is the moral and epistological implications. I believe this to be the best video I have seen addressing the moral weaknesses of a naturalistic view of life. If you were only going to see one video on ID as a way of thinking - this would be the one.

I know emotions are high as the topics of evolution / natural selection, intelligent design, and religious faith surround this film. However, as I viewed it for myself, I think most of this heated discussion is misplaced. This film just happens to be about these topics, but the real point Ben Stein is exploring is the problem that arises when a particular view becomes orthodox and uses its dominance to squelch any contrary view.

At no point in this film are the arguments for or against evolution or intelligent design made or compared. While Ben talks with some folks who have been ostracized and punished for broaching the topic of intelligent design in science courses, the film never makes the case that their arguments are right and evolution is wrong.

The film merely points out that individual cells are astoundingly complex, even the simplest of them and the odds of one of them popping into being and surviving and having the ability to reproduce and those descendents successfully reproducing is vanishingly small. In fact, in his interview with Dawkins, Ben brings up the Francis Crick notion called Panspermia, which is that life on Earth might well have been seeded here by some higher intelligence. Now, the naïve among us might point to this higher intelligence as God, but these scientists insist that such beings must exist and have evolved within our universal system. Of course, there is no such requirement except in the minds of those defining this game. What about an intelligence that popped in from another universe or other dimensions or other times? Anyway, it is interesting to see these vaunted minds struggling with the realities and limitations of their elegant models.

Ben kept asking how life began and no one could answer. He asked how the Universe began and no one could really answer. And of course they can't, because by definition they are quite unknowable. They are prior to our existing system and will require evidence not available here.

Personally, I was impressed that one of the scientists who heatedly pointed out that he had no more time to debate intelligent design because it bored him insisted that anyone who understood science properly would realize that there is and can be no free will. This is, of course, a doctrinal, definitional, and faith filled view. It has been debated for centuries and millennia long before our current scientific method was ever invented. What you see in such a claim is testimony and if you reject that I will point to the word certitude rather than certainty for such a strongly held view of something that cannot be absolutely demonstrated. Yes, I am aware of the debate on both sides.

Some have objected strongly to Ben visiting the Nazi extermination centers or using the Soviet system and the Berlin Wall as metaphors for the current scientific establishment. The point of the film is that ideas have consequences. While the Progressive fascination with eugenics and race improvement is no longer discussed, it is real and should be honestly and fairly discussed. The Nazis made this a closed topic, but before The Final Solution, many were talking about purifying the races. In 1904, H.G. Wells said, "I believe .. It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies." He was not alone.

If freedom means allowing really annoying people to do what they want, surely academic freedom includes the right to be wrong. A great many of the facts now taught as true will be overthrown and every modern technology will eventually be made obsolete. People of faith should not be automatically excluded from the academy. If that is the true aim of people like Dawkins (and one of the scientists in the film openly stated his desires to eliminate all faith in God) then we can identify such people as a threat to human freedom and their agenda undeserving of the subsidies of the tax dollars of believers. These people would then be advocating the establishment of their faith using government power and money. This is forbidden in the American system and should be rejected by free people everywhere.

So, view this film and keep an open mind. Decide for yourself. See what is actually being said rather than what is being claimed on its behalf.

Ideas do matter and they do have consequences.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI.

I was impressed at the breadth of the perspective on the issue of whether Intelligent Design Theory actually is scientific theory. This documentary uses direct interviews with esteemed academicians, relatively unknown professionals, and some political activists involved in the issues around Intelligent Design. It is shown that whereas Evolution Theory was once roundly opposed by the large majority of society, Evolution Theory has become almost axiomatic among contemporary scientific/politic cross-sections of society. The first portion of this documentary, which comprises about 80% of the play-time, is a secular investigation of what actually is behind the various positions on Intelligent Design.

The last portion of this documentary involves application of theology to secular ethics: if Evolution Theory is taken to extremes then what might be the overall social/political results?

Ben Stein tells you how it is- or, in this case, how it isn't. Science should be free of playground bullies and group-think. Thanks, Mr. Stein, for shining a clear light. We can all see a little better now.