“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” produced by Ben Stein, actor and promoter of Intelligent Design
By Larry Jones
The woman in the ticket booth said, “Enjoy the movie.” But I hadn’t
come to enjoy “Expelled.” I knew from what I had already read that I
would not enjoy it. I went because I wanted to do my small part here
to prevent you from wasting your money. Unless, that is, you get off
on being lied to.
In the beginning (if you”ll excuse the biblical expression) Stein is introduced as “an ardent supporter of SCIENCE.” Lie # 1! Be that as it may, he certainly is no supporter of the SCIENTIFIC METHOD by which objective truth is apprehended. Instead, the film uses a combination of pseudo facts, misleading quotes, deceptive interviews of quasi-scientists whose careers were allegedly destroyed by a nefarious cabal of evolutionists, plus gotcha interviews of real scientists such as Richard Dawkins whose comments are meant to prove that if you catch the evolution virus you will end up an atheist.
Seemingly endless black and white clips of Soviet Communists and German Nazis that equate those fundamentally opposed societies, and depict them both supposedly smashing all freedom of thought are interspersed with lines like “and no religion, too,” from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” There is a lot of this kitschy kind of stuff, which surely cut down on the production budget.
Stein comes across as a super-patriotic flag-waging wacko who uses much of the budget flying all over the world collecting his disingenuous on-the-scene interviews, all the time trying to appear the open minded seeker. He may be an actor, but he pulls off that seeker role like he’s trying out for the high school play.
CAREERS DESTROYED?
Early on we are forced to hear the self-portrayed victimization of biologist Caroline Crocker. Stein intones: “After she simply mentioned Intelligent Design in her cell biology class at George Mason University, Carolyn Crocker’s sterling academic career came to an abrupt end.” “[My supervisor] said “nonetheless you have to be disciplined,” and I lost my job,” said Crocker.
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does a top notch job of revealing the truth about “Expelled.” Of Crocker’s case they state: “Despite claims of being fired, Crocker was allowed to continue teaching and complete her GMU contract after the Department became aware of her ID instruction through student complaints. She was instructed to not teach about intelligent design and creation science, which was not a part of the curriculum of the courses she had been hired to teach. Academic freedom does not mean the freedom to teach about anything you want, regardless of the expected content of your courses. And, far from having her academic career “come to an end,” after GMU, Crocker taught at NVCC [North Virginia Community College], and additionally acquired in 2006 a postdoctoral position at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, MD, working on T-cell transduction – an actual scientific investigation -suggesting that her reputation as a scientist was unaffected by the controversy over intelligent design.
“Currently, Crocker has a job associated with intelligent design: she is employed as the executive director of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness [IDEA] Center; a national ID group for students, and, according to her web site, offers lectures to “churches and educational institutions” for fees ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.””
At NCSE does equally sound exposures of each of the pseudo-scientists Stein interviews.
EVOLUTION, EUGENICS, AND THE COLD WAR
Some supporters of evolution have wrongly applied Darwin’s principles of natural selection to the social sphere. Known as Social Darwinism, this incorrect view is linked to eugenics by which Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, sought to promote the ideal of perfecting the human race by, as he put it, getting rid of its “undesirables” while multiplying its “desirables” — that is, by encouraging the procreation of the social Darwinian fit and discouraging that of the unfit. See here .
Eugenics lay behind Hitler’s attempts to develop a pure race. Stein makes the now discredited mistake of conflating evolution with Social Darwinism and hence with eugenics. Either Stein is uninformed or dishonest. Perhaps he’s a combination of both.
The film also repeatedly attempts to make comparisons between evolution and the Berlin Wall, saying it needs to be torn down. With the black and white clip of the Berlin wall actually falling in 1989, the sound track seems to include every right wing anti-evolutionist shouting with great joy as if evolution had also just been destroyed. Or maybe it was just the music. I don’t know how other movie goers reacted, but I couldn’t help but laugh, so idiotic was the connection between the Cold War and evolution. It also seemed that Stein was also trying to conflate himself with Ronald Reagan.
No matter which side the viewer is on, he or she will end up feeling sad, if for no other reason than that throughout the film Stein has a “my girlfriend just dumped me” look on his face.
One blogger I read summed up the film’s content as a bunch of brain farts. Actually, Stein’s main objective seems to have been to “prove” that evolution leads to atheism and eugenics. Except for those without a minimal understanding of biology, he does not succeed at either.
In a great YouTube spoof Richard Dawkins appears to argue for the stork theory of the beginning of human life. He then asks, “but who delivered the stork?” After all, if we are to give serious consideration to intelligent design, we ought to do the same for the stork theory. Check it out at this YouTube (or see below)
I don’t know how national audiences break down in terms of their reactions to “Exposed,” but I do know in the theater to which my friend and I went, 40% of the people in attendance voted two thumbs down. I’m not sure about the other three viewers.
Larry Jones is a long time political activist and former United Church of Christ minister who lives in Honolulu.