Expelled – The Movie | ryansutter.net

Expelled – The Movie

13 Mar 2008 at 20:40

tastyrerun

Creationism DV Eric Evolution god Intelligent design Irreducible complexity Michael Behe money Nature Propaganda scientist

OK, so here’s the situation. I used to be a big fan of Ben Stein. “Who?” you may ask. If you don’t know him by name, I’m pretty sure you know who he is. Remember the teacher with the flat dull voice who said “Bueller? Bueller?” in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? No? How about the guy on the Visine commercials talking about red watery eyes in a dull monotone? Or perhaps you’ve seen his television program “Win Ben Stein’s Money”? No? Well, here’s a Wikipedia article about him.

Now that we’ve established who we’re talking about, here’s the deal… I used to really like this guy. I thought he was an intelligent guy, a good guy, even a fairly hip guy. Unfortunately he’s now blown whatever respect I had for him by throwing his lot in with the dishonest, disgusting, culture-undermining, hypocritical, lying and completely unintelligent “intelligent design” movement by starring in and promoting a new movie called “Expelled” which pitches ID as a valid scientific field being persecuted by “big science”.

When I first heard about the movie I assumed that it was anti-ID, exposing what a weak intellectual fraud the whole movement is, sham science perpetrated on a poorly educated populace intended to bring about a Christian overthrow of our countries secular institutions. Then I found out that, no, Ben is pro-ID. What?!?!

I know the man is intelligent, he proved that on his show, and it’s impossible for me to believe that anybody with even a modicum of intelligence can be duped by such obviously fallacious arguments as the ones the IDer’s come up with. Michael Behe’s “irreducible complexity” has been debunked multiple times as have every other claim ever made by an ID proponent that I’ve ever encountered. ID is just so-called “scientific creationism” with fancier sleight of hand, more sciencey sounding lingo and a mysterious “designer” substituted for the Biblical God (although ID proponents are all aware that it is The LORD GOD they are referring to). This is not science, this is anti-science, a religious attack on science, and the people who are perpetrating it are well aware of that fact.

See, the father of the whole ID movement is a man named Phillip Johnson. Mr. Johnson is not a scientist, he is a lawyer, and he is also, having read much material written by him, a shyster and a moron. He does not attempt to convince by evidence, observation or experiment but rather by court-room rhetoric. Language, not empirical observation, is his tool of trade and changing minds and bringing people to Jesus is his goal, not the advancement of our understanding of the universe. This man is well-aware of the nature of his agenda and I firmly believe that the other lead ID proponents are aware of what they’re doing as well. They don’t listen when they’re debunked, they don’t care that they lose in state legislatures, they keep fighting against reality because they need to change the culture (in their minds) in order to save their religion. This is not about science, it’s about religion and this movie, Expelled, is not a documentary, it’s propaganda, pure and simple. The only explanation I can come up with for Ben Stein’s involvement is that he agrees with the ID agenda of replacing our secular cultural institutions with Christian ones and replacing the rigors of science with a bunch of hand-waving “GOD did it” mumbo-jumbo whenever an interesting problem is encountered.

This matters for multiple reasons. First, most of the people in our country are woefully uneducated about evolution to begin with. Second, to contribute to advances in medicine, biotechnology and the environment a solid understanding of evolutionary science is vital. If the youth of America are able to be convinced by these frauds that evolution is false and science can be just whatever the hell you want it to be then this country will be the one country in the world left out of the future of this world.

Of course, I don’t believe that’s going to happen any time soon (or at all, for that matter). I think the ID movement is a last gasp effort of a (thankfully) dying way of thinking. But this movie will do damage. It will give people who have no grasp of what they’re talking about the illusion that they know that evolution is wrong and ID is right. It will perpetuate the lie that ID has something to offer scientifically. It will confuse, delude, and mislead people who don’t understand the subject well enough to know better. And so, like any effective propaganda, it will accomplish what it’s set out to do, not to educate but to convert.

ID is a morally and factually bankrupt con being foisted on the American public by unethical and dishonest men with an agenda that has nothing to do with science. The difference between ID and science is the difference between a postcard with a picture of the Grand Canyon and the real thing. It is unfortunate that Ben Stein has chosen to ally himself with these people. Whether he’s evil, delusional or stupid doesn’t matter, he’s lost this fan.

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ryan

Falterer,

I think you've pointed out an important distinction. When Creationists contend that evolution = atheism they actually hurt their own cause fairly extensively. I have heard others argue (and I agree with them) that all pseudo-scientific or quasi-logical attempts to defend the Bible (creationism and other exercises in apologetics) actually drive away people with the ability to think rationally from a belief in God.

I have spent years attempting to construct a viable theory of Christianity that can be 100% reconciled with science without losing it's fundamental message, and I have learned that it is impossible to hold on to certain core tenets. First, interpretation of Genesis as allegorical or traditional folk stories undermines the entire premise of Messianic salvation, which undermines the teachings of Paul but not, I might add, the teachings of Jesus. I don't see this as a real problem because I think Paul was a loon who just ripped off the mystery religions of his day, but to many Paul's message = Christianity. They are more interested in the religion about Jesus than the religion of Jesus. Plus, losing the doctrine of sacrificial atonement leaves a religion that no longer provides any obvious answers to any of the big metaphysical questions that religions are there to attempt to answer. Why are we here? Dunno. Why is there suffering? Dunno. What's the cure for suffering? Dunno. Judaism has much to offer in terms of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures to try to tease out answers to these questions, but frankly it's too foreign an approach to those scriptures for a typical Christian-educated mind. Christians see the OT completely differently than Jews do, as some sort of warm-up act for their religion, not as a separate religion of it's own. So, Paul and Eden and all sorts of associated stuff get the ax and the Christian story suffers from it quite a bit. There is really only one thing left: what Jesus taught. Yes, some of that is quite good, but none of it is particularly original and once you remove the bits about sacrificial atonement that his writers put in there it's pretty weak stuff to build your life on. It tells you to treat people well, live a good life, help your enemies. I doubt any of us would disagree with those sentiments but it's not (IMO) a very broad base on which to build a complete spiritual life. I've said over and over again that I've been amazed at how much deeper, richer, and fully-formed Buddhism is in comparison.

Rather than taking the long, tedious approach I've taken of digging through the remains of a shattered mythology, trying to figure out what's salvageable and what's lost forever, many just either adopt a whole new mythology or chuck the whole thing out and say "because this conception of God is false, God doesn't exist". I can't say I blame 'em. Unless you actually feel you have something to gain by developing a personal religious definition and keeping some fragments of Christianity embedded in it, it's really not worth the effort. Yeah, I'm atheist, but there are certain conceptions of god/divinity/etc that I can still accept as feasible (although lacking actual belief in them). I'm also a Christian of sorts, raised with Christian values and principles and agreeing with such concepts as agape, honesty and love (although I don't even believe Jesus said or did anything written about him in the Bible, I don't think he's still alive, am not sure he ever lived at all and reject pretty much everything Paul ever said... some Christian). I'm a Buddhist mostly and a UU sometimes. This patchwork religious person brought to you by the dishonesty of Creationism... :-)

Falterer

Eric, thanks for the link. That was a great lecture, not just because Miller's a good speaker and had some important points, but because he actually predicted the ID movement would take the approach of undermining evolution in the public imagination.

Ryan, regarding your point that evolution does not imply atheism: I agree with your sentiment, but would like to add (or underline) that evolution will lead people toward atheism while religious groups continue to insist that there is no way of reconciling the Bible with such science.

I sympathize with evolution's deniers; its unassailability presents an uncomfortable compromise. As science explains more, our universe gets bigger, yet our dependence on God to explain it dwindles. Isn't that contrary to Romans 1:20? Is God so impotent he depends on our imagination for life support? Why must we make such a huge exception to Ockham's razor, just for God's sake? etc. Questions like these may be why IDists deny evolution so fervently and unreasonably.

ryan

OK, to clarify a bit:

If kids aren't given a good basis in good science at a young age they are unlikely to decide to pursue it when they pursue secondary education. Early learning is important for this reason. As a concrete example, people of my generation were exposed to computer programming in large numbers as children because the available computers at the time could not be used for anything particularly useful without programming them. Almost everybody I work with had a Commodore or Apple as a child. Contrast that to the current generation of college students and high school students who have grown up in the era of the Internet and remember the dot-com bubble bursting. There is a real shortage of new blood entering the field of software development because this generation sees it as a pointless dead end, not particularly exciting, and not anything they really want to understand. So, we're getting more and more of our software developers from India.

Now, as biotech becomes a more and more important part of our lives and our economy and as the environment becomes more and more endangered, we need more young minds to decide to move into the biological sciences to help advance research and solve problems facing our species and others. To deny evolution and paint science itself with a tarred brush is giving a fairly strong disincentive for impressionable kids to get interested in science. The advancement of ignorance becomes a larger and larger liability for our species as our technological dependence and sophistication grows.

david

"This matters for multiple reasons. First, most of the people in our country are woefully uneducated about evolution to begin with."

Were you gonna finish this thought and actually explain why that matters? Aren't there quite a few things that our country is "woefully uneducated" about that also don't have anything to do with the day-to-day lives of 99% of the population?

"Second, to contribute to advances in medicine, biotechnology and the environment a solid understanding of evolutionary science is vital. If the youth of America are able to be convinced by these frauds that evolution is false and science can be just whatever the hell you want it to be then this country will be the one country in the world left out of the future of this world."

I didn't realize you could go directly from Jr. High / High School right to advancing medicine and biotechnology. I would have guessed that you need a lot more than a High School Science course to make the advancements you are talking about.

I guess I (having little interest in Evolution vs. Creation debates) am not clear if these ID guys are trying to get Creation in or Evolution out of the curriculum. In either case I would suggest opening a High School Psychology textbook before taking too strong of a stand on what constitutes Science and what should or shouldn't be included in a Public School's Science program.

"Expelled, is not a documentary, it’s propaganda, pure and simple."

I've found that people don't always care if a documentary is accurate or logical as long as they agree with the premise. Take most Michael Moore films for example. I often find myself agreeing with his conclusions, but hate his use of WTBS-like tactics to make his points. But it doesn't bother everyone. When discussing Bowling for Columbine, noted film critic, James wrote:

"This is another thing to take into account when evaluating a movie: if it's a documentary, does everything have to be spin-free and factual? I don't think so, as that would make for a pretty boring movie. That's closer to cinema verite than documentary."

Benjamin Franklin

Here's my version- "Expelled: No Bones About It"

The scene begins in a nice restaurant whose specialty is steaks. The waiters go about their business serving people their meals. One day, one of the waiters, Guillermo, announces to the rest of the waiters - "God has spoken to me and in his manifestation as a cow, told me that eating meat is all wrong. Julia Child was wrong! Emeril? Wrong! Martha Stewart? Spawn of Satan! This restaurant should not serve steaks, but only vegetarian dishes!"

The other waiters may think this is a little nutty, but let it go. Guillermo then starts announcing to all the restaurant patrons "My Cow -God has told me that that eating meat is completely wrong - you should all just order salads or leave". He refuses to serve the customers their steaks, and disrupts the restaurant's business.

The owners of the restaurant let Guillermo go, and Guillermo finds another job at a vegetarian restaurant.

Now enters the Vegetable Institute, a small, well-funded think tank of Cow-God believers who shout to the world - "Waiters are being EXPELLED and SILENCED just because they believe in the Cow-God. They are afraid to even say "moo". Children are being taught in school to eat meat! We need to change the cafeteria menus! We must elect like-minded thinkers to the school boards! A group saying they are not affiliated with the Vegetable Institute proceed to make a movie including an interview with Guillermo saying that he was fired for his beliefs. The movie shows disturbing scenes of filet mignon, prime rib, slaughterhouses, concentration camps and Hitler.
.
.

Dear readers - I ask you -

Did the other waiters at the steak house want Guillermo to shut up just because his concept of God differed from theirs? Where they just too committed to their "meatism" to see the truth? Or was it that they felt Guillermo was promoting something that they could find no rational basis for, and interfered with their profession needlessly?

I wonder if Ben Stein is ready to do a sequel.

eric

One of the best lectures I've seen on the subject of Intelligent Design (including the Wedge Document, Michael Behe, the bacterial flaggerlar motor, and human evolution) can be seen here in it's entirety:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

It's especially compelling because the talk is delivered by Ken Miller who, in addition to being a devout Catholic, is head of biology at Brown University (an Ivy League school in case you weren't aware).

ryan

There are those who contend that the earth is flat and they are not given time in the science classroom. There are those that contend that the Holocaust never happened and they are not given time in the history classroom. There are those that contend that the moon landing was a hoax, that Bigfoot is real, that aliens abduct people and that evil spirits cause mental illness. None of these views are taught in the classroom.

Why?

Simply because there is no solid evidence to support any of the contentions raised. They are pseudo-scientific, pseudo-historical or pseudo-zoological, lacking in evidence. Intelligent Design Creationism is exactly one of these pseudo-scientific ideas. Clearly it's proponents claim to disagree, but so do holocaust deniers, moon hoaxers, Illuminati conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers. They all believe that their minority, factually-unsupported position is true and deserves equal treatment. The only difference between a creationist and a flat-earther is that flat-earthers are far rarer these days. But from scientific standpoint, their positions are equally unsupported by evidence.

One reason I'm particularly upset by this movie is that evolution is not easy to understand but once you "get it" it's power, elegance, and breathtaking scope are literally staggering. Most people think they understand evolution but they don't. They understand a rough outline of a cartoon character version of it. They don't see how bio-diversity, genetics, eco-systems, and the like all interoperate to form this amazing web of life that shapes itself over time. People need to be taught the truth about it. We legitimately need dramatically better evolution education in this country. Instead, a movie like this perpetuates the lie that evolution is some sort of scientific conspiracy against God when in fact it's simply a discovery of how the world works, whether theists like it or not.

Evolution DOES NOT IMPLY ATHEISM. That is a lie as well. It is only via a lack of imagination and a desire to stick to a particular interpretation of scripture that people make this assertion. Evolution happens, happened, and will keep happening. It's observable, it's understood, it's entirely supported by genetics, the fossil record, chemistry, physics and real world experiment and observation. It's no more a theory in crisis than heliocentrism, gravity, or geometry. If a person refuses to accept that their particular conception of God needs to be adjusted to account for this fact of life and instead attempts to claim that this fact is not a fact, using the media to spread lies, fear, uncertainty and doubt because their views cannot gain traction any other way, well, that person is in the wrong and needs to come join the reality-based community, but they don't need to stop believing in God anymore than people had to stop believing in God when they realized the sun didn't revolve around the earth.

In short, ID isn't bad science, it's not even science. It's a religious PR campaign calculated to undermine science in the service of one particular interpretation of the Bible. It's preachers dressed up as scientists talking science talk and playing the victim card when real scientists require them to provide evidence to back up their contentions. This entire movie is based on the premise that IDer's are persecuted because the mainstream can't accept their conclusions when in reality ID has no conclusions, no research, no science at all. It's a social movement funded by rich born-again Christians to attack science in the public sphere and this movie is just propaganda on it's behalf.

James

Anthony,
I thought the same thing when I first read about this movie some months ago. I'll have to see it before reserving judgment, but my impression was to compare it to a literature professor: surely, an instructor shouldn't be fired just because they don't agree that Shakespeare is the greatest playright of all time.

The difference here, though, is that it's not just that some have a minority opinion, it's that they're trying to push a non-scientific agenda in a scientific forum. In Discover magazine a few months back, there was an atricle about a professor who feels strongly that the Big Bang never happened. He brought up some good points, and he admits much testing remains to be done. I feel his minority opinion would be acceptable in the classroom, however, as he wasn't asserting that his theory was correct a priori, nor was he claiming that any holes in the big bang theory automatically lend creedence to his. The ID community, on the other hand, try to find data to fit a preconceived notion, and insist that any unasnwered questions in evolution automatically lend support for Genesis chapters 1-10.

Benjamin Franklin

For those of you reading this blog who think that Ben Stein was in any way the motivating force behind this movie, please reconsider.

From the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Texan interview with Logan Craft (executive producer of Expelled):

http://www.sbtexan.com/default.asp?action=artic...

TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?

CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…

Ben Stein is a hack!

This film is a manufactured argument, cleverly crafted to advance a conservative christian agenda. ID at this point, after almost 20 years and millions of dollars tossed at it by the Discovery Institute, is still merely a vague idea. It has not yet even been fleshed out into a valid scientific hypothesis, and certainly hasn’t developed into a viable or testable theory.

So at this point, the ID/creationist movement is merely a well-funded public relations effort trying to rally public support by falsely decrying "There is no Freedom of Speech!", and promoting “science/evolution = atheists = Naziism”, rather than offering any positive evidence for why ID should even be considered as science.

To see what people who have seen the movie are saying, go to

www.expelledexposed.com

“Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”
—Isaac Asimov

Anthony

I'm obviously biased to the other extreme, but my impression of the Expelled trailer was that the documentary was geared more toward the idea that within the Scientific community there is hostility toward those scientists & researchers who challenge Darwinism.

Now I'm admittedly not into science nor do I understand much about it - but it would seem to me that having an open scientific community where even the most established theories can be challenged would be healthy.

Falterer

Judging from the trailer, it's a slick slurry of swill Stein wants us to swallow:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fn3ujGafAK8

Everything in this trailer is wrong. He promotes Richard Sternberg's lying allegations; he hails the open-mindedness Galileo's contemporaries; he suggests Einstein came before Darwin chronologically; he suggests evolution is a global conspiracy involving schools, courts, and "everyone" (not at all paranoid); he equates evolution with Social Darwinism (a misnomer and an irrelevant phenomenon) and smears Darwinists with Nazi imagery; he suggests that Darwinists' reluctance to allow the teaching of non-science as science is evidence that they are afraid or "hiding something"... It goes on like this; lies, melodrama, ad hominem.

Perhaps the most ridiculous, most despicable, and most revealing part of the trailer comes during Stein's brain curdling conclusion: "I now realize it's my duty to get the word out, to warn others before it's too late."

Too late for what, Stein? He doesn't say. Probably, he doesn't think it will be too late for anything, the words just sounded good to him. And really, that's all this movie is about. Propaganda for something Stein wants so badly to be true.

Stein has the right to believe in the IPU. He even has the right to spew this trash into American cinemas. Apparently, he also has the right to offer kickbacks for corrupt schools willing to subject their students to his filth ("The Expelled Challenge").

The entire film can be refuted by a series of links to articles from the Talk Origins archive. Like this, for example:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA006_1.html

Wasn't that easy?

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Expelled – The Movie

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