Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

I am still waiting for a documentary that explains Intelligent Design in a way that makes sense and uses logic rather than incredible leaps in fantasy. The thing is, I don't think that it is possible to explain Intelligent Design in a way that is logical and makes sense. I have read literally thousands of different theories, essays, letters, and papers all explaining all kinds of different theories behind Intelligent Design and none of them have made a lick of sense. Now, for those of you who don't know what the theory of Intelligent Design is, it is the possibility that the reason why we are here is because God had crafted and allowed his world to morph and form into the world we have today. Darwin's theory of Evolution, on the other hand, is the possibility that humans are decedents of other forms of evolved forms of living beings based on millions of years of research based on bone formation, Pre-evolutionary concepts, and fossils. I was raised a strict Christian. When I was younger, I read the bible daily. I would pray every morning, night, and afternoon, I taped passages from the Bible to my notebooks in school, and I was always told about the great things that Jesus did and said. I always dressed in a suit and I always recited the bible and lived by the life lessons that I read about. Whenever life got really rough, I stuck by my faith and stuck through all the complications knowing that Jesus would have done the same in his infinite patience and understanding of human behavior. I could argue that I've read the bible more than any religious person I know. It wasn't until I took the time to learn things from a separate perspective that I learned of the Intelligent Design theory. Upon reading this, I slowly came to realize that my ideas about how the earth was created and how the humans came to be were completely nonsensical. I desperately searched for some way around the Intelligent Design theory and only grew more confused. I began to have religious friends who told me that everything in the bible about what Jesus's feelings about poor people and gay people was wrong and that they were all sinners. I slowly came to realize that they couldn't be sinners as they were just being themselves. I met so many religious people with varied opinions and ideas about the bible. Maybe it's because I wasn't a child who was sheltered by his parents, was constantly lied to about the bible, and had to go through home school, but I lost my faith and became an Atheist. Anyway, I've been trying to find something about Intelligent Design that is scientifically feasible. I was hoping that EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED would spell it all out for me, but instead, it deeply offended me. Instead of explaining to me anything honest about Intelligent Design, it misquotes, misinterprets, and straight out lies about the Darwinist theory. It uses the Darwinist theory as the theory that has led to Abortion, Atheism, Murder, the Holocaust and the Nazis, and fascism. These are all things that could be proved wrong by anybody who paid any attention in History class, knows anything about religion, and uses common sense. So, as a result of it's lies, misquotations, and misinterpretations, it becomes straight out propaganda. Propaganda is something that I am highly against and something that I feel has done nothing but poisoned the human race that is capable of so much. To me, propaganda is as low as a person can go in film-making. So, not only do I not recommend this film to anybody who believes in the theory of evolution, but I also don't recommend it to the respectable people who believe only in Intelligent Design, for it is dishonest, cheap, and repulsive. It is a disgrace to call this a documentary. It is a disgrace to call this film-making. I do not blame narrator Ben Stein, director Nathan Frankowski, or renowned Atheist Richard Dawkins. I blame the people who make up such nonsense and misappropriates all of the men, women, and children who have died as a result of religious dictatorship. As of now, this is the worst film I have ever seen.

Pros:

-the film has a sense of humor

-some interesting interview footage with scientists

Cons:

-This film commits a number of documentary film making sins! This film is a perfect example of how not to do a documentary. Student filmmakers take notes

-most of it's claims based of scientists and Darwin being religious are irrelevant considering what the film is about

-the film is dishonest and misleading in that it uses Hitler and the Holocaust to slander the people who believe in the theory of evolution

-the filmmakers use music by John Lennon and The Killers among others out of context and in a non justifiable way -the attempt to connect religious theory vs evolutionary theory with politics is not only inappropriate but also poorly conceived as well.

-there is no rhythm, strategy, or effort put into the research displayed here. Anybody with a computer, the internet, and a keypad can find out why the filmmakers are lying

-the film is, at the end of the day, propaganda, and anybody with any sense of actual human morality and sympathy are going to not like this film very much

Since reviews of this film are pretty much split right down the political divide, I suppose I should stress that I'm neither a Christian nor an atheist (although you might call me a curious agnostic who usually votes Republican), and have no emotional stake in ID or evolution. I WANTED this film to be interesting, enlightening and thought provoking. Sadly, it wasn't. I hoped that there would be intelligent arguments presented from both sides. There weren't ANY from either side. People keep mentioning that the main point of the film is a defense of academic freedom, not to prove ID or disprove Darwinism. But its 'defense' of academic freedom was every bit as contemptuous towards evolutionary science as is the behavior of the current scientific community towards ID. Are we really to believe that if the roles were flipped and intelligent design were the predominant ideology taught in classrooms, that ID supporters would allow Darwinists equal time? Just look at the reactions given by the comments being posted on this forum by people who, miraculously, found this film to be praiseworthy. ID supporters, like all ideologues, want equal time only until they achieve power. Perhaps evolutionists are the same way, though one of the examples of 'discrimination' given in this film has already been proved false. A waste of a fascinating topic, a waste of time, a waste of money. If this kind of film making is the fruit of Michael Moore's legacy, then he and Stein both should be shot for crimes against cinema.

I don't know if this movie could even be considered a legitimate documentary. The movie is filmed with interjected scenes of Nazi war camps while the interviews are taking place. Apparently Ben Stein blames the holocaust on science and uses this to support his view against evolution. The entire "documentary" is misleading, he rarely shows any subtext of who he is talking to or make mention of any of their accreditation. Ignoring this, Ben never actually makes any real scientific points at all during the entire film. He never even stumps or even makes it appear that he has stumped a scientists anywhere in this film.

Apparently, Mr. Stein's entire objective of this film is to convey no real science (not there there is any in ID to begin with) but rather to preach out about free speech and how we should "teach the controversy". However, there is no real controversy, the "controversy" was already sorted out decades ago. I guess this means we should teach alchemy AFTER the discovery of chemistry because some backwards, ignorant, bronze age people from a time capsule still think alchemy is viable science.

Creationism's explanation for the unexplained is that of supernatural. However, by definition supernatural is unknown. So what the film is really saying is: we cannot explain X with current knowledge, therefore, X = supernatural = unknown (why is there a middle term there?). Just because theory A may not explain X does not mean that theory B automatically explains X.

Disregarding everything that I have mentioned above, the movie is still directed poorly, uses cheesy clips and doesn't flow well.

It is a terrible and misleading movie.

To paraphrase a passage from Professor Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker one day a primate woke up and discovered it was self aware . From that moment it started building things and because it was aware of the land , ocean and sky it came to the instant conclusion that these geographical features were also made by someone . On a similar note the oldest established religion in the world Hinduism believes in reincarnation almost certainly down to the fact that nature goes around in cycles such the seasons and the female menstrual cycle hence the believe that lives also go around in cycles . Think too of the forbidden foods in the Abrahamic religions such as pork and seafood . Eating such foods in a hot climate like the Middle East will cause you food poisoning . The ancient Hebrews would misinterpret this as God forbidding certain foodstuffs . You can see the logic and thinking behind these concepts and they do follow a recognisable logic open to interpretation and leads to a belief in creators and afterlives . However just because something is logical doesn't make it true and EXPELLED is not a documentary that concerns itself with truth

This documentary was written by Ben Stein and purports to be about scientists discriminated against by the evolution lobby at American universities . These poor people are critical free thinkers who put forward the suggestion of life on Earth and perhaps the universe itself down to intelligent design

" Whoa Theo . Lay off the big words . what's intelligent design ? "

It's a slightly refined type of creationism

" What's the difference between that and creationism ? " Creationists believe God created all life . Apologists for intelligent design would never use the word " God " have an almost identical train of thought that an intelligence of sort created life . It's like someone saying they're not a believer but they still have a surrogate new age belief along the lines of the Quakers or Bhuddhists

It turns out that if you do a quick internet search of these " intelligent design martyrs " then you'll find that there's much more to it than Stein's comments that they were victimised simply for not following the evolution crowd . Don't believe me ? Then look it up for yourself

Stein you see wants us all to believe that there's a massive conspiracy against anyone having a different opinion to the Darwinian crowd and he never misses a chance to compare it to the oppressive communist regimes of Eastern Europe . The irony of that is communist nations did away with genetics and replaced it with the pseudoscience of Lysenkoism because it was more in keeping with the Marxist doctrine of conditioning . That and the fact genetics was seen as being a reactionary concept used only by fascists

And this is where EXPELLED really scores an own goal . Despite painting scientists who believe in evolution as being on a par with Stalin he has to bring up the Nazis who were Darwinian dogmatists and that's why they murdered millions because they were replacing God with Darwin . Two facts you might want to consider here

1 ) Hitler never mentions the name Charles Darwin in Mein Kampf

2 ) Not one single Nazi leader was an atheist . All of them were brought either Catholic or Protestant . Christianity was not banned under the Nazi regime and was encouraged even though Nazi society did tend to mirror a sort of neo-Hindu paganism rather than the happy clappy vicar we are used to in 21st Century Europe . You might like to remember the Hitler oath taken by all military personnel in the Wehrmacht starts with " I swear by God this sacred oath that to the leader of the German empire ..... "

So you see there's a laughable irony to all this nonsense being put forward by Stein which does leave a nasty taste in the mouth . That said anyone with any intelligence can see through this tissue of lies and you come away with a feeling of both intellectual and moral superiority to Stein and his ID cohorts , so much so I could have given this 10/10 even though it deserves 1/10 so I'll compromise and give it 5/10

Among this films multitude of sins you can count quote mining (contorting information from even Darwin himself), the blatant misrepresentation of it's supposed subject matter, evolution (which has nothing to say about the origin of life), and the offensive suggestion that being an atheist denotes a lack of morality to the extent that we all harbour genocidal tendencies.

Amazingly, the film doesn't even bother to define what the terms 'Intelligent Design' (read: 'God Did It') or 'Darwinism' mean, most likely to deliberately muddy the waters and reframe the discussion as one of free speech rather than evidence vs. magic. In terms of propaganda, this was probably a shrewd move on the part of the filmmakers because if they did actually shed any factual light on the precepts of ID it would disintegrate like a vampire. To set the record straight the term 'Darwinist' is redundant. There is only the theory of evolution. It is not a cult of personality but rather a hard-studied scientific construct supported by the work of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years. Furthermore, it is a bit rich to make an emotive plea for free speech in terms of a 'level playing field' considering that religion has a less than stellar history in such matters. In science if you can't back up what you have to say with evidence then it is of no use to the system. This uselessness is unintentionally (and ironically) embodied in Expelled as it is thick on rhetoric and wafer thin in terms of actual substance.

Plagued by dishonesty and misinformation throughout this film lacks the very moral values of transparency and fairness it claims to promote (for examples check out the trivia on IMDb.com). As well as being hypocritical it is also kind of cowardly. If you are going to make a documentary on this stuff at least have the integrity to say what you actually believe in instead of obfuscating the issues at hand and, frankly, lying. People deserve better which is precisely why rationalists balk at the idea of letting these folks loose in the science classroom. Overall, having set the bar so low, I would say that Expelled deserves to be looked back on by future generations and ridiculed and puzzled over in equal measure. 'Did people really think like that?' I am afraid so.