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

This movie is interesting in that it's done very dramatically and is able to raise strong emotions. Good merits end there.

Bad merits of this piece of fiction comes from posing as a document. This "intelligent design" is not taught simply because it's not science in any sense of the word, and the makers seem to know it well. They had to come up with desperate conspiracies of some big science (first time I've heard such a term) and accusations of destroying freedom of speech in order to make it effective to the regular religious American viewer. If their "studies" don't get through scientific peer-reviewing and are not published in Nature, it's not because "big science" suppresses "freedom of speech", it's because their "studies" spell out FAIL! in huge orange letters that are self-illuminating All they ever do in the movie is make the theory of evolution look like root of all the evils ever done. It's pure fiction, dressed in a fancy whore-costume and sold as a documentary.

I don't recommend this movie to anyone, but if you absolutely must see it, then keep in mind that it's pure fiction with no roots in reality what so ever.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: This film for me sums up the mentality of people like Ben Stein and the Christian Right: The Ends Justify The Means. Which is ironic, considering they have the nerve to show evolutionists intercut with Nazi death camps! Dishonesty, half-hidden false accusations, unfair comparisons, it's all fair game to the Christian filmmakers.

If there is someone who is more grating or unctuous in his insincere sincerity than Ben Stein, I don't know who it is. The only way I could watch this movie is to watch it as a comedy. Otherwise, if you are given to occasional rational thought, it will make your head explode. It expects you to take faith-based attacks against rationality as rational thinking. Its cartoon of how a cell works reveals more about the mentality of the filmmakers than I think they are aware.

The funniest thing about this film is its rating, which presently is 3.8. I went to the "loved it" section to see who rated it highly. Not surprisingly, it was given ten stars by a number of people whose reviews were suspiciously similar. Hmm... They wouldn't be doing something dishonest to help the cause of religion (I mean, Intelligent Design), would they? Without all of these attempts to jack up the rating for this film, it might actually reach the number 1 bottom position, beating out Battlefield Earth, Santa With Muscles, and Manos: The Hands of Fate.

They didn't help the cause of religion (at least as a positive force), and they certainly didn't help the cause of any benevolent God, with this "documentary".

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.

Intelligent Design has no evidence to support it (everything they claim has been refuted, look for yourself) and states that life has a supernatural origin. This is creationism not science. Once you realise that then everything else in the film is irrelevant. Worse than that it's so utterly biased.

Arguments for evolution and the events surrounding these arguments are mentioned then dismissed with a single comment and a pointless piece of archive footage. This footage has nothing to do with the point in question and is only there to try and ridicule opposing views.

I have followed much of the ID story for years and so much is brushed aside in this film (I refuse to call it a documentary), so much is deliberately taken out of context that this travesty can only be described as blatant propaganda.

The worst thing in this film is the way they try and blame Darwin for the holocaust, this is like trying to blame the person who discovered fire for the witch burning during the inquisition.

I do recommend that you watch this film as it gives a good insight into the methods and motivations of the ID proponents and exposes them as nothing more than sick twisted liars.