Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

For those who have found positive things to say about this film, I would ask you how the greatest conspiracy in human history might have been perpetrated. Virtually every major scientific society in the world has come out with the strongest support for evolution, a theory that has more factual underpinnings than the atomic theory of matter or quantum mechanics. The conspiracy to silence the dissent against evolution must include most people working in geology, biochemistry, paleontology, ecology, molecular genetics, etc., all fields where overwhelming amounts of evidence provide the basis for our understanding of how life on earth diverged from a common origin. When I am told that "leading" scientists have questioned evolution, it reminds me of the National Enquirer headline that stated that a space scientist had an encounter with aliens. Reading the article made it clear that this person was a draftsman at some NASA facility. Let us be clear that there is no scientific debate about whether evolution took place (that debate was finished more than 100 years ago), rather, it is religious fundamentalism that refuses to accept that humans evolved from other life forms (yet most Americans do not accept this fact). Ben Stein's agenda appears to be to drive America back to some fundamentalist time, while the rest of the world advances.

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

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".

It's common knowledge that actor and game show host Ben Stein was a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, but does anyone know if he was a good speechwriter? Judging from his new documentary, Expelled, which argues that the discussion of intelligent design is barred from academia, Stein couldn't hold an argument with a mute clown. The film jumps all over the place with its ideas, setting up and knocking down the most obvious of strawmen and making leaps of logic, making him about as coherent as a schizophrenic homeless man. And, man, is he obnoxious about it. Imagine Michael Moore with a megaphone, pressed against your ear. Stein questions his allies with faux disbelief, and his foes with raging cynicism. The film begins with a montage of professors, academics and journalists who claim to have been fired for their belief in intelligent design. What evidence does Stein have? Their word, and that's all he needs to believe them. To make it look more official in the film, there have been documents typed up giving reasons, but these are pretty clearly unofficial documents, not the actual pink slips, and we're only shown selected, highlighted words from them anyway, so there's no way to judge for ourselves. The I.D. proponents claim vehemently that their purpose is not to insert religion into scientific discussions, but Stein harps on the atheism of his enemies, and even goes so far as to point out the word "Creator" in the preamble of the Constitution. In other segments, Stein interviews evolutionary biologists, asks them leading questions and gives each of them a total of about 20 seconds of screen time to answer while Stein sits there widening his eyes at them in fake disbelief. Not once does he bring together an I.D. supporter and an accredited scientist and have them discuss the subject at any length. The only scientist who gets any more than a moment of screen time is the infamous Richard Dawkins. Yeah, we all know he is kind of a jerk. Purportedly the filmmakers had to cut his interview to pieces to make him look worse, or so Dawkins claims. You have to believe him, considering how much the rest of the film cheats. To add insult to injury, Stein comes to the conclusion that Charles Darwin and those who uphold his theories are the reason the Holocaust happened. He's quite far off by this point, if you couldn't tell. His original premise is that I.D. proponents had been expelled from academia. That may be true. If he had asked one of the evolutionary scientists why that was and let him answer without interrupting, they would have basically concluded that I.D. is not worth discussing because it does not provide an argument. Expelled itself provides no real argument, either, and should definitely be expelled from the ranks of cinema. There is no competition for the worst movie of 2008.