Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

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.

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.

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.

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.