Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

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.

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.

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.

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.