Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-20T03:51:37Z

LiberalMedia: This movie uses junk science or highly biased research methods intended to arrive at partisan or conspiratorial conclusions. That is the definition of a Schlockumentary

'''''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed''''' is a [[Schlockumentary]] charging [[Darwinists]] with suppressing and persecuting opponents in order to avoid discussing the scientific challenges which [[Intelligent Design]] presents to the [[Theory of Evolution]].
The film's premise is that scientists have been expelled like naughty children from schools, universities and the scientific community, merely for daring to ask inconvenient questions.<ref>[http://www.expelledthemovie.com/news.php Expelled the movie website]</ref>
The documentary is hosted by [[Ben Stein]] and was released Friday, April 18, 2008. '''You can locate a theater near you by state or zip code [http://expelledthemovie.com/theaterap.php here].'''

The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” <ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2</ref>

The film cites several academic disputes to argue that [[scientist]]s and [[educator]]s who promote intelligent design are persecuted by the scientific establishment.<ref name=pressrelease>{{cite web |author=Lesley Burbridge-Bates|publisher=[http://www.premisemedia.com/ Premise Media]|date=[[2007-08-22]] |url=http://www.premisemedia.com/EXPELLED-PressRelease_08-22-07.pdf |title=''Expelled'' [[Press Release]] |accessdate=2007-09-29 |format= |work=}}</ref>
Examples given by the film include [[Richard Sternberg]], a [[biology|biologist]] and a journal editor and research associate at the [[National Museum of Natural History]], and [[Guillermo Gonzalez]], a pro-[[Intelligent design]] [[astrophysics|astrophysicist]] denied tenure at [[Iowa State University]] in 2007.<ref name="nyt">[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life's Origin], New York Times, 27 September 2007</ref>

In the film's trailer, Stein states that there are "people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God" and that "freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions."<ref name="nyt"/>

Before the film opened, some critics trashed the movie using the same kind of illegitimate tactics which the movie describes. For example, ''Time'' said Stein misrepresented evolution as saying that the first cell "arose whole" from the primordial soup, which is unlikely as the movie website correctly acknowledges the evolutionary view that it took millions or billions of years for the first cell to be produced by random, natural processes. The ''Time'' reviewer, having put words in Stein's mouth, then claims that this supposed misrepresentation is a typical example, probably hoping that potential viewers will choose not to watch the movie. Actually, all it shows is that ''Time'' is so desperate to keep people fooled about the weaknesses of the theory of evolution that they will stoop to misquotation and character assassination.

Several critics deny that the ideology of "[[survival of the fittest]]" led to the [[Holocaust]]. But the connections that the film makes can hardly be disputed. By the 1920s, German textbooks were teaching evolutionary concepts including heredity and racial hygiene. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927; in 1933, Germany passed the Law for the Protection of Heredity Health. [[Josef Mengele]] studied anthropology and paleontology and received his Ph.D. for his thesis entitled "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups." In 1937, Mengele was recommended for and received a position as a research assistant with the Third Reich Institute for Hereditary, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfort, and subsequently became the "Angel of Death" for directing the operation of gas chambers of the [[Holocaust]] and for conducting horrific medical experiments on inmates in pursuit of [[eugenics]]. [[Evolutionist]] [[Stephen Jay Gould]] admitted: "The Nazi racial hygiene program began with involuntary sterilizations and ended with genocide."<ref>http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/scopenotes/sn28.htm</ref>

==Filmmaker statements==

{{quotebox|"If you acknowledge this idea that [[design]] can be detected scientifically in the universe, then you open up the door to saying, 'Maybe this [[atheist]]ic view isn't true,' [and] the entire worldview of people who are atheists crashes down around them," Mathis said. "This is a foundational concept for people who believe this way. So they defend it with incredible vigor."<ref>[http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?id=27761 Intelligent Design foes no match for Stein in 'Expelled'] - Baptist Press </ref> }}

==[[Liberal]] Reception==

Predictably, complaints about the film from liberals have not addressed the film's premise. The atheist liberal [[Richard Dawkins]] claimed he was tricked into appearing, indicating that he had been told it would be a movie named ''Crossroads'' that would be focused on "exploring the controversy." (Two others who were similarly deceived said they would have appeared anyway.) In response, conservative Ben Stein said that no one he interviewed asked what the film would be about, and the co-producer Walt Ruloff said at the preview that interviewees were paid and were even told ahead of time what the questions would be.<ref>Bethell, Tom, [http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12759 No Intelligence Allowed] ''The American Spectator'', 19th February, 2008.</ref>

The pro-[[evolution]] magazine ''[[Scientific American]]'' criticized the film, calling it "intellectually dishonest," and detailed their objections with the film and intelligent design in a series of inflammatory articles.<ref>http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sciam-reviews-expelled</ref>

The pro-[[evolution]] magazine ''[[New Scientist]]'' ran a review which described the movie as follows: "''Expelled'' is pure propaganda, its style reminiscent of a substandard [[Michael Moore]] flick complete with voice-over narration and lots of aimless wandering around". The review criticizes the movie's treatment of [[Richard Dawkins|Dawkins]] and claims that the movie "seems to be the next step in sneaking ID into schools after the Kitzmiller vs Dover case saw the compulsory teaching of ID ruled unconstitutional in 2005".<ref>Gefter, Amanda, Warning! They've Got Designs on You, 12 April 2008, New Scientist.</ref>

==Movie Reviews==

In ''National Review'', [[David Klinghoffer]] describes the [[Darwin-Hitler connection]]:
* Expelled touches on [[Darwinism]]’s historical social costs, notably the unintended contribution to [[Nazi]] racial theories. That part packs an emotional wallop. It also happens to be based on impeccable scholarship. <ref name=dk>[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjg1NDg2ZDM5YTMwMGFiZGNhNTU5M2MwOTQ2NGE1Mjc=]</ref>
* "The key elements in the ideology that produced [[Auschwitz]] are [[moral relativism]] aligned with a rejection of the sacredness of [[human life]], a belief that violent competition in nature creates greater and lesser [[races]], that the greater will inevitably exterminate the lesser, and finally that the lesser race most in need of extermination is the [[Jews]]. All but the last of these ideas may be found in Darwin’s writing."

Tom Bethel wrote:
:The film, a documentary, is about scientists and researchers who acknowledge the scientific evidence for the intelligent design of life and who have been ostracized or denied tenure as a result. In a word, they have been "expelled" from the academy. <ref>http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12759</ref>

[[Carl Wieland]]:
{{QuoteBox|This powerful documentary is all about the persecution and censorship of any scientist who dares to oppose the Darwinist paradigm, by even suggesting the relatively modest hypothesis that the universe shows detectable evidence of design.<ref>Wieland, Carl, [http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5638/ Cracking the wall in science] 20th February, 2008, (Creation Ministries International).</ref>}}

As described by the review in the ''[[New York Sun]]'', [[Richard Dawkins]] "becomes so flustered at one point that he even posits a creation theory of his own that fits the parameters of the film's working definition of intelligent design" in [[Expelled]], but claims the movie is "dull, artless, amateurish, too long, poorly constructed, and utterly devoid of any style, wit, or subtlety."<ref>http://www2.nysun.com/article/74583</ref>

Roger Friedman, a [[liberal]] who writes articles on the website for the [[Fox News Channel]] (as part of their ongoing goal to remain balanced), criticized the movie in a celebrity gossip column by personally attacking Ben Stein, and claiming that the movie's "warped premise" that "somehow the theory of evolution is so evil that it caused the [[Holocaust]]" is actually [[anti-Semitic]]:
{{QuoteBox|"Expelled" is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) "expose" of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But it does show that Stein... is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck..... Who cares, really, if "Expelled" is anti-Semitic? It will come and go without much fanfare.<ref>Friedman, Roger, [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348468,00.html#2 Ben Stein:Win his career], 9th April, 2008, Fox News</ref>}}

Jeffrey Kluger's review in the [[liberal]] [[Time Magazine|''Time'' Magazine]] asserts that [[Holocaust]] was the result of "the simple fact of being human," a shockingly ignorant claim that denies its unique horror:

{{QuoteBox|"The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another [in the [[Holocaust]]] is the simple fact of being human."<ref>Kluger, Jeffrey, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729703,00.html Ben Stein Dukes it Out with Darwin], April 10th, 2008, Time</ref>}}

In his quest to attack Ben Stein further, Kluger puts words in his mouth, and then commits the [[strawman fallacy]]:
{{QuoteBox|"[Stein] makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is it couldn't--and it didn't...<ref>Kluger, Jeffrey, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729703,00.html Ben Stein Dukes it Out with Darwin], April 10th, 2008, Time</ref>}}

:The movie does not criticize Darwinists for saying the cell "arose whole" but for arguing "that life arose from a primordial sea on a lifeless planet through a chance collision of chemicals". This is the typical pro-evolution device of pretending that critics don't understand what evolution is saying. But it backfires, because the movie comes with a leader's guide which shows that Kluger is the one in error.

Justin Chang wrote the following for the [[liberal]] publication ''Variety'', which has a circulation smaller than ''Conservapedia'''s daily page views:
{{QuoteBox|"...the film's flippant approach undermines the seriousness of its discourse, trading less in facts than in emotional appeals....the filmmakers' failure to offer even a working definition of [Intelligent Design] leaves them open to the common charge that it's all unprovable, faith-based pseudo-science....Even more offensive is the film's attempt to link Darwin's "survival of the fittest" ideas and Hitler's master-race ambitions (when in doubt, invoke the Holocaust)..."Expelled" is technically well-mounted, though its aesthetics trump its ideas at every turn. If evolution is worth debating, it's worth debating well, and by a more intelligently designed film than this one."<ref>Chang, Justin, [http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117936783.html?categoryid=31&cs=1 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed], April 11th, 2008, Variety</ref>}}

==Alleged Copyright Violations==

On April 9, 2008, legal notice was sent to the producers of ''Expelled'' by the graphic firm XVIVO, LLC, alleging copyright infringement. The notice states that ''Expelled'' includes a segment depicting biological cellular activity that was copied by computer-generated means from a video entitled ''The Inner Life of a Cell''. XVIVO holds the copyright to all the models, processes, and depictions in ''The Inner Life of a Cell'', and had not authorized Premise Media or Rampant Films to make any use of the material. The notice threatens legal action if the producers of ''Expelled'' do not remove the allegedly infringing segment from all copies of the film prior to its scheduled commercial release on April 18, 2008. <ref> [http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/EXPELLED-Letter.pdf] </ref>

The producers of ''Expelled'' responded with a lawsuit filed on April 14, 2008, seeking declaratory judgment that there is no copyright or other infringement. This lawsuit is currently unresolved.<ref>[http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080415/20080415006769.html?.v=1] EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed Producers File Lawsuit and Expose Other Efforts to Suppress Free Speech</ref>

== See also ==
*[[Origins debate]]
*[[Theory of evolution]]
*[[Creation-evolution controversy]]
*[[Design detection]]

== External links ==
* [http://www.discovery.org/a/4689 Michael Shermer’s Fact-Free Attack on Expelled Exposes Intolerance of Darwinists towards Pro-Intelligent Design Scientists]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:Intelligent Design]]
[[Category:Evolution]]

Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed