Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a documentary attempting to reveal how intelligent design supporters are suppressed and persecuted within schools, universities and the scientific community. The documentary is hosted by Ben Stein and set for release in the spring of 2008.

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.

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.”

The film cites several academic disputes to argue that scientists and educators who promote intelligent design are persecuted by the scientific establishment. Examples given by the film include Richard Sternberg, a biologist and an unpaid research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, and Guillermo Gonzalez, a pro-Intelligent design astrophysicist denied tenure at Iowa State University in 2007.

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."

Filmmaker statements

"If you acknowledge this idea that design can be detected scientifically in the universe, then you open up the door to saying, 'Maybe this atheistic 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."

Critical response

Predictably, complaints about the film from liberals have not addressed the film's premise. Richard Dawkins claimed he was tricked into appearing - apparently he didn't know that the producers had any plans to expose academic dishonesty, or he would have kept his mouth shut. (Two others who were similarly "deceived" said they would have appeared anyway.) In response, 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.

One reviewer complained about a sequence where Stein visits World War II death camps and traces the Nazi philosophy back to the godless Darwinian world in which fitness must prevail and everything is permitted, calling the linkage "despicable".

Robert Moore, a film critic from The Orlando Sentinel pretending to be a minister, snuck into a private screening, did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and criticized the film the next day in his article. Moore compared Stein, who is Jewish, to Holocaust Deniers and charge [sic] that Stein's linking of Darwinism to the Holocaust was "despicable." Stein states, "The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters."^{[Citation Needed]}

Well respected science journal Scientific America has also panned the film calling it "intellectually dishonest".

Favorable response

Carl Wieland:

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.

See also

• Origins debate
• Theory of evolution
• Creation-evolution controversy
• Design detection

External links

• Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at the Internet Movie Database
• Intelligent Design and Academic Freedom by Barbara Bradley Hagerty at NPR.com