I took a trip to the cinema and watched Ben Stein's documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It was an eye-opening, thought provoking documentary that ultimately suffers from the same disease that the Michael Moore documentaries suffer from - it's one sided.
The film begins by exploring the stories of a handful of academics who have been fired, denied tenure, or otherwise forced to discontinue research because they had the temerity to propose intelligent design as a scientific paradigm through which one could address the question of the origin of life.
After establishing that intelligent design was the common thread leading to the turn of fortune for all of these academics, Ben Stein sets out to determine what's so bad about intelligent design. He first visits several well known evolutionary biologists and asks them all the question about whether intelligent design is a valid theory. In about 45 seconds of air-time, the film shows the disbelief and arrogant denial of these individuals that intelligent design ("ID") could possibly be valid. Unfortunately, this is the extent to which the film addresses the reasons that evolutionary biologists reject the ID notion. (The film suffers from this in that it is completely one-sided, and so there's no real intelligent debate about why ID is rejected.)
After showcasing the emotional rejection of ID, Ben Stein travels around to meet a panel of Intelligent Design proponents. He visits professors from both religious institutions as well as non-religious institutions. They speak about some of the holes in Darwinian evolutionary theory, and suggest that ID is a valid paradigm for approaching the outstanding questions.
At various points in the movie, Ben Stein then goes back to the evolutionary biologists and asks them the questions raised by the ID proponents. The one argument he consistently scores with is that evolutionists do not have an answer for how inorganic material transformed into life. There's a humorous scene in which one of the biologists (I think it was film villain Richard Dawkins) tries to explain how proteins latched onto a crystal that mutated, but ultimately can't answer the question of how life was created.)
Next, the film looks at the statistical improbability of 250 proteins aligning in the correct order for life to somehow come together. This is displayed with a man asked to pull the lever on a slot machine. After he wins the first time, he thinks he has won, but they tell him he must pull the levers of another 249 machines and they all must be winners so that he will win.
After addressing the probability of life appearing from proteins, Ben Stein explores some of the logical conclusions that come from an adherence to Darwinism.
It is in this twenty minute segment that I feel the film is least biased and most poignant. Stein says that as a Jew, one instance of Darwinism leading to horrible consequences stands out for him, and that is the holocaust. The film shows some haunting clips of Hitler speaking about the need to eradicate the worthless people from society. It shows a propaganda film calling disabled people food wasters, and explores the racist sentiments of the late twenties and early thirties. Essentially, Hitler was trying to help evolution along by weeding out those in society who were unfit.
With Hitler's aims clearly established, Ben Stein visits Hadamar, an 'insane asylum' in Germany where 15,000 unwanted people were killed, dissected, and cremated. One of the best parts of the film is the questions and responses he gets from his tour guide throughout the Hadamar visit. (Clearly some conflicting reactions.) After Hadamar, Stein also visits Daccau. (Hadamar was the trial ground, Dachau was the 'mass production site.')
After visiting Dachau, stein returns to Down House, Charles Darwin's home and examines some of the museum artifacts there. Interspersed with his trip to Down house are several more interview bites about how Darwinism leads to the loss of respect for human life. He also points to Darwinism as the root of the Eugenics movement.
The film finishes with a hilarious interview with the ever-so-arrogant Richard Dawkins, who seems to be an easy target for Stein's selective film editing.
All of his trips and interviews aside, the thesis of the movie is that there are holes in the Darwinistic Evolution, and that intelligent design is a viable avenue to find possible answers, but the scientific community has quite unscientifically built a wall that says any research that even suggests intelligent design is valid, is not science. On his thesis, Ben Stein does well. It seems apparent to me that the scientific community is not as open minded as it ought to be and are likely curtailing the freedom of inquiry that he is pushing for. On whether or not intelligent design is truly valid, the film really never takes the time to serious examine both sides of the issue.
The challenge for anybody watching this film, like a Michael Moore documentary, is to put your own opinions aside long enough to be open minded about the subject material... but also realize that the film has been carefully edited to support one conclusion.
Torben Review: 3 stars out of 5
