Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed reviewed

Ben Stein's Expelled No Intelligence Allowed poster I saw an advance screening of the movie ”Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” last night. It’s a film put together by intellectual heavyweight/gameshow host, Ben Stein. Seriously, this guy is brilliant, and hilarious. Generally speaking, the film attempts to challenge the academic elitist establishment for attacking our freedom. Specifically, the film sets out to debunk Darwin’s theory of evolution, and exposes certain scientists who have been blacklisted for even talking about the concept of Intelligent Design. The movie was compelling, but I couldn’t always keep my finger on why it was. Was it because of the clever humor dropped in at just the right moments (usually in the form of old movie, or instructional film footage)? Yes. Was it because there really seems to be a problem with certain scientists being fired from their jobs for expressing even the possibility of A. I.? Yes, but personally, I can’t really relate to that, since I don’t feel like my own freedom is under attack. Was it because Stein took us to Germany to tour a hospital and concentration camp where thousands of people were murdered because they didn’t fit Hitler’s idea of the perfect race (proportedly a Darwinian construct taken to insane lengths). Yes, even though it felt a bit heavy-handed and emotionally manipulative, as in addition to Hitler’s horrors, Stein showed how Darwinism leads to athiesm, abortion and euthanasia.Do I think people should see this film? Yes, without question, since it is a great launching pad for discussion about the topics of evolution and creationism. Still, it felt very much like a Michael Moore doc (or truthfully, any documentary) where the intentions are to stir up emotion and present facts that lead to a certain, predisposed conclusion. Personally, I’d love to see it again with a group of people who are less apt to be friendly to Stein’s anti-Darwinian stance.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

If you have done little or no reading on this issue then your viewpoint is one from ignorance. Google “Intelligent Design” and spend an hour finding answers on your own. If you wish to discuss this issue further come over to the ‘Evolution and Origins’ forum at http://www.talkrational.org/

1. Black5 on April 19th, 2008 at 1.57 pm
I wonder, would a public school teacher in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, be allowed to say the following:

“It is interesting to contemplate … [all the many forms of life on earth] … so different from each other, have all been produced by laws acting around us. … There is grandeur in this view of life, HAVING BEEN ORIGINALLY BREATHED BY THE CREATOR INTO A FEW FORMS OR INTO ONE; and that from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

Just imagine a public school teacher who says those words: that God creates life and places it on the earth in a few forms, and then that life evolves according to the physical and natural laws that God put into place in the universe.

Would that be allowed?

Actually, it should be REQUIRED FOR THE TEACHER TO SAY THAT.

Why? Because the quote is from: On the Origin of the Species, Chapter XV, Recapitulation and Conclusion, By Charles Darwin.

If you are going to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools, you should teach what Darwin actually wrote about it.

****

If you believe in God, you really have only two choices:

1. God created all life on earth like a carnival magician, or the Amazing Kreskin: a wave of the hands and poof! there was life. That’s Creationism. (I dont believe God does his handiwork like a second rate magician.)

or…

2. God created all the processes, chemistry, mathematics, and physical laws that govern the universe with an end in mind - the creation of life. It’s a belief in God as powerful and intelligent on a grand scale. In this belief, evolution IS intelligent design. Evolution is not random, though it may have random elements. The goal was to create man.

Doesn’t all of science - everything we have learned so far - leads us to this view? It is not an incompatible view. I recall that AT&T/Bell Labs scientists won the Nobel Prize for “hearing” the remaining noise of the Big Bang - the origin of the Universe. But what the scientists couldn’t tell us - and no scientist can yet tell us - is where did the original matter come from, and how did life get breathed into it?

Einstein proved that space and time are related, and postulated that the Universe is expanding, but finite. What is beyond the finite universe?

I am an engineer by training, and have always enjoyed science and scientific inquiry. I believe that scientific inquiry only leads to one thing: the discovery and understanding of the rules of the Universe - the rules that God created, the way God decided the Universe would work.

Year by year, decade by decade, and century by century, we discover and understand more of God’s “scientific” design of the Universe. His “rules.”

That leaves us with one really important question: Why?

And THAT is the right question.

Michael S. Class
Author

Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame: The History Book with a Message for Today’s Young Americans

Read the book. Remember the truth. Share it with your children.

Web Site: http://www.MagicPictureFrame.com

———————–

2. Anonymous on April 9th, 2008 at 5.09 pm
Stein is a former presidential speech writer (for 2 presidents), a former lawyer and law professor, and has 15 books in print. Aside from him having a differing view than you on the origin of our species, what’s funny about his intellectual resume?

Since when do people have to end up in jail before a social injustice has taken place, or before freedoms have been infringed upon?

Does Martin Luther’s inclusion in the rolls of contributors to Nazism preclude Charles Darwin’s?

Just like religious ideas, Darwinism doesn’t inherently lead people to extremism, but they are both often a component of it.

3. i got your pop right here on April 1st, 2008 at 8.35 am
“intellectual heavyweight/gameshow host”

former gameshow host - yes
intellectual heavyweight - ROTFLOL

“challenge the academic elitist establishment for attacking our freedom”

Yes, so many people are languishing away in jails because they believe in “intelligent design”. Wait - there aren’t any. They have their books, articles, blogs. Exactly what freedom have they lost? Freedom from ridicule?

“debunk Darwin’s theory of evolution”

ROTFLOL

Ben Stein admits that he’s not sure that evolution is incorrect.

“Hitler’s idea of the perfect race (proportedly a Darwinian construct taken to insane lengths”

Or maybe Hitler used Martin Luther’s idea of anti-semitism? And was blessed by many Catholic bishops?

“Stein showed how Darwinism leads to atheism, abortion and euthanasia.”

Yes, it’s so obvious how the mere idea of evolution leads otherwise perfectly sane people to extreme ideas. Fortunately, religions do not attempt to do that. I’ve heard that Buddhism is especially peaceful. But I have doubts about Islam.

4. onein6billion on April 1st, 2008 at 7.28 am
Expelled is a movie which I think every christian should go see.
There are a plethora of movies and Documentaries that profane the name of Christ and tear apart the Bible. I appreciate the fact that in within the avalanche of Darwinian media coming out of Hollywood, there is a a movie that points to tangible results that occurred and are occurring now due to nations adapting to an ungodly theory.
For an large oak tree to exist there must have been first an acorn.
Originally this nation believed the biblical account but has strayed slowly and methodically to atheistic morals to which are spoon fed to our children in school, culminating to an all out attack in the college level to anything that suggests that our creator and not the creation brought all we see about. Some would suggest that some of us don’t feel the effects of our freedom withering away due in part to apathy and resignation to what the world offers rather that in faith believing God can make a change in the lives of others. Some have been active in the change that God commands us to pursue and as a result have unveiled the decay that our nation now faces.

“There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.” Walter Cronkite

5. Harold Chavarro on March 25th, 2008 at 9.13 am