Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed.

http://atheistmedia.blogspot.com/2008/11/ben-steins-expelled.html

This is a movie narrated by a relatively famous American TV-personality Ben Stein. The whole film is created to promote ID, Intelligent Design. You have to admire the way they use the material and linguistics: showing the Berlin Wall being built between the Germans and using the word freedom over and over again. The point of using 'freedom' is the same as that of George W. Bush: no one can say they think freedom should be put down. Of course not! What they don't differentiate is the division between 'freedom to' and 'freedom from'. Next good word to use in an American production for Americans: the A-word, atheism. There was a survey a while ago which listed the most prestiged and the most despised religions in the US: atheism was second last, only overcome by scientology. Someone once said that it doesn't really matter what you believe in, as long as you have a religion in the US.

The promoters at one point try to excuse some firings by saying these people weren't teaching creationism or ID, but that they were exercising their academic freedom. These people go on about how the evil atheists in the academia are nearly paranoid about the mere mentioning the theory, or ID, in a lecture or an academic paper. Hmmm... perhaps because of this: "If we can get Intelligent Design in the class rooms, we will soon be able to have daily school prayers." Ahhh... didn't you just say the goal wasn't to do that???

There are nicely cut short clips of interviews with known evolution biologists and -of course- people from the Unholy Trinity, that is, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, telling what's wrong with the theory of Intelligent Design and the promotion of bringing it to the science class. To me it would appear the makers of this are attempting only to somehow ridicule them, instead of actually thoroughly answering the criticism presented to them.

One of the funniest parts is a very obviously acted scene where a smart-looking 50's guy looks down on a skull on the table with a typical girl next door wearing a dress looks up to the guy, asks the professor next to them in a veeery broad Deep South accent, how people could have become humans from monkeys when the BIBLE SAYS otherwise. No shit, Sherman. Or: a scientist mixes water, CAFFEINE, etc. and runs electricity through it. No life emerged. Conclusion: life could not have been originated from "primordial soup" without a divine spark. And this: "Richard Dawkins has devoted his entire life to promote the Evolutionary Gospel." This nicely shows their entire language used to deal with evolution is religious-based. No wonder it doesn't work!

All the way to the end they gather men and women in front of the camera to tell the audience how they were wrongly accused. "I mentioned ID in some of my slides." "I mentioned ID in my academic paper." "I was fired because in my academic paper I questioned the usefulness of the evolution theory since mathematical sequences don't work when applied to the mutations of animal species." Quantitative methodology doesn't work for drawing conclusions from qualitative material. Again: no shit, Sherman! They march in numerous people with fancy academic titles to back up that ID really is science. “Evolutionary debates are no longer abut science but it has become a religious War.” You brought in God -> yo brought in religion -> you’re going to have to suck up the consequences of your action, boy! The same thing goes on : some people say that evolution promotes atheism, which “has no moral foundation, no afterlife, no nothing”. Read the chapter seven of ‘The God Delusion’: if people’s moral foundation is the Bible, we’re fucked. Just look at the Old Testament, or even the New Testament. And don’t try to say that some stories are allegories and some true: on what grounds do you decide which ones are true and which are not? That’s not in the Bible. You don’t have some innate idea of what morally good, do you? Oh dear, then atheist could have that too!!! Our Father, thou art in heaven…!!! Or as Einstein put it: “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” One professor tells about his childhood trauma when studying biology at the university, his evolution teacher in his opinion showed no signs (nor the text book) about there being design as part of Darwinism, which then led him to ID. Well, no, obviously there‘s no invisible design factor in Darwinism, that’s the whole point. Hence the debate between ID and Darwinism. I assume his enthusiasm to speak in this film has nothing to do with the large tumor in his head (he‘s diagnosed with brain cancer).

They interview the author of ‘The Dawkins Delusion’ and conclude that ID is about explaining ‘why’, not ‘how‘. No; Dawkins says in ‘The God Delusion’ that explaining the ‘how’ through Darwinism also answer the question ‘why’. These people just want to lift their hands up and explain everything at the present time unexplainable or difficult with the sentence ‘God designed it‘. It never ceases to amaze me how easily the ID supporters are lacking any curiosity, they just want to check everything out as ‘God made it’. And the best argument: ‘Of course the carbon measurements state that the rock is ten thousand years old, that’s how God designer it.” So let me get this straight: God designer the rock to appear to be older than what it really is? Vintage stones? For what, to test the faith of the people? ‘Let’s see if the father is willing to burn his own son, Isaac, on the stake alive.‘ ‘I bet he will!’ ‘Hell no! It’s his own son!’ Well, he did try but an angel intervened just in time to save the son’s day and life. Hahahaaa… what an excellent joke! That is so funny!!! Not.

“What is being presented to the public is [that] first comes the science, and then comes the world view. I would like to argue that that might not be the case that it may actually be the other way around. That the world view comes first and it influences the interpretation of science.” No, it wasn’t Tapio Puolimatka speaking (the name and the authority of the speaker is unknown since it is not shown in the part it is said [the film is divided into eleven parts]) “I think it is sending a really bad message to religious people who are interested in science that -- in order to do science credibly they have to leave their religious beliefs at the door.” (Dr. Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology, University of xxxxwlok) That’s because it’s true. It’s not science if you attempt to prove something by a divine factor.

Okay. So life cannot begin if the possibility is one in a fantazillion. That one is nothing, there must be God evolved. Yeah, obviously... Just because something *appears* miraculous, doesn't mean it's designed by God. This goes right back to the Watchmaker thing (see Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker'). And just because modern science cannot explain something now, doesn't mean that's how it's going to remain the same forever. Technology evolves (ooh.. the E-word... sorry, my bad). Aristotle thought human health was due to the balance of slime, bile (=sappi), black bile and blood. Doesn't work today, does it?

These people seem to label evolution theory (swearing again...) as something static when in reality Darwinism is under constant scrutiny. The definition of fundamentalism is that a person refuses to change their views even when presented the strongest evidence possible proving the opposite. From my point of view, the Christian Right which promotes the ID theory and attempts to include it to school curricula (and sometimes succeeding as in Kansas, see www.venganza.org). Of course universities won't let Intelligent Design intervene the curricula and pose as science; if given the change, I doubt there will be an end until were in pre-Darwinian age when religion rules the academia. There must be a zero tolerance.

Let me know if you had the stomach to watch the whole thing all the way to the end. I think it was the seventh part after which I ended. It kept repeating the same things all over again, and getting sidetracked even more from the ID theory towards the Evil Atheist Conspiracy Who Try To Lure Our Young Into Forsaking God. The title of the film is perfect, I just think it's perfect for different reasons that the film makers.

I think I'll watch the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen discussing next: http://richarddawkins.net/article,2025,THE-FOUR-HORSEMEN,Discussions-With-Richard-Dawkins-Episode-1-RDFRS

Or 'Expelled Exposed' (a counter-strike to the film at hand) if I can find it.