Intelligent Movie - Expelled
Spirituality Column # 75
April 15, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper
Intelligent Movie
By Bob Walters
Everybody knows Ben Stein. Everybody loves Ben Stein.
That may be about to change.
He reveals himself this week as a very dangerous first class thinker.
Stein’s new docu-movie, Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed (www.expelledthemovie.com), is in theaters Friday, April 18. If it lives up to its billing, the Darwinist crowd is going to start sleeping not so well.
And will blame Stein for their pain.
Stein is Jewish (note: Genesis is Jewish). He was an author, philosopher and presidential speechwriter before playing quirky characters in movies (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), commercials (FedEx) and as host of the TV game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”
This week Stein swings a big, smart hammer on the topic of Intelligent Design, or ID. Expelled supports the very wise, very elite, courageous and very much growing crowd of scientists and thinkers who have concluded, completely opposite the politically correct Darwinists, that there is no way the Cosmos, Earth and Humanity just “happened” as a big, pointless, amoral cosmic freak of nature.
No, Stein insists: an intelligent designer, a creator, a moral force, ahem … God … is the only rational way to explain how and why we are all here.
Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, call your office. Better yet, call your doctor; this movie is going to make you sick.
Mimicking the genre of Michael Moore’s silly attack pieces on common sense (Fahrenheit 911, Sicko) only without Moore’s disingenuous editing tricks, Expelled pushes back at the 150-year-old Darwinian trend of eliminating God – the “Intelligent Designer” – from serious scientific and philosophical discussion.
Routinely teachers are fired, professors are denied tenure, science magazine editors are ridiculed and scientists are denied funding – all Expelled – because they examine, for example, a human cell and authoritatively conclude, “that couldn’t have just happened.”
Expelled also scrutinizes Darwinism’s devastating moral effect on humanity. Survival of the fittest? Look up “Nazism.”
Christians will champion this movie because it effectively and cogently discusses ID without it being portrayed as the grist of close-minded, monosyllabic country bumpkins. The Jews should like it because Darwinists are messing with Genesis 1-2-3, the beginning of the Torah.
The atheists and Darwinists aren’t going to fare so well.
Go see this one. It will, hopefully, begin to change the way true intelligence, and truth, are viewed … for the good.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends that you read Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator.
Labels: Ben Stein, Christian, Darwinist, Expelled, God, ID, Intelligent Design
posted by Bob Walters @ 6:05 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
The Claim
Large numbers of scientists are secretly questioning evolution. “One on one, in a scientific meeting, after the third or fourth beer, my experience has been that many evolutionary biologists will say, “Yeah, this theory’s got a lot of problems.” (Paul Nelson, Expelled)
The Facts
For a movie obsessed with evolution, it is odd that Expelled never bothers to define evolution properly. The big idea of biological evolution is that living things have common ancestors: that they have descended with modification from earlier forms. To understand evolution, we have to study the pattern that the branching tree of life has taken through time as well as the processes or mechanisms that bring about the changes. It is well documented by statements from scientific societies large and small that scientists no longer feel any need to debate whether evolution took place; what they are doing now is working out the details. Scientists agree that natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, genetic recombination, mutation, and symbiosis are major evolutionary processes, but they continue to debate the relative importance of each mechanism to the history and diversity of life. Similarly, scientists agree on the basic contours of the tree of life, although they continue to refine and revise the picture in detail in the light of further data and theory.
Expelled confuses the debates among scientists about the details of evolution – how it works and what descended from what – with a nonexistent dispute about whether evolution occurred. This approach plays into the conspiracy theme of the movie: somehow, scientists are scheming to keep the unwary public from learning the truth about the supposed falsity of evolution. Science, however, rewards dissent and independence of thought – when it has a solid base. Scientists are an independent lot who find success and professional advancement by successfully overturning established ideas and through vigorously debating the evidence supporting scientific interpretations in scientific conferences and journals. The thought that anyone could herd them together to conspire against anything – even intelligent design – is laughable. One may as well conspire to herd a roomful of cats.
This seems to be what Rush would call a "seminar caller." Let's call it "seminar spam." No name or credit, just an anti-Creationist rant. If you see this elsewhere, let me know. I have a hunch this email message is going to turn up a lot in places that support "Expelled."
Bob Walters (rlwcom@aol.com)
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