{"id":76,"date":"2008-08-05T02:26:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T06:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=76"},"modified":"2009-09-09T19:41:06","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T23:41:06","slug":"expelled-no-intelligence-allowed-2008-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"David\u00a0<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/h1>\n
David Berlinski (r) discusses the implications of eugenics and evolution with Gerald Schroeder (l) and Ben Stein in front of the Berlin Wall.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n
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Who Made Who? (with apologies to Angus Young)<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n

\u00a0[xrr rating=3\/5]<\/p>\n

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed<\/em>. Featuring Ben Stein, Peter Atkins, Hector Avalos, Doug Axe, David Berlinski, Walter Bradley, Bruce Chapman, Caroline Crocker, Richard Dawkins, William Albert Dembski, Daniel Dennett, Guillermo Gonzalez, John Hauptman, Ben Kelley, John Lennox, Robert J. Marks II, Alister McGrath, Stephen C. Meyer, P.Z. Myers, Paul Nelson, John Polkinghome, William Provine, Michael Ruse, Gerald Schroeder, Jeffrey Schwartz, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer, Mark Souder, Richard Sternberg, Deano Sutter, Daniel Walsch, Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, Pamela Winnick, and Larry Witham. Original music by Robbie Bronniman and Andy Hunter. Camerawork by Ben Huddleston and Maximilian Zenk. Edited by Simon Tondeur. Post-production supervisor, Patrick Tittmar. Written by Kevin Miller, Walt Ruloff, and Ben Stein. Directed by Nathan Frankowski. (Premise Media Corporation\/Rampant Films, 2008, Color, 90 minutes. MPAA Rating: PG).<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s not to admire about Ben Stein? If I were given the chance to be anyone else for just one day, it would be the monotonous economics teacher from\u00a0Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off<\/em>, Yale Law School valedictorian, Nixon speechwriter, Comedy Central game show host,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0financial columnist, Ford administration attorney, Clear Eyes pitching \u00fcber-Renaissance man, who\u2019s comfortable being himself in his trademark Nike sneakers with his suit jacket and tie.<\/p>\n

I also like that Stein\u2019s a conservative who speaks his own mind: When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent a \u201cleaner, tougher\u201d (read: Waging War on the Cheap) Army into Iraq in 2003, Stein was one of the few Republicans who saw through his idiocy and advocated building up the U.S. military to Cold War levels to fight the Jihadists. I also like that he\u2019s a Hollywood fixture who nonetheless has the guts to loudly advocate for pro-life causes.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also one of the sharpest knives in the drawer. While objectivists and libertarians try to paint Michael Milken as some kind of modern-day Prometheus, I still stand by Stein\u2019s assessment, his 1992 book\u00a0A License to Steal,<\/em>\u00a0of the junk bonds king as a swindler who defrauded investors. He\u2019s a\u00a0mensch<\/em>\u00a0in the best way, too: He sticks by his friends, and doesn\u2019t let political differences get in the way of contributing to comedian pal Al Franken\u2019s (whom I loathe, actually) Minnesota senate run.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just scratching the surface. I daresay at the rate I\u2019m going it would take ten lifetimes to equal Stein\u2019s prolific r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Despite his vast array of talents, though, I think it\u2019s safe to say that the one thing Ben Stein is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0is a first-rate biologist.<\/p>\n

In his opening narration, Stein says,<\/p>\n

I believe everything that exists was created by a loving God\u2026. All along, I\u2019ve been well aware that other people, very smart people, believe otherwise. Rather than God\u2019s handiwork, they see the universe as a product of random particle collisions, and chemical reactions. And rather than regard humankind as carrying the spark of the divine, they believe we\u2019re nothing more than mud and made by lightning. Somehow, that mud found a way to grow, reproduce, swim, crawl, breathe, walk, and, eventually, think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stein interviews a number of scientific academicians in what trying to establish the documentary\u2019s assertion that the adherents of Intelligent Design\u2014a position with which I am in great sympathy\u2014are systematically being censored, kicked out of the academy, and blacklisted for daring to question Charles Darwin\u2019s theories of the origins of species and evolution. Yet, even if the viewer were unaware of Stein\u2019s manipulative questioning and editing\u2014in portraying these scientists as martyrs felled by the sword of secular intolerance\u2014it nonetheless becomes embarrassingly clear that, in number and quality, ID\u2019s proponents are rather thin.<\/p>\n

While I agree with much Ben Stein says regarding issues of free academic speech, much about\u00a0Expelled<\/em>\u00a0came off as a right-wing version of a Michael Moore \u201cdocumentary,\u201d in that the movie\u2019s designed to lead the viewer to a foregone conclusion. One segment shows Stein interviewing Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomy professor allegedly denied tenure at Iowa State University because of his writings on ID. However, Stein left out that the professor was more likely a victim of the \u201cpublish or perish\u201d policy that most universities foist upon their faculties.<\/p>\n

Although I, being a Deist, believe that God created the universe, this planet, and the life that exists on it, I readily admit that those beliefs are largely matters of\u00a0faith<\/em>. I don\u2019t believe religion can disprove scientific theories any more than science can explain away God. Both propositions are akin to squaring the circle. That said, if there is\u00a0evidence<\/em>\u00a0supporting the idea of Intelligent Design (the Big Bang Theory is an excellent place to start), then I am certainly open to it.<\/p>\n

Stein tries to make his case that there are well-respected scientists who\u2019ve discovered evidence that an \u201cintelligent designer\u201d (God) created life on this planet. Fine, but we in the audience are never made privy to exactly what that evidence\u00a0is,<\/em>save the inability of what Stein tags \u201cDarwinism\u201d at explaining how everything got here in the first place. We are supposed to infer that since, A). There is no explanation, that, B). Therefore, an \u201cintelligent designer\u201d must have created it (which is quite reasonable, but\u2013as Clara Peller might inquire\u2014where\u2019s the beef?).<\/p>\n

Where Stein succeeds more is at poking holes into what laymen vaguely construe as \u201cDarwinism.\u201d He\u2019s quite piquant in showing Darwin\u2019s\u00a0adherents<\/em>\u00a0as seething dogmatists, which many of them indeed are. Touchy, even, as in the case of his interview with renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins may be brilliant, but in this documentary he comes off as petty, peevish, and petulant. Is this\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0the guy you secularists so revere? Hasn\u2019t it ever occurred to Dawkins that in his fervor to be Madelyn Murray O\u2019Hair with Ph.D., that his many books \u201cdisproving\u201d the existence of God (at least in the eyes of atheists)\u00a0violate the first rule of logic, that one cannot disprove a negative?<\/p>\n

Stein is clearly having fun trying to trip up Dawkins to admit even the possibility of God\u2019s existence, and Dawkins defends his atheism, stating, with \u201cninety-nine per cent\u201d certainty that there is no God. (99 per cent? Some defender of atheism).<\/p>\n

But, again, we are brought back to the proposition of ID\u2019s adherents, who have a lot of valid questions, but\u2014at least using Stein\u2019s narrative\u2014haven\u2019t exactly presented anything to back up their assertions. The best in this regard was Stein\u2019s interview with mathematician and molecular biologist David Berlinski. A senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an ID think tank, and author of the book\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions,\u00a0<\/em>Berlinski\u2014a secular Jew\u2014came off as the opposite of Dawkins. \u201cNow,\u201d I thought, listening to this obviously brilliant, gregarious, and inquisitive man, \u201cfinally a thinker with a\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0argument in favor of Intelligent Design!\u201d \u00a0Yet, after listening to him dissect Darwin\u2019s theories from a scientist\u2019s perspective, Berlinski really had little to say about ID. (By editing for brevity, the filmmakers do quite a disservice to Berlinski in this regard; he has quite<\/em> a bit to say in making the case for an intelligent designer in\u00a0The Devils Delusion,\u00a0<\/em>and I fear some of his arguments ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor).<\/p>\n

One area I found quite a lot to agree with Stein was his assertion that Darwin\u2019s ideas on natural selection\u2014in the hands of American and British eugenicists and, later, the Germans (who were heavily influenced by American eugenicists)\u2014can lead to the state exterminating millions of biological \u201cundesirables,\u201d as in the case of Nazi Germany. Oddly, this was the film\u2019s most controversial segment, even more than its endorsement of Intelligent Design.<\/p>\n

After the film\u2019s release, the Anti-Defamation League, the alleged Jewish civil rights organization, took fellow Jew Ben Stein to task for \u201ctrivializing\u201d the Holocaust: \u201cHitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler\u2019s genocidal madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, really? I submit that this statement is ignorant of history: In\u00a0Mein Kampf,<\/em>\u00a0Adolf Hitler spelled out his admiration for the eugenics movement and Darwin. This is no trivial matter. In the film, Stein narrates a passage from Darwin\u2019s 1871 work,\u00a0The Descent of Man:<\/em><\/p>\n

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stein\u2019s detractors cried \u201cfoul!\u201d noting that he omitted Darwin\u2019s following sentences,<\/p>\n

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What has been left out of the criticisms is that Darwin was friendly, personally and professionally, with many of the larger lights in the British eugenics movement, in particular Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer. Darwin later embraced the phrase Spencer coined \u201csurvival of the fittest,\u201d and used it synonymously with his term “natural selection” in later revisions of\u00a0On the Origin of Species.<\/em>\u00a0Although Darwin\u2019s later defenders have tried to distance him from Spencer\u2019s cockamamie \u201cSocial Darwinist\u201d writings, the fact remains this was done posthumously on his behalf; during his own lifetime, Darwin said little that could be used to contradict the leading eugenicists of his era. In fact, his son, Major Leonard Darwin, became chairman of the British Eugenics Society from 1911 to 1928, and was seen in his efforts as carrying on his father\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Also left unmentioned by the ADL is the fact that Hitler\u00a0perfected<\/em>\u00a0eugenics policies that in the United States, England, and continental Europe resulted in the forced sterilization and castration of hundreds of thousands, of genetic \u201cundesirables.\u201d Indeed, the preferred German term for eugenics was \u201cracial hygiene,\u201d and was carried out to the letter<\/em> in the death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, and Treblinka.<\/p>\n

I think most critics have misread Stein. He never claimed that Darwin would ever have advocated such ghastly horrors, and given his own writings, we know he would not have. What Stein\u2019s (accurate) treatment of the linkage between eugenics and the Holocaust demonstrates is that scientists should tread with caution when making inroads into the ethical sphere, because the unintended consequences of ostensibly benign theories can have devastating effects, particularly when taken up by murderous statists (like, say, embryonic stem-cell research has the potential to unleash). Granted, Charles Darwin was no more\u00a0causally<\/em>\u00a0responsible for the Holocaust than Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche or Richard Wagner were, but why are these latter fair game for the assignation of blame, but not Darwin? I recommend historian Edwin Black\u2019s\u00a0War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America\u2019s Campaign to Create a Master Race,<\/em>\u00a0which uncovers the dark and sickening forgotten chapters of America and Germany\u2019s shared history.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t change the fact that Stein was trying to take out Darwin\u2019s theory on the origin of species, by using the eugenics argument and the Holocaust in support of debunking it.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the movie has much to recommend it in recounting how the scientific community enforces its \u201cconsensus\u201d will against dissenters, even prior to a peer-review article being published. This does not bode well for academic freedom. It is a result of government funding becoming too intertwined with scientific research. If Intelligent Design is such a preposterous set of ideas on its face, then let its adherents expose it to critical review.<\/p>\n

The scientific \u201ccommunity\u201d cannot have it both ways, dismissing ID out of hand, wallowing in the swamp of government cash while advocating the pseudoscience of \u201cclimate change.\u201d I think Stein is onto something when he says the scientific \u201ccommunity\u201d is hardly objective, and requires its members to march in lockstep.<\/p>\n

That said,\u00a0Expelled<\/em>\u00a0was, sadly, otherwise largely a brilliant exercise in sophistry.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 David Berlinski (r) discusses the implications of eugenics and evolution with Gerald Schroeder (l) and Ben Stein in front of the Berlin Wall.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Who Made Who? (with apologies to Angus Young) \u00a0[xrr rating=3\/5] Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Featuring Ben Stein, Peter Atkins, Hector Avalos, Doug Axe, David Berlinski, Walter Bradley, Bruce Chapman, Caroline Crocker, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[34,24,27,30,28,32,31,33,25,26,29],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentaries","category-mreview","tag-adolf-hitler","tag-ben-stein","tag-charles-darwin","tag-david-berlinski","tag-documentary","tag-eugenics","tag-evolution","tag-holocaust","tag-id","tag-intelligent-design","tag-richard-dawkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}