Ben Stein’s Expelled premiers in a thousand theaters

Here’s a promising-sounding review of Ben Stein’s Expelled by Mary Ann Kreitzer at Spero News. In addition to the outrageous facts about the systematic crushing of dissenters in the scientistic establishment, and the exposure of the bigot Richard Dawkins, which I’m looking forward to seeing on the big screen, I like this line:

It is amusing to see the Intelligent Design scientists refusing to speculate on who or what the “designer” is, while the atheists speculate that life began on a crystal or was “seeded” by alien intelligence. Really!

When the Darwinists, who disdainfully put down not only belief in a divine creator but any doubts about Darwinism as the neurotic spewings of unthinking bigots, have recourse to flying saucers to explain life on earth, we can reasonably conclude that the Darwinian establishment is in about the same shape, and has about the same future prospects, as the Soviet Union circa 1983.

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Jim N. writes:

What gets me is how utterly stupid—yes, I said “stupid” and I mean stupid—these people are. On the one hand, Dawkins argues that, if we posit God as the creator of the material universe, we need to account for His existence somehow (never mind that Eternal and Uncreated are attributes we assign to God for this very reason), and on the other he and/or his colleagues posit space aliens as the creators—apparently oblivious of the need to explain the origins of the space aliens!

Byrne H. writes:

Per the quote you mentioned, it is “interesting” to see this because the film is edited in such a way as to make this claim. Yes, if you put an evolutionist on the spot and ask how life could have started, their answer will be a poor one. If you don’t demand that an intelligent design advocate identify the designer, that tricky question will be avoided. The fact that either side could give either answer, but that the video only shows the opposing side giving the ridiculous answer, is evidence to me of a bad film and not a good argument.

Paul T. writes:

I haven’t seen the film, but out of curiosity I looked it up on RottenTomatoes.com, where a posting in an appended readers’ forum stated the following:

From Scientific American:

[ … ]Expelled then trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted by the Darwinist establishment. First among them is Richard Sternberg*, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and his original office. Looking a bit smug in his self-martyrdom, Sternberg also reports that a colleague compared him with an “intellectual terrorist.”

What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn’t even hint at it—is that Sternberg’s case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg’s choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn’t lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn’t lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer.]

And so on. These confounding facts are documented in the appendix to the unofficial Congressional report from Rep. Mark Souder’s office that the film cites in support of its story. At the very least, the Sternberg affair is considerably more complicated and questionable than Expelled lets on. The movie’s one-sided version is either the result of shoddy investigation or deliberate propagandizing—neither of which reflects well on the other information in the film.

So it is with the rest of Expelled’s parade of victims. Caroline Crocker, a biology teacher, was allegedly dismissed from her position at George Mason University after merely mentioning ID; the film somehow never reports exactly what she said or why anyone objected to it. Reporter Pamela Winnick was supposedly pilloried and fired after she wrote objectively about evolution and ID; we don’t know exactly what she wrote but later we do hear her asserting with disgust that “Darwinism devalues human life.” The film forgot to mention that Winnick is the author of the book A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion—a title that suggests her objectivity on the subject might be a bit tarnished.

The movie’s unreliable reporting is even more obvious during the scene in which Stein interviews Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute, the institutional heart of ID advocacy. Stein asks whether the Discovery Institute has supported the teaching of ID in science classes so avidly because it is trying to sneak religion back into public schools. Chapman says no and the film blithely takes him at his word. No mention is made of the notorious “Wedge” document, a leaked Discovery Institute manifesto that outlined a strategy of opposing evolution and turning the public against scientific materialism as the first step toward making society more politically conservative and theistic. Maybe Ben Stein didn’t think it was relevant, but wouldn’t an honest film have trusted its audience to judge for itself?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2008 03:48 PM | Send