Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

And boy is it not allowed!  Ben Stein did his damnedest to make sure nothing even approaching intelligence comes anywhere close to this movie.  I'm not going to bother wasting my time outlining all the piss poor science in this "documentary"; others before me have already done that and done that much better than i could.  Instead i'm going to focus on the other glaring flaws this movie demonstrates and show you exactly why it's such an abysmal excuse for a documentary.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a movie that does nothing right.  I well expected bad science, but i did not expect the banal presentation.  Did Stein even intend for anyone to be entertained by this?

For starters, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is the most deliberately manipulative pieces of cinematography i've personally seen since Triumph of the Will.  And yet, Ben Stein has the audacity to compare evolutionary biologists (or "Darwinists" he calls them - a title deliberately chosen to invoke images of dangerous ideologues) to nazis.

Now i'm not saying Ben Stein is the Leni Riefenstahl of Creationists.  Fuck no!  Triumph of the Will was propoganda, sure, but it was well manufactured propoganda.  Riefenstahl broke a lot of boundaries utilizing new techniques, blending images and music in ways not seen in movies prior to 1935.  Even critics of the film's message marvel at its presentation.

But Expelled brings nothing to the table.  It certainly isn't good and it's not even bad enough to be comically bad, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Room.

All Stein really offers his audience is stock images of Nazis, Stalin and communists thrown up at opportune times in order to score cheap political points off of Evolutionary Biologists (or EVILutionary biologists!  See what i did there? I'm so clever!).  No doubt this would appeal to his intended ignorant-as-sin audience, but for anyone else, it just looks and feels awful in every possible way.  Sort of like what women having sex with Ben Stein must experience (or men, let's be fair).

Now, one might think that if you're going to be deceptive and slanderous, it's at least beneficial to do so with a measure of subtlety (or humour).  The documentary that comes right out and beats you over the head with its message is far less effective than one that carefully walks you through the reasoning.

But as it turns out throwing up pictures of Stalin and the Nazis is Ben Stein's idea of being subtle, because about halfway through the film, he literally abandons all precepts and comes right out and says that evolution lead to the Holocaust.



No, he really says that.

Of course it can be argued that the holocaust and eugenics started from social engineers misappropriating the concept of "survival of the fittest" for their own twisted ends, but Stein does nothing to critique others who do the exact same thing.

What about laissez-faire market types who believe in a completely unregulated market that promotes economic "survival of the fittest"?  Where would that leave the "economically unfit" (which, btw, would include many "socially unfit" individuals like the severely handicapped, as well as completely normal people with poor economic prospects and/or networking abilities)?  Likely suffering in the squalors of poverty forced to either adapt themselves better for the economic system thrust upon them against their will by learning how to be "good employees"... or die of poverty related causes in a gutter somewhere and decrease the surplus population.

But, c'mon!  No one really believes that crap, do they?

Oh dear...

The thing that Ben Stein fails to grasp (in addition to high school level science) is that a documentary, or at least a halfway decent documentary, should do more than state your beliefs loudly then pound away nonstop at your opposing side like a sexually frustrated poodle on someone's leg.  A good documentary should at least provide some evidence for why your belief or opinion is the superior one.  You say you've found a hole in evolutionary biology?  Ok then, how does Intelligent Design (ID) propose we fill that hole?  Or are you just going to point at every flaw in every facet of human understanding and simply say "God did it"?

Abiogenesis?  God did it.  Reconciling Quantum Mechanics with General Relativity?  God did it.  How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?  God did it.  How is M Night Shyamalan still making movies?  God did that, too (the bastard!).

Stein complains that ID proponents are having their freedom of speech rights infringed upon because they cannot hold creationist views and be associated with respectable scientific organizations and he cites a number of them whom he claims have lost their job as a result.

Why, that's just so unfair!  What is this, Communist China?  If i wanna teach the next generation of aspiring paleantologists that Jesus had a pet T-Rex named Mr Picklepus that he taught to give him felatio, that's my right as an American citizen (er, Canadian?)!  Screw you nazi bastards and your adherence to "educational standards"!

But this isn't a matter of free speech.  Organizations are allowed to discriminate against views that are damaging to the organizations overall purpose.

A university can (and should) discriminate against scientists who waste critical funding money studying whimsical theories based solely on ideology.  Likewise, an organization would be completely justified in firing anyone who, as a representative of the organization, uses their position to front such erroneous organizationally damaging beliefs, be they creationists, holocaust deniers or white supremicists.

Of course, one wonders if Ben Stein would be so willing to champion up the free speech rights of (say) a Marxist (or hell, even a Keynsian!) who loses his or her job as an economist at the Cato Institute or other laissez-faire market promoting institute?

Something tells me "no".

At one point Stein sits down with noted evolution biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.  The purpose of which seems to be solely to cash in on Dawkins saying that he (nor anyone else) has a coherent idea of how life began, so therefore (in Stein's opinion) it can be by "Intelligent Design".

Checkmate!  Score one for the creationists!  Take that you pointed headed professors, with your "science" and your "evidence" and your "theories" and your "iphones" and your "modern medicine" and your "microprocessors" and your "marvels of the modern world"!

But let's look at this a little closer, shall we?

You have a small child under your care and you have a cookie jar on a refridgerator.  One day you notice the cookies in the jar are gone, but the jar is still in place.  The small child has crumbs on their face and a guilty look, so you're fairly certain you know what happened to the cookies in the jar.  You approach your young charge and ask them directly, "Did you eat the cookies in the cookie jar?"

To which your clever youngster responds, "no, it was a ghost."

You, not likely to be convinced by this argument (hopefully... i'm not one to judge), point out the reasons you suspect the child had eaten the cookies and note that the "ghost theory" is a silly one.

But this child imagines him/herself to be quite the clever one.  "Even if i ate the cookies, that doesn't discount my theory of the ghost stealing them for me," the child protests.

"But ghosts don't exist," you calmly state.  "Plus, it's much more likely that you got the cookies yourself."

"But what proof do you have that there isn't a ghost?  That jar is on top of the refridgerator, and i can't reach all the way up there."

"But you could've climbed the counter or used a chair or even taken the step ladder from the garage or...."

"Aha!" the child shrieks with delight. "You don't even have a clear idea how i could've gotten the cookies, so it's completely possible that a ghost had stolen them as i claim."

Would you accept this argument?

No?

But it's such a sound argument!

If this isn't acceptable, why is it acceptable to say life was first created by an "intelligent designer", just because our (current) best theories don't have an adequate, "100% guaranteed to be correct or your money back" answer?  And more importantly, how is this any different from plain old creationism?  Make no mistake, Stein is adament that Intelligent Design is not Creationism, even though his movie is inexplicably lacking in any distinguishing characteristics between the two.

So what's the difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism?  To a sane person, there is no difference.  Creationism is Intelligent Design and vice versa.  There is no difference between saying "God did it" or "an intelligent creator, who may or may not be god, did it" and it's completely fair for everyone else in society to immediately and unequivically dismiss both of these "theories" simply on the premise that it adds nothing to the scientific debate.  Even if Creationism were true (big if), it only replaces an "i don't know" with an untestable, undemonstratable and ultimately unneeded answer that stifles further debate and prevents any further knowledge from being gained.

But Stein will never get this and neither will the primary audience of this movie.  As far as they are concerned, Christian Americans, all 225+ million of them, are just a persecuted minority... just like the Jews of Nazi Germany.  If i were Jewish, i'd find that horribly offensive.  But Ben Stein (who is Jewish), doesn't, so what the hell do i know, right?

All in all, this is an awful movie and a poor excuse for a documentary.  It's manipulative, disgusting, unentertaining, protracted creationist propoganda.  Don't waste your time with it.  Just take note of those who rent it and avoid them like the plague.  I'm pretty sure stupidity isn't contagious, but you don't want to take that chance!