Posted on 04/20/2008 8:30:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
April 19, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org -
Darwin...Darwin...Darwin...you can almost hear Ben Stein muttering to himself as this subversive little documentary, "Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed," unfolds. Having opened only yesterday it has already left the piggies that feed at the trough of big science foaming at the mouth and staggering about in near apoplexia.
So outraged are the fascisti intelligentsia by Stein's work that as the film's website makes clear, "...the National Center For Science Education has taken the extraordinary and unprecedented step of building a website devoted solely to discrediting the...film..." an overtly political act.
Science subordinating itself to politics?
How can this be and why was it deemed necessary?
Well primarily because Ben has seen fit to present the not-so-pretty face of what the field of evolutionary biology has become and how an obviously left-leaning bunch of fanatical atheists are suppressing - at all levels - inquiry into an interesting if not promising avenue of exploration called intelligent design.
But isn't intelligent design merely a code phrase for creationism?
No, not at all.
Intelligent design [ID] is a hypothesis, a way of attempting a better explanation regarding the origin of the species than Charles Darwin's now 150 year-old theory. ID rests heavily upon an idea called irreducible complexity, a term originated by biochemist Michael Behe and explained in his 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," which posits that biological systems are far too complex to have simply "evolved," from the inanimate components percolating in some primordial pool of mud.
Behe argues that the odds are impossibly high of such a thing happening by chance, ruled out mathematically because of the sheer number of mutations required, which would have to occur, in exactly the right order, at exactly the right time to construct the DNA for even such a simple organism as a bacterial flagellum.
But this is a movie review, not a scientific treatise.
The central topic of Expelled is not about the science of intelligent design, though that is certainly laid out, but rather it is about a more universal concerns, liberty and freedom, especially intellectual freedom and its intentional suppression in this particular case.
To establish that fact Stein interviews on camera a half-dozen or so highly credentialed professional scientists who have been forced out of academia, lost their jobs and blackballed, one for the simple act of having allowed to be published in the periodical he was responsible for editing, a single article which mentions the verboten term, intelligent design.
For this and similar sins against scientific orthodoxy these folks are either fired, fail to be granted tenure, see their grants dry up or are simply harassed out of their positions. The anxiety quotient is so high over potential loss of employment and retribution that many scientists who have first-hand knowledge of this phenomenon refused to be seen on camera, for fear of reprisal, and were interviewed in the dark.
Stein does an extraordinarily good job exploring the dark side of the Darwinian theory of evolution, how explaining life as a mere series of complex chemical reactions cheapens it to the point where Hitlerian theories such as Eugenics and master race ideology become justifiable.
Lest one get the impression that this was somehow a European thing be warned that Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood was organized around identical principles and that during the height of this mania in the early 20th century 50-60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized [see, Edwin Black’s 2003 book, “War Against the Weak].
Though treated with respect, under Stein’s simple Columbo style, gentle cross examination, the defenders of Darwinian evolution – such as Richard Dawkins [author of “The God Delusion"] - come off as pompous asses, genuinely scary individuals who are fearful that their hegemony might be ending.
What emerges from Stein’s questioning is that the majority of these politicized practitioners of unfree inquiry are not just agnostic or atheists but are phobic in their reaction to any religion predicated on the existence of a Deity and quite willing in their position as “guardians of the truth," to impose their Godlessness as official dogma in America’s classrooms working in league with similarly motivated educrats through the control of textbooks and similar materials.
Such a reaction is explainable in that these people have replaced traditional belief with a totalitarian and regimented scientific secular religion in which freedom of inquiry is strictly controlled.
If the case of ID is insufficient to allow one to connect the dots regarding politicized science, kindly substitute the Gaia-centric secularism of Global Warming, because exactly the same modalities are in play.
To see the extent to which this suppression has take hold, consult the internet encyclopedia project Wikipedia on Intelligent Design or any of its proponents. The main article on the topic is a near carpet-chewing anti-ID rant obviously written by its detractors and - at great variance with Wiki’s usual open structure – the piece is actually padlocked by its author(s) and incapable of even being edited - a sure sign of intolerance and fear, equivalent to a cyber book burning.
The reviews of this documentary are simply amusing, take Jeffrey Kluger’s piece for Time Magazine, which includes the following:
“The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth's primordial soup. The answer is it couldn't--and it didn't. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing…" [source, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729703,00.html]
There are so many problems with Kluger’s review that it would take a separate article to explore them, but let’s deal with the most basic.
Kluger writes, “makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution…"
Yet who is Mr. Kluger, what is his bio?
Uh…well he is a doey eyed auteur, a “science writer" and attorney by training who worships at the Global Warming church. He is manifestly not a scientist.
Even more basic, his offering of, “Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing…" as being supportive of a reasonable description of the origin of life and at the same time destructive of Intelligent Design is idiocy, so absurd and child-like that he might consider instead simply shrieking, “Creationism" and pulling his dress up over his head.
And that is how this argument is being conducted by the mavens of American science.
With the vast increase in knowledge that has come in the century and a half since Darwin, in evolutionary biology, biochemistry, nanotechnology and related fields weaknesses in that theory have prompted alternative explanations.
That is all that this is really about, the proponents of these alternative theses would like the liberty to discuss them in public, in peer reviewed articles without threat of banishment from the scientific community.
It stands to reason that if the forces of scientific orthodoxy were as confident in their theory as they say, there would be no need to carry on this manner, to base their defense on a policy indistinguishable from that of burning witches in the public square.
That tactic hints that the big science establishment has real reason to be fearful and that this debate should be kept firmly in focus, see Stein’s movie, it’s well made, thought provoking and more than a little maddening.
Liberals overlooked many glaring errors and even the numerous outright lies in Al Gore’s and Micheal Moore’s films, but you can bet all liberals will review about this film is things they consider misinformation.
Next up: Newt Gingrich, starring in “Banned.”
Anybody seen it yet — Is it worth the price of admission?
Well worth the price of admission.
Even more basic, his offering of, “Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing…” as being supportive of a reasonable description of the origin of life and at the same time destructive of Intelligent Design is idiocy, so absurd and child-like that he might consider instead simply shrieking, “Creationism” and pulling his dress up over his head.
I see that the writer accomplishes the same thing in this paragraph that he accuses the Kluger of, that is he doesn’t offer any facts, just a name calling rant.
Some people are reporting that on, opening night this film exceeded expectations at the box office.
It was :
* #14 in number of theaters being showed
* #8 in tickets showed. It did quite well.
BTW, this film isn’t just a movie, it is part of the culture war. I saw this post on Infidels.org :
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=5284277&postcount=193
QUOTE:
“So I went and saw it today. No, I didn’t give Ben Stein any of my money - I bought a ticket to a different movie starting at the same time. There were about 25 people in the theater - for 7:30 showing on a Saturday in the Bible Belt it is not a tremendous success I would say.”
Here’s another comment which shows the author’s true colors :
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=10637
“It pains me to admit that Ben Stein’s Expelled did indeed make the top ten on Friday with $1.2 million on its 1,000 screens. This is pretty good, actually, content notwithstanding, as it’s certainly very easy for documentaries to crash and burn, especially if they don’t have Michael Moore or penguins (witness Morgan Spurlock’s Where In the World is Osama bin Laden?, opening on 100 screens and earning $43,900.) Figure about $3.7 million for the so-called satirical film.”
You sought and you found SeekAndFind, you are very dangerous.....:)
Here’s at least an interesting review that goes to the heart of the matter ...
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=44147
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Reviewed by: Edward Douglas
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Cast:
Ben Stein
Richard Dawkins
Eugeni Scott
John Lennox
David Berlinski
Richard Sternberg
Caroline Crocker
Guillermo Gonzalez
Mark Souder
Christopher Hitchens
Directed by Nathan Frankowski
Summary:
The filmmakers’ intentions are kept deliberately vague—is this about free speech or about teaching religion in the classroom?—but it’s a surprisingly entertaining and informative doc that at least tries to address the debate over intelligent design from another angle.
Story:
Ben Stein takes a look at intelligent design and how scientists and teachers who’ve dared to address it have come under attack from the scientific community using Darwin’s theories of evolution.
Analysis:
The subject of intelligent design is one that has sparked a lot of controversy and hopefully, this review won’t bring out the loonies on either side of the debate, because personally, I don’t feel like religion and faith is something that can or should be argued or debated on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter. And yet, this film has already been the center of many heated debates and anger from the scientific community, making it difficult to analyze it without taking into account one’s own opinions about creation, evolution, God and religion.
The crux of the film centers around a series of high-profile firings in the academic world of respected scientists and educators who dared breach the subject of intelligent design. Actor, comedian and reputed intellectual Ben Stein decided to investigate these incidents, taking the Michael Moore approach by providing the film’s personality as he travels around the globe talking to scientists and philosophers on both sides of the heated debate. Essentially, intelligent design tends to be immediately written off as “creationism,” that it comes strictly from a religious faith-based point of view that has no business in science. Stein tries to prove otherwise by showing how the scientific community has been closed-minded in their treatment of those who address it while following their own “theories” of evolution.
On the surface, Ben Stein seems to be pushing for open debate and discussion rather than the scientific community bullying anyone who offers disparate ideas, but he doesn’t exactly go about this in the best way, especially when the film shows Darwin’s influence on the Nazi ideals and comparing Darwinists to communists, both extremely flawed and overly flip arguments that hurt the film more than it helps. Stein’s intentions are also somewhat deceptive, because while he never outright says “intelligent design should be taught in the classrooms,” the film’s marketing campaign seems to say otherwise, something that’s difficult to ignore when attempting to analyze the film on its own merits.
It’s far too easy to superimpose one’s own agenda or beliefs on a film like this due to the amount of contradictory information being spooled to the viewer via Stein’s interviews. “Expelled” will probably be embraced by religious fundamentalists as surely as it will be trashed by the liberal media, both for the wrong reasons, and instead of solving the problems, it will just add to them, since the people in the scientific community who might gain something from being more open-minded will already have written this film off as propaganda.
There’s more than a little irony to the way things have changed in the hundreds of years since the time when scientists were being persecuted by the Church, and going by Stein’s take on the matter, things have turned fully the other way. This seems the most evident in the film’s climax where Stein faces off with Richard Dawkins, a scientist who has gone so far as to disprove the existence of G-d—we’ll probably have to read his book for his arguments—though by that point, we’re no closer to getting to the bottom of why the educators were fired.
Technically, the film could be better, as the camerawork is somewhat shaky during the interviews, a problem that’s resolved as the film progresses. Too much cutesy film footage is edited into the interviews to try to keep things moving at a brisk pace amidst a lot of scientific babble, but this often colors the information and responses to try and sway viewers towards the film’s biased viewpoint.
Personally, I don’t think either camp’s argument is completely on the money and ultimately, the film’s message about opening communication between the two camps seems like the most viable solution. Although this documentary does little to prove or disprove any of the theories (scientific or otherwise) from either camp—many of which you’d have to be a MENSA member to fully understand—one probably shouldn’t write the movie off merely based on their own personal beliefs. If nothing else, it’s an often entertaining conversation and debate starter, which might have been Ben Stein’s purpose all along even if there might have also been ulterior motives lying beneath the film’s heady surface.
Another report :
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/04/expelled_audience_in_iowa_give.html#trackback
Expelled Audience in Iowa Gives Standing Ovation to Persecuted Astronomer
The movie theater screening Expelled in the home town of Iowa State University (ISU) apparently couldn’t handle all the people who showed up last night, and the audience responded with a standing ovation for ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure by ISU because of his pro-ID views. According to The Ames Tribune,
A line for the 7:10 p.m. premiere showing of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” at the Varsity II theater on Lincoln Way stretched back five storefronts to the Bali Satay House Friday... Those who made it into the theater before it filled up generally responded positively to the film. They greeted the ending credits with applause and, after Gonzalez wrapped up a brief discussion following the film, treated him with a standing ovation.
That analogy has always stayed with me.
LOL! Talk about a confused statement. The Time reviewer has never considered that pronouncing "eons of time" does not end the argument. 500 million years is finite, and considering the the project of mindless Darwinian process, a mere snap of the fingers. "Eons of time" is waved like a magic wand as if it explains anything....which it does not.
Another popular analogy is a tornado going through a junkyard and producing a 747. These are easier to under stand than one chance in 10 to the 65th power. However, such terrible odds are not an obstacle to Athiests who simply add billions of years to get there.
It is certainly a lot easier for me to believe that Mind always existed and created other minds, than to believe that mindless matter/energy always existed and through time + chance created mind. Also, even if the latter was true I don't see how we could actually know it is true with any validity. This is because in that worldview, all of our thoughts are simply determined by blind chemical reactions, electronic impulses etc, including our thoughts about this debate. Reason, in order to be valid, has to stand outside and be uncontrolled by these forces. In other words, in order for Reason to be valid, something other than the material universe MUST exist.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-projector18apr18,1,4982009.story';
EXCERPT
‘Expelled’ could exceed box-office forecasts
By Josh Friedman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 18, 2008
Commentator and character actor Ben Stein, whose film career took flight when he played the boring, strait-laced economics teacher in the 1986 teen comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” has come around to the other side.
As host and co-writer of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” this time the 63-year-old Stein is the one striking a preppy rebel pose. In Premise Media Corp.’s new documentary, Stein purports to expose a conspiracy against the intelligent design movement, arguing that “Big Science” is stifling academic freedom by keeping any discussion of God out of the classroom.
“Expelled,” with production and marketing budgets in the single-digit millions, is expected to make no dent at the box-office despite the widest documentary release ever, at more than 1,000 theaters. But it could dwarf forecasts with even a fraction of the faith-based crowd that turned Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” into a cultural phenomenon in 2004.
I saw it Friday night. Ben Stein’s interview of Richard Dawkins towards the end of the movie is well worth the price of admission by itself. The only pity is that Stein doesn’t pursue Dawkins’s outlandish statement that instead of God being the Prime Mover behind life on earth, maybe it was aliens visiting from another world!!......hows that for an educated man !!.....the whole movie illuminates that the left/secular/communists/fascist/americanliberal world view is determined by their wish/fantasy that we humans are gods unto ourselves who can create heaven on earth if only the “little people” would just relinquish their freedom to their “betters” and stop clinging to religion, etc....hmmm,that sounds a little familiar...
It’s my opinion that Ben Stein lost all credibility (not to mention his mind) when he decided to donate to Al Franken’s Senate campaign....He’s just feeling guilty rich I guess.
I saw the film Friday.
The main point of the moview wasn’t to debate evolution/Intelligent Design/Creationism, it was to illustrate how closed minded the science community has become to any ideas other than evolution.
On that score it was an excellant movie, with the ideas presented in a forceful, yet entertaining way.
Yep. That’s when I stopped paying any attention to Ben.
LOL...the old primordial soup ploy. The incredibly complex biomolecules required in cellular construction could not have randomly synthesized themselves from inorganic starting materials. And the notion that eons of "slow cooking" would magically produce all the enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, etc., is ludicrous. Organic biomolecules degrade over relatively short periods of time so waiting "eons" for all the ingredients to come together (in stoiciometric amounts of course) and assemble into a living cell is preposterous.
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