Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Ben Stein, Intelligent Design and the Horseshit Divine

Unnnngh!!!!

I get so tired of browbeating these creationists.

Once more for the thick skulled:

From Amendment I of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

And Ben gazes into the eyes of genius. Chuck is not impressed.

The basic steps of the scientific method:

1. Define the question

2. Gather information and resources (observe)

3. Form hypothesis

4. Perform an experiment and collect data

5. Analyze data

6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis

7. Publish results

8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

Anyone? Anybody at all? Bueller? Bueller?

Dishonesty and obfuscation are at the heart of the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It is a charlatan of a film using misdirection, half truths, unexplored anecdotal evidence, outright lies, false associations and out-of-context material to further its own confused premise that American academia is stonewalling the debate over Intelligent Design (ID) as valid scientific theory.

Stein insists this assault on academic freedom is so widespread, so nefariously omnipresent in our institutions of learning, that we as a nation are in imminent danger of losing our capability for rational debate and thus, all our freedoms entirely.

Keep looking at that patriotic sleight-of-hand nonsense because in Stein's other paw is the big, intellectually lazy turd of ID. And Stein remarkably avoids conversing about it or promoting any of its tenets throughout the entire film.

Instead, Expelled shows archival footage of Soviet Russia, the Berlin Wall and Nazi atrocities as the alarming end products of the acceptance of evolutionary theory. I think someone might be forgetting that Nazi Germany was a severely Christian nation and perhaps longstanding anti-Semitism had more to do with the Holocaust than the theories of Charles Darwin. And, as for barbaric Soviet equivalencies, one can point to many other godless, socialist nations on this earth that believe in evolutionary theory who nonetheless do not eradicate large portions of their citizenry, deny them religious freedom, spy on them, or prevent them from leaving the country.

The film even hurls the accusation that Darwin's theory on the origin of species is a catalyst for genocide, euthanasia, abortion and eugenics.

The film is so full of fucking straw men that Ray Bolger should be starring in it.

All to keep anyone from looking at the emperor without his clothes. The wizard behind the curtain. Creationism posing as Intelligent Design posing as scientific theory.

Expelled is genuine in one respect. As a documentary, it uses the exact same techniques that ID does. Having no legitimate merits of its own, it simply exists to poke holes in evolutionary theory, tear down the science community that advocates it and play the poor, oppressed victim of pernicious secularism. Where there is a question that evolution does not answer, ID sticks it foot in the door like some snake-oil salesman gaining access to your home in order to shill his spiel of lies. ID can only snipe and nitpick from the grandstand. It has no horse in the race.

Yet it refuses to know its place. Scientists and those of us with three digit IQs aren't looking to silence proponents of ID as Stein claims. We simply want it relegated to its proper place- the church, parochial institutions or religion departments. That is where it belongs.

It has no business in the science community. It is based on a non-falsifiable premise and therefore cannot be tested in any measurable degree. It relies on the acceptance of supernatural forces. That, by definition, excludes it as science.

It is faith. It is theism. It is religion.

Which might explain why some of the interviewees at the outset of the film were released from their jobs at universities for promoting this theistic horseshit. Stein portrays them as noble victims of a weighted, obdurate system. The real reasons for their termination are not explored, only their anecdotal opinions are lent credence by Stein.

Let's turn the tables here. How long do you suppose an instructor at a parochial school would last if they started espousing the merits of atheism or preoccupied their classrooms with pointing out inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible?

About as long as it takes to scream "heretic" and gather kindling for 'neath the stake.

Using the Berlin Wall as visual metaphor, Stein and the filmmakers continually refer to a fictional "wall" of academic exclusion; an insurmountable barrier between the marketplace of new ideas and the science community. This "wall" would be better erected where it belongs, between church and state. That would put an end to this ID nonsense once and for all. Pouting Christians have lost their ball, can't take it home, but still want to play. And ID is decidedly a Christian movement.

Stein is quite disingenuous with all of it anyway. He never reveals his own thoughts on ID (or his personal beliefs) and interviews its supporters with forced incredulity toward their claims of prejudice within academia. He is overly coy with ID opponents and those who back evolutionary theory. He even shamelessly plays a concerned ethnicity card (as a Jew) while equating "Darwinism" to Nazi euthanasia.

Interestingly, the voices of ID critics are so prevalent, knowledgeable and cogent at the film's beginning that you wonder whether Stein is performing some grand ruse, allowing himself some backdoor escape route if it all goes south on him.

It does. He strangely stays for the idiocy.

Expelled simply has no intellectual teeth. It's a hodgepodge of overt subjectivism. An outright embarrassment in documentary filmmaking. But, then again, it faithfully represents the cesspool of theology from whence it sprung:

The mass hysteria, willful ignorance and mental derangement of god-think - induced by brain washing, coercion, fear mongering, indoctrination and psychological child abuse.

By the way, how's that whole "proving god exists" experiment going, fellas? Do you need some more Bunsen burners and microscopes or would you prefer some rattlesnakes and strychnine?