Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

starring Ben Stein
written by Kevin Miller, Walt Ruloff and Ben Stein & directed by Nathan Frankowski
Rated PG for thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking.
51%

Comedian and television personality Ben Stein wades into the middle of the debate over the theory of Intelligent Design with what he hopes will be a bombshell that will destroy the wall supposedly keeping it outside the realm of serious academic discussion. Framed as an intellectual journey from skepticism to belief that the intelligent design discussion is being suppressed, Stein interviews a variety of scientists and relevant personalities on both sides of the debate.

I am sorely tempted to discuss Expelled purely as entertainment, but that would be rather unjust, both to the filmmakers (who believe that, at least on some level, they have made a serious film) and to any potential audience members who might go, expecting something quite different from what they would get. Expelled was quite different from what I expected, definitely not what I hoped and perhaps least of all what it pretends to be.

In rough outline, the film begins with Stein finding and interviewing a number of scientists who have lost jobs, tenure, research grants and so forth because they have chosen to associate themselves in some way with Intelligent Design (including former faculty of the Smithsonian Institute and George Mason University). He interviews various members of “the establishment” (including Richard Dawkins) to determine why Intelligent Design has such a stigma attached to it, what makes evolution so much better and what alternative theories exist, such as directed panspermia. He also attempts to establish, by talking to a number of proponents of Intelligent Design, including faculty from Biola University, Baylor University and members of the Discovery Institute.

All Stein claims to be interested in is opening the lines of communication within academia, to get a healthy dialogue going. On the surface, his movie pays lip service to that ultimate goal throughout. With that in mind, the choice of subtitle is a poor one. And that is only the beginning. Expelled never really shakes the overwhelming sense of cheap points being scored and propagandist one-sidedness such as one might expect from a Michael Moore documentary. At its best, it feels as though a dialogue might begin in spite of its efforts rather than because of them.

There are several significant issues that plague the arguments presented by Expelled and seriously cripple either its case for Intelligent Design or its attempt to start a dialogue. First, evidence that Intelligent Design is persona non grata in academic circles to the degree that Stein claims is extremely one-sided. The stories of the scientists who have supposedly been persecuted by the scientific community, for instance, appear at the very beginning and are taken completely at face value.

A minimal, perfunctory effort is made to get the other side of the story. For instance, Stein walks through the front door of the Smithsonian, cameraman by his side, apparently to demand an explanation for one of the firings, but security turns him away immediately. Of course. He walked in the entrance with a camera and didn’t explain himself. This is not a genuine attempt to get both sides, and it doesn’t even happen until the film is almost over. Furthermore, the claim is totally subverted by the interviews. There are scientists who are obviously prominent and respected members of the scientific community, who also espouse the possibility of Intelligent Design (such as physicist Dr. John Polkinghorne). There are also scientists who are obviously staunchly opposed to the theory who express their willingness to tolerate anyone who has “thought through” the scientific theories they espouse.

Stein frequently resorts to some creative and sporadically-entertaining, but manipulative, methods of editing. Few comments, whether made by scientists from one side or the other or by himself, are allowed to pass without inter-cutting a brief clip from an old movie or educational film. Example: One scientist mentions that the opponents of Intelligent Design want to silence the opposition. Cut to a scene from the original Planet of the Apes as a gorilla sprays Charlton Heston with a high-pressure hose and screams, “Shut up, you freak!” Heston responds with the famous line, “It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!” Back to your regularly-scheduled movie.

Stein’s question are consistently and infuriatingly disingenuous, in the same vein as a test question once asked by a conservative professor I knew: “Why are Republicans so bad?” Near the end, in an interview with Richard Dawkins (which, in most respects, was the best and most interesting part of the film), Stein establishes that Dawkins does not believe in the Judeo-Christian God. He then asks if he believes in any Hindu gods. Dawkins’ first reaction is a dumb-founded stare. Surely this is not a serious question? Stein follows it up by asking if he believes in Allah. How about any other gods? I am far from sympathetic to Richard Dawkins’ worldview, but I felt, as Dawkins surely did, that my time was being wasted.

Expelled also commits what I believe to be a major fallacy by presenting Darwinian evolution as the theory of evolution currently espoused by the scientific community despite the numerous flaws in it. It is my understanding that conflating the modern theory of evolution with Darwin’s initial hypothesis is akin to equating Freudian psychoanalysis with the cutting edge of modern psychology. Nevertheless, Stein is careful to discuss only Darwinian evolution, and leaves out all mention of more recent developments and discoveries in the field, as well as totally ignoring the existence of theistic evolution. Of course, theistic evolution would have no place in the film anyway, as several minutes are devoted to establishing that a belief in evolution of necessity destroys belief in God.

The most egregious of this film’s many sins, however, is undoubtedly its transgression of Godwin’s Law, which essentially decrees that “the first person to call the other a Nazi automatically loses the argument.” Expelled spends a grossly disproportionate amount of time exploring the link between Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Holocaust under Hitler (with a discussion of eugenics thrown in on the side). There is a logical fallacy at work here: reductio ad Hitlerum. In short, “a view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.” This segment, which is quite long and appears right in the middle of everything, serves only to obscure the real issue almost beyond recognition. It is clearly not germane to the discussion, or even conclusive in determining whether or not Darwin was wrong.

Expelled truly did entertain, and it had some moments of genuinely thought-provoking discussion. I think that ultimately I wanted to like it more than I knew I did, and ended up liking it less than I thought I would. There is much more that could be said on the subject, but the bottom line is that the film will probably be counterproductive to its goals because it suffers from the flaw that many people (unfairly, in my opinion) attribute to the proponents of Intelligent Design: it enters a serious, complex debate wielding a foregone conclusion.

On a more personal note, I was quite surprised by the prominent role played by Baylor University, a subject of some interest to me as I was recently accepted by a graduate program there (in a field that is totally unrelated to this debate, of course). I was even more surprised when my Sunday school teacher, a Baylor professor, appeared on the screen for a brief interview segment (although his link to Baylor was not noted by the film, perhaps because he has not experienced any repercussions for his beliefs). I had no inkling beforehand that he was involved, but I certainly intend to ask him about the Baylor controversy the next time I see him. I will not be at all surprised if he tells me what I already suspect: that Expelled, here as elsewhere, was not telling the whole story.

For a little further reading, see this review by Carl Hoover, of the Waco Tribune, who attended the same showing I did.

~ by Jared on April 18, 2008.