Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Ben Stein shows us a world where Academia's freedom of inquiry might not be so free. This should be a concern for anyone and everyone. This undermines the concept that we will be teaching facts and truth in our universities. However, if you watch how this documentary is formatted you will find that this documentary is overly biased, delving into spectrums of propaganda! Let me explain. Stein sets about proving his premise by interviewing scientists that have been rejected by the establishment. Scientists who have allegedly had their lives ruined because of their belief in something called "Intelligent Design." Science isn't here to persecute people's beliefs and this concept would probably outrage anyone... that is until you realize the lengths he goes to paint science as the root of this evil.
So, we have Stein interviewing scientists that have had their qualifications ruined by the establishment, wouldn't you think Stein should interview people working in the scientific community at the time about this issue? If this persecution of dissidents was happening I would think he'd go and talk to people still working in the field and cite his examples for scrutiny. This never happens. Either Stein is a just a terrible host for a documentary and should stick to the game shows, or he has an agenda. Stein does interview PZ Myers, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott, and the mighty Richard Dawkins for his grand finale, but he never once asks them about the people that were fired or denied tenure. He only sticks to questions concerning how life began.
He doesn't even really talk to them about why Intelligent Design is rejected by the scientific community versus why evolution is taught. He never asks these questions. Michael Ruse, who isn't even credited during his interview (more sloppy documentary work), proposes a possible life beginning scenario involving crystals. This results in Stein asking him again how it's possible... after Ruse just told him and results in what can be interpreted as a rude response from Ruse. This style of filming to show scientists as unwilling to entertain the idea of Intelligent Design pushes the viewer to see science as intolerable.
Seems as though no one on this forum knows how life began. Fine. OK, then how did we get here via the process of evolving? Sorry if that question is too threatening or challenging, just wondering since there seem to be some mighty smart people on this forum.
I reviewed a lot of the comments about this film and it seems as if many say we "got here" by "evolution". This seems to me to be an incomplete or misleading answer since the commenters (at least those defending evolution) don't seem to really know how we "got here". Not to mention the shrillness of the evolution defenders makes me question their confidence. Maybe it's partly a job security thing or a passion for the theory or a hatred of Christian people or all the above.
Wow, that's a load of info to digest. Seems like there is no agreement on the question so I see why you "do not know". Some say extraterrestial. As for Miller/Urey, I found the following on the Duke University site: "There has been a recent wave of skepticism concerning Miller's
experiment because it is now believed that the early earth's atmosphere
did not contain predominantly reductant molecules. Another objection is
that this experiment required a tremendous amount of energy. While it
is believed lightning storms were extremely common on the primitive
Earth, they were not continuous as the Miller/Urey experiment portrayed."
Came upon this site and read some of the comments about this film, have not seen it. Wondering...how did a living being come from a non living substance? Just asking, so spare me the intolerance, personal attacks and ridicule that robertallen and the mod dude seem to be fond of.
Intelligent design does not mean that the study of observable reality is rejected. Take for example The Stretch Factor by Dr. Gerald Schroeder which harmonizes billions of years for the age of the universe with 6 days of creation. The key in this is hermeneutics, i.e. day in Hebrew is yom. Yom can be a literal day or an age (some length of time). Therefore, 6 ages of billions of years. Religion has a history of suppressing science in the west but that does not mean the scientists themselves saw the laws of the natural world as a rejection of God. Now there are religious people and organizations who are trying to right the historical wrong of suppression by becoming more open to what science has to offer. The irony is that now they are the ones who are being suppressed and rejected because of their belief in a designer. A little one sided it seems.
Yes, even very prominent scientists have been fired for believing in the Creator's (intelligent) design. I know personally of just one in particular who in fact for all his life taught evolution in universities etc, but who began to open his mind because of the impossibilities he had turned a blind eye to until he could do this no more! He also opened his mind to the possibility of the existence of God and began searching for Him. He became a Protestant Christian and now preaches and teaches Truth (and there is only ONE Truth and security regarding where we come from, who we are and where we are headed). That meant a great deal of humbling of pride, stripping of all he had been wrongly taught and believed, and now he is a very happy man indeed. God has restored all he lost in this process, to boot. Praise the Lord.
A few thoughts regarding this documentary.
Is it biased? yes, as are all documentaries, on some level. The real question is did the point get through? After reading some of the blogs, the answer is obviously no.
Did people get fired for believing in intelligent design? I have no doubt that the answer is likely yes, (only those involved really know the truth) but the only ones that would be deserving of it, are those who are trying to bring faith into a classroom of science. (they were not all teachers)
One thing this documentary does very well is to remind people that nothing, not even science can give an explanation to the origin of life itself. This doesn't mean by default the answer is god, but serves to bring those who live by absolute proof back to reality, (if they are paying attention) reminding them that science will never be able to answer everything. With that said, any man who can get Richard Dawkins to admit that he isn't 100% athiest, should not be dismissed so easily.
Personally, I found the documentary entertaining, and not so outlandish as the explanation that accompanied it would have us believe. Since this subject matter is so devisive to begin with, hard liners from either side of the equation will not be swayed from their own entrenched beliefs.(when in doubt, run home to momma!) The most important thing that Ben Stein did not address, (it doesn't serve his point) can be found in a documentary called 'intelligent design on trial'. (regarding genetics) It is an excellent documentary; look it up, and check it out. It is well worth the watch!
15:21 - This is the very first large mistake that Mr. Stein makes, among others. Michael Shermer wasn't factually "wrong", as he puts it. Ben Stein heard one side of the three or four stories, proving that he went into this with an already incredibly biased opinion. When Shermer said "there had to have been something else going on", he meant exactly that. In other words, "Mr. Stein, you've clearly only heard, and have been willing to hear, one side of every story, and it's the proponents of intelligent design's story that you're hearing, so of course due to hurt feelings, anger, and contempt over losing their jobs, they're only going to tell you enough to make it out that they did absolutely nothing but mention the two words. They clearly did more than that, or else they wouldn't have lost their jobs." Excellent editing job, but again, Stein just went at this with an already biased opinion on the side of "intelligent design", so he edited it like a Michael Moore film to paint the exact picture that he wanted to paint.
i forced myself to watch the whole thing -- it's the kind of production one might expect in an elementary school setting. no actual science, only opinions. no proof of controversy, just belief. why do people laugh at creationists? to get to the other side.
I am a high school teacher and have found many times that some of my most academically gifted students lack in the area of common sense. Without commons sense, many times it's difficult to see the obvious.
1. Common sense tells me that no human being was available at the beginning to observe how the universe and all its components came into being. Therefore, there is no man nor textbook that can dogmatically verify how it all came into being.
2. Common sense tells me that order cannot come from disorder.
3. Common sense tells me that if it all began with a piece of matter, that piece of matter didn't place itself in the abyss and then decide what its purpose was.
4. Common sense tells me that if it happened billions of years ago, why does it not continually happen again and again?
5. Common sense tells me that I have a mind that I can think with. Neither a piece of matter nor an explosion could have given me that ability.
6. Common sense tells me that if we did evolve, when and why did we stop? Why are humans digressing in their actions and in their emotions rather than progressing?
7. Common sense tells me that I have 2 choices: either to believe that an Intelligent Being (God), someone much smarter than I, created all there is or believe that it all happened by accident.
Since no one was there to observe the beginning, I choose to believe the one that actually makes more sense. I choose to believe God created all. To believe otherwise is to believe all there is is one big accident; therefore, so am I. What a depressing way to live: having no purpose.
Great, what I thought was an open-minded and free community of people, is just as shallow and closed-minded as the rest of the world. Truth hurts, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
It's funny, if you question accepted scientific theories, like evolution, it really is kind of like going before a firing squad. I've never seen anything quite like the rage of some of these evolutionists ...oh, wait, yes, I have... in the Pakistan and Israel conflict. Hmmm. Is evolution the new religion?
By the way, on a side note, I too accept the evolution theory as one possibility for how we came to exist. I think there are a few other viable ones too...like (please don't hurt me) intelligent design and (yes, I'm gonna go there) creatures from the sky messing with our DNA.
All of these theories have issues, I'll grant you, but what else have we got?
In light of the brutal history of persecution perpetrated against scholars and scientists by the religious establishment going back thousands of years, I honestly have no sympathy for bible thumpers getting drummed out of the scientific community. I see it as understandable at worst, and a step in the right direction at best.
Thank you Robertallen1, I do have to admit that this change has been a long time coming. This documentary was just the final nail in the coffin.
I was very excited when I came across this Documentary. I thought, awesome, finally mainstream media is going to give us an honest exploration of truth and wisdom. What I discovered though shook me to my core and down to the very foundations of my faith.
After watching, I could not shake the feeling that something didn't seem right. Seeing the contradictions and down right lies propagated by Ben Steins I had to do some research on his supposed facts. My discoveries not only lead me to the fact that this WHOLE documentary is complete propaganda but that even my own faith and belief in a Christian world view is wrong. Christians, PLEASE, for the love of God, if we want to make a case for truth we need to use truth to make that case.
You can't disprove evolution by disproving Darwinism. There were obviously problems with Darwinism because of how outdated it was, scientists now have better ideas of how evolution works, some supporting Darwinism, some not so much. Nobody in this film directly stated that they were fired/expelled for the reason of their beliefs, and like the skeptic had said, there was probably more going on. What's going on with these individual cases could be nothing more but the known fallacy of causal inference. But to be honest if someone came to work at an auto-body center claiming that a horse and buggy is faster than a car, I don't know how long they would be able to keep their job.
this review is bull*hit. the reviewers are atheists and evolutionists reviewing a creationist film, so get a life and get some creationist reviewers, so this isn't so biased
This is, hands down, the worst 'documentary' I've ever seen.
This documentary is well done. It is thorough, and as a person who dared question the physics of auto-generation of life, I can attest that narrow minded evolutionary bigots do not tolerate even intelligent counterpoints.
Not science. Creationism repackaged. Part of the real push against freedom by wanting religion in schools. Same people wouldn't agree to Hindu or Muslim teachings.
Give me the empirical proof that a painting had a painter. Something beyond the obviousness of its self evident proof. Something happened to create this universe. I like to back my religion up with science, otherwise it's merely superstition.
It is meaningless we can only see so far into the universe and every time were able to see further we see more the odds and possibilities are infinite for life to happen we have way more stars and solar systems then we do casinos and games so why is this so hard to understand. Because we live on a finite world but seriously we should change the word scientific theory to scientific fact so this who only know simple English can understand what we're talking about. It's appalling to me that real scientists who understand this principle could ever say intelligent design is even a possibility anymore or for that matter even call themselves scientists. Shame on you shame on you
Intelligent design is just repackaged creationism but if something "had to create us" what created it and what created that creator and so on and so forth. The only way to explain how it happened is through evolution through time. We already see it has happened with the wolf being domesticated into various dog breeds large and small they have the same DNA. Another thing is everything alive today share a lot of the same genes. There's a nova special on where did we come from we're science has created 2 of the building blocks of RNA just by precipitation and light and although they havnt figured out How the other to molecules came to be its only a matter of time now till they get the rest of the recipe. Chemistry did create all life on earth and we've been evolving since then. Lets say that a slot machine has a one in a million chance for a jackpot it's perfectly possible to hit the jackpot on the millionth try but people also can hit it on the first try. This is the principle of evolution while certainly it could have taken all the try's necessary to "hit the jackpot" the chance of chance happens to be much different with it landing many time before the required try's and once it happens once then life does what it does it reproduces and mutates. Intelligent design is rubbish and anyone who would try to undermine scientific progress by pursuing this is rubbish and should have been fired. Science must come to a conclusion and uh I don't know it must be intelligent design is not acceptable. In science a hypothesis is formed and tested until it teaches the status of scientific "theory". I use quotation marks because people who don't follow science thier whole life's or don't understand it or don't care or even worse have followed religion thier whole life think that theory means a guess. And that is not what scientific theory is. In science theory means fact so we need to change the word I think to simply scientific fact so even idiots can understand that it's the real truth. Germ theory isn't just a guess " uh well I think there's small thing inside my body that are killing me" no germ theory is germ fact there really are small microbes viruses and bacteria everywhere. And we don't say of that's just a theory now do we. Come on people I know it's great to believe that this life is not the only life ill live but the fact is it is my only life and I don't feel like wasting it away for hope that I'll "transcend" my human for that's just plain old stupidity and wanton hope.
This movie is total CRAP!!! Ben Stein claims intelligent design is motivated by science, rather than religion, but it's the same kind of science as "I don't understand how cars work! God must have made them." In other words, ID has nothing to do with science. And for Stein to say that Darwinism contributed to the holocaust is a blatant lie! I've read a lot of the history of world war 2, and there are many references from the Nazis to "providence," and to Hitler and God. The standard issue German army belt buckle said "Gott Mitt Uns," (God is with us). Every German courtroom, throughout WW2 had a crucifix on the wall. I read one biography of Hitler which said that Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, if he had lived in the time of Hitler, would have hailed Hitler as the second coming. Of course, this is nothing new. From the political right we constantly see lies and ignorance.
There isnt a single theory about the creation of the universe that holds up without inventing systems such as "Dark Matter" et. al. Why cant people just believe that we dont possess the so called intelligence to work out the theories of the universe from mathmatical modals.. We cant predict the weather for tomorrow, thats just atmospherics in our own area, never mind trying to predict what collided with what billions of years ago..
Its a moot point.
Is Darwinism right I have no idea, Is ID right, I have no idea, but for ID to be right then those intelligent beings must have come from somewhere. Or were they designed, if so by who.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg..
Darwin..Egg
ID..Chicken