Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Apr 30th, 2008 | By Eric Jensen | Category: Movie ReviewsRating: 
Expelled is Ben Stein’s little piece of propaganda, a screed posing as a documentary. If it is a documentary, it’s in serious trouble; it’s more misguided than An Inconvenient Truth and, if you can imagine, packed with more outright lies than even the works of Michael Moore.
I won’t spend much time here refuting the movie’s foolish Intelligent Design position or going through a point by point explanation of why each of its claims about people who have been professionally and personally ruined by a shadowy, anti-Intelligent Design cabal within academia are completely bogus. That information is easy enough to come by from jillions of different sources. Instead, I’ll look at it as a movie. Since it bills itself as a documentary, the question is therefore if it is a good documentary, and the answer is a big, bold no.
As implied by the name, a documentary should document things. That’s as opposed to, you know, just making shit up, which is precisely what’s been done here. Each of the people the movie sets up as some kind of martyr for the cause of Intelligent Design tells a story that’s made up almost from whole cloth. The details of the true stories behind the paranoid nonsense these people are spewing are all there to be easily found, and they paint a much less sinister picture. But since Expelled tries—poorly—to convince us that all discussion of Intelligent Design is unfairly stifled by cruel scientific juntas, the rather mundane truths were simply not good enough, I guess.
Apart from obvious lies, there’s the whole problem of technique, the terrible way in which the lies and misinformation are presented. To begin with are a number of obvious rookie mistakes. Throughout, Stein does such things as equate correlation with causation and improbability with impossibility, both of which any high school science student could tell you are thoroughly wrong. Another beginner’s error is the notion that this issue, or any other, is a straightforward either/or thing; if evolution is wrong—and Ben Stein believes it is—then Intelligent Design must be the answer. This movie would have you believe that the disproving of one thing is the same as proving another, which everyone knows is not the case. Of course, this movie also does nothing to “disprove” the idea of biological evolution, but whatever.
So what other things are wrong with this “documentary?” It uses music like “Spirit in the Sky” to sway emotion and opinion, for one thing. For another, it uses clips from classic movies—classic fictional movies—to do the same thing. Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein is used to suggest that all scientists are dangerous maniacs; a moment from The Wizard of Oz is intended to convince you that evolution—the single most robust theory in any branch of science—is nothing but an elaborate smokescreen and that scientists are merely hoping you’ll pay no attention the man behind the curtain.
Absurd claims are made, such as that all biologists are secretly creationists (and Intelligent Design is the same as creationism, despite what Stein would have you believe). Crystals are implied to be as phony a thing as crystal balls. Interviews with respected scientists were obtained by lying to them and saying the interviews were to be conducted for an entirely different, much less biased film. Stein talks down to one interviewee, making the poor woman look like a complete idiot on camera for no reason other than to show off how brainy he is. Quote mining is rampant and grievous. And a big ol’ chunk of the film deals with what amounts to an argumentum ad hominem, one of the big logical fallacy no-nos in any kind of rational argument.
And who is that hominem that’s being argumentumed? Why, Hitler of course! Hitler liked Darwin‘s theory, says Stein, and so it must be evil. A lengthy section of the film is dedicated to discussion of how Hitler’s Germany was all about Social Darwinism. What it never says is that, oh, Social Darwinism is a misapplication of Darwinian evolution and actually has nothing to do with the biological theory that Charles Darwin put forth. Evolution is part of the science of biology. So-called “Social Darwinism” is no more a legitimate interpretation of evolution than if it were applied to astronomy or library science. One of his interviewees even says as much, pointing out that the Nazis “in particular wanted to apply Darwin to society,” but Ben Stein never chimes in with, “Oh, so they wanted to use it for something it had nothing to do with?” So not only is Stein’s playing of the Nazi card just a bad argument, it’s not even a bad argument against the thing he wants to argue about.
Stein does point out, graciously, that not all evolutionary biologists become genocidal madmen. But he also recommends discarding the idea of Darwinian evolution because somebody could use it like that again and before you know it we’ll have Geheime Staatspolizei marching down Main Street, U.S.A. Yet at a couple of points in the movie Stein claims, somehow with a straight face, that his real purpose with the movie is just to stop the alleged suppression of the idea of Intelligent Design in what is supposed to be a free society. And speaking of suppression of ideas, let’s not forget how the filmmakers were kicking people out of pre-release screenings for fear they might raise dissension. Good work, guys!
So as a documentary, it totally fails. Of course, the movie isn’t a documentary at all, but that’s how it bills itself. What Expelled really is is a propaganda piece, pure and simple. Aside from everything else, the stirring call to action at the end of the film makes that abundantly clear. You may lose your job or have your personal life made a shambles by those evil scientists, says Stein, but go out there and preach the gospel of Intelligent Design anyway! The problem then becomes the fact that it isn’t any good as a propaganda movie, either. It plods along in a grandly tedious fashion. It makes the guy championing the cause look like a dick as he talks down to perfectly nice people and makes Richard Dawkins wait to be interviewed while he (Stein) fucks around in his car doing nothing. And, oh yeah, it sucks. For all the complaining Stein does about the Nazis, maybe he should have taken just one page from their book, because Leni Riefenstahl sure made better propaganda.
I laughed—uproariously—a number of times, but always at the movie, never with it. Everyone else in the theater (a crowd amounting to about four other people) was taking notes just like I was; they were all only watching the thing so they’d know how to tear it apart. They didn’t take it seriously and neither should you. It’s garbage.
No, worse than that, it’s obvious garbage.
Related posts:
The whole title was: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). KAMPF was a direct translation from that ‘Struggle’. There was, supposedly, not enough Lebenstraume. That’s why in the industrial revolution in England 12 year old proletariat girls had to work over 100 hours a week. Malthus set the paradigm that is today very relevant even to Islamist terrorists. They believe that unconscious myth that there is not just enough space for us all.
Stein is under heavy attack for ‘exaggerating’ or ‘going easy’ on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the ‘Politics-is-applied-biology’ Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I.
Catch 22: Haeckel’s 140 years old fake embryo drawings have been mindlessly recycled for the ‘public understanding of science’ (PUS) in most biology text books until this millennium, although Haeckel’s crackpot raging Recapitulation/Biogenetic Law and functioning gill slits of human embryos have been at the ethical tangent race hygiene/eugenics/genocide, infanticide, and Freudian psychoanalysis (subconscious atavisms). Dawkins is the Oxford professor for PUS - and should gather the courage of Stephen Jay Gould who could feel ashamed about it.
The marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between “white” and “colored races” was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).
The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould’s scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87).
So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the ‘Up’ of the ancient city from Plinius’ Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17). Today, Swedish state church is definitely the most liberal in the face of the world.
Hitler’s formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the “Nordics”, a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel’s position on the ‘Judenfrage’ was assimilation and Expelled-command from their university chairs, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?
In 1917 the immigration of “defective” groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census.
Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the “nordic” balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).
Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,
and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the “yellow” group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.
Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century. And she went Full Monty.
Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. In England, they are fertilizing human embryos for research purposes and pipetting chimera embryos of humans and monkeys, ‘legally’. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.
I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.
You may read more on the matter from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline/edit them a ‘bit’):
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf
pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm
Yeah…
Anyone else have something they’d like to copy and paste?
Dear Pauli,
Banning something and pretending that it doesn’t exist will never, ever, be the solution to regulating and moralizing it’s impact.
I’m developing some kind of dangerous obsession, I think. I keep reading that comment over and over and over, hoping against hope that it will eventually assemble itself into something that makes sense. The sentences all say something (though not always in the most grammatical way), but what do they mean when they’re all put together like that? There has to be a point in there somewhere, right? Otherwise, why bother? But I can’t find the damned thing, and so I’m doomed to repeat the same action over and over in a futile attempt to produce a different outcome.
Dude! Like that time Mulder kept blowing up in the bank!
Furthermore!
Consider the phrase “Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)”
Doesn’t that make you wish for another Wayne’s World movie? Wayne and Garth: Masters of Schwing.