Gairney Bridge

I went to see the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed yesterday evening. I had free tickets, complements of Campbellsville University. I was actually planning to go see the movie during a Saturday matinee (cheaper, of course), but free is pretty hard to beat. The theater was pretty full (80-90%), and there was even a good bit of applause at the end (unusual for a movie these days, in my experience).

There has been a lot of hoopla over the movie, and most of it has not been of the kind variety. For instance, if one were to peruse the collection of reviews at the Rotten Tomatoes website, one might leave with the distinct impression that this is a real stinker (as of today, Expelled only generated a 9% rating, which translates into only 2 out of 23 reviews being positive — and one of those positive reviews was from Christianity Today!). Expelled has its own particular ax to grind, to be sure, but in looking at the comments of many of the reviewers, let’s just say the local hardware store must have had a sale on wood-cutting equipment. Consider some of the following comments:

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time…. (Jeanette Catsoulis of the New York Times; that’s a mighty lofty accolade, but I can’t find where Mrs. Catsoulis reviewed An Inconvenient Truth or any of Michael Moore’s documentaries, so I’m not sure how accurate the measuring bar is on this one)

The movie itself is an example of design by faith and emotion rather than intelligence, defined as rationality grounded in proof. (Nell Minow of the Chicago Sun-Times)

[Y]ou need to see this movie because these people are not going away… (oops, that’s not really a film critic, but someone who calls herself the “Flick Filosopher” ranting on her own blog)

Using loaded language and loaded imagery, Stein and Co. … equate evolution with atheism, lay responsibility for the Holocaust at the feet of Charles Darwin, interview and creatively edit biologists and others (scientists apparently “cast” for their eccentric appearance) to make them look foolish for insisting that science, not religion, can explain creation. (Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, who apparently saw a different movie than the one he wrote the review about; actually, Mr. Moore’s review deserves special mention for the venomous nature of his own rant, which rivals that of the “Flick Filosopher” above, sans the profanity).

It probably does say something about the controversial nature of a film when a reviewer must resort to a steady stream of fallacious appeals to ridicule in order to write the review. Why not comment on production values instead of another rant on behalf of the Richard Dawkinses of the world? Isn’t that what film critics are supposed to do, rather than fancy themselves to be spokesmen for science? But I digress.

If you’ve made it through this much of my musings, you’re probably wondering if the movie is worth seeing.

I’m not a big documentary fan, so I may not be the best judge in that area. The film is well-made if you’re into that sort of thing. The production values are high and Mr. Stein is an entertaining fellow (he even pokes fun at himself a bit). It also seems to do a good job of documenting the various cases of folks that have received some sort of scrutiny for daring to suggest anything resembling intelligent design (which the film mentions is unfairly defined as creationism; this is one of the reasons that I think Mr. Moore, above, may have been mistaken about which movie he was viewing). There are a couple of slow spots, but overall it moves well and keeps the interest of the moviegoer. Possibly the most entertaining portions of the film are the interviews with those scientists who are opposed to ID — some are very nice, some of quite nasty, and at least one (William Provine) is, well, a bit difficult to classify (you’ll just have to see him for yourself!). There is a segment near the end of the film where Stein interviews Dawkins that is just about worth the price of admission, so I suspect the segment will find its way onto YouTube one of these days.

I would like to see this movie do well, and it does need to be seen by those who might be unaware of the academic escapades that are affecting some scientists. It is difficult to get a valuable evaluation when the well has been poisoned by one side in particular prior to the opening of the movie (but it is amusing to find movie reviewers suggesting that folks with Ph.Ds aren’t really scientists). Training in logical thinking isn’t really popular either these days, so fallacies aren’t hard to come by anymore. If that was a stock that was being publicly traded, I’d be buying shares and telling all my friends to do the same.

If you’ve got $8 or $10 to burn, go see the movie. I doubt many will be swayed one way or another by it, though. It does put forth some stories that otherwise might get buried by the mainstream media. But the fervor this is generating should be proof enough that something is amiss. Someone doth protest too much methinks.

If interested, viewing this interview between R.C. Sproul and Ben Stein on the subject of naturalism might be profitable.

UPDATE: In the original post, I forgot to include this quote from a local paper (that would be the paper published by our friendly neighborhood giga-church, the same I referenced in a post below). You’re probably going to hear complaints from some of the evolutionists featured in the film, about how they’ve been misrepresented, etc. However, consider these words from one of the folks associated with Expelled:

Although some interviewees are raising a ruckus about the film, Steve Schmidt, director of distributing, said ‘every person was told this film would be about the conflict between Intelligent Design and Evolution, each person was given the questions in advance if they desired, each person was paid, and every one of them cashed their check. Our conscience is totally clean regarding the film — we misrepresented nothing.’

In this case, following the money trail would be a pretty good indicator, imho.