EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED
When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, it was immediately controversial because it challenged the then-accepted explanations for the origin of life. Today, according to this compelling documentary, co-written and narrated by former presidential speechwriter, TV host and actor Ben Stein (Win Ben Stein’s Money), Darwin’s theories for the origins of life are so entrenched in the U.S. scientific community that to question them is academic suicide.
Stein travels across the United States and Europe to interview scientists who have lost research grants, professorships and tenure at universities because they suggest that the scientific evidence for intelligent design is stronger than the evidence for the origin of species provided by Darwin and his subsequent adherents.
Stein interviews Richard Dawkins, a proponent of Darwinian atheism, who is unable to sustain a logical argument to support his uninformed views about God.
To most of the academics, scientists and observers in the film, Darwin’s theories of evolution (and the origin of species and their negative influence on the scientific and social policies of governments and the world) have failed. The debate, the filmmakers say, will be settled by the scientific evidence, if scientists are allowed to question Darwinism in their research and if teachers may question it in schools.
This film wants to spur audiences to question Darwin’s theories but never acknowledges that intelligent design is a philosophical argument for the existence of God (from Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas) rather than a scientific one. This is an important distinction that Vatican scientists have urged those engaged in the creation/evolution debate to keep in mind a clear voice the film could have used.
Ben Stein’s humor engages, but Expelled may appeal more to creationists than scientists, though it protests that the dogma of Darwinism is an issue of free speech not a religious one. Mature themes and disturbing images.
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