Musings on Ben Stein's Expelled

I know this post is a little late, but last night I watched Ben Stein's Expelled for the very first time. I really enjoyed it for a variety of reasons. I love Ben Stein because he's a good Republican and was on The Wonder Years (BTW, congratulations, Danica!) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I learned from the movie that Intelligent Design is not a specifically evangelical movement, for it contains Jews, Muslims, and even agnostics. And I thought that the movie's depiction of the inside of the cell was riveting in its music, color, and graphical demonstration of complexity.

I also read critiques of the movie, some of which I liked, and some of which I did not care for. Wikipedia, for instance, said that the movie received overwhelmingly poor reviews, in part because it was boring and poorly made. Were these critics watching the same movie? I hope they're not the types who gush at Michael Moore's "documentaries."

One critique is that the pro-ID professors on the movie who lost their jobs or failed to get tenure were not being punished for teaching Intelligent Design. After all, a lot of people didn't get tenure! I'm skeptical about the "official" explanations, though. These professors feel that Intelligent Design had something to do with their fall from academia, and even some of the critical sites point out "problems" in what they were teaching. So I don't believe that them teaching Intelligent Design and them suffering academically are pure coincidence.

As far as Stein's connection of evolution with eugenics and Nazism is concerned, sure, it's not entirely fair. Even if the Nazis used "natural selection" to buttress their agenda, that wasn't Darwin's fault, plus the Nazis didn't necessarily apply evolutionary concepts correctly. Hitler tried to put into place artificial selection, whereas evolution is about natural selection. But religion often is blamed for the acts of bad religious people, so forgive me if I don't shed a tear when Darwinism gets the same treatment!

I agree with critics who point out that Stein quoted Darwin out of context. Stein quotes Darwin as saying that helping the poor and the weak is injurious to the race of man, when Darwin actually states in the next paragraph that we should do those things anyway (see here). Darwin may have been a complex figure. I have heard people try to tie him with racism, but I saw a book in the library not long ago that said he was anti-slavery.

Although the movie presents evolutionist Eugenie Scott claiming that a lot of religious people believe in evolution, I think its overall message is that evolution=atheism, which is bad (in the movie). I agree with critics who say that Ben should have interviewed Kenneth Miller, a staunch evolutionist who is also a devout Catholic. And, while the movie shows a blurb of John Polkinghorne saying that science can't disprove God, it should have also pointed out that Polkinghorne believes in God and evolution.

What's interesting is that both ID supporters and evolutionists act like they're the underdog in the cultural war. Stein presented atheist Richard Dawkins as someone who helped build the "wall" that keeps ID proponents out of science, as if he has a significant amount of power. When I listen to Dawkins' God Delusion, however, I can tell that's not how he feels. In his eyes, he's a voice of reason amidst a sea of numerous people who embrace religious superstition and are eager to persecute those who disagree. Both sides view themselves as victims and outsiders.

Is there a way for dialogue to exist between the two camps? Stein talks as if the persecution of ID-proponents is an attack on academic freedom, which allows people to ask anything they want, even about evolution. ID-proponents apparently want their beliefs to get a fair hearing. But it's not as if evolutionists are unwilling to engage the concept, for they have made arguments about why ID is problematic and how evolution can account for the "gaps" ID claims to identify. Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God contains a lengthy critique of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, and Dawkins engages the argument from design in The God Delusion. Can the two sides find some way to engage one another, without crying to the courts (as evolutionists do) or the local school boards (as conservative Christians do)?

I'm not in the mood right now to get into the arguments of Intelligent Design. Overall, I believe there is design, but I'm open to scientists looking for other explanations. At the same time, I was a little disappointed that Dawkins didn't point out the "flaws" of nature, as many critics of the design argument have done. Instead, he said that aliens are responsible for the design in nature. Go figure!

Whether you agree or disagree, Expelled is a movie worth seeing!