Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

My in-laws were in town this weekend, and that allowed my husband and me to go see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." We saw it Sunday afternoon. I had seen all the trailers on the website before going. This movie is NOT about the arguments of evolution vs. intelligent design. This movie is about intellectual freedom and debate in the scientific community and educational institutions of this country. The PG rating is deserved, as there are several clips of the Nazi concentration camps that a young viewer would find disturbing (and even some of us older viewers).

Let me apologize up front, as I can't remember specific names of all the people interviewed. This is one of the cons of the movie: it only shows the name of each person once.

Ben Stein is the narrator and "star" of this documentary. It starts with an interview with a man from the Smithsonian who was forced out of his job because he published a peer-reviewed paper on intelligent design (also known as I.D.). The interesting thing was the man is an evolutionist. He then interviews a professor whose "contract was not renewed," because she mentioned I.D. on a couple of lecture slides in one of her classes. I want to say she was an evolutionary biologist. There was also an astronomer who didn't get his tenure position because he was asking I.D. questions. And there was another professor whose website was taken down and grant money taken away by his university because he wanted to investigate some of the I.D. questions. And finally, a journalist who was fired because she wrote an article comparing evolution and I.D. side by side, without taking sides. The point being, that it isn't just one or two people this is happening to.

Interwoven with the interviews are clips from old movies and news reels. Sometimes it is a partial phrase to set up the next point, sometimes it is clips from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Some of them are new animated clips in black and white to fit in with the feel of the movie or to explain a concept.

He also interviews several people who are either I.D. supporters, or evolutionists who want to have the debate with I.D. (although, there were only 2 of those). As he digs into it, he interviews a philosopher at either Cambridge or Oxford who says the point is your world view: are you willing to believe in a designer, or do you want to deny the existence of a designer. The evolutionists are so anti-designer/God that it was sad. They get angry. They call I.D. people names rather than argue the points.

From the world view discussion, Ben Stein takes a side trip into the past: Nazi Germany. He goes to a hospital where the Nazi's killed the mentally and physically handicapped, and one concentration camp. The point of this side trip is that Hitler and the physicians and others around him were trying to help evolution along by eliminating the weak and useless. Their reasoning was taking Darwin's theory of evolution to it's logical conclusion. Ben repeatedly says that not all people who believe in Darwinian evolution carry it to this extreme, but the point is that it can be taken to this extreme.

From there he talks about the founder of Planned Parenthood and her belief in Darwinian evolution and using abortion and birth control to keep the poor and disabled from reproducing themselves. Again, not everyone heads down this path, but it certainly is pretty easy to take it to its logical conclusion.

One professor that Ben interviewed was an evolutionist that was willing to have a discussion about I.D. He talked about how studying evolution lead him away from God. He said it was very liberating to not believe in God. He had no purpose, no hope, no life after death, and no free will. My husband and I weren't sure about the "no free will" comment. We guessed he was talking about no free will to accept or reject God. This man brought out my sympathy. I felt sad for him. The man had a brain tumor before and had it removed. He said if it came back, he would take his own life. Ben's voice-over said that shortly after the interview, his tumor had come back.

Ben talks to a biochemist (I think) at one point about the structure of the cell. Back when Darwin wrote his theory, they believed the cell was the smallest unit of life. Now, we know a cell is much more complex. An analogy might be something like, if the cell that Darwin knew was a Buick, what we know today is more like an International Space Station. There are some really neat graphics that take you on a "tour" through a cell, but there is no explanation of what you are seeing. A brief explanation of what we were seeing would have been helpful.

If you are going to this movie to find out the arguments about I.D. vs. evolution, you will be disappointed. This movie is ultimately about the fact that the scientific community is repressing discussion about intelligent design vs. evolution. I would recommend parents of teens heading to college see this, and even teenagers heading to college see this movie. It will open their eyes to the politics of science.