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As I sat through opening night of Ben Stein's movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the words H.L. Mencken wrote at the conclusion of the Scopes Monkey Trial kept running through my mind:
" ... even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge."
After a several months long road show, in which producers held private sneak previews for largely sympathetic evangelical audiences, the film, released by Premise Media, opened nationwide Friday. The movie's essential point is that academics who believe in intelligent design -- the concept that life's complexity demands a divine guiding hand -- are being persecuted and that an oppressive and orthodox scientific establishment is quashing dissent in an all-out attack on free speech. Best known for his dead-pan delivery in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Stein co-writes, narrates and stars in the film.
I saw the movie at a theater in Harrisburg, Pa., the town in which the 2005 trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover took place and federal Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design was repackaged creationism, a religious notion masquerading as science.
As a journalist who sat through every day of the trial, I can tell you that this movie is a slick misleading piece of shrill propaganda. It misrepresents science, religion and intelligent design. It exploits both the concept of democracy and the victims of the Holocaust.
Stein and the film's producers work overtime to link the scientific community's refusal to accept intelligent design as an attack on free speech. They use heavy-handed imagery to draw comparisons -- the Berlin Wall being a recurring theme. Before a staged audience, Stein paraphrases Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech as clips are shown of black people being attacked during the Civil-Rights Movement. He refers to scientists only as "Darwinists" or the "elite establishment."
But in trying to present his case that intelligent design has not been given the fair hearing that it deserves, Stein commits a serious blunder and contradicts his own message.
The first half of the movie is devoted to explaining how intelligent design is not religion. Bruce Chapman of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute is interviewed and adamantly explains that, despite what all the mainstream science organizations and academies say, intelligent design is most definitely science. He argues it's not religion because the designer is never named, so they are not necessarily talking about God. The only explanation of intelligent design ever presented in the movie is that it's the "study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a product of intelligence."
But then, using Johnny Cash's version of "Personal Jesus" as a segue, the filmmakers seem to completely forget their earlier message. The rest of the movie is devoted to proving that atheistic scientists hate God and are trying to suppress intelligent design because, well, it's all about belief in God.
Evolutionary biologist and famed atheist Richard Dawkins is the linchpin to this argument. And honestly, in this context, Dawkins makes a rather effective tool. He comes across as more than a bit arrogant in his dismissal of all faiths. He agrees there is a war between religion and science. Dawkins said he was misled about the purpose of the interview, but even so, I have to think he should have known better.
Still, Dawkins does not speak for all scientists and there are many who embrace evolutionary theory and still believe in God.
Most of the people who see this movie will undoubtedly be Christian evangelicals who have closed their minds to anything but a literal interpretation of the bible. (Premise Media's media campaign has targeted conservative churchgoers.) But there will also be a few perhaps who know little about science, but who nonetheless come with an open mind. They will walk away from the theater with some sadly erroneous ideas.
Despite what the movies leads one to believe, there is no such thing as intelligent-design research. Money spent on ID goes to bankroll glossy marketing campaigns, such as Expelled, and to lobby lawmakers, as with the "academic freedom" bills being pushed now in state legislatures across the country.
See more stories tagged with: science, religion, creationists, darwin, evolution, intelligent design
Lauri Lebo is the author of Devil in Dover: An Insider's Account of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America, which chronicles the 2005 First Amendment battle of Kitzmiller v. Dover, in which a federal judge ruled that intelligent design was merely repackaged creationism.
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