Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a 2008 independent documentary film, directed by Nathan Frankowski and hosted by Ben Stein. The film contends that the mainstream science establishment suppresses academics who believe they see evidence of intelligent design in nature and who criticise evidence supporting evolution and the modern evolutionary synthesis as a mainstream conspiracy to keep God out of science laboratories and classrooms. The scientific theory of evolution is portrayed by the film as contributing to fascism, the Nazi Holocaust, communism, atheism, abortion, and eugenics. The film portrays intelligent design as motivated by science, rather than religion, though it does not give a detailed definition of the phrase or attempt to explain it on a scientific level. Other than briefly addressing issues of irreducible complexity, Expelled examines it as a political issue.
Expelled opened in 1,052 theaters, more than any other documentary before it, and grossed over $2,900,000 in its first weekend. It earned $7.7 million, making it the 13th-highest-grossing documentary film in the United States (statistics include 1982-present, and are not adjusted for inflation). In July, the movie was re-released allowing groups of 300 to book private screenings in theaters.
The general media response to the film has been largely unfavorable. It received an 8% meta-score from Rotten Tomatoes (later improved to 10% overall) where the film was summarized as "Full of patronizing, poorly structured arguments, Expelled is a cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary." Multiple reviews, including those of USA Today and Scientific American , have described the film as propaganda. The Chicago Tribune's rating was "1 star (poor)," while the New York Times described it as "a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry" and "an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike." One of the few positive reviews appeared in Christianity Today .
The American Association for the Advancement of Science describes the film as dishonest and divisive propaganda, aimed at introducing religious ideas into public school science classrooms. The film has been used in private screenings to legislators as part of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaign for Academic Freedom bills (bills designed to introduce criticism of evolution into school science classes).
Overview
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is described by its promoters as a controversial satirical documentary. Ben Stein provides narrative commentary throughout the film and is depicted as visiting a sequence of universities to interview both proponents of intelligent design who claim to have been victimized and evolutionary scientists who are presented as atheists. The film makes considerable use of vintage film clips, including opening scenes showing the Berlin Wall being constructed as a metaphor for barriers to the scientific acceptance of intelligent design. The film takes aim at some scientific hypotheses of the origin of life, and presents a short animation portraying the inner workings of the cell to introduce the intelligent design concept of irreducible complexity, the claim that such complexity could not arise from spontaneous mutations. The intelligent design proponents shown include David Berlinski, who claims that Darwinism influenced the Nazis. The film also attempts to associate Hitler's ambitions of a master race and the holocaust to Darwinian ideas of survival of the fittest through stock footage film clips such as filmed images of Nazi concentration camp laboratories.
The film addresses the concept of intelligent design itself only superficially, focusing on how it is treated in academia rather than on issues involving the concept itself. It makes almost no attempt to define intelligent design or show any scientific evidence in favor of intelligent design. Instead, the film deals with the subject almost entirely from a political, rather than scientific, viewpoint. Similarly, it critiques evolution without defining it or giving a basic explanation of evolutionary theory.
Promotion of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution
Further information: Intelligent Design and Intelligent Design MovementThe film claims that intelligent design deserves a place in academia. This "design theory" is defined in the film by the Discovery Institute's Paul Nelson as "the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a result of intelligence." Stein says in the film that intelligent design is not taught or researched in academia because it is "suppressed in a systematic and ruthless fashion," although the National Center for Science Education responds that there is no scientific research in the field to suppress, and that because intelligent design cannot be scientifically tested it is not a scientific concept.
In the United States federal court case Kitzmiller v. Dover , intelligent design was ruled to be a strategy to circumvent previous court rulings that have found the teaching of creationism in public school to violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and hence that teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in science classrooms is also unconstitutional. In the film, Stein comments that he thought science was decided by evidence, and not the courts and interviewee Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute, denies that teaching intelligent design in science classes is an attempt to sneak religion into public schools.
Claims that intelligent design advocates are persecuted
The film contends that there is widespread persecution of educators and scientists who promote intelligent design, and a conspiracy to keep God out of the nation's laboratories and classrooms. The film contains interviews with educators and scientists in which they describe this persecution. In the film, Stein says, "It's not just the scientists who are in on it. The media is in on it, the courts, the educational system, everyone is after them." Stein further accuses academia of having a dogmatic commitment to Darwinism, comparing it to the party line of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, which cannot be questioned without severe consequences.
Portrayal of science as atheistic
The film alleges that scientists and the scientific enterprise are dogmatically committed to atheism, and that a commitment to materialism in the scientific establishment is behind the claimed suppression of intelligent design, but fails to say why religious explanations should be inconsistent with the scientific method which only deals with explanations that can be tested or empirically validated. Stein contends that "There are people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can't possibly touch a higher power, and it can’t possibly touch God."
The National Center for Science Education criticizes the film for representing scientists who are atheists as representative of all scientists, without discussing the many prominent scientists who are religious, and thus creates a false dichotomy between science and religion. The associate producer of the film Mark Mathis said they had excluded scientists who are religious, such as Roman Catholic biologist Kenneth R. Miller, because their views would have "confused the film unnecessarily." Mathis also questioned the intellectual honesty of a Catholic accepting evolution. Miller later noted that 40% of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science profess belief in a personal god.
In its review, the Waco Tribune-Herald said "That’s the real issue of Expelled — atheist scientists versus God — even though it wholly undercuts statements by intelligent design researchers early in the film that ID has nothing to do with religion." It described the "failure to cover how Christian evolutionists reconcile faith and science" as "perhaps the film's most glaring and telling omission," and said that the film rather "quickly dismissed by a chain of quotes that brand them as liberal Christians duped by militant atheists in their efforts to get religion out of the classroom." Defending the movie, the producer, Walt Ruloff, said that scientists like prominent geneticist Francis Collins keep their religion and science separate only because they are "toeing the party line." Collins, who was not asked to be interviewed for the film in any of its incarnations, said that Ruloff's claims were "ludicrous."
Claims that Nazism was inspired by acceptance of evolution
Further information: Nazi eugenics, Creationism and Social Darwinism, Nazism and religion, and Adolf Hitler's religious beliefsThe film portrays evolution as responsible for Communism, Fascism, atheism, eugenics, abortion and, in particular, Nazi atrocities in the Holocaust. Film critic Jeffrey Overstreet, writing for Christianity Today , stated that "Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany." Richard Weikart, a DI fellow and historian, appears in the movie asserting that Charles Darwin's work influenced Adolf Hitler. He argues that Darwin's perception of humans not being qualitatively different from animals, with qualities such as morality arising from natural processes, undermines what Weikart calls the "Judeo-Christian conception of the sanctity of human life". Nazi gas chambers and concentration camps figure highly in the narrative of the movie. In the film, intelligent design proponent David Berlinski says that Darwi
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