Movie Review: EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed
Ben Stein hosts this documentary about the censoring of free speech and throught in the world of academe. Several college/university professors are profiled who lost their jobs merely for mentioning "Intelligent Design" in papers or in class; hence the title: EXPELLED: No Intelligence (as in Intelligent Design) Allowed. Ben uses the Berlin Wall (scenes of its construction, existence, and fall are seen throughout) as a motif to illustrate the wall surrounding and cutting off free thought in academic circles.
Interviews with noted Darwinists/Atheists like Richard Dawkins illustrate their "faith" in Darwinian Evolution as the ultimate way to dethrone God and explain the origin of life while they all admit that they have no idea how it could possibly have happened. Some, like Dawkins, even go to the absurd length of Panspermia (the idea that advanced extraterrestrial aliens seeded this planet, and perhaps the galaxy, with life having evolved from nothing themselves first, of course), in effect advocating a form of Intelligent Design without calling it that. Heaven forbid we ascribe any intelligence or creativity to God!
A rather poignant moment is when Ben Stein, a Jew, goes to Germany to view a place where Hitler had numerous Jews gassed. The guide confirms to Ben that Darwin was the main reason Hitler gassed Jews, and others deemed inferior like the handicapped and retarded, was to accelerate the evolution, or breeding, of a more pure race of people. After all, if we are nothing more than evolved animals, why not be treated as such? Evolution removes any moral considerations. If we are not created in the image of God, then we are essentially nothing more than glorified lab rats to be experimented on or killed on a whim.
A few professors are interviewed with their identities concealed for fear of jeopardizing their careers, prompting Ben to end the film by asking if no one will stand up openly to the stifling of free inquiry in science now, who will? Like his character in Ferris Bueller, he repeatedly asks: "Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?" Maybe Ben should follow this up with a division of David Horowitz's campaign for academic free speech focusing on science in the classroom.*
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*NOTE: Ben Stein has joined with the Discovery Institute to advocate for academic freedom. See their petition at the link below.
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posted by Postmann | 10:31 PM
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