Expelled did quite well at the box office this past weekend. Released in only 1052 theaters, it came in #9.
A full release would have placed it in the top five.

tothesource has run articles questioning the tactics of the Intelligent Design movement. ID advocates insist that ID does not promote belief in God. This is clearly disingenuous. They often equate evolution, whose proponents may or may not accept providential mutations and selections, with atheistic evolutionism which insists that “religious contaminants” must not “prostitute science” (Huxley), since “a blind, unconscious process” (Dawkins) is sufficient to account for life.

There are other concerns. Do we really want religion taught to our students by biology high school teachers?

Yet tothesource has run numerous articles supporting one of Intelligent Design’s main points; that disciples of dogmatic materialism are becoming increasingly strident to the determent of free scientific inquiry and the free expression of religious belief. This is apparent to anyone who has sat in a science classroom, read a Scientific American magazine or listened to one of the increasingly outspoken proponents of atheistic evolution. Should only one side be allowed to speak? And if science is being taught in an atheistic way in our schools, isn’t that just as unconstitutional as science being taught in a theistic way?

Yes, what to think? There is so much controversy swirling about this film that we asked two distinguished scholars, Dinesh D’Souza of the Hoover Institute at Stanford and John Haught of Georgetown University, to tell us if this film is worth seeing. As you can see, they have very different opinions.

Thumbs up. There are good things in this movie. - by Dinesh D'Souza

In Ben Stein's new film Expelled, there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design holds that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.

So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, "How did life begin?" One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.

In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Moreover, Harold writes that the various components of the cell do not function like random widgets; rather, they work purposefully together, as if cooperating in a planned organized venture. Dawkins himself has described the cell as a kind of supercomputer, noting that it functions through an information system that resembles the software code.

Is it possible that living cells somehow assembled themselves from nonliving things by chance? The probabilities here are so infinitesimal that they approach zero. Moreover, the earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years and the first traces of life have already been found at some 3.5 billion years ago. This is just what we have discovered: it's quite possible that life existed on earth even earlier. What this means is that, within the scope of evolutionary time, life appeared on earth very quickly after the earth itself was formed. Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing? Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?

It is ridiculously implausible to think so. And the absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let's call this the "ET" explanation.

Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can't. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can't bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET. But doesn't it take as much, or more, faith to believe in extraterrestrial biology majors depositing life on earth than it does to believe in a transcendent creator?

Seriously funny

Ben Stein takes on the debate-phobic Darwinian establishment - by Marvin Olasky

Expelled's showing of the connection between evolutionary doctrine and Nazi eugenics has already infuriated some in academia and the media: University of Minnesota professor P.Z. Myers blasted Expelled as "ludicrous in its dishonesty," and Orlando Sentinel reviewer Roger Moore raged about "loaded images, loaded rhetoric." But since a movie is not a dissertation, films show linkages by juxtaposing clips rather than pages of footnoted type. The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?

The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes. When I stalked the stacks of the Library of Congress in the early 1990s, I saw and scanned shelf upon shelf of racist and anti-Semitic journals from the first several decades of the last century, with articles frequently citing and applying Darwin. If you read an anti-Expelled review that dodges the issue of substance by concentrating merely on style, you'll be seeing another sign of closed minds.

April 18 [Expelled's debut] will bring an interesting test of whether Expelled, or any other documentary so conceived and so dedicated, can endure in movie theaters past the first weekend. Michael Moore's fatuous documentaries have done good box office with the help of sympathetic reviewers and network news producers. Ben Stein's excellent one might rely on evangelicals and others who are tired of being ridiculed by the closed minds of the Evolution Establishment.

Some 200 students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary recently got a free sneak preview of the upcoming documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and they gave it high marks.

Running nearly 100 minutes, Expelled documents the stranglehold that Darwinian evolution holds on contemporary science, particularly as it exists within major research universities. The documentary's on-screen host, Ben Stein, shows how even the slightest departure from the Darwinian party line in favor of alternate theories of human origins such as Intelligent Design often brings swift academic and personal discredit upon the scientist proposing an alternative view. It opens in theaters April 18.

"Frankly, I thought I would be bored stiff watching a 100-minute documentary and I couldn't imagine anyone watching a 100-minute documentary in a theater," said James Parker, professor of worldview and culture at the seminary. "But the movie holds your attention to the very end. One of the great strengths was the candid interviews it had with many atheists. For example, [evolutionist] William Provine went down the list of implications of atheism.... His candidness was shocking and appalling in one sense, but in another sense, it was great because it gave you a feeling for the implications of atheism.... The movie also made a great appeal for academic freedom."

Thumbs down. There's no good reason to see it - by John F. Haught

During the highly publicized Dover School Board trial in 2005 I testified for the plaintiffs that teaching “intelligent design” (ID) has no place in public school biology classes.  As the only theologian present, I argued that ID is not only bad science but also a thinly disguised, not to say emaciated, version of theology.  Consequently teaching ID in American public schools is unconstitutional. My testimony may be found online here.

As it turned out, the Dover School Board’s proposal was soundly defeated, and Judge John E. Jones’s decisive ruling will make it harder than ever to sneak ID back into the public schools.  However, the court’s verdict cannot prevent propagandists from producing documentaries that still try to make ID seem like good science. Actor and commentator Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” has spared no expense in attempting to do just that.

“Expelled” might easily have been satisfied with making one more tiresome attempt to convince viewers that ID is a scientifically worthy alternative to evolutionary accounts of our planet’s living diversity. But it goes much further. Its main objective is to arouse sympathy for the handful of scientists whose dissent from “Darwinism” and espousal of ID has led to their being denied tenure and even “expelled”—unjustly as Stein sees it—from well earned academic positions.

Fair-minded people, “Expelled” argues, should find this eviction outrageous. Who will stand up for freedom, Stein imploringly asks as the film ends. Why should departments of science run by atheists get by with exiling just those whose research is powerful enough to put the human mind back in touch with a “higher power”?

In its attempt to show that evolution amounts to atheism, Expelled takes two lines of attack. First, it  places on exhibit, in one embarrassing interview after another, several of the most nakedly atheistic spokespersons for science alive today, all the while tracing their godlessness back to “Darwinism,” the film’s tendentious label for evolutionary biology. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, P. Z. Myers, William Provine, and Peter Atkins almost willingly become Stein’s stooges as he makes his case that evolutionary biology is a mask for materialist atheism. Since these authors have eagerly and openly flaunted their personal belief that Darwinian science entails atheism, they turn out to be Stein’s greatest allies in building up his caricature of academic science as the enemy of religious faith.

Second, “Expelled” further associates evolution with atheism by dipping into the archives of 20th century experiments in human degradation, flashing numerous black and white images of unspeakable atrocities, all allegedly inspired by Charles Darwin. Nazism, eugenics, and the Holocaust, the film proposes, can all be traced back to ideas sprung from the twisted brain of the mild-mannered naturalist from Down House.

It is impossible to list here all that is wrong with this film. Any cinematic cleverness or polemical power it may have achieved is nullified by its willful distortions. Most nauseating is the tiresome juxtaposition of benign images of Darwin with an endless cascade of grotesque depictions of human evil.  Illogically mistaking visual sequencing for causal connection, the documentary violates every canon of fairness and critical thinking.

Most glaring to this reviewer is the movie’s display of ignorance about the nature of science, theology, and the appropriate relationship between the two. Stein’s production gratuitously dismisses two centuries of empirical research, beginning with geology and culminating in genetics, that have provided convergent evidence for evolution. It also confuses the question of life’s origin with that of how life diversifies. But, most annoying of all, “Expelled” simply cannot accept the fact that science is not supposed to “touch a higher power” or decide the truth or falsity of our religious convictions.

Ever since the 17th century, astute minds have agreed that what we now call “science” can tell us only about the natural causes of things. Science does not talk about God, purpose, or values. It can neither affirm nor deny the reality of things divine. Of course, subsequent reflection on scientific discoveries may lead one person to God and another to atheism. But science, strictly speaking, is a self-limiting method of inquiry not equipped to answer theological questions nor permitted to introduce references to the supernatural whenever it gets bogged down in seemingly insoluble problems.

This reserve is not good enough for Ben Stein.  He demands much more from science than did Galileo, Pasteur, or Einstein. A fundamental premise of “Expelled” is that science, if it has any interest in truth, should lead us directly to God. Evolutionary biology must be bad science, therefore, since so many of its students are outspoken atheists.

The documentary rightly notes that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have carelessly alloyed evolutionary biology with a soul-deadening philosophical materialism.  But then Stein & Co. commit a similar sin of methodological impurity by merging a mangled understanding of science with a thinly disguised version of natural theology known as ID. Dawkins deserves rebuke for his ridiculous declaration that science alone is qualified to settle the question of God’s existence. But Stein ends up simply mirroring Dawkins by drawing science into the service of his own vaguely theistic worldview. The only difference is that for Dawkins science should make the case for atheism whereas for Stein it should confirm God’s existence.

One may have hoped that by now scientists, theologians, and philosophers would all have moved far beyond such an embarrassing mix-up of science with belief-systems. Unfortunately, however, evolutionary materialists and ID advocates alike are luring minds back to a prescientific stage of human consciousness when empirical study of nature had not yet been emancipated from dogma and religious preoccupation. 

It should be an annoyance to every true scientist that Dawkins, who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, now wants science to go back to solving theological questions such as God’s existence.  But it should also disturb every religious believer when someone like Stein claims that scientists should now have the “freedom” to let their discipline drift off, without a break, into theological speculation. I doubt that in his impassioned call for scientists to be granted the “freedom” to invoke non-natural explanations in write-ups of their research Stein has any idea how much he has in common with his evolutionary materialist antagonists who also find it convenient to turn science into the servant of ideology.

Both sides fail to understand that a careful differentiation of science from theology is essential to the wellbeing of both. It is not the business of theology ever to provide scientific information. Nor should a believer ever favor or adopt a scientific set of ideas for theological reasons, as theologian Paul Tillich wisely cautioned.  Indeed, as Michael Buckley has shown, it was the careless fusion of theology with Newtonian physics by some early modern Christian thinkers that prepared the way for the Enlightenment distaste for deity. Once it became clear that physics can get along quite well without theological support, scientifically educated people began to wonder whether theology has any relevance at all.  They still do, thanks in great measure to the kind of confusion of theology with science that “Expelled” tries to revive.

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