I saw 'Expelled' (Open Spoilers!)

I saw Expelled: no Intelligence Allowed a little while ago. I don’t know if anyone else will have seen it - it’s not the most-watched film of the season, and I even took care to buy a ticket for a different movie so my money wouldn’t go to the producers of this film.
The primary point of the movie is to claim that advocates of a form of creationism called “Intelligent Design” are systematically purged and discriminated against with restrictions on free speech that could lead to a new Holocaust.

It is tempting to think that I am using the words “new Holocaust” in a form of hyperbole. However, the film itself appeals to the Holocaust, with Ben Stein visiting a Nazi asylum and a concentration camp. Images from the building of the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust, Stalin’s reign in the Soviet Union, and ‘50s science fiction movies form about a third to half the footage in the movie.

Ben Stein opens the movie by talking about academic freedom and claims that academic freedom is being threatened. He then interviews people he claims have been subject to a purge by biologists.

Next, Stein seeks out advocates of Intelligent Design (primarily from the Discovery Institute, an Intelligent Design-focused think tank.) He spends an inordinate amount of screen time (probably 3 or 4 minutes) asking Seattleites where the Discovery Institute is, presumably to demonstrate the Discovery Institute is a small David against the Goliath of ‘Big Science,’ but in the 21st century it just makes him appear incompetent at using Mapquest. He also interviews philosophers and mathematicians. A distinct difference can be seen in the film’s interviews with evolutionary biologists. Where the Discovery Institute’s fellows and the philosophers are generally interviewed in good light – outside or well-lighted offices - the evolutionary biologists are interviewed with dark backgrounds. Also important is the fact that every evolutionary biologist interviewed (Sternberg is a taxonomist) is an atheist. Stein did not speak to any evolutionary biologists who are theists, such as Ken Miller Kenneth R. Miller - Home Page, most likely since that would undermine his next point.
The final section of Expelled conflates evolutionary biology with atheism, and boils down to an easy equation:

Atheism + scientists = Darwin + eugenics = Hitler’s genocide + (I’m not kidding) Planned Parenthood

It seems like some bad parody of an internet argument gone wrong, but the whole point of the last third of the movie is that scientists believe in evolution not because of evidence but because they are atheists who want to push their atheism on the rest of us, and this atheism with the justification of Darwin makes eugenics and the Holocaust possible.
Perhaps the most “gotcha” moment in the film occurs at the very end, when Stein asks Richard Dawkins if there’s any way Dawkins could imagine intelligent design being correct. Dawkins responds by discussing the idea of panspermia (which if you read Dawkins’ books, you know he disagrees with.) Panspermia is the idea that life on Earth did not originate on Earth, that it instead arrived from elsewhere. There is no evidence for panspermia, but it can be related to intelligent design. Dawkins says that if intelligent design were taken as a given, then intelligent aliens a long time ago could have engineered some seed of life that landed on Earth, and spread from there. The filmmakers did an excellent job of making Dawkins look like a fool – the other people in the theater chuckled when they heard Dawkins mention aliens. What they failed to realize is that Dawkins was talking about intelligent design instead of his own beliefs.
In short, Expelled is a propaganda film designed to advance a single point of view – that scientists are atheists who use evolution to support crimes against humanity and free speech. That someone thought it worthwhile to spend $9 or $10 million to make and market this movie is a testament to the twisted priorities of discourse on controversial subjects in America.

Anyone else see it or have thoughts on the movie?

I was gonna until you spoiled it, yeesh!

Check here for a good review of the movie. I’m not going to waste my time watching it. What’s a revelation to me is Ben Stein’s complete ignorance and disregard for science. And I used to think he was a smart guy. No more.

I saw it, driven by morbid curiosity and a desire to be able to remove the “you didn’t see it” defense from potential debates (Stein did not get my 9 buck, though. Stop-Loss got it).

I pretty much concur with the OP. It was basically Creationist Internet Drivel: The Motion Picture.

The most grating thing to me (besides the incessant Godwinism), was Stein’s constant use of the word “Darwinism,” and his wold application of the word to anything and everything. He literally does not know (or at least pretends not to know) the definition of the word “evolution,” and basically sees his imaginary ideology of “Darwinism” as being synonomous with atheism.

The movie is like one of those internet creationists who gets everything so wrong and so twisted that you don’t know where to start with addressing it, and you know you’d be wasting your time anyway.

Going into a movie you didn’t buy a ticket for is stealing. It’s stealing from Peter and giving it to Paul, but even so. If you’re not willing to give them your business, you have no business watching the movie in the theater. (When it comes on your cable, you’ve already paid for access.)

wevets, was there anything you thought the movie got right? (Hard to imagine how, given their premise.)

I paid for access to the theater - they got their money, I just don’t feel any particular obligation to the producers of this film. They want to lie to me, they can’t expect the pleasure of me paying for the privilege. :wink:

That’s an interesting question - I was pretty thoroughly unimpressed. I think there was very little the film got even close to right. There was one interesting portrayal of an interviewee who I think was an atheist professor from Texas (not sure what he was a professor of - for anyone who has seen the film, he was the skinny guy with glasses and one of those string ties) - but he seemed quite cranky, inflamed and alarmed. I believe there are atheists like that (although I don’t by any stretch imagine it to be representative or a fair portrayal.) I also believe the Discovery Institute people do actually think they’re David against a Goliath - irrelevant as that is to whether they’re correct or not.
PS - Sorry Bryan Ekers - you can still see it for the recreational outrage effect though!

Moderator inserts: At the request of the OP, I have added a Spoiler Warning to the thread title, although I don’t think any of this is really “spoiler.” Spoiler, in my mind, involves some plot twist that was unexpected – the solution to a mystery, say, or some similar surprise to the audience. There’s nothing you’ve described that’s in any way unexpected. I think Bryan’s comment was a joke.

Whether you feel it or not, you have an obligation to the producers of the film, because you consumed the (dubious) entertainment/information service they were offering for sale. You snuck in and consumed an entertainment (or whatever you’d want to call it) product without paying for it; you’re a thief. I don’t want to give them any of my money – and therefore will not be seeing the movie (except possibly later on cable).

If you want to redeem yourself, buy a ticket for Expelled and then throw it away. Tossing it may provide some satisfaction, and it will even things up. (Or, once you’ve bought the Expelled ticket, feel free to sneak into the movie for which you previously bought a ticket when you saw Expelled.) Otherwise you remain a thief.

Thanks for your insights about the movie, though. I wonder if it’ll have much impact one way or another on anybody. We might start seeing that stupid Darwin—>Holocaust idea more often.

I bought a ticket for another movie too. I wasn’t going to give Ben Stein any of my money. If you want to accuse me of “stealing,” I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

This seems like a question of “Which is worse, stealing or lying?”

Quite. Though I may check it out sooner or later if segments end up on youtube or cable TV.

Anyway, the plot described in the OP isn’t what I’d call Shyamalesque. Creationist makes dopey arguments, uses quotes out of context, relies on sloppy editing and appeal to ignorance, bear shits in woods, film at eleven.

At the risk of overexposing my unabashedly unguilty love for the man, I am going to add this movie to my increasingly long list of movies that would be much better with “Michael Bay’s” as the first two words of the title. :smiley:

I was wondering how long it would take before the slightly condescending tones of the “You’re Stealing” crowd chimed in. Four posts. Not bad.

I saw it as well, and Like Diogenes, Stop Loss got my nine bucks.

A shame that Ben Stein was too busy in 1973 sniffing Richard Nixon’s seat cushion to have missed this better last word on the same topic.

“Slightly”? Look, I’m not going to resort to smilies. Let’s stipulate that I’m being more than slightly condescending.

Done.

We haven’t yet heard from Stein whether he’d prefer to complain about his movie being derided by people who haven’t seen it, or to complain about his movie being seen by people who didn’t pay for it. He only gets one.

Until now I had no interest in the film whatsoever, but your sermonette has inspired me to join the thieves’ guild.

Hopefully I can find a pirate copy online somewhere so I don’t have to go all the way to the theater to steal food from Benny’s table.

He’s smart enough to advocate a point of view which virtually guarantees interest by and profit from a certain niche of the viewing public. His intellectual honesty and semantic rigor, on the other hand, is open to question.

Which you knew going in, so why bother going to see it?

I work with a number of pseudo-Creationist closet (and some not so closeted) fundies who insist that “you really need to see this movie!” (I try to make it a point not to get involved in these kinds of discussions with people with whom I work, but on more than one occasion I’ve been incautious about concealing my lunchtime reading, which has included The Voyage of the Beagle, Mayr’s What Evolution Is, and a variety of Dawkins and Gould books.) My response is that if the points made in this film are so revolutionary and clearly accessible to even a layperson, they should be able to reiterate and defend them successfully to me. So far I haven’t had any takers. I wouldn’t waste my time actually watching the film any more than I would a Michael Moore “documentary”, as it is clear from the trailer that intellectual dishonesty and semantic manipulation will be employed as a matter of course. I’ll discuss the issue of Intelligent Design with anyone educated on the topic of biology and zoology; I’m not going to sit in the dark and watch two hours of unmitigated pandering bullshit.

Stranger

So as not to hijack this thread, a discussion of the ethical merits associated with paying for one movie and seeing another may be joined here.