# Ben Stein's new movie Expelled **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 23, 2008, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482 "2008-03-23T23:44:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/261 "2008-05-01T19:43:06Z")
> [@Ben Stein](#): > > Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people. Nice conflation there; implies that compassion and empathy are synonymous with religious belief, but incompatible with science. (Could have sworn I read about people being killed before the scientific method was developed. _Lots_ of people.) ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/262 "2008-05-01T19:45:43Z")
> [@Ben Stein](#): > > Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people. Remember when Jonas Salk famously said, “Kill them all, and let your nonexistent God sort them out!”? Science-loving bastard. Jesus, we could riff on Ben’s quote all day. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/263 "2008-05-02T00:32:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed The stormtroopers and Sonderkommando and other death camp personnel were all ‘scientists’? Learn something new everyday I suppose. (Yes, I’m familiar with Josef Mengele, but he didn’t actually send them to the gas chambers.) I wonder how Stein will respond to his and the movie’s censure by the [(Jewish) AntiDefamation League](http://adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5277_52.htm): > [@](#): > > ADL Press Release: > The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory. > … > Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. [QUOTE=Bosstone] I wonder if Jimmy Kimmel will make a speech denouncing his relationship with Ben Stein. [/QUOTE] I think he’s filming a video about it with Stein and Sarah Silverman called “I’m Fucking Retarded”. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/264 "2008-05-02T00:36:12Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] I think he’s filming a video about it with Stein and Sarah Silverman called “I’m Fucking Retarded”. [/QUOTE] That was great, I am so stealing that. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/265 "2008-05-02T00:40:15Z")
I don’t understand; by tarnishing science with the brush of the Holocaust so, and by saying “science leads to killing people”, is Ben Stein meaning to suggest that science, all of science, is bad and we should stop engaging in its practice? I mean, because that’s a lot of damage beyond just “Don’t believe them when they argue for evolution”. That’s “Throw out your television, your computer, your refrigerator, your microwave, and your car, stop seeing doctors, refuse to travel by plane, and try your best not to learn any physics or chemistry”. Among a hundred other things; the scope is so ridiculously unnarrowed. Even for a creationist, wholesale condemnation of science seems over-the-top. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/266 "2008-05-02T01:42:17Z")
[QUOTE=Indistinguishable] Even for a creationist, wholesale condemnation of science seems over-the-top. [/QUOTE] Especially when you just used digital cameras/airplanes/cars/credit cards/etc. to make and promote said movie. A debate could be had perhaps about “are there some truths that should not be pursued” or “is some information inherently dangerous” (i.e. should we pursue cloning or using genetic modification to engineer a super race or whatever) but to condemn the whole field destroys whatever filament thin credibility he might have had. Blaming Darwin for the Holocaust, even if you could prove that there is some supposed connection twixt _SOCIAL_ Darwinism (a gross corruption that Darwin himself denounced) and Nazism, is roughly like blaming Alexander Graham Bell for cyber crime or Henry Ford for drunk drivers. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/267 "2008-05-02T01:53:29Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] Especially when you just used digital cameras/airplanes/cars/credit cards/etc. to make and promote said movie. A debate could be had perhaps about “are there some truths that should not be pursued” or “is some information inherently dangerous” (i.e. should we pursue cloning or using genetic modification to engineer a super race or whatever) but to condemn the whole field destroys whatever filament thin credibility he might have had. Blaming Darwin for the Holocaust, even if you could prove that there is some supposed connection twixt _SOCIAL_ Darwinism (a gross corruption that Darwin himself denounced) and Nazism, is roughly like blaming Alexander Graham Bell for cyber crime or Henry Ford for drunk drivers. [/QUOTE] I think it’s even dumber than that. At Bell and Ford invented the things that get misused. Darwin didn’t invent Natural Selection, he basically just discovered it. Blaming him for the Holocaust is like blaming Isaac Newton for someone getting pushed off a roof. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/268 "2008-05-02T01:57:05Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] …Blaming him for the Holocaust is like blaming Isaac Newton for someone getting pushed off a roof. [/QUOTE] Even if ‘someone’ was a Jew? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/269 "2008-05-02T02:06:00Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] Blaming Darwin for the Holocaust, even if you could prove that there is some supposed connection twixt _SOCIAL_ Darwinism (a gross corruption that Darwin himself denounced) and Nazism, is roughly like blaming Alexander Graham Bell for cyber crime or Henry Ford for drunk drivers. [/QUOTE] Right, but what gets me specifically is that the way he phrases it goes even much further than this. This isn’t just condemnation of people who research or voice support for evolution or connected matters; this is (or at least sounds like) condemnation of the entirety of science, no matter how far removed from such questions as supposedly addressed by intelligent design theory, as though the entire departments of physical sciences should be removed from universities and no one should ever again put on a labcoat or whip out a calculator in pursuit of knowledge about the world. Ire directed at Darwin I could see, at biologists more generally, ok, but at everyone else too? What’d they do? It’s just so amusingly sloppy, the way he throws his muck about. It’s not just like blaming Ford for drunk driving; it’s like considering Isaac Singer and Johannes Gutenberg responsible as well, and taking Eli Whitney and Jonas Salk to task for their role in the advent of cybercrime. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/270 "2008-05-02T11:01:58Z")
It’s worse than that. It’s a condemnation of logical thought. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/271 "2008-05-02T13:52:35Z")
I wonder where Ben Stein got those faith-based eyeglasses he wears. I’m pretty sure Lenscrafters uses the science of optics, so he couldn’t have got them there or it would have led Ben to start killing people as soon as he put them on. Does the Vatican gift shop sell them perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2008, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/272 "2008-05-03T10:06:30Z")
Pain is watching Glenn Beck interview Ben Stein. It becomes a Burridan’s Ass situation of which one would you bitch slap first. [Excerpt](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHbdMbSLfb4) of an earlier interview twixt them, but Beck’s fellating him even more enthusiastically on the show this week. Has Stein been on any shows where the hosts are critical in promoting this movie? I know that most people on a promo tour want inane hosts in general, but most aren’t promoting a documentary with a clear and controversial thesis. Michael Moore, to give him his due, has gone on the shows of extremely conservative “put the host in hostile” shows when promoting some of his documentaries (and since they usually play as loosely with facts and critical thinking as he does he usually does okay) but has Stein been on _Daily Show_/_Colbert_ or anyone else who would call shenanigans? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/273 "2011-06-08T01:35:59Z")
Resurrectio! You can now own the movie Expelled if you’re interested. I don’t mean on DVD- [you can own the movie](http://ncse.com/news/2011/06/expelled-block-006695). > [@](#): > > \*Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed \*— the 2008 creationist propaganda movie fronted by Ben Stein — is scheduled to be auctioned, lock, stock, and barrel, pursuant to the bankruptcy proceeding of Premise Media Holdings LP. > … > The auction is scheduled to take place on-line from June 23 to June 28, 2011. It’s tempting to make a $20 bid just to see if it hits. More likely it’ll be bought by a religious broadcasting channel and aired constantly. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/274 "2011-06-08T02:26:23Z")
[Nelson]HA ha![/Nelson] ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/275 "2011-06-08T03:02:39Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Resurrectio! > > You can now own the movie Expelled if you’re interested. > > I don’t mean on DVD- [you can own the movie](http://ncse.com/news/2011/06/expelled-block-006695). > > It’s tempting to make a $20 bid just to see if it hits. More likely it’ll be bought by a religious broadcasting channel and aired constantly. I can see doing something with it like _What’s Up, Tiger Lily?_ – put a ridiculous soundtrack to it for laughs. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/276 "2011-06-08T03:12:06Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I can see doing something with it like _What’s Up, Tiger Lily?_ – put a ridiculous soundtrack to it for laughs. But…didn’t they already do that?😕 ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/277 "2011-06-08T03:15:42Z")
The original ridiculous sound track just kind of evolved, but I was thinking about one intelligently designed. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/278 "2011-06-08T04:34:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > But…didn’t they already do that?😕 Win. From the link above: > [@](#): > > The high bidder will become the owner of the movie that The New York Times (2008 Apr 18) described as “[o]ne of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time … a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry … an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike” and that was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for its “profound dishonesty” and condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its “outrageous” misuse of the Holocaust to “tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution.” If I win it I’ll definitely include those reviews on its new packaging. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/279 "2011-06-08T04:50:25Z")
Roger Ebert sometimes says in his reviews of truly awful movies that they should be turned into guitar picks. That could be an enterprising endeavor for somebody to literally do with _Expelled_. I’d pay a dollar for a guitar pick made of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482/280 "2011-06-08T05:12:03Z")
I went to his website to see if he ever reviewed it, but alas, no such luck. [But he did blog about it.](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-steins-new-movie-expelled/442482.md?page=15)