If Nothing Else," Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" Should Tell You Something, Just In Case You Haven't Noticed

I got out Friday night, to see “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” I had made arrangements to possibly see it with a few more people, in the next few days, and I happily will, and have opportunity to discuss it. But, after seeing the film and reading reviews online, one thing stands out particularly starkly to me.

I watched comment on the film leading up to its release and the reviews of those who saw it early. There is enough positive comment to read on the web. Here are a few at a good ones at: PipeLine News.org, http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=expelled4.19.08.htm , and The American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/post_83.html . But, everything in what are considered major, usually traditional news outlets, totally and pretty abruptly trashed the movie, calling it ignorant, or dishonest propaganda.

Consider two things about that:

1) Without going to a specifically theistic source, before the popularity of the Internet, you could have read NOTHING positive about the film. That’s the world that I was raised in, born in the late 50’s and a young man in the 70’s.
2) And 2 (and this is what stood out so starkly) Stein’s movie discusses how a academic and science organizations are closed to the mere suggestion that an intelligent author might be responsible for the design of systems more complex and capable than anything human beings have ever created. And, they are hostile to the point that those who even dare to draw their fundamentalist naturalist dogma into question suffer sanction socially and/or professionally. Many whom Stein interviewed would not even appear on camera, for fear of reprisal. But these established news sources are so similarly insulated that they can scarcely deliver up a report that does not endorse and defend this and other aspects of the pop-culture status quo.

These people would like the public to think that they are the real, objective source of news. But, the population of these establishment news sources is a) a fraction of one percent of the American population. And b) regardless, is philosophically restricted.

Do I think that this is an intentional distortion of the news? No, I don’t. In fact, I’m certain it is not. To make such a charge would be like their charges that Ben Stein is involved in dishonest propaganda. They are entirely genuine. They just don’t know any better. These days, the information of the fossil record and the complex systems is so extensive that it could hardly be more obvious that the differences are not over the data, but over predispositions in interpreting the data. The systems look to be of design if you do not foreclose the idea from the very beginning. And, if you do, the complexity of the system only display the wonders that evolution can perform, regardless of the lack of fossil evidence and the lack of explanation of how such a process began and continued to reproduce through stages of development. Other options are off the table.

This is how the establishment scientists arrive at their conclusion: they have nowhere else to go. Lack of evidence is just that; the evidence is incomplete and we will supposedly know eventually. But, that’s the point of Stein’s movie: that other options may not even be entertained. Stein is not asking, as some caricature the whole notion of intelligent design that a Biblical or any other account of creation be taught in public schools. The only argument is that scientists shouldn’t be shut off from discussing what they see as the evidence of design in the system. Anyway, they aren’t trying to deceive us. THEY REALLY BELIEVE that someone like me is impenetrably stupid.

They say that God cannot be studied by science. Obviously, the author of nature cannot be tested by nature. It’s a bogus argument, anyway. Not only can God not be empirically tested, but any theoretical empirical evidence would be of something less than what ordinary language means by the term, God. But, the critical journalists are annoying. The Pipeline News article cites a good example at Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729703,00.html : a writer who has no idea what he’s talking about is presuming to pronounce both scientific and moral judgment on Stein and the film, when he seems to have little more than a freshman pop-biology foundation of authority to stand on. This is really simple stuff: plainly, these persecuted scientists are vastly more scientifically aware. No matter: they parrot the establishment, however feebly.

Stein speaks with scientists who contend that there should be openness in interpretation of the data, but have either seen or experienced suppression of the mere mention of heresy from the establishment Darwinist confession, not about change due to natural selection (which is an uncontroversial fact), but about any consideration of the evidence that complexities in nature suggest intelligent design and/or that Darwinism offers no explanation for the origin of life. The notorious evolutionist and ant-religionist Dr. Richard Dawkins *author of the God delusion finally admits a possibility that life on earth might be the product of an intelligent designer. But, such a designer would have to have been a highly evolved species of an alien civilization who planted life on our planet. In other words, intelligent design may be considered as a possibility…just not by God.

The supposition of God or an alien author are alike metaphysical (extra-empirical) ideas. But one needn’t feel obligated by supposing the existence of space aliens. God on the other hand, might have the temerity to hold standards for His creation…a most beastly idea. One scholar in the movie makes the clear statement that the dispute is not scientific, but a metaphysical one. And, it is plain to me that once that insolent anti-God metaphysical posture is established in a systematic mind metaphysical, they almost inevitably become supercilious and scornful of infidels: just the sort of religious adjudication that they ostensibly oppose. And all of the hyper-Darwinist scholars in Stein’s movie evidence this tendency.

The movie was good. Stein is just trying to leverage the question to consciousness via the pop-culture medium of film. At bottom, the issue is not at all scientific evidence. The issue is freedom of speech. And, speech is being restrained not by scientific evidence, but by the typical human anxieties of power, money, and fear. And, as with any entrenched interest, when they can’t respond to questions with answers, they respond with moral judgments and/or intellectual ridicule: “You’re evil! You’re stupid!” It’s a contemporary Inquisition. And these of the pop-science establishment are the dogma-pounding fundamentalists. I’ve seening the film twice

Ben Stein is visibly amused by the selective disdain of different metaphysical postures, and troubled by some of the historical logical ramifications of Darwinism. America will decide what path it follows. If we move wrongly as a society, it will get dark...here, as it has in Europe. But, Christians needn't despair. In what were thought more darkened parts of the world, when I was young' in Asia and Africa and South America, Christianity is burgeoning. Even if Europe and America progress toward cultural self-immolation, these parts of the world will thrive. The New Testament foresees that "the last will be first." And, a culture that stews in self-worship, will achieve what it has earned.