Getting Expelled
Has the scientific academy become so closed-minded that mere questioning of Darwinian evolution results in expulsion of its own members?
Ben Stein and Premise Media have shown that at least some intolerant priests wear white lab coats. Their documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed examines the ousting of many scientists from their jobs because of openness to Intelligent Design (ID). The incidents of intolerance put forth in the film have been questioned and supported from different quarters, but many negative reviews verify the film’s conclusions: even the mention of ID can get you fired and labeled as a religious nutjob. Believing in a spontaneous big bang seven to twenty billion years ago is science, as surely as the observed phenomenon of gravity, but believing we are not cosmic accidents resulting from random mutation is unscientific. End of discussion.
So the film demonstrates effectively the lack of open inquiry in academia, a value, it claims, is central to our country’s founding. It then goes on to attempt to show the link between Darwinism and Nazism, or the scientific theory driving Nazism better known as social Darwinism. Ever since Hitler’s self-conscious attempt to participate in and further the process of natural selection by ridding the earth of inferior humans, evolutionists have been trying to distance themselves from the implications of the theory—that some human species will have evolved further than others. Neo-Darwinians protest that people best survive (in this day and age) by helping others and this is one of the latest steps of evolution. As regards the theory, this may be true. But what they fail to admit or account for is that if some part of the human race should disagree and triumph through totalitarian violence, absolutely no objection on any moral grounds could be made. Nature red, tooth and claw doesn’t have a conscience, only an evolutionary progression; by definition, what is next is better. In such a system there is no Bible, ethical authority or provincial 21st century morality to object to how one part of the accident treats another.
Expelled makes the point that Darwinism was necessary for Nazism but not vice versa. All Nazis needed Darwinism to scientifically justify their actions, though not all Darwinists (or Neo-Darwinists), indeed very few, are racists or Nazis. The implication is that the theory of evolution which led so many people to the Holocaust should at least be allowed to be questioned. Throughout the movie the interviews are juxtaposed to images of intolerance, cruelty and comedy including Stalin, Hitler, planet of the Apes and Frankenstein. This is well done until it is over done, giving the viewer the impression that this sort of thing is supposed to amount to argument which takes away from the genuinely good arguments otherwise stated. I’m afraid that this feature of the movie has given many license to write off the issues instead of dealing with them. More exploration, even quotation from Darwin and his “bull dog” Thomas Huxley, linking the theory to its moral and social implications would have cemented the issue. As it stands, few will be able to make the connection and as a result will cry “propaganda.”
Irrespective of its faults, Expelled ends brilliantly. Stein interviews Richard Dawkins who says he can’t put a figure on the unlikelihood of God’s existence though it’s (probably?) 97% or 99%. He goes on to say that although ID is ridiculous, it’s more likely that another form of intelligent life evolved elsewhere and seeded life on earth. You see, God is extremely improbable if not impossible, but aliens designing life and planting it on earth, that deserves consideration. Such faith could move mountains.
Those who have read Darwin’s Descent of Man, who know the certainty of micro evolution and the laughable improbability of macro evolution, who see Darwin’s theory as a 150-year-old dinosaur on the back nine inevitably to face extinction (insert reference to Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), and who know the difference between science and philosophy and can see one masquerading as the other, will be encouraged by this film. ID is not a strictly Christian movement. Ben Stein is Jewish, and many critics of evolution have no interest in the Bible or creationism. Expelled sold more tickets opening week than any documentary other than Fahrenheit 911, meaning that many open-minded evolutionists will be confronted with the blind prejudice of the establishment.