Ben Stein, in the new film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed
His heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few.
Coming to a theater near you on April 18, 2008
Ben travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth…that bewilders him, then angers him…and then spurs him to action!
Ben realizes that he has been “Expelled,” and that educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance.
To which Ben Says: “Enough!” And then gets busy. NOBODY messes with Ben.
Movie Blog: http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/
Although I have no idea what the movie is “really” about, it sure sounds good.
Of course not - Stein doesn’t give due respect to the Flying Spaghetti Controversy. Until the Christian Intelligent Design advocates give equal time to Flying Spaghetti Monster Intelligent Design, I’m boycotting!
Wow. A cheap advertising piece for a documentary that has already been shown to be full of errors and omissions. As well as employing some highly dubious tactics in both getting interviews and marketing.
I suggest you do some research into the cases the documentary brings forth as examples; you’ll easily find that those people were denied tenure or fired for basically being grossly incompetent.
And, of course, ID just is not science. Behe was forced to admit that for ID to be science, you’d have to allow astrology and other crackpot ideas as well.
As a resident of Florida, I welcome Texas’s slide into intelligent design classes. All the better to beat them in attracting high tech jobs to the sunshine state.
In all this struggle for fairness, I’m still waiting for the first creationist to suggest we discuss the multitude of errors contained in Genesis, somewhere in public schools. “Argueing the controversy” only goes one way, apparently.
Let’s let scientists determine what science is, not some local school board politicians. This is partly science teachers, fault for dodging the whole topic of evolution, what a theory is, and even what science is, in science class. Get with it folks!
TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?
CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…
Ben Stein is a hack!
This film is a manufactured argument, cleverly crafted to advance a conservative christian agenda. ID at this point, after almost 20 years and millions of dollars tossed at it by the Discovery Institute, is still merely a vague idea. It has not yet even been fleshed out into a valid scientific hypothesis, and certainly hasn’t developed into a viable or testable theory.
So at this point, the ID/creationist movement is merely a well-funded public relations effort trying to rally public support promoting “science = evolution = atheists”, rather than offering any positive evidence of the “designer”, or “design”.
To see what people who have seen the movie are saying, go to
“Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”
—Isaac Asimov
Crazy. Personally, I think that the whole arguement boils down to someone not wanting to be held responsible for their actions.
That means you. If you are unwilling to listen to arguements on the “other” side, why is that?
—
So it’s funded and Ben’s not the driving force…so what? Bobcat Goldthwait isn’t really a cop, George Burns isn’t really God. Keaneu is not really The One.
Get over all that.
So it’s Christian agenda. Get over it…what DOESN’T have an agenda of some sort?
Bowling for Columbine, Inconvenient Truth and Supersize Me all had an agenda.
If it’s the Christian agenda that’s buggin you…deal with it. Don’t make your desicions in life according to some opinion you have about Christianity or Religion.
Look, just give it a few years and Islam agenda will be a huge force behind the media…then what will you do?
In my experience, the creation/evolution debate always ends in fallacious arguements (on both sides), so I don’t think it will ever really get anywhere.
Even if if the “ID/creationist movement” offers positive evidence of the “designer”, or “design”, don’t you think it will fall short, or be buried, or be debunked or sound silly or not be intelligent or not be reaonable?
I mean, look at what needs to happen first…The Bible has to be first accepted as a historical and scientific authority. Other than people who believe that, who’s gonna go for that? The debate will end there before it even starts.
Don’t you agree?
Like, if I have a really good arguement for why Linux is better, but you can’t get past the idea that you can’t play windows games on your machine and you have to use Gimp and Open Office, then I won’t get very far, right? Oh, and you have to uninstall windows.
(at least with mac there’s a linux kernel)
Analogies are fun, but they are full of holes and don’t really get to the point. Sorry.
Either way, thanks for commenting.
Thanks benjamin for the link to the real producers.
I still find myself so surprised Stein is putting out such trash. I guess I would have taken all of his money on his show if only a question about Darwinian evolution had come up.
My point is not about Ben Stein, nor the agenda, but that there is a basic dishonesty to the film. It asserts that anyone who suggests that God had a hand in creation (or who sees the moive) will be expelled, castigated, fired, mocked, etc.
This is clearly not the case, so the movie and trailers present gross hyperbole.
The movie also presents totally one-sided presentations of those who were “expelled”. For example, no one from GMU is presented to say that Crocker was not fired (as she states in the film), but that her annual contract was not renewed. Nor does anyone offer the rationale that her contract wasn’t renewed because she refused to teach the assigned curriculum. This was not a case of a researcher being fired for questioning Darwin. She wanted to teach her own opinions of creationism, contrary to what the university hired her to teach. This is not a case of infringement of her freedom of speech, but you don’t see that side at all in the movie.
There are also other sides to the Discovery Institutes’ poster children Gonzalez, and von Sternberg’s “expulsion”,. but you won’t see any side presented but theirs in the movie either.
You are correct that everyone has an agenda, but when there is dishonesty, don’t you agree that it should be brought to light?
Benjamin, I agree that truth (and the other side of the story) should be if nothing else “mentioned”.
I agree that if the writers are being dishonest that it should come out.
But when does that ever happen.
I was looking at my box of cheerios the other day and their claim is that it may help reduce heart disease.
Well, it says “may” which gives them the whole field to play in. Second, it says “help” which also opens up quite a bit for interpretation. Then is says “reduce” Well, reduce is not defined, so any fluctuation is most likely “legally” deemed “reduced”, even if it’s just a little bit and then goes up next week.
There are some other cereals claiming to lose weight by eating their cereal. Well, the “lose weight” part is huge and does the selling, doesn’t it, but the fine print is that there’s no definition or when you will ose weight, and how much, but the really huge thing is that they suggest eating only their cereal all day, and then one “sensible” meal in the evening.
Man, basically, their claim is hinging upon the fact that you are severely reducing your food consumption, so yeah, you’ll lose weight. You’re also going to be hungry and gin it all back very quickly.
My point: Oh, right. We never get the whole story, and anyone aggressively persuing the whole truth will for the most part be looked at as a fanatic.
Someone else needs to make a rebuttal movie, get it funded and get it out there. I’m sure it can happen.
For example, We all know the Three Little Pigs story, right? Well, I saw a book at the library that claims to tell the real story, where the Wolf was really just wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, and the Pigs were being really mean to him.
So, I’m not suprised that stuff is being left out.
I’m hoping they touch on the real issues, and the whole movie isn’t about the victimisation or people. It sounds like it might be just that, and that’s really a sad commentary on where we live.
The real issues are that there are holes in the fossil record, and that carbon dating doesn’t really work, and that many of the bones found pointing to human evolution were falsified, and that the sun is shrinking, and that erosion works faster than we’ve been taught to believe.
I personally don’t care that creation is not being taught in school. If a parent doesn’t know any different, then what difference does it make? Letting other people teach your kids 100% of what they know to be true is not wise. Parents should be the authority.
I know that’s crazy talk. It’s how I’m raising my kids.
They are going to know that people believe in evolution, and know what they believe and what evolution is, and natural selection.
I actually have a bigger problem with the “general” education and “mass” teaching of public and even private schools. I don’t think that’s how it was supposed to be.
And actually, if those people on the movie actually did get fired for going against what the school wanted them to teach, then OK. Fine. They should be fired. That’s not a free speech issue. Most universities are privately owned, so they set their own rules.
Just like I’m sure someone who taught evolution at a Christian university as truth without permission would probably get fired too.
Oh, and if anyone is going to make a rebuttal move, I would hope that you would not make it about how Ben Stein is lame or whatever. Or that the graphics they used were taken from some other movie.
And if it’s going to be about the Flying Spaghetti Monter, then I would hope that they would show people eating…spaghetti.
I may or may not watch the movie. The claims made so far seem highly unsubstantiated, and the move to only show the movie to churches, and to make people sign NDAs when seeing the movie is all very sketchy (it’s like some are being Expelled from Expelled, oh the irony). If they really have any claims to make they should really come out and show them. ID doesn’t really have any scientific basis.
I love to think about people who don’t like intelligent debate with people who think differently than themselves (ie., evolutionists) finally being forced to have that conversation. What are you guys afraid of? It’s like Inherit the Wind in reverse, for crying out loud.
Scientists are always up for a debate … about science.
ID, however, is not science. For it to be, you’d have to change the definition of science to such an extent that astrology would be counted as science.
Of course, then there’s the fact that ID proponents simply don’t want a debate either. Why? Because they have already been shown to be ignorant of science and scientific findings time and again. Behe at the Dover trial, Simmons in his radio debate with Myers … and those two were proclaimed to be ID experts.
Keith,
Matt’s right - ID is not science. To add to Behe and Simmons, Phillip Johnson (the “father” of the intelligent design movement) says straight out that intelligent design is not science, has never been about science, and is simply a polemic. Moreover, ID as a movement is based on the “Wedge” document, that clearly lays out their goals to brainwash the next generation of students.
But if ID “experts” wish to quit their pathetic whining and actually put together something resembling a scientific concept, then scientists will be happy to debate it - in laboratories.
There’s nothing heroic about filming a few people in a non-war zone and flashing up pictures of Nazis every few minutes. Expelled! the movie is an appeal to the emotions, not a look at the scientific credibility of either the theory of evolution nor the hypothesis of ID or creationism.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=mJkWdYsuPxU
Not only has Ben been expelled - His Noodlyness is also being kept out of “Big Science.”
Teach the Noodle!
Ian and Dan, will you watch the movie?
jorge
Of course not - Stein doesn’t give due respect to the Flying Spaghetti Controversy. Until the Christian Intelligent Design advocates give equal time to Flying Spaghetti Monster Intelligent Design, I’m boycotting!
Wow. A cheap advertising piece for a documentary that has already been shown to be full of errors and omissions. As well as employing some highly dubious tactics in both getting interviews and marketing.
I suggest you do some research into the cases the documentary brings forth as examples; you’ll easily find that those people were denied tenure or fired for basically being grossly incompetent.
And, of course, ID just is not science. Behe was forced to admit that for ID to be science, you’d have to allow astrology and other crackpot ideas as well.
As a resident of Florida, I welcome Texas’s slide into intelligent design classes. All the better to beat them in attracting high tech jobs to the sunshine state.
In all this struggle for fairness, I’m still waiting for the first creationist to suggest we discuss the multitude of errors contained in Genesis, somewhere in public schools. “Argueing the controversy” only goes one way, apparently.
Let’s let scientists determine what science is, not some local school board politicians. This is partly science teachers, fault for dodging the whole topic of evolution, what a theory is, and even what science is, in science class. Get with it folks!
For those of you reading this blog who think that Ben Stein was in any way the motivating force behind this movie, please reconsider.
From the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Texan interview with Logan Craft (executive producer of Expelled):
http://www.sbtexan.com/default.asp?action=article&aid=5533&issue=2/4/2008
TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?
CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…
Ben Stein is a hack!
This film is a manufactured argument, cleverly crafted to advance a conservative christian agenda. ID at this point, after almost 20 years and millions of dollars tossed at it by the Discovery Institute, is still merely a vague idea. It has not yet even been fleshed out into a valid scientific hypothesis, and certainly hasn’t developed into a viable or testable theory.
So at this point, the ID/creationist movement is merely a well-funded public relations effort trying to rally public support promoting “science = evolution = atheists”, rather than offering any positive evidence of the “designer”, or “design”.
To see what people who have seen the movie are saying, go to
http://www.expelledexposed.com
“Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”
—Isaac Asimov
Crazy. Personally, I think that the whole arguement boils down to someone not wanting to be held responsible for their actions.
That means you. If you are unwilling to listen to arguements on the “other” side, why is that?
—
So it’s funded and Ben’s not the driving force…so what? Bobcat Goldthwait isn’t really a cop, George Burns isn’t really God. Keaneu is not really The One.
Get over all that.
So it’s Christian agenda. Get over it…what DOESN’T have an agenda of some sort?
Bowling for Columbine, Inconvenient Truth and Supersize Me all had an agenda.
If it’s the Christian agenda that’s buggin you…deal with it. Don’t make your desicions in life according to some opinion you have about Christianity or Religion.
Look, just give it a few years and Islam agenda will be a huge force behind the media…then what will you do?
In my experience, the creation/evolution debate always ends in fallacious arguements (on both sides), so I don’t think it will ever really get anywhere.
Even if if the “ID/creationist movement” offers positive evidence of the “designer”, or “design”, don’t you think it will fall short, or be buried, or be debunked or sound silly or not be intelligent or not be reaonable?
I mean, look at what needs to happen first…The Bible has to be first accepted as a historical and scientific authority. Other than people who believe that, who’s gonna go for that? The debate will end there before it even starts.
Don’t you agree?
Like, if I have a really good arguement for why Linux is better, but you can’t get past the idea that you can’t play windows games on your machine and you have to use Gimp and Open Office, then I won’t get very far, right? Oh, and you have to uninstall windows.
(at least with mac there’s a linux kernel)
Analogies are fun, but they are full of holes and don’t really get to the point. Sorry.
Either way, thanks for commenting.
Thanks benjamin for the link to the real producers.
jorge
“That means you. If you are unwilling to listen to arguements on the “other” side, why is that?”
Yes! Teach the Flying Spaghetti Monster side!!!
All praise and teach the miracles of the FSM.
I still find myself so surprised Stein is putting out such trash. I guess I would have taken all of his money on his show if only a question about Darwinian evolution had come up.
Super J.
Jorge,
My point is not about Ben Stein, nor the agenda, but that there is a basic dishonesty to the film. It asserts that anyone who suggests that God had a hand in creation (or who sees the moive) will be expelled, castigated, fired, mocked, etc.
This is clearly not the case, so the movie and trailers present gross hyperbole.
The movie also presents totally one-sided presentations of those who were “expelled”. For example, no one from GMU is presented to say that Crocker was not fired (as she states in the film), but that her annual contract was not renewed. Nor does anyone offer the rationale that her contract wasn’t renewed because she refused to teach the assigned curriculum. This was not a case of a researcher being fired for questioning Darwin. She wanted to teach her own opinions of creationism, contrary to what the university hired her to teach. This is not a case of infringement of her freedom of speech, but you don’t see that side at all in the movie.
There are also other sides to the Discovery Institutes’ poster children Gonzalez, and von Sternberg’s “expulsion”,. but you won’t see any side presented but theirs in the movie either.
You are correct that everyone has an agenda, but when there is dishonesty, don’t you agree that it should be brought to light?
Benjamin, I agree that truth (and the other side of the story) should be if nothing else “mentioned”.
I agree that if the writers are being dishonest that it should come out.
But when does that ever happen.
I was looking at my box of cheerios the other day and their claim is that it may help reduce heart disease.
Well, it says “may” which gives them the whole field to play in. Second, it says “help” which also opens up quite a bit for interpretation. Then is says “reduce” Well, reduce is not defined, so any fluctuation is most likely “legally” deemed “reduced”, even if it’s just a little bit and then goes up next week.
There are some other cereals claiming to lose weight by eating their cereal. Well, the “lose weight” part is huge and does the selling, doesn’t it, but the fine print is that there’s no definition or when you will ose weight, and how much, but the really huge thing is that they suggest eating only their cereal all day, and then one “sensible” meal in the evening.
Man, basically, their claim is hinging upon the fact that you are severely reducing your food consumption, so yeah, you’ll lose weight. You’re also going to be hungry and gin it all back very quickly.
My point: Oh, right. We never get the whole story, and anyone aggressively persuing the whole truth will for the most part be looked at as a fanatic.
Someone else needs to make a rebuttal movie, get it funded and get it out there. I’m sure it can happen.
For example, We all know the Three Little Pigs story, right? Well, I saw a book at the library that claims to tell the real story, where the Wolf was really just wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, and the Pigs were being really mean to him.
So, I’m not suprised that stuff is being left out.
I’m hoping they touch on the real issues, and the whole movie isn’t about the victimisation or people. It sounds like it might be just that, and that’s really a sad commentary on where we live.
The real issues are that there are holes in the fossil record, and that carbon dating doesn’t really work, and that many of the bones found pointing to human evolution were falsified, and that the sun is shrinking, and that erosion works faster than we’ve been taught to believe.
I personally don’t care that creation is not being taught in school. If a parent doesn’t know any different, then what difference does it make? Letting other people teach your kids 100% of what they know to be true is not wise. Parents should be the authority.
I know that’s crazy talk. It’s how I’m raising my kids.
They are going to know that people believe in evolution, and know what they believe and what evolution is, and natural selection.
I actually have a bigger problem with the “general” education and “mass” teaching of public and even private schools. I don’t think that’s how it was supposed to be.
And actually, if those people on the movie actually did get fired for going against what the school wanted them to teach, then OK. Fine. They should be fired. That’s not a free speech issue. Most universities are privately owned, so they set their own rules.
Just like I’m sure someone who taught evolution at a Christian university as truth without permission would probably get fired too.
Oh, and if anyone is going to make a rebuttal move, I would hope that you would not make it about how Ben Stein is lame or whatever. Or that the graphics they used were taken from some other movie.
And if it’s going to be about the Flying Spaghetti Monter, then I would hope that they would show people eating…spaghetti.
Jorge,
Do you mean “Flock of Dodos”?
I may or may not watch the movie. The claims made so far seem highly unsubstantiated, and the move to only show the movie to churches, and to make people sign NDAs when seeing the movie is all very sketchy (it’s like some are being Expelled from Expelled, oh the irony). If they really have any claims to make they should really come out and show them. ID doesn’t really have any scientific basis.
The FSM trailer was also edited, the new version is available here (the old link no longer works):
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=vaULFAZMK1o
I love to think about people who don’t like intelligent debate with people who think differently than themselves (ie., evolutionists) finally being forced to have that conversation. What are you guys afraid of? It’s like Inherit the Wind in reverse, for crying out loud.
Scientists are always up for a debate … about science.
ID, however, is not science. For it to be, you’d have to change the definition of science to such an extent that astrology would be counted as science.
Of course, then there’s the fact that ID proponents simply don’t want a debate either. Why? Because they have already been shown to be ignorant of science and scientific findings time and again. Behe at the Dover trial, Simmons in his radio debate with Myers … and those two were proclaimed to be ID experts.
Keith,
Matt’s right - ID is not science. To add to Behe and Simmons, Phillip Johnson (the “father” of the intelligent design movement) says straight out that intelligent design is not science, has never been about science, and is simply a polemic. Moreover, ID as a movement is based on the “Wedge” document, that clearly lays out their goals to brainwash the next generation of students.
But if ID “experts” wish to quit their pathetic whining and actually put together something resembling a scientific concept, then scientists will be happy to debate it - in laboratories.
There’s nothing heroic about filming a few people in a non-war zone and flashing up pictures of Nazis every few minutes. Expelled! the movie is an appeal to the emotions, not a look at the scientific credibility of either the theory of evolution nor the hypothesis of ID or creationism.