The big ‘liberal’ documentaries (Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth) get all the media love and attention, while the ‘conservative’ ones are ignored. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is the only documentary I can think of, with such an obvious built in audience of religious conservatives, to achieve wid-spread or semi wid-spread theatrical distribution. As I generally make a point of seeing films, especially documentary’s, that are ‘controversial’ and hence good conversation and blog fodder, I caught this one on its last night at the local Reel.
Hosted by that one of a kind showmen Ben Stein, simply put this is a film about the concept of Intelligent Design and how it is excluded from serious consideration by the scientific and academic ‘establishment’. Now Intelligent Design is a concept that requires a little unpacking, these are vague words especially when used in combination, and could really mean any number of things. Generally as discussed in the media ‘ID’ is treated as a code word for literalistic Biblical creationism, something one would call teaching Genesis in schools, if one didn’t want to admit to (or deal with the legal ramifications of) teaching Genesis in schools. This definition is certainly what is meant by some Intelligent Design advocates, but it is neither the exclusive nor even the most accurate summation of ID.
Intelligent Design could be most basically rendered as the idea or theory that life, in its great complexity was not arrived at by chance, but rather bears the imprint of some intelligent originator. The traditional sky God who came down and made the Earth and everything on it out of nothing, would be but one example of an intelligent designer, however one for which specific evidence is not found, as far as objective evidence is scientifically understood to be. Intelligent Design simply questions the old Darwin understanding of life coming about and evolving through shear chance, random genetic mutations simply improving on one another, increasing complexity derived not through any kind of direction, but via what could only be described as luck, and luck of only the most insanely minuscule of mathematical probabilitys to occur.
The film sites, via expert and cheesy illustrative cartoon, how the most basic form of life would require at minium 265 proteins coming together in an exact sequence and working in concert. This is likened to getting a floor of slot machines to all pay out there total holdings one after another, with just one turn at each machine. It’s not very likely, indeed exceedingly not likely, and indeed apparently even less likely then the example given to occur. In addition to which the doc points out that there is no scientific agreement on how life first started on this planet to begin with. The old stand by, which I learned from science class and Star Trek, is that lightening struck a boiling mud puddle some where a billion years ago, causing some amino acids to bond together and create life. In effect this is a variation on the spontaneous generation theory once popular in ancient Greece, and now so much discredited that I remember disproving it as a class exercise in elementary school. The other most prominent theories are that life started on the backs of crystals, which are prone to variation and mutation, and on which simple proteins and acids would have been piggybacked into odd formations that eventually resulted in life. The other theory is that aliens ‘seeded’ life here, (again with the Star Trek) which is in fact a form of intelligent design, though then you get the question of from whence the Aliens, which is basically the same as the from whence God question, so there you go.
Given the inherent limitations of any theory as to the origin and progression of life, it would seem appropriate for the scientific community to reflect the zeitgeist and be open to a variety of explanations. However, as the film painstakingly and perhaps overly documents, qualified scientists who undertake to work on or publish anything that takes the idea of intelligent design even remotely seriously, tend to lose there jobs or at lest not get tenure. For more information on this you can reference Seattle’s Discovery Institute, which seems to be the scientific hub for the pro ID vestiges of academia, and apparently catalogs such horror stories.
But why would the scientific establishment be adverse to even considering ID, especially given the limitations of the theories so far expounded? This is because, says the doc, ID challenges the dogmatic assumptions of many scientists in the same why that evolution challenges those of the religious fundamentalist. Darwinism is an article of faith, codified and hallowed, enshrined as a unquestionably basic componit of the universe. Stein takes us to the home of Charles Darwin, now meticulously kept and preserved as a museum. You see old papers and specimen jars, bones and scientific equipment. There is a Victorian sitting room where you can just picture Charles and a close circle of associates siting and conversing, challenging assumptions, and unintentionally creating a new dogmatism. This holding of Darwin and his thinking as essentially the religion of the secularist scientist is further brought home by an eerily life like statue of the man in the museum presumable adjoining his old residence. He sits like Lincoln in his monument, inscrutable, mystifying, yet of a great presence, like an old Catholic icon, there for the veneration of the faithful and the subtle existential angst of the unbeliever. The place is a scientific Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca or Temple Square.
Like the more virulent defenders, apologist, and unrelenting zealots of the old religions, this scientific establishment has sponded its own aggressive front lines. Surely there is a fear that if something as basic as Darwinian evolution is effectively challenged that other things will follow, an unraveling of authority, a domino theory of what could diminish science and its prestige. For that reason there is little coloring outside the lines allowed in ‘the establishment’. 2006 was a banner year for those most pointedly desiring to fight back against the tied of anti-scientism, which they believe (and from there point of view perfectly rightly) to be wedded to ‘religion’ especially of the conservative variety, but actually encompassing anything that accepts the sky god (or any anthropomorphized god) of tradition. Christopher Hitchins, Richard Harris, and Richard Dawkins all had best selling Scientific Atheist Verses That Evil and Debilitating Superstition of Religion books that year, quite an accomplishment, and indeed a possibly foreboding sea changing for America.
Of this triumvirate Dawkins serves as the films intended straw man, and the object of the confrontational climax with Stein, a conceit apparently now required of popular documentaries. Stein doesn’t defeat Dawkins, he holds his own, and in fact seems to go out of his way to be generous to his interviewer/ would-be assailer, something which the film attempts to take advantage of. When asked how such a proof of Intelligent Design would come about, were it to come about, Dawkins indulges in the intellectual exercise and paints a scenario, which the film construes to be Dawkins admittance that such an event could still in fact be possible. That’s a low blow, but Michael Moore has been guilty of worse, though his have generally been better executed.
I admire this film for the assumptions it questions, for putting a microscope to its subject matter and critically evaluating it. Though far from perfect in its execution it does a good job of prompting discussion and for that should receive accolades. Some could say it strays a bit in the militancy of its metaphors, such as the Berlin Wall of science, but it is intended to be a confrontational work. The time taken to point out that Darwinism was a major building block for Eugenics and hence the Nazi’s holocaust is well taken, but extreme and unthinking devotion to any set of principle yields bastard children, wether they be Catholics or Communists. The image that I most carry from the film was an aw inspiring CG animation of the workings of an animal cell. It is a machine, I can’t really buy that that happened by chance, in that way I am at least Deist. I don’t know a lot about science, I think I know a little more about religion, but mostly I like to think about these important questions of where we came from and what life means, and this movie was an aid to that. My expectations were far exceeded. Four out of Five, a plus for issues tackled, a minus for polemical elements in the presentation.
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Those of us who remember the original discussion of intelligent design remember that challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution were not met with outright rejection. Such challenges were met with invitations for ID theorists to show their evidence; to define their philosophical definitions; to define precisely what “design,” “intelligence,” and “irreducible complexity” mean. They were not faced with rejection. They were faced with counter challenges to define their terms and to show their evidence. Scientists have consistently proved to be open to alternate theories and alternative evidence to evolution. The problem was that, when challenged, the ID theorists couldn’t present any. “Design” degenerated into “irreducible complexity,” the definition of which turned out to be “those very occasional times when God — or something which may or may not be sort of like God — shows up in a currently inexplicable event. When “irreducibly complex” systems were shown to be “reducible” the evidence was deemed “rejection.”
ID proponents present their argument, scientists proved that the arguments are flawed, the IDers cry “bigotry!”, “arrogance!”, “atheism!, and necessary precursor to Naziism!”
Scientists didn’t reject ID out of hand. They rejected it when it proved to be flawed in logic and data. It was only when ID proponents continued to present their ideas as factual and logical that scientists rebelled.
Intelligent Design theorists are mirroring a technique inherited from Creationism. I use the term “mirroring” because they discovered that “Is not!” “is too!” is an effective argumentative technique. The opponent’s effective criticism is countered (rhetorically effectively, but not factually effectively) with “You do the same thing.” When Creationist arguments were answered by demonstrating that they had no evidence to support them the answer was simplicity itself – to reply “You have no evidence.” Now evolution, which is virtually proven by the evidence is countered by the simple assertion “You have no evidence.” Of course such an argument is not effective at all when people have access to facts and effective data-gathering techniques but it’s totally effective for the vast majority of people who have no access to the facts, only access to who presents the argument in the slicker manner.
In the same way a lack of evidence on the part of Intelligent Design theorists is now being countered by “You’re silencing us!”
Scientific careers are made by successful challenging of the evidence. Newton successfully challenged Aristotle’s 1500 year dominance of science and established himself as, perhaps the greatest scientist of all history. Einstein challenged Newton’s 500 year reign and established himself as a household name. A successful challenge to the Darwinian model of evolution would make a scientist’s career – don’t you think that, if people could come up with a real challenge they wouldn’t do so?
Judging from the teaser ads, Expelled's ad hominem argument is shameless. Describing your opponent as “dogmatic,” “clever,” “closed minded,” or, worst of all, necessarily atheistic is manipulative, inaccurate, and humiliating. Not only did the scientists not reject ID out of hand, there are many Christian (not to mention Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist) scientists who accept Darwinian evolution and their religious convictions without discord or contradiction. One has but to read discussion threads in the Chronicle of Higher Education to see that “scientists,” “intellectuals,” even “professors” are not a lock-step world-view bloc.
The danger with a movie such as Expelled is not that the true issues, freedom of academic inquiry, evidence based practice, the scientific method, and open inquiry will be subverted but that they will be perverted; that real inquiry will be stifled by an appeal to rhetorical and political manipulation and that viewpoint will determine right. Right makes right will be replaced, by visual, media manipulation makes right.
You gave Expelled! "Four out of Five, a plus for issues tackled, a minus for polemical elements in the presentation. "
Well you're in a small minority of reviewers who liked the film. Most managed to see through its tacky propoganda, and realised that it is all innuendo and allusion - no facts at all.
On the review site Rotten tomatoes.com the movie is currently running at 30 negative reviews to 3 positive ones....
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/
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