Run--Do Not Walk--to See 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'

I've been waiting quite awhile for the release of Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It opened nationwide today and I was at the first matinee performance in my area. (It's good when you can combine book research with a reason to watch a movie!) I was eager to see this film both for its subject matter--the academic opposition to the theory of intelligent design--and because I wanted to support its theatrical release. Expelled will have the largest U.S. opening of any documentary film ever, according to WorldNetDaily:  

Scheduled for release in 1,000 theatres, "Expelled" will be hotter than "Farenheit 9/11," which debuted on 868 screens, and much more convenient to see than "An Inconvenient Truth," which I was surprised to find opened on only four screens nationwide despite all the hype, peaking at 587 before its appeal melted.

If you're not familiar with this documentary, it is fundamentally about a loss of freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech in scientific, academic and legal circles. It focuses on how those who have even minimally questioned neo-Darwinism in favor of intelligent design have lost jobs, grants, and credibility. But it broadens this focus to look at what it costs our society to have unquestioned support for evolution and staunch opposition to intelligent design. As Ben Stein pointed out in an interview with Bill O'Reilly, Darwinism was "a brilliant theory in the middle of the 19th century. It's the 21st-century, there are a lot of questions being raised about it. Nobody had any idea the cell was so complex. We would just like to ask some questions." (This is in reference to the evolutionist idea that all life arose from a single cell--and how biologists now see how complicated a single cell is, but aren't allowed to question this very basis of evolutionary theory.)

I was glad to see that Expelled showed how neo-Darwinism gave rise to eugenics (which both Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler embraced). I was also surprised that intelligent design opponents such as Richard Dawkins were willing to grant interviews. Now, working in video, I know how easy it is to edit someone in such a way as to distort their original point in the interview. But I was honestly floored to hear celebrity atheist and Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins say he thinks we were "seeded" from alien life forms who designed us. This is my summary from memory so I may be a bit off, but you'd have to do a lot of creative editing to manipulate this idea if he didn't actually say something so outrageous. And this is less of a fantasy than the existence of God?!

As documentaries go, this one was produced well. It made complicated ideas easily understood, added large doses of humor with intercut movie references, and yet still kept track of the bigger picture without getting lost among all the details. My only quibbles were the bobbing scenes when the cameramen would walk with the subjects (bouncing footage on the large screen is nauseating) and the parsimonious use of titles. With so many interview subjects, it was hard to keep track of the players. I would have preferred to see the subjects identified several times. (For those of you who have seen the documentary, The Privileged Planet, you will recognize some of the scientists from that film in Expelled.)

I have several video clips to recommend to you. Each is worth watching, in my opinion. Here are several trailers for the movie (embedded in the player below) but I think the "super trailer" is the best representation of the content and approach of the film:

Here is a round-up of interviews from the film in a clip called "Darwinists and Religion." You don't see Dawkin's famous alien statement here, but some of his other provocative thoughts are featured:

Finally, here is an extended interview that R.C. Sproul did with Ben Stein earlier this year.

I suggest that you watch these videos and then see Expelled in your local theater, if at all possible. I'm normally not a fan of watching theatrical releases because I prefer watching films at home, on my own schedule, in superior comfort, and for much less money. But sometimes a vote with the wallet at the box office can be quite meaningful. In the case of Expelled, it is not only a vote for a diversity of film topics, it is also a vote for the preservation of free speech and scientific inquiry.