Expelled: No intellience abounds

I am an engineer, a mathematician, and a shade-tree philosopher. I am agnostic with admittedly strong atheist leanings. I believe all life forms on the planet evolved from one single-celled organism. Whether that parent organism came about naturally from the primordial ooze or by some sort of intentional seeding I've no strong opinion. I also would like to think myself inquisitive and open-minded. In the spirit of such, I streamed the Ben Stein "documentary" Expelled: No intelligence allowed from Netflix via my 360 this afternoon.

To those unfamiliar with the film, it is billed by those involved with its production and distribution as an investigative documentary exploring the suppression of scientific exploration involving the field of Intelligent Design, here after referred to as ID. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth.

The film is essentially a three act play with an epilogue.

Act I: It is suggested that any academic that attempts to publish a paper about ID does so at his own peril. Interviews are shown with several professors whose careers were either derailed or ended because of involvement with the ID movement. Despite horrible editing and a continual interjection of cold war era stock film of the Berlin Wall and such, so far so good. This is what I was expecting.

Act II: An attempt to discredit Darwin and evolution is made. This starts out innocuously enough with interviewees illustrating some of the weaker points of the theory. These are well known to anyone with experience in the life sciences such as protein chain complexities and mathematical probabilities. But this segment quickly devolves (no pun intended) to the point where actual original cartoons are presented making fun of the very concept of evolution. This struck me as odd as my understanding of the intent of the movie was to point out the unscientific disdain which ID receives from the mainstream academic community. They're losing me at this point, but rather than turn it off, I stick it out.

Act III: This is where shit gets really loopy. A full half hour or so is now dedicated to illustrating how Darwinian Evolution leads to abortions, forced eugenics including sterilization, Nazism, and genocide. I am not making this up. Stein actually travels to a WWII era German asylum (essentially a concentration camp for the mentally ill) to attempt to hammer this point home. I am now absolutely flabbergasted.

Epilogue: At this point any attempts to present the illusion of an unbiased examination are completely discarded. The film now illustrates through Stein's narration and interviews how it is the underlying goal of evolution supporters to promote atheism and kill God. The irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Intelligent Design is universally regarded in the scientific community as a secular version of Creationism. ID supporters maintain that it has nothing to do with religion, but is instead a legitimate theory of the origin of life. The present tone of the movie completely disregards that technicality. Now the flags start waving and the word "freedom" is bandied around like it's the Summer of 2003 in the White House Press Office. A wavy-haired Reagan gives his famous "tear down this wall" speech. Stein is shown at the podium of an undisclosed university auditorium forcefully proclaiming, "No lie can live forever!" It ends with a call to action from Stein to take the fight to the streets, even if it means the loss of your job, friends, and livelihood.

The strangest thing about this whole smoldering pile of crap is that it never actually describes or explains intelligent design whatsoever. There is a single, one word textbook definition presented...once. That is all. In actuality, there is a vast array of scientific (or at least pseudoscientific) concepts which describe ID and why it should be considered a valid, competing theory. The movie makes no attempt to discuss any of these, chosing instead to utlize fear and sensationalism.

I've got a theory on why this was case. The movie wasn't aimed at people like me. I expected too much and gave it way more credit than it deserved. It was aimed at the cabbages of society in need of harvest. The sheep. The easily led. Those who are too feeble of mind or lazy to think for themselves. I hope they enjoyed it. Me? I was just appalled.