The Origin Of Specious Arguments | Ben Stein matches wits with a sculpture of the head of Charles Darwin in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
It’s hard not to like Ben Stein. What would Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have been without the teacher standing at the front of the classroom repeating “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?” in his monotone voice? Stein is known for intelligent humour, sarcastic commentary, and... well... scary Republican politics. Unfortunately, only his politics show up in the new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, directed by Nathan Frankowski.
According to the press kit, Expelled “uncovers... the current and often hidden persecution of educators and scientists who are being denied tenure and even fired in some cases, for their belief in the evidence of ‘design’ in nature, challenging the idea that life is a result of random chance or the result of evolution.”
In other words, the movie hopes to expose BIG SCIENCE as an organized group that is systematically and discriminatorily determining the “truth” by excluding proponents of Intelligent Design from the academy. And Stein works hard at his task, conducting interviews with scientists from both camps (including Richard Dawkins, the infamous author of The God Delusion) in an attempt to convince his audience that evolutionists have not only taken over science as a whole (which somehow may lead to—gasp!—atheism), but may also be wrong about the origin of species.
If you can tell what you’re watching is propaganda, it’s not doing its job very well. Expelled, which splices together scenes of Stein with archival footage of Cold War drills, educational “how-to-spot-a-commie” films, and coverage of the Berlin Wall, is transparently not doing its job. Basic message? A wall (think Berlin) is in place right now in the sciences to keep new thought out and protect evolutionary biology (think Communism) from Intelligent Design (think American way of life).
“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are,” Stein says. “Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. It’s anti-the whole concept of learning.”
But how strong is the evidence that supports the validity of Intelligent Design? Stein doesn’t seem to care; Expelled is too busy discrediting evolutionists by manipulatively linking evolutionary theory to the Nazi death camps.
That’s right, Hitler’s final solution was apparently an exercise in planned evolution. Stein reasons that since the Nazis used a perverted form of Social Darwinism to justify their anti-Semitic brutality, their activities must discredit all evolutionary theory. So, by adhering to—and, worse, teaching—evolution, we’re inevitably headed toward another Holocaust. His attempt to link eugenics (a mostly North American form of social engineering that involved the forced sterilization of thousands) to evolution as it’s understood today is also feeble, and for the same reason: he doesn’t draw a distinguishing line between evolution and Social Darwinism, a move that allows him to confuse the politically motivated misapplication of scientific theory with scientific theory itself. They are not the same thing, Mr. Stein.
Equally frustrating is Stein’s refusal to explain the underlying theory of either evolution or Intelligent Design, something that should be key to a documentary about the rivalry of two competing ideas.
One of Stein’s central statements, that we need an intellectual climate that tolerates dissent and encourages independent thought and research rather than slavish adherence to a particular school of thought, is, in and of itself, excellent. I think it would be hard to find a scientist (or teacher, or author, or journalist) who would disagree. But this ideal gets lost in Stein’s nearly two-hour long propaganda trip through the archives.
Ultimately, Expelled isn’t about science, but the politics of selling science in neoconservative America. Stein reduces this scientific debate to a battle between big guys and little guys, a version of the truth that’s as simple-minded as he seems to think his audience is.
Science? Science? Science?
