Ben Stein’s Expelled is painful to watch

We were shown the movie in my Critical Thinking (English 1C) class at Sacramento State University, and my teacher took to heart the conspiracy theory presented in the movie. He’s stated several times so far in the class how proud he is of being tolerant of opposing views, and how he’s a “centrist,” so the movie’s dishonest plea for “academic freedom” resonated with him. It isn’t him I’m worried about, however — it’s the other students in my class. They seemed to have fallen for the Michael Moore-style dirty tricks used in the movie, and the awful quality of scientific education in our country has ensured they don’t have even a basic understanding of the scientific method.

If you want to see how ridiculously slanted and dishonest the movie is, there are plenty of sources out there to check (such as ExpelledExposed.com and Scientific American). Really though, the movie is so blatantly manipulative (apparently evolution is so evil it caused the holocaust) at points that I find it hard to believe anyone can take it seriously. But people do take it seriously. It’s a movie with an agenda, and in some ways it is succeeding in its purpose.

The truth is, there is no controversy in among actual biologists about intelligent design, and no one has been fired just for believing in it. The film attempts to provide evidence of “big science” suppressing ID, but all of its evidence can be refuted. In fact, the 6 people “expelled” for believing ID were never fired at all (for believing in ID or otherwise). In each case there was more to the story, and apparently Stein felt it was unnecessary to share the details with us. Not to worry, however — a few minutes on a search engine will dig up plenty of evidence to refute Stein’s claims.

This movie was insulting to me. I can handle dishonesty, but this movie was malicious. The film makers obviously had no interest in science or scientific debate, nor did they care about historical fact, or even theology (they claim evolution leads to atheism, despite the numerous religious people that believe in evolution and numerous religious scientists that study evolution). It’s anti-science propanganda, plain and simple. It’s depressing to think that there are otherwise rational people being taken in by its rhetoric.