Years) is the film’s co-writer, and lead. He arrived at the screening with a suit and a pair of Vans.
The film opens by exposing severe cases of highly-qualified educators and professors at top universities who have been fired for mentioning that the evolution theory has some flaws. Top professors are denied tenure, editors fired, and journalists shunned for touching the subject even at its most innocuous levels. It continues, slowly peeling back the layers, revealing scientific and academic intolerants (many of them funded by our tax dollars) that have swiftly and aggressively silenced any dissent—either by Intelligent Design proponents or anyone questioning Darwin’s theory, a deliberate crushing of our freedom of inquiry.
The documentary is funny, serious and definitely entertaining. It is very well-edited and cleverly intercut with movie clips from the '40s and '50s that illustrate the preceding point in a comical way.
After many U.S. engagements, Stein hops off to Paris, Germany and England to dig deeper. After the first half hour, one begins wondering if the on-screen material is real, or even possible in America today. But why the commotion?
The theory of intelligent design says that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random mutations. For decades now, Neo-Darwinism has maintained a stranglehold within public education, suppressing all other theories on the origins of life —especially those that hint of a "designer." Expelled rejects the notion that “the case is closed,” and exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy.
Unlike some other documentary films, Expelled doesn’t just talk to people representing one side of the story. We are openly able to view the double standards and contradictions among the evolution advocates and intolerants who have built seemingly impenetrable walls around the sacrosanct theory of evolution and (with a disturbingly hypocritical intolerance that kills the spirit of progressive discussion) refuse to allow any rational debate. At one point a notable professor is speechless on camera, when confronted by Stein with an email in which he calls Intelligent Design proponents “Christian idiots.”
The film uses visual metaphors like the Berlin Wall (preventing freedom on thought and speech) as well as the concentration camps of Nazi Germany (Darwinian roots of National Socialism’s concepts) to illustrate the point, that the Darwinian academic intolerants are a separator and destroyer of freedom of thought, expression and inquiry.
The suppression of freedom, especially that of inquiry, leaves one feeling suffocated and manipulated by a strange phenomenon in a country that gives so much and sacrificed so many to preserve this precious concept. Time and time again, the film echoes the message; we cannot be called Americans if we do not posses the freedom of speech and inquiry.
In a recent survey, almost 95 percent of biologists in the National Academy of Science identified themselves as atheists or agnostics. Similarly, in a 2003 survey of leading evolutionists, 87 percent denied the existence of God and 88 percent disbelieved in life after death. For many evolution proponents, Darwinism seems to function like a type of secular religion. In the words of Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling The God Delusion: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
Given the anti-religious views of many leading Darwinists, it’s certainly possible that some of the current close-mindedness in the scientific community about intelligent design and evolution
stems from personal prejudice rather than the facts of science. Whatever the cause, the present dogmatism of much of the scientific establishment regarding evolution and Intelligent Design is a tragedy for genuine science.
In Expelled, the ruling academic elite are given carte blanche to state their case and explain their actions. Their credibility at this point becomes thin at best. When Stein asks what brought matter into existence, one professor quickly replies that the matter arrived “on the back of crystals.” He is frustrated with having to repeat it three times, when Stein, in apparent disbelief asks again and again.
The theater erupted with laughter when atheist Dawkins went around in circles stretching to try to explain where matter came from that he asserts allowed for evolution to begin. After some back-peddling he leaves Stein with a theory, that “aliens” may have “seeded” the planet. Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford, states, "Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion." He makes no bones about his hatred for the Judeo-Christian God. Responding to Stein’s comments, he quotes from his own best-selling book a laundry list of degrading names which he ascribes to God.
Despite what we continue to read in the popular press and textbooks, modern science is increasingly discrediting Darwinism along with other key elements of the “materialistic” worldview. The film’s producers note on their website getexpelled.com that 91 percent of Americans believe in God. 78 percent of Americans believe that God created human beings in our present form, or guided an evolutionary process that has led to our present form.
After the screening the producers received a standing ovation (yes, even in Hollywood) followed by a question and answer segment, with a dynamic panel. The panelists included Stein, the film’s producers, Logan Craft, John Sullivan, Walt Ruloff and Mark Mathis, UCLA professors, MotiveMedia and Premise Marketing director, Paul Lauer as well other prominent entertainment figures. All of them revealed that the heart of the documentary was freedom, and, specifically, exposing the danger of the suppression of it. Scientists, the panel maintained, should be encouraged to follow the facts where the facts lead them.
The film opens April 18 to approximately 1,000 theaters nationwide. Don’t miss this one.
