My Review of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”

The documentary has been out for a while now, probably making this review useless to most everybody, but I’ve been meaning to write it for some time, so I will. The film is basically about how academia and the media have an extremely low tolerance level for Intelligent Design proponents, or even just dissenters from Darwinian evolution. Its message is one advocating academic freedom for Darwin dissenters.
Ben Stein, the star interviewer, goes around talking to people who have been “expelled” from their jobs or who have suffered in some other manner for their  view points (or in a couple of cases just for their actions giving some credibility to undesirable viewpoints). Most of these you meet early in the film. Ben also interviews the other side of the debate, the Darwinists, giving them a fair amount of screen time. One thing that is probably likely however is that the movie purposefully shows the clips of interviews which best make their case, or best make the Darwinists look bad (although they don‘t go too far with it, it seemed to me). That doesn’t mean however that such segments should be dismissed, they were after all authentic recordings, but the viewer might keep in mind that the Darwinists probably have better clips not shown just as the ID proponents probably have worse clips not shown. At this point I would like to point out that I am an ID proponent in case the reader is not yet aware.
Besides the focus on “the expelled” the film also deals with some other issues such as the science behind ID (The film did a very poor job relative to what they could have here, but it did make clear that there were evidence based arguments against Darwinism and showcased the claim that Darwinian evolution distorts the evidence and is very lacking in supporting evidence.) and Darwinism’s connection with Nazism. This second subject has been the main point of criticism about the film, but don’t believe anyone who says the film makes the case that Darwinism leads directly to Nazism. Indeed the film pretty much explicitly states that that is not the point they are making. Rather the film makes the point that Nazism used Darwinian ideas to justify killing a large amount of people, and to paraphrase Berlinski in the film “Darwinism may not have been a sufficient ingredient for Nazism, but it certainly seems to be a necessary one.”
In the film you will meet most all the stars in the debate on both sides, such as: William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Stephen C. Meyer, David Berlinski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Eugenie Scott, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ruse (Conspicuously absent was Michael j. Behe, although I know they interviewed him based on an online clip.) and others.
To help inject humor into a serious topic the film makes liberal use of old black and white film or TV clips, some of which were either doctored or created for the film. Also you get a fair dose of Ben Steins famous dry humor in the interviews, narration and his behavior (Such as pulling out a metallic collapsible backscratcher and using it then putting it away again in a business like manner while listening to a talk given by ID proponent Paul Nelson.).
My favorite parts of the film include: The black and white clip of a cowboy shootout (you’ll get it when you see it.), Michael Ruse’s laugh inducing talk about life starting on the backs of crystals, the cell animations with well done music, the way it makes clear to the public that the standard media definitions of ID are wrong and often intentionally so (Now people will know when a reporter doesn’t know what he’s talking about.), I LOVED the whole Discovery Institute segment (“It must be this whole building,” hilarious!), of course the awesome ending (the Reagan clip was inspiring even though brief), and also the Dawkins segments and his exposing of the NCSE in particular.
Some other points, it occurred to me when watching it for a third time with my Bible study group, that the film might offend young earth Creationists with some of it’s comments as it doesn’t exactly give it a great deal of respect (although it isn’t exactly antagonizing either) so you are warned if you believe in a young earth (I still haven‘t made up my mind on the issue.). Also the ten minute or so section dealing with the Darwinism Nazism connection might be seen by some parents as unsuitable for children, so you might watch it beforehand to see if you think it is ok. Also I want to say that I came away from the film impressed by Richard Dawkins’ willingness to be frank about things, if a little saddened by the views he holds.
All in all I think the film makes its case powerfully, is well made (Although a director friend of mine tells me the camera work wasn’t very good, but he says it doesn’t matter much for a film like this.), is often funny, and is very thought provoking on many things. I highly recommend it, and out of five stars I’d probably give it 4 stars. But your enjoyment of the film will be very affected by where you stand on the issues brought up in the film.

Florida House of Reps and House Speaker Contact Info.

The House having effectively killed the “Evolution Academic Freedom Bill”, I thought folks might like to contact them, particularly Floridians. At this site you can click on the representative of your district or choosing and email them or send a message by phone, or postal mail, (I have read that postal mail makes the most impact in these cases, showing that you care enough about the issues to take the time to write and send a letter.) to their offices. For instance if you click on House Speaker Marco Rubio (like the above linked to article would seem to recommend) you will find his capitol office information:
420 The Capitol
402 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300
Phone: (850) 488-1450

And his district office information:
Suite 200
1000 SW 57th Avenue
Miami, FL 33144-5120
Phone: (305) 442-6939

And a link to email him. This site would seem to have info on how to contact the Florida House more generally, as opposed to individuals. I hope this post has been useful and/or informative for you.

More Evolution Academic Freedom Bills!

A short post. Along with Florida (Which has passed theirs) four other states have introduced evolution academic freedom bills. Michigan is the newest, and Louisiana has passed theirs in the Senate. Read more over at evolutionnews.org

This Blog Has Now Recieved Over 10,000 Views and 2,000 Spam!

:-).

Obama: “I can’t disown my pastor”… “I disown my pastor”

Not exact quotes of course. Recently pastor Wright has shown up in the news again, and to only a very few people’s surprise, this has been less than good for Obama. Now, contrary to Obama’s previous statements of six weeks ago that he could no more disown pastor Wright than he could the black community or his white grandmother, he has effectively disowned pastor wright after all. This doesn’t look good (I guess it needed to be done for his presidential chances, but it is a little bit late). All this so soon after some in the media tried to assure people that Obama had effectively survived the Wright episode intact and that it was no longer an important issue. I’m sorry but a story like this does not just cease to be important to people after a single speech, and I sincerely doubt it will go away until some time after the general election. Pastor Wright it seems to me is shaping up to be quite the accidental patriot, quite possibly helping his country by hurting Obama’s chances at becoming president.

Eye Problems

It seems that during my recent trip and before hand I have been spending too much time staring at glowing screens of various kinds. Because of this, I have noticed some pinkness develop in certain areas of my eyes and a short time span during which I am able to be at the computer before my eyes start hurting and watering. As a result, I have tried and will continue to try to not spend much time on the computer until I feel my eyes have healed to a satisfactory degree, which means slow posting, which any reader of this blog should be used to already. Just felt I should make this excuse post.

Florida Passed Academic Freedom Bill!

The bill is supposed to protect teachers who present scientific information critical of darwinian evolution. Thought I ‘d just take a sec to post on the good news. Read more about the details here. [EDIT/UPDATE: Apparently the Bill has not been passed but quite the opposite at the moment, due to inability within the "time limit" to reconcile two different academic freedom bills. One approved by the senate, one approved by the house differing from the senate approved version (possibly with intention to produce the observed effects). Sigh. Maybe one of the other four states now considering such bills will have better luck.]

My Trip.

I recently went to visit a couple of friends (Andrew and Krystal Armstrong) for a while and thought I should post on the trip. I guess the most interesting parts were when I was involved with their film projects. Sometimes they made progress with their own film project and sometimes they helped out another guy with his. I was surprised to see how much a single person could do with a good editing program on their home computer. To see what I mean check out Andrew (the director) Armstrong III’s trailer for the film project here. Pretty cool in my opinion. I got to lend a small hand with the film, so that was neat. The film is based on an online graphic novel called “The Makeshift Miracle” which was written by Jim Zubkavich and which can be read here. The full length film finally got finished and can viewed on the same page as the trailer, let him know what you think.

Aside from that stuff, I got to use a high speed internet connection for a while. It exceeded my expectations. Shortly before the trip I had read about a free website which lets you watch some popular television shows online. Turns out that besides such series as the office, heroes, the pretender etc., they also have a few movies. The website is hulu.com and I enjoyed using it to watch the just mentioned series. It was quite a change having to wait at most a few seconds to watch most any media file.

Lets see, what else, ah yes I got to see expelled but I think I’ll post on that as its own post. Also there was a surprising amount of trees which was nice. And I learned to eat a whole lot less at meal times, which was good as I was hoping to lose some weight and felt I should go hungry more. Also I learned a couple new meals that I can make here at home. Now that I’m back one person has told me that I look like I lost twenty pounds, so now I’m aiming to continue the trend, wish me luck. Oh, and Andrew taught me and Krystal a new card game called Egyptian Rat Screw, which is very fun with three people. We laughed a lot at the mistakes we made while learning to play. I guess those are the highlights although I know I haven’t mentioned everything I could have. It was a fun trip all in all, but like I said before, I’m happy to be home again.

I’m Home Again!

Well I just got back from a recent trip, so I should resume posting again soon, but for now I want to enjoy being home again. Plus it is kind of depressing having to get re-used to my slow internet connection after having access to high speed for over a week. Besides that though, it is good to be home.

“EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed” Is Finally In Theaters Today!!!

Starring Ben Stein, the documentary “Expelled”, which is about the whole Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian evolution controversy and which deals in particular with the academic freedom issues, came out today in theaters. So go watch it!! I can hardly wait to see it later tonight.