Movie Review: Expelled

By Donald James Parker  

Yogi Berra said "it's déjà vu all over again."  It's a feeling you've lived an experience before.  That's exactly what I encountered while watching the movie Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed, though I know I'd never seen it before because yesterday was its grand opening.  Why was it a walk down memory lane for me?

About 18 months ago, I was on vacation at my mother's and enjoying the laid back life in Madison, South Dakota where I grew up.   My life was focused on college football.  One day at two in the morning, I awoke and heard an inaudible voice telling me to write a book about evolution.  I was still half zonked and immediately fell back to sleep. The next morning when I really woke up, the first thing I thought of was that experience.  I went immediately to prayer with the words, "Lord, did you ask me to write a book about evolution last night?"  To tell you the truth, I really didn't expect an answer.  However, clear as a bell a small, still, inaudible voice said to me, "And when you're through with that, I want you to go after Harry Potter and the sexual revolution."  I knew nothing about evolution and was not a writer.  The experience was so profound, however, that I followed up and began to research evolution.  What I found was shocking.  Part of what I discovered was brought to the screen in Expelled.  Ben Stein found the same things and many of the same people I had.  

A documentary has to be really well done to keep people's attention in this day and age.  I thought this one was.  The application of music to create a dramatic effect where there was no drama showed genius.  The video clips and pictures all enhanced the effect of Ben's exposé.  He used an interesting approach.  Instead of cramming the information down the movie-goers throats, he presented the facts through interviews with key people in the controversy and let their own words reveal the two camps of thought.  The presentation was mostly subtle, allowing viewers to decide for themselves the ramifications of the questions and answers they witnessed.  Of course, references to Hitler's Germany (which I myself made) do present a bias due to the extreme negative image of Nazism.  The comparison of the tactics used to suppress dissent in Germany to those of the scientific establishment was a definite indictment, one which gave notice that Stein was interested in swaying the audience. Does he have reason to seek the ability to influence peoples' opinions?  Is there really a war going on?  Are there really science storm-troopers?  From my previous research, I was already convinced the answer to all the questions above is a resounding affirmative.  Militant atheism is a growing movement with a stated goal of wiping religion from the face of the planet.  Richard Dawkins, one of the anti-intelligent design interviewees, said something to the effect that evolution is just one of the battlefields.

Some people might have thought this movie would dive head-first into the debate about the origins of mankind. In reality, regarding the actual evidence, this was more like sticking just a big toe into the pool.  What was presented is the fact that substantiated evidence is in short supply on both sides of the question, but that the evolutionary crowd believes their conjectures dealing with the origins are scientific to the point of precluding intelligent design as an alternative.  Stein spoon-fed us just enough knowledge on the topic to know that there is indeed enough reasonable doubt to convince rational people that free discussion should not only be allowed on the matter but encouraged. Normally, scientists who attack intelligent design don't present evidential refutation against ID.  They produce mockery, insults, diatribe, and innuendo instead. This attitude was evident in the people reviewed. The theme of the movie is the loss of academic freedom and the potential loss of even more basic liberties down the road as a result.  Finding the truth relies on the freedom to search for said veracity.  Stein pleads for the liberty of seeking, not so much to convert you to believe in intelligent design.  He didn't have time, and I don't have room to expound here on all the tangents of this complicated struggle for the minds and hearts of mankind.  I used 370 pages in my novel to get the idea across. Many other books have been written on the subject.  The water is definitely not shallow. Dive in yourself and explore the depths of this crucial topic.

Some see this as a struggle between religion and science. That's not true.  The battle is between real science and biased science. Everyone should be more like Joe Friday from Dragnet – "just the facts, ma'am." Science should consist of a search for truth, wherever the evidence leads.  Let me quote Edward Morrissey here, "If scientists get punished for challenging orthodoxy, we will not expand our learning but ossify it in concrete."  The thing that blows me away about this situation is that the media reinforces the position of the scientific establishment.  The very people who should be at the forefront of speaking out for academic freedom are mouthpieces of the ones who dictate their truth arrived at through selective research.  I've tried to cram into a thimble one thought that expresses my position.  I would ask every person who espouses human evolution one simple question:  "if you were accused of a crime, would you be satisfied that justice was served if you were convicted by the same type and amount of evidence present for the argument that man evolved from a one-celled organism?"

Will Expelled receive great success in the marketplace? Does a documentary have a chance to succeed against sexy, suspenseful, irreverent flicks loaded with special effects and dazzling conversation?  I doubt it, but it should.  This is a movie that all people should see, especially Christians.  There is a doomsday feeling about the content, which could be constituted as the alarmist rants of a madman or the warnings of a prophet.  Since I've been in the same pair of moccasins, I believe strongly in the latter.  I don't think that God asked me to write a book about evolution to entertain people.  There's an old expression that where there is smoke there is fire.  Believe me, there's a lot of smoke in this situation (much of it coming from the ears of the anti-ID people at the release of this movie due to their belief that this is a conspiracy of fundamentalists to get Christianity back into the schools). What I see is a smoldering man-made volcano towering above all of us, waiting to rain down its pestilence upon the people of the earth. It's not too late for us to defuse it, but we must stand up and be heard. At the end of the movie, Stein says something to the effect of "I can't stop it on my own.  I've done what I could.  What are you going to do?"  

What have I done? I got up at 3:30 AM today to write this review.  I spent fifteen months reading a number of  books and writing four of my own touching on the subject. My life will never be the same due to the knowledge that God brought to my attention on this matter.  I wonder what my reaction to Expelled would have been if I saw this back in the days when I was ignorant of the problem.  Probably I would have walked out of the theater stunned. So what are you going to do?  One thing you might do is call your local theaters that aren't showing it and ask for the movie.  My advice is to see the movie and pray about how God wants you to respond.

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