I saw Expelled: the Movie this weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I haven’t enjoyed a movie so much in years. The full title is Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and it stars Ben Stein the actor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who kept asking his class for an answer: “Anyone? Anyone?” Ben Stein is also a highly respected New York Times columnist and was a speech writer for two Republican Presidents in the 1970s.
The movie is about the suppression of freedom of speech in the scientific and academic communities regarding the origin of species and the first living cell. It is presented in an entertaining and compelling way. What I enjoyed most was how clever Ben Stein was. Even when he appeared to be acting rather dense he was still outwitting Richard Dawkins, the aggressive angry in your face atheist.
For example, Dawkins said that any evidence of intelligent design on earth could be explained only by the existence of a superior alien intelligence that would have itself evolved only through unintelligent processes. According to Dawkins, this is because the existence of any god was as likely as the existence of fairies. These alien beings would have superior intelligence to our human intelligence, said Dawkins. After that, Ben Stein asked a befuddled Dawkins what appeared to be a rather dense series questions such as “Do you believe in any Hindu gods?”
Not being a “scientist,” I wouldn’t dare to speculate what is more likely: fairies, aliens, or Hindu gods. Nor do I know the difference between aliens and Hindu gods when it comes to assessing intelligent design and superior intelligence. They are probably a horse apiece, but then again, I’m not a “scientist.”
Go see this movie.
