Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a new documentary from actor Ben Stein on the subject of Darwinism and intelligent design. It is well-produced and entertaining. It takes a position sympathetic of intelligent design, but allows Darwinists a chance to give their views as well.
Expelled features a number of interviews. Stein talks with many of the leading proponents of intelligent design. They make an interesting case, at least for further study of the issue.
Stein also interviews the most virulent critics of intelligent design. They are given a chance to make their case, but Stein also shows that some of their statements are false. The Darwinists also make some revealing admissions. Atheist Richard Dawkins attacks God and Christianity in the most caustic terms. Michael Ruse claims that life may have formed on the back of crystals. Dawkins admits that scientists have no idea how life began, but says that aliens may have designed it, just not God.
Expelled details the efforts of Darwinists to suppress debate of the issue. A string of scientists were fired or denied tenure after advocating or even mentioning intelligent design. The media either ignores or misrepresents the issue. Darwinists rhetorically attack or even sue schools that broach the issue.
Expelled doesn't delve too deeply into the scientific details, which would be tough for this sort of documentary. But it does have some fascinating animation of the complexity of the cell.
Expelled also explores the moral and political implications of Darwinism. It shows that Darwinism was closely tied to the eugenics movement, which sought to prevent the reproduction of those people seen as less fit. It also formed a part of the ideological basis of Nazism, though of course most Darwinists weren't Nazis.
Expelled ends with a call for freedom of inquiry on this important issue. It is a movie that conservatives should see.
Expelled is playing at the Kalamazoo 10 theater.
Connecting Hitler and Darwin
'Expelled' goes easy on Darwin-Nazi link
2 comments:
I saw this movie cause I was hoping it would be good. The concept seemed great.
It was just a bad documentary.
It focuses on the people who get kicked out of academics for wanting to teach intelligent design for about 30 minutes. The rest of the time is spent demonizing people who believe in evolution and Darwinism.
As a guy who believes in both creationism and evolution I was expecting better.
Id say go see it anyways... cause its only $3 for students.
But this had the potential to be ground breaking and fell way short.
Stein is under heavy attack for 'exaggerating' or 'going easy' on the influence of evolutionism behind Nazism and Stalinism (super evolution of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Russia). But the monstrous Haeckelian type of vulgar evolutionism drove not only the 'Politics-is-applied-biology' Nazi takeover in the continental Europe, but even the nationalistic collision at the World War I.
The marriage laws were once erected not only in the Nazi Germany but also in the multicultural states of America upon the speculation that the mulatto was a relatively sterile and shortlived hybrid. The absence of blood transfusion between "white" and "colored races" was self evident (Hailer 1963, p. 52).
The first law on sterilization in US had been established in 1907 in Indiana, and 23 similar laws had been passed in 15 States and sterilization was practiced in 124 institutions in 1921 (Mattila 1996; Hietala 1985 p. 133; these were the times of IQ-tests under Gould's scrutiny in his Mismeasure of Man 1981). By 1931 thirty states had passed sterization laws in the US (Reilly 1991, p. 87).
So the American laws were pioneering endeavours. In Europe Denmark passed the first sterilization legislation in Europe (1929). Denmark was followed by Switzerland, Germany that had felt to the hands of Hitler and Gobineu, and other Nordic countries: Norway (1934), Sweden (1935), Finland (1935), and Iceland (1938) (Haller 1963, pp 21-57; 135-9; Proctor 1988, p. 97; Reilly 1991, p. 109). Seldom is it mentioned in the popular media, that the first outright race biological institution in the world was not established in Germany but in 1921 in Uppsala, Sweden (Hietala 1985, pp. 109). (I am not aware of the ethymology of the 'Up' of the ancient city from Plinius' Ultima Thule, however.) In 1907 the Society for Racial Hygiene in Germany had changed its name to the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, and in 1910 Swedish Society for Eugenics (Sällskap för Rashygien) had become its first foreign affiliate (Proctor 1988, p. 17).
Hitler's formulation of the differences between the human races was affected by the brilliant sky-blue eyed Ernst Haeckel (Gasman 1971, p. xxii), praised and raised by Darwin. At the top of the unilinear progression were usually the "Nordics", a tall race of blue-eyed blonds. Haeckel's position on the Jewish question was assimilation, not yet an open elimination. But was it different only in degree, rather than kind?
In 1917 the immigration of "defective" groups was forbidden even in the United States by a law. In 1921 the European immigration was diminished to 3% based on the 1910 census.
Eventually, in the strategical year of 1924 the finest hour of eugenics had come and the fatal law was passed by Congress. It diminished immigration to 2% of the foreign-born from each country based on the 1890 census in order to preserve the "nordic" balance in population, and was hold through World War II until 1965 (Hietala 1985, p. 132).
Richard Lewontin writes:“The leading American idealogue of the innate mental inferiority of the working class was, however, H.H. Goddard, a pioneer of the mental testing movement, the discoverer of the Kallikak family,
and the administrant of IQ-tests to immigrants that found 83 % of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 79% of the Italians, and 87% of the the Russians to be feebleminded.” (1977, p. 13.) Finnish emmigrants put the cross on the box reserved for the "yellow" group (Kemiläinen 1993, p. 1930), until 1965.
Germany was the most scientifically and culturally advanced nation of the world upon opening the riddles at the close of the nineteenth century, and in 1933 the German people had not lived normal life for twenty years. And so Adolf Hitler did not need his revolution. He did not have to break the laws in Haeckel's country, in principle, but to constitute them.
Today, developmental biologists are anticipating legislation of laws that would define the do’s and dont’s. The legislation should not distract individual researchers from their personal awareness of responsibility. A permissive law merely defines the ethical minimum. The lesson is that a law is no substitute for morals and that dissidents should not be intimidated.
I am suspicious over the burial of the Kampf (Struggle). The idea of competition is innate in the modern society. It is the the opposite view in a 180 degree angle to the Judaeo-Christian ideal of agapee, that I personally cheriss. The latter sees free giving, altruism, benevolence and self sacrificing love as the beginning, motivation, and sustainer of the reality.
You may read more on the matter from my conference posters and articles defended and published in the field of bioethics and history of biology (and underline/edit them a 'bit'):
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Asian_Bioethics.pdf
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Haeckelianlegacy_ABC5.pdf
pauli.ojala@gmail.com
Biochemist, drop-out (Master of Sciing)
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-ID.htm
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