‘Expelled: No Intelligence allowed’ is completely correct; there is no intelligence in it!
To really understand this documentary slash movie you have to first understand how Intelligent design came about, after all it should at least in theory be different from the theological understanding of why we are here since such a theological argument would never be considered to be science. The whole point of intelligent design is so it could be included within science, mostly the aim is to get it taught in schools as the counter point to evolution, in other words to lift the creationists into the remit of science along the way acquiring the objective weight of true knowledge. At some point I was happy to concede that perhaps Intelligent Design is pushed out to easily, this was the first point made by Ben Stein, no one should be afraid of discourse on any subject. Freely expressed opinions and views are exactly the things that have allowed secular societies to become better for everyone. Now to be honest, after some thought, I want to claim that Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence allowed is simply a dishonest representation of the truth and I will explain why that should be the conclusion. Please do watch the documentary otherwise this won’t make sense even though the first issue is understood if you already know a little about the dispute. Sadly Ben Stein does not appear, at least from his documentary, to understand the argument at all.
The first issue is really that of science, what does it mean to be a scientist. Well the short answer is that science operates in a very strict set of rules on both logic and evidence, if Intelligent design wants to be considered science it cannot claim to either be above the rules neither can it then claim that they are unfair. There is not a personal opinion of what these rules should be they are set out to be justified as objective. Stein claimed that scientists who in their professional work cited either Intelligent Design or religion were in consequence pushed out of the community; this is very different from keeping your religion out of the work which was not the issue at all since people should always be allowed their personal beliefs. The debate whether science should include a religious perspective or Intelligent Design is over, it fails to meet these rules and is NOT science; it can be included within reason and other discourse but never science. People who are paid to either teach or perform scientific research should be punished at every level when they introduce Intelligent Design not because it is religious, even though it is, rather because it is not science no matter how dressed up it might be. Stein hopes to appear as an unbiased observer collecting all the information, unless he had no control over the whole of his documentary, this is not really what he is, the interviews and evidence he introduces speaks of his own opinion thus making it biased towards what he thinks. It is dishonest for this reason alone plus criticising the scientific community for applying the rules which everyone has to follow is not really a problem, it is what they are supposed to do.
There is a reason why people like Dawkins won’t debate the followers of Intelligent Design; they don’t wish to elevate religious perspectives to the level of science. Of course some do, Harris does a lot and so does Dannett even though it never really feels like a debate. I would disagree that Intelligent Design is not born of religion, in order for it to work there must be an assumption of at least a creator if not God! Stein should not include people who talk about Darwin as the prime example of evolution, the origin of species is 150 years old this year and it does not contain the modern science it contains the science of 150 years ago, so it should never be used in order to understand modern evolution. Anyone who does not recognize they should not be doing this just does not understand science and should be kicked out of the community. My last objection on this area is that science is objective, thus making it universally true to everyone or to rephrase that so it is not misunderstood, to make sure that anyone independent of culture if following the same rules will consider it to be true within the limits of the current explanation. Expelled: No Intelligence allowed is not an honest investigation into the debate, it is full of agendas which point the finger at the evil scientists for upholding the set out rules and it attempts to distort the picture in favour of the religious believer who want to not only introduce pseudoscience but who also want to bring real science down to its level.
The second issue is the whole business of Stein trying to convince us on a very emotional level that if we don’t allow religion in science that our societies will end up like Nazi Germany. To say that the murder of those considered ‘handicapped’ is the result of Darwin is missing the point because the idea for this did not come to those that knew about Darwin at the top end of the Nazi government; it came from someone in the community. A father who wrote to Hitler asking for permission to kill his own disabled child, this letter was only later passed on to Hitler where it was then adopted as policy. To me the murder did not come about through science it came from a disordered & sick society that was looking for answers to its own problems. There is no justification to now bring religion into science, after all religion does not have a very good track record on either human or equal rights so it won’t ever stop such a thing happening again. The real answer is in our reason and discourse, as long as these are allowed, it will direct science into answering the right questions and not the wrong ones. Before we blame Darwin, with no consideration of whether eugenics had anything to do with the idea of evolution, should we not have an honest and open debate about why this murder of the ‘unwanted’ or the forced sterilization that happen in many countries around the same time. The destruction of science and the acceptance of religious ideas are not the real answers to stopping such problems in the future.
Intelligent Design introduces a set of ideas that are only justifiable to those that happen to share the same ideas as Christians, I happen to not belong to that group so I will always reject the assumption of this creator. It is interesting that Stein introduces the idea of freedom at the start of his documentary, as far as I can see no one is restricting freedoms of those that happen to believe in a religious perspectives in fact it is the other way around in America the issue of abortion is coming up yet again, where is the freedom of women to choose (within certain limits) whether they wish to have an abortion or not? Stein talks the talk but I would be surprised if he could ever live up to his own standard of freedom. Science is not the forum of anything non-science, religion has no place in scientific debates and rather than arguing that it should be we should just be allowing directed science to keep benefiting us all. The documentary is very funny in its own right only I am worried that people will start to believe that it actually represents the truth.
Image from: www.amazon.com
