Ben Stein’s “Expelled:
No Intelligence Allowed” was very quick to suck me in. Even watching it a
second time, I was impressed with the composition and the structure of the
film. The makers of the documentary play on emotion very effectively both with
visuals and the soundtrack. It presents heavy subjects and takes them
seriously, and at one point it had me thinking so heavily on several issues
that I completely missed a few of the test answers. I believe that is what a
good documentary should do; make you think and examine subjects you otherwise
wouldn’t have considered. Still, even with all the good it did me, the film
left me with a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth.
Stein is clearly using
the documentary to push forward his own agenda. That’s what these things are
for, after all. Still, I felt that he was a little too sensationalist in how he
portrayed the “evils” of big science. Comparing the censoring of Intelligent
Design to the Nazi regime was a bit much. I understand that Stein is Jewish,
and such things are prominent in his mind, but wouldn’t that be the exact
reason not to make such a connection?
It’s almost as if he’s making light of genocide. It may be true that the
higher-ups are trying to censor ideas they don’t agree with, but no one is
killing for Darwin (to my knowledge). He tries to further imply that Darwinism
is dangerous with a link directly to Hitler, because obviously the people most
likely to commit genocide are those that don’t believe in anything more
intelligent or higher than themselves. I’ve seen claims that Hitler was a Christian,
an Atheist, a Jew… Atheists can blame the Holocaust on the Bible just as much
as Christians can blame it on a lack of beliefs, I’m sure. Either way he was a
man with strong convictions and the hope that he could “purify” his species.
The comparison to the wall dividing Berlin was much more accurate in portraying
Stein’s message.
The point of “Expelled”
is that big science is fighting against the theory of Intelligent Design.
According to intelligentdesign.org,
The theory of
intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living
things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process
such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's
components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural
structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some
combination thereof.
That same website
claims that I.D. is not Creationism, which is defined by the Merriam-Webster
dictionary as “a doctrine or theory holding that matter, the
various forms of life, and the world were created by God.” Now, the only way
I.D. might be considered anything other than Creationism is if a person
believes the Designer to be of a terrestrial (whether extra or otherwise),
rather than supernatural, origin.
The most common belief
for those that don’t believe in Creationism and/or Intelligent Design seems to
be Darwinism, which is
…
a theory of the origin and perpetuation of new species of animals and plants
that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the
survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen
and may continue to arise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups
of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors; broadly : a theory of
biological evolution (Merriam-Webster).
So,
to put it simply, the difference between Darwinism and Intelligent Design is
that one is guided purely by nature, and the other is guided by an entity. Both
sides see how species have changed over the millennia, they just argue over the
how and why. This is an argument that has no end, though. After all, if
there is a Designer, once you find him/her/it… how did they come into being?
Therefore, I find it difficult to understand why just mentioning Intelligent
Design as a possible theory is getting people sacked. It’s so typical for
humans to shut down and toss out those that don’t believe exactly as they do.
People claim to be open-minded, especially in fields like science, but then
they get riled up over two words and a difference in origin that, with as little
as we know about everything, doesn’t make much difference in how science will
progress. Future scientists aren’t going to stop making cures for diseases. NASA
won’t stop sending people into space. Johnson & Johnson won’t stop trying making
their chemicals greener. Humans won’t stop learning and wondering and imagining
just because they believe in I.D.
America is supposed to
be the one place that will always allow and support diversity. That means a
person of any race, background, religion, or social status has the ability to
speak their minds and believe what they want to believe, even if others don’t
agree. So why are Americans being punished for mentioning the fact that there
are different ideas? Ben Stein is right in bringing this problem to light
because, we, as a species, should be past the point of stomping out that which
is different to what we’ve always “known” to be true. Everyone involved in the
discussion needs to remember that all we have are theories about the origin of
life, and that we know very little about so much.
REFERENCES
"Creationism." Merriam-Webster
Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2013.
"Darwinism." Merriam-Webster
Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2013.
"Definition of Intelligent
Design." Intelligent Design. Discovery Institute, n.d. Web. 20 Apr.
2013.
