When I heard that Ben Stein was releasing a movie, I have to admit I was a little excited. I had generally agreed the few comments and snippets of articles of his that had come my way. I knew him to be generally in favor of individual rights and free markets, ideas which I support myself. While I wasn't yet born when he was an advisor to Richard Nixon, I understood that this now pop-icon was a generally respected economist and conservative pundit, and I was interested to see what would come of this intersection of Washington Politics and Hollywood fame.
The actual result is, to say the least, something that I am not interested in watching. The movie, titled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is by most accounts, a piece of creationist propaganda that sets out to demonize the scientific community for not accepting "intelligent design" as a scientific theory (although, you know, its not). This in itself is not terrible. I have myself in the past argued that we need to keep an open mind regarding alternate scientific theories, so as to not prevent the progress of science. However early reviews suggest that Ben Stein, and the creators of the film, go much further than just this argument.
The main argument of the movie?
Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.Ladies and Gentlemen, the Intelligent Design discussion has officially been Godwin'd. This type of logical fallacy is so often invoked in our society that it has its own intellectually appealing name "Argumentum ad Nazium". Even if we accept the idea that the theory of evolution has a small chance of leading to eugenics and genocide, this does not in itself discredit the theory. Some of the scientific research of the 20th century led to the building of an atomic bomb that was was used to kill thousands upon thousands of people in Japan during World War 2. This tragic event does not mean that the science behind it was bad, it just means that people have a capability of doing very terrible things.
I agree with the broad point of the movie (as I understand it) that scientific inquiry should not be dismissed as nonsense before the evidence is analyzed, and this is no less true today than it was in the middle ages. However, when a theory is disproved, or when it becomes clear that it is not following the rules of the scientific method, then the so-called "conspiracy to suppress it", ends up being the common sense reaction to someone trying to portray pseudo-science as science. Intelligent design falls clearly into this category, as its main point, that the universe as we know it was created by an unseen designer, is untestable. On any note, anyone hoping to hold an intelligent design discussion, well, intelligently, is going have to find a better argument for disproving evolution than "it sounds like something Hitler would support".
I have not watched, nor will I most likely watch this movie. The reviews for it have been negative pretty much across the board, to the extent that I doubt its worth watching, even for the entertainment factor of seeing Ben Stein throw away his credibility. My fondness of the man wasn't cemented strong enough to make me feel guilty for being fickle.
