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Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) More at IMDbPro »

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283 comments in total

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252 out of 434 people found the following comment useful :-
Do The People Who Believe in Intelligent Design Really Think That It's Right to Slander and Lie?!, 1 May 2008

Author: tonymurphylee from USA

I am still waiting for a documentary that explains Intelligent Design in a way that makes sense and uses logic rather than incredible leaps in fantasy. The thing is, I don't think that it is possible to explain Intelligent Design in a way that is logical and makes sense. I have read literally thousands of different theories, essays, letters, and papers all explaining all kinds of different theories behind Intelligent Design and none of them have made a lick of sense. Now, for those of you who don't know what the theory of Intelligent Design is, it is the possibility that the reason why we are here is because God had crafted and allowed his world to morph and form into the world we have today. Darwin's theory of Evolution, on the other hand, is the possibility that humans are decedents of other forms of evolved forms of living beings based on millions of years of research based on bone formation, Pre-evolutionary concepts, and fossils. I was raised a strict Christian. When I was younger, I read the bible daily. I would pray every morning, night, and afternoon, I taped passages from the Bible to my notebooks in school, and I was always told about the great things that Jesus did and said. I always dressed in a suit and I always recited the bible and lived by the life lessons that I read about. Whenever life got really rough, I stuck by my faith and stuck through all the complications knowing that Jesus would have done the same in his infinite patience and understanding of human behavior. I could argue that I've read the bible more than any religious person I know. It wasn't until I took the time to learn things from a separate perspective that I learned of the Intelligent Design theory. Upon reading this, I slowly came to realize that my ideas about how the earth was created and how the humans came to be were completely nonsensical. I desperately searched for some way around the Intelligent Design theory and only grew more confused. I began to have religious friends who told me that everything in the bible about what Jesus's feelings about poor people and gay people was wrong and that they were all sinners. I slowly came to realize that they couldn't be sinners as they were just being themselves. I met so many religious people with varied opinions and ideas about the bible. Maybe it's because I wasn't a child who was sheltered by his parents, was constantly lied to about the bible, and had to go through home school, but I lost my faith and became an Atheist. Anyway, I've been trying to find something about Intelligent Design that is scientifically feasible. I was hoping that EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED would spell it all out for me, but instead, it deeply offended me. Instead of explaining to me anything honest about Intelligent Design, it misquotes, misinterprets, and straight out lies about the Darwinist theory. It uses the Darwinist theory as the theory that has led to Abortion, Atheism, Murder, the Holocaust and the Nazis, and fascism. These are all things that could be proved wrong by anybody who paid any attention in History class, knows anything about religion, and uses common sense. So, as a result of it's lies, misquotations, and misinterpretations, it becomes straight out propaganda. Propaganda is something that I am highly against and something that I feel has done nothing but poisoned the human race that is capable of so much. To me, propaganda is as low as a person can go in film-making. So, not only do I not recommend this film to anybody who believes in the theory of evolution, but I also don't recommend it to the respectable people who believe only in Intelligent Design, for it is dishonest, cheap, and repulsive. It is a disgrace to call this a documentary. It is a disgrace to call this film-making. I do not blame narrator Ben Stein, director Nathan Frankowski, or renowned Atheist Richard Dawkins. I blame the people who make up such nonsense and misappropriates all of the men, women, and children who have died as a result of religious dictatorship. As of now, this is the worst film I have ever seen.

Pros:

-the film has a sense of humor

-some interesting interview footage with scientists

Cons:

-This film commits a number of documentary film making sins! This film is a perfect example of how not to do a documentary. Student filmmakers take notes

-most of it's claims based of scientists and Darwin being religious are irrelevant considering what the film is about

-the film is dishonest and misleading in that it uses Hitler and the Holocaust to slander the people who believe in the theory of evolution

-the filmmakers use music by John Lennon and The Killers among others out of context and in a non justifiable way -the attempt to connect religious theory vs evolutionary theory with politics is not only inappropriate but also poorly conceived as well.

-there is no rhythm, strategy, or effort put into the research displayed here. Anybody with a computer, the internet, and a keypad can find out why the filmmakers are lying

-the film is, at the end of the day, propaganda, and anybody with any sense of actual human morality and sympathy are going to not like this film very much

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217 out of 400 people found the following comment useful :-
A Global Conspiracy?, 25 April 2008
Author: egelman from Charlottesville, VA

For those who have found positive things to say about this film, I would ask you how the greatest conspiracy in human history might have been perpetrated. Virtually every major scientific society in the world has come out with the strongest support for evolution, a theory that has more factual underpinnings than the atomic theory of matter or quantum mechanics. The conspiracy to silence the dissent against evolution must include most people working in geology, biochemistry, paleontology, ecology, molecular genetics, etc., all fields where overwhelming amounts of evidence provide the basis for our understanding of how life on earth diverged from a common origin. When I am told that "leading" scientists have questioned evolution, it reminds me of the National Enquirer headline that stated that a space scientist had an encounter with aliens. Reading the article made it clear that this person was a draftsman at some NASA facility. Let us be clear that there is no scientific debate about whether evolution took place (that debate was finished more than 100 years ago), rather, it is religious fundamentalism that refuses to accept that humans evolved from other life forms (yet most Americans do not accept this fact). Ben Stein's agenda appears to be to drive America back to some fundamentalist time, while the rest of the world advances.

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146 out of 260 people found the following comment useful :-
Falsehoods and lies abound, 25 April 2008

Author: DMFIC from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

About the only thing I can say about this movie is it's pure unadulterated crap.

The movie claims itself to be a documentary about big science ignoring valid inquiry into scientific area while banishing dissenters from its ranks. All centering around the "controversy" over Evolution and Natural Selection vs. Intelligent Design (ID). In reality it is a massive piece of propaganda designed, presumably, to stir ID supporters into action.

Strangely, whilst this movie is supposed to be about Evolution vs. ID, neither term is ever actually defined. Though I suppose that their target audience would already know what these two things mean, for the purposes of the film it would probably be useful to take 60 seconds to define each.

To compound the matter, while the argument is for the incompleteness of scientific evidence toward evolution, all signs point to the makers of the film not even bothering to find out what incompleteness exists. For example, one of the film's producers recently gave an interview with Detroit weekly, during which he made absolutely false claims about what science doesn't know, on top of not understanding how science was done. When confronted by the interviewer that he was wrong and given scientific literature he was quick to point out that he wasn't a scientist. The implication being that he can't be held responsible to know even the basics of evolution before making a "documentary" about why it's wrong. This, I feel, exemplifies the glaring incompetence of the people behind the scenes.

Cases are also presented of people who were fired or dismissed from their positions for "questioning the validity of Darwinism(Evolution)". Investigation of these cases reveals their characterization of the events to be false.

Furthermore they imply that Natural Selection leads to atheism leads to Nazism leads to genocide/holocaust by using Lord Privy Seal jumps to stock footage of concentration camps. As if the hundreds of years of antisemitism including systematic killings predating even the birth of Darwin didn't happen.

Much imagery and context is also used to suggest that ID is the religious (read:Christian) view while only atheists believe in Evolution. There are many many God (whichever God you'd like) fearing individuals who think that evolution is our best explanation going, including prominent evolutionary biologist Ken Miller (See:Finding Darwin's God). When asked why they didn't include anyone like Ken Miller, one producer said they didn't want to confuse the issue. Interesting how these people who present themselves as such good and devout people are so skilled at deception and lies, something that I believe is a major sin under the big 10.

Save your time and your money, this film is worth neither the price of admission nor the time lost watching.

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330 out of 636 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than I thought it would be - raises valid issues, 19 April 2008

Author: fx_man from USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The vitriol in many of the negative reviews and the dogged defense of the "mislead scientists" is more indicative of the reviewers own biases than what is actually presented in the film.

I was dragged to this one by friends, to be honest. I had read about the film even before it was released and how it was "creationist propaganda", and how P. Z. Myers was not allowed in to a screening but Dawkins got in, etc. So I already had a negative bias going in. However, by the end I have flipped around quite a bit.

Stein is more interested in dissecting whether there really is stonewalling in academia, and more importantly, whether important issues regarding science, philosophy and metaphysics are being conflated and misrepresented to the public.

ID as a "scientific theory" might not be meaningful or even valid, but it becomes clear from the film that the issues to which ID is directed are not necessarily the "how" of biological processes but the "why". Of course many will recognise that science is not meant to tackle "why", science concerns itself with the "how". So where's the problem, then? Well, that is precisely where the problem is, as it becomes clear from the film. Dawkins and many like him have set up a straw man, claiming an explanatory scope for one particular interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution far beyond its capacity to explain. In other words, they stretch science beyond the "how" to the "why", by hypothesising about life origins even though Darwin himself has not done so, save in some private letters, and Darwin's theory has never meant to encompass it. By doing this, Dawkins and many like him have created a false dichotomy, pitting science against religion, conflating science and metaphysics to the point of arguing metaphysics doesn't even have a place in the human quest for knowledge. Well, that is a strict philosophical position one can hold independent of empirical science. But it isn't any more valid than the metaphysical claims of ID.

The film wasn't deceptive or misrepresentative of any of the scientists, with the exception maybe of William Dembski, who was given a pass by Stein. Dembski has exhibited some of the same tendencies as Dawkins, on the opposite extreme. The documentary would have been stronger, had Stein asked Dembksi about some of Dembski's own statements regarding ID as the basis for a greater cultural movement, not really representing a scientific theory per se. Dembski is guilty of the same scope-stretching as Dawkins.

David Berlinski came across as the most incisive mind of the bunch, articulating issues for what they were. For example, he correctly pointed out how difficult it is to even talk about Darwinism since the concept of species itself is not well understood and continually redefined and refined. Reading the wikipedia entry on species and the species problem confirms this.

Finally, some have complained about the connection made between Darwin's theory and eugenics, and the connection to Hitler. For the record, connections have been made between Wagner's music and Hitler, and between Nietzsche's philosophy and Hitler. All this merely indicates that when arguing from the theory as a premise, one can easily end up devaluing human life. Thus, the main idea is that science cannot remain neutral in the sense that ideas it raises will have consequences. Berlinski, again, rightly points out that Darwinism was not a sufficient condition for the development of Hitler's "ultimate solution" and modern racism, but it was a necessary condition. If one thinks about it, it does provide a "scientific" basis for an already existing latent racism, giving it impetus and elevating it to what some consider justifiable actions.

The same connection has been made between religion and some horrible philosophies, and no one denies that the given dogmas of that religion might have been necessary for those philosophies.

So in the end, Expelled fulfills its mission in raising awareness of a very real problem today when it comes to discussing certain scientific and philosophical issues in academia and in the scientific establishment. I don't agree with the specifics of ID when it comes to biology, but as a general metaphysical world view, it has as much support in human history and evolution (yes, evolution) as atheism. And really, as it is clear from Dawkins' words, his real agenda is no less than to claim that atheism is the only intelligent choice. And apparently this should not be debated or arrived at by rational discourse,but by de-facto pronouncements and edicts, from Dawkins and those who think like him.

I don't think so. If anything, this film should encourage people to look into this for themselves and study what is at issue. In the marketplace of ideas truth eventually triumphs. History has taught us at least that. Why stonewall? I recommend this film to those with an open mind who enjoy a good debate now and then.

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75 out of 132 people found the following comment useful :-
If I.D. proponents were hoping to look smart by making this movie, boy are they crazy!, 23 November 2008

Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

It's common knowledge that actor and game show host Ben Stein was a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, but does anyone know if he was a good speechwriter? Judging from his new documentary, Expelled, which argues that the discussion of intelligent design is barred from academia, Stein couldn't hold an argument with a mute clown. The film jumps all over the place with its ideas, setting up and knocking down the most obvious of strawmen and making leaps of logic, making him about as coherent as a schizophrenic homeless man. And, man, is he obnoxious about it. Imagine Michael Moore with a megaphone, pressed against your ear. Stein questions his allies with faux disbelief, and his foes with raging cynicism. The film begins with a montage of professors, academics and journalists who claim to have been fired for their belief in intelligent design. What evidence does Stein have? Their word, and that's all he needs to believe them. To make it look more official in the film, there have been documents typed up giving reasons, but these are pretty clearly unofficial documents, not the actual pink slips, and we're only shown selected, highlighted words from them anyway, so there's no way to judge for ourselves. The I.D. proponents claim vehemently that their purpose is not to insert religion into scientific discussions, but Stein harps on the atheism of his enemies, and even goes so far as to point out the word "Creator" in the preamble of the Constitution. In other segments, Stein interviews evolutionary biologists, asks them leading questions and gives each of them a total of about 20 seconds of screen time to answer while Stein sits there widening his eyes at them in fake disbelief. Not once does he bring together an I.D. supporter and an accredited scientist and have them discuss the subject at any length. The only scientist who gets any more than a moment of screen time is the infamous Richard Dawkins. Yeah, we all know he is kind of a jerk. Purportedly the filmmakers had to cut his interview to pieces to make him look worse, or so Dawkins claims. You have to believe him, considering how much the rest of the film cheats. To add insult to injury, Stein comes to the conclusion that Charles Darwin and those who uphold his theories are the reason the Holocaust happened. He's quite far off by this point, if you couldn't tell. His original premise is that I.D. proponents had been expelled from academia. That may be true. If he had asked one of the evolutionary scientists why that was and let him answer without interrupting, they would have basically concluded that I.D. is not worth discussing because it does not provide an argument. Expelled itself provides no real argument, either, and should definitely be expelled from the ranks of cinema. There is no competition for the worst movie of 2008.

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147 out of 280 people found the following comment useful :-
Dramatic fiction, 26 April 2008

Author: grifr-1 from Piteå, Sweden

This movie is interesting in that it's done very dramatically and is able to raise strong emotions. Good merits end there.

Bad merits of this piece of fiction comes from posing as a document. This "intelligent design" is not taught simply because it's not science in any sense of the word, and the makers seem to know it well. They had to come up with desperate conspiracies of some big science (first time I've heard such a term) and accusations of destroying freedom of speech in order to make it effective to the regular religious American viewer. If their "studies" don't get through scientific peer-reviewing and are not published in Nature, it's not because "big science" suppresses "freedom of speech", it's because their "studies" spell out FAIL! in huge orange letters that are self-illuminating All they ever do in the movie is make the theory of evolution look like root of all the evils ever done. It's pure fiction, dressed in a fancy whore-costume and sold as a documentary.

I don't recommend this movie to anyone, but if you absolutely must see it, then keep in mind that it's pure fiction with no roots in reality what so ever.

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22 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Dishonest, 5 May 2009

Author: alexmreid from United Kingdom

Amongst this films multitude of sins you can count quote mining (contorting information from even Darwin himself), the blatant misrepresentation of Evolution (which has nothing to say abut the origin of life) and the rather offensive suggestion that being an atheist results in a lack of morality to the extent that we may harbour genocidal tendencies.

For the record the term 'Darwinist' is redundant. There is only the theory of Evolution. It is not a cult of personality but rather a scientific concept involving the work of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years. Whatsmore, it is a bit rich to make an emotive plea for free speech in terms of a 'level playing field' considering that religion does not exactly have a stellar record in such matters. For example the stagnant knowledge sink of the dark ages is the true face of the religious mind when it comes to principles such as 'free speech'. In Science if you cant back up what you say with evidence then it is of no use to the system. This damningly renders Expelled as a whiney, erroneous film which is thick on rhetoric and wafer thin in terms of anything useful or insightful.

Plagued by dishonesty and misrepresentation this film lacks the very moral values it claims to promote (for examples check out the trivia on IMDb.com). Overall I would say that Expelled will be looked back on by future generations and probably ridiculed and puzzled over in equal measure. 'Did people really used to think like that?' I am afraid so.

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23 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
The guys working with science has kept bad ideas out of the classroom...What they forgot is that every generation has its Retards!, 16 May 2009

Author: fosterjv2 from United States

Yes Ben Stine, there is a conspiracy against you. Normal people Like to call it REALITY! There is a reason why people don't take intelligent design seriously, and that's because it requires the existence of a variable that does not appear to be real. look, there is nothing to suggest that god even exists, other than some ancient documents. I don't mean to offend any one. whether you thing God made every thing or you think that it is just stupid it does not matter. It just isn't science. You can belief what ever you like. As long as you admit that it is just what you believe you don't have to defend it. but when you claim it to be a fact then you have to deal with peer review, a process of which many enter and few come out. There is a reason why intelligent design is not allowed in schools. it's because the theory was intellectually gutted decades ago.

Don't see this movie, it only encourages him. (by the way dose any body else think that it's ironic that he is preaching freedom but at the same time he attacks gay rights?)

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13 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Ben Stien Vs. Reality, 28 April 2009

Author: Joseph Sylvers from United States

"Religulous" was a documentary about the ridiculous aspects of religion. Within the first five minutes we learn that Maher is an atheist, a comedian, and a bit of a prick. In Stein and Frankowski's "Expelled", we begin with black and white montage of The Berlin Wall, armed soldiers and huddled masses, this goes on over the credits for about 5 minutes, while a string version of "All Along The Watchtowers" plays. Then we see Stein behind the stage, an eager roaring crowd waiting for him, as he walks from his dressing room like a heavy weight boxer, and emerges into flashing lights with a greeting of "What up, Gangstas?" So from the word go, we know Stein is going for seriousness, drama, and a tiny bit of levity(not comedy, and certainly not satire as the plot synopsis suggests). We learn nothing about Steins personal views, other than that he is an impartial curious party, interested in defending free speech, wherever he finds it. Maher(who appears in a brief clip here), and Stein both use editing to their advantage, in order to smear, their subjects, but no matter how rude or impish Maher was he's never really dishonest, Stein and co edit quotations of Charles Darwin and Margaret Sanger, to make them into Eugenicists bigots, who all but built the blue prints to Nazi Death camps. Sanger, was a eugenicists but her politics began and ended with giving women birth control and allowing them to make their own decisions. Darwins quote says yes eugenics makes sense, you wouldn't breed inferior animals, etc, but Stein cuts off the next sentence which says, something to the effect that to ignore the weak and helpless, would be to ignore the noblest human virtues, and would be an invitation to great evils.

Richard Dawkins becomes the Darth Vader of the film, mocked in a cartoon, referred to as a reptile, the architect of division, and the climatic end interview pushes past dishonesty to discontinuity. When Stein asks Dawkins if there is any way that Intelligent Design would be possible, Dawkins responds, that if some advanced civilization seeded earth millions of years ago, maybe there could be some molecular signature, but even those advanced creatures would themselves have had to evolve. There the frame freezes, and Stein says "Woah, waoh, waoh, Richard Dawkins believes in Intelligent Design?" This explanation is also called Pansperima which is laughed at earlier in the film as "Darwinists believe in aliens???" There are no interviews with scientists who believe in evolution and religion, according to the film, even if they were to interview them it would be pointless, because they would only just be saying that to save their jobs.

The films charges include, that Darwinism leads to atheism, which leads to moral erosion, which leads to Nazism. The most emotionally manipulative sequence is a tour through a Nazi camp where the handicapped were executed. Darwin also leads to Planned Parenthood and abortion, makes life meaningless, and encourages suicide! While ID, can allow us to discover the existence of God...which will give us the opposite of all that. Societies who worship Gods, will limit themselves in what they will do to other peoples, is another claim. ID is not religious though, and has nothing to do with Creatonism or God. As many of it's proponents say, bringing religion into it is a Darwinist smear campaign to make them seem like fanatics.

There's a Nova documentary called "Intelligent Design On Trial" about the Dover school board case vs. the discovery institute, who was supplying ID books to their schools, school board lawyers won the case when they found early versions of the text books, which had a Freudian slip, and used the word "creationism", where they meant ID...

Very little time is devoted to exploring the cases of any of the scientists fired for their ID convictions. And even less time is given to explaining what advances ID has given science or could lead to. The film focuses mostly on negative proof, the horrors of Darwinism and atheism. And how time and time again, ID proponents are dismissed from their positions, for their controversial views.

I'm prepared to believe that scientists are just as biased as everyone else, if James Watson's comments last year taught us anything it's as much. Maybe Darwin is like Newtonian Physics and one day will discover an Evolutionary equivalent of Einstiens Relativity, but Steins pretentious examination, of an interesting subject, just makes a paranoid, conspiracy ridden mess of things. Its not even remotely funny, and at times downright dishonest. But it is thought provoking in a number ways, like is a movie bad, just because it's wrong? The music and editing was well done. The cartoon where Dawkins, is at the slot machine of life, trying to get all the necessary proteins to create a primordial soup, made me smile a bit. But if you look into any of this films many claims(a 5 to 10 minute goggle search should do it), it falls apart.

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10 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Loose associations makes Ben Stein an idiot, 14 May 2009

Author: animegyrl from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I have no idea what has happened to Ben Stein, but the man has completely flipped. "No Intelligence Allowed" about sums it up when describing this film. Asside from the fact his "loyal audience" were paid extras, there was so much "evidence" based in little or no fact it was mind-numbing.

He quote-mined, which I consider low for anyone to do, I don't care who or what you are, but to quote-mine to make an argument is juvenile. Hey, I can do it, too "I don't believe in God." Kirk Cameron, 2005. Shocked? Look it up and you will see why taking something out of context undermines any argument.

Also this connecting Hitler to Darwinism, sure, I'll give him that, however, Darwin was misunderstood in this respect. Come on folks, like the Bible has never been misquoted or misinterpreted to validate means of destructive and murderous behavior (i.e. witch trials, Spanish Inquisition, Crusades). How many have died in the name of God? I don't care which one or ones? How many? And even if Hitler used Darwin, he still did it as God's champion. However, he was wrong and I will explain why. Our environment shapes what shape and even color a species takes. A green moth in a green environment will survive predators better than a red moth in the same environment, even if the red moth is superior in strength and speed. However the green moths do not decide the red moths are inferior and kill them all. There is no evidence in nature that links Darwinism to what Hitler did. What he did was genocide and eugenics, which were indeed mentioned, but a stretch to connect it to Darwinism, since, again, there is no evidence to support it in the natural world.

Also, Ben keeps asking the questions, but gives no evidence on his own behalf, nor did any of his so-called experts. In order for a theory to enter academia, it must first be tested, duh. Once successfully tested, you can get the grant money to further investigate your theory, however, if it is loosely based on the statement "God did it!", of course no one in academia is going to take you seriously! Again, duh.

Also, this primordial mud thing? There were oceans of it with trillions upon trillions of variables, it actually isn't that difficult for organic compounds to get jiggy and create amino acids, which get jiggy, to create proteins, which get jiggy (simplifying things with the jiggy bit), and create DNA and so on and so forth.

No one can prove a negative, but there certainly isn't enough evidence to convince this agnostic that there is any kind of God, especially when religious people keep giving God human characteristics. Not very divine, people. And don't give me this "God made us in His own image." Wrong! God is an archaic human invention used to explain how things works without any scientific or logical basis to control the masses. You speak of freedom, Ben? What about the thousands of years of religion used as a means of suppression? Stop acting like you are the persecuted, you big baby, you aren't. There are states in this country, that's right, the United States of America, Great Land of Liberty, where you can't even run for office if you are an atheist. You can't even join the Boy Scouts of America, unless they finally lifted that ban.

Stop asking the questions and do something or you lose all credibility convincing anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

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