Ben Stein’s “Expelled” Film
March 18, 2008 by Bryan Woods
World-famous game show host / actor / scientist Ben Stein, perhaps best known as Ferris Bueller’s teacher in the popular 80s teen film, has put together a film which, as far as I can tell, attempts to document the societal persecution of non-believers of evolution.
Check out the trailer.
Stein insinuates that evolutionists are hindering the free speech of those who believe in an “intelligent designer.”
He then, in the trailer itself, literally goes forth to warn believers in Jesus that they will lose their jobs and be expelled from their school programs for their beliefs.
What’s happened to my fourth-favorite game show host of the 1990s?
Welp, obviously nobody’s going to take this movie seriously, but can you even fucking believe it?
After you’re done with the trailer, check out my main man:
Robert Whitney
Bryan Woods
agiftofgod
monikamagdalena
daveywhitney
seanwhiteman
Michael Maloney
christofwhiteman
mkknyr
T. Emilia Brogan
Ben Stein has certainly gone off the deep end.
For those of you reading this blog who think that Ben Stein was in any way the motivating force behind “Expelled”, please reconsider.
From the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Texan interview with Logan Craft (executive producer of Expelled):
http://www.sbtexan.com/default.asp?action=article&aid=5533&issue=2/4/2008
TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?
CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…
Ben Stein is a hack!
This film is a manufactured argument, cleverly crafted to advance a conservative Christian agenda. Intelligent design at this point, after almost 20 years and millions of dollars tossed at it by the Discovery Institute, is still merely conjecture. It has not yet even been fleshed out into a valid scientific hypothesis, and certainly hasn’t developed into a viable or testable theory.
So at this point, the ID/creationist movement is merely a well-funded public relations effort trying to rally public support by falsely decrying “There is no Freedom of Speech!”, and promoting “science/evolution = atheists = Nazism”, rather than offering any positive evidence for why ID should even be considered as science.
To see what people who have seen the movie are saying, go to
http://www.expelledexposed.com
“Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”
—Isaac Asimov
wait- this isn’t satire?
Robert-
Unfortunately, no.
I watched the trailer. I never heard any mention of “Jesus”, just a higher being. Please get your facts straight. Ben is Jewish. I don’t think he has any desire to promote Christianity.
Jim, if you watch Stein’s interviews with Pat Robertson, Bill O’Reilly, and RC Sproul (all available on YouTube), you’ll see that his take on Intelligent Design seems to be that it is a religious movement opposed to what he regards as atheistic Darwinism. Bear in mind that a lot of the grassroots marketing for the film has focused on church leaders and creationists, and the target audience does appear to be the religious right. Pandering to the Christian worldview will be key to the film’s financial success, which is why it creates a false dichotomy between theism and evolutionary theory.
I think it’s a falicy to believe that one side is religious and one side is irreligious. No one has no bias. Everyone lives the way they do because of some reason. Everyone has presuppositions.
I dare you to find objectivity in scientific communities, even among colleagues.
One thing I have read a lot in blogs is that there is millions of repeatable experiments for evolution. I’d like to know what journal’s they are reading. I have yet in my research come across one macro evolutionary proving experiment that does not have intelligence behind it’s catalyst or execution.
I don’t believe for me it’s a theistic issue. Believe if you want it was god or aliens or whoever…. what i want to know is where information came from in the world. Show me an experiment that gets coherent meaningful information from non intelligence.