Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Have you seen the movie yet?

Our youth pastor, the Worldview Class, my whole family (& Maryn) plus some other youth & the bus driver went on a fieldtrip to see it last Sunday. We had pizza at church in the youth cafe - did I tell you that Maryn painted the silhouettes in there?
Recognize Jacob?
Then we took the church bus to a theatre in Gainesville. We had a group of 30 (three cheers for group rates!). Since it was a Worldview Class fieldtrip and I am the church librarian, I brought WORLD Magazine issues http://www.worldmag.com/ from the last few months for the group to READ & consider life issues from a more biblical perspective than is found in TIME Magazine or the daily newspaper, TV news. You know what I mean.

I thought the movie was interesting. It was well made and kept my interest. Stan kept singing along with the music.

It had humor: Two evolution proponents attempting to explain how life began:
EP#1 "I just told you it was on the backs of crystals!"
He reminded Stan of this Monty Python skit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM
EP#2 "Beings from another planet "seeded" this one." Space Aliens?
Anything to keep from admitting there is some intelligence in the design of the world. It would have been more laughable if they were not in earnest. They truly believe that they and everything that is is an accident rather than the creation of our loving God. How SAD.
And SCARY since they are in charge of EDUCATION.

My kids liked that comic & commentary segments from black & white movies were interspersed with the interviews. I liked the story line: Ben Stein investigates the claims of intolerance toward Intelligent Design Proponents. He asks questions and takes the accusations of each "side" to experts on each "side" as he searches for the answers. I found it interesting that Intelligent Design proponents merely want to point out and apply in science the theory that the world appears to have a design (which to me would logically infer a designer) rather than seeking to Name that Designer (sounds like a game show) which would make the group religious rather than scientific. This is not Creation Science. I still like the fact that they want to open dialogue apart from Darwin.

Only a short clip pointed to the link between Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the founding of Planned Parenthood. Ben spent much more time exploring Hitler's embracing the idea of forming a perfect race. He even visited some death camp sites as well as Darwin's home (now a museum). I found it gripping when Ben stared into the cold, white statue eyes of Darwin as if searching to see if Darwin had any idea how his ideas would be used as a justification to torture and kill so many Jews. As if Ben wanted an explanation or at least an apology.

I liked how Ben compared the ideological wall erected by evolution theory proponents (anything not agreeing with evolution is religion, not science, and cannot be explored, included in scientific data or publications, or used to explain anything) to the Berlin Wall, interspersing clips of Reagan's speech. I'm guessing producers thought that by leaving out the final charge, he was in fact drawing more attention to that challenge. But I wanted to hear it.
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall."

Evolutionary scientists, what are you afraid of? Why do you want to excommunicate anyone challenging the theory of evolution? Look at all the facts and see what makes the most sense. Exciting things can be accomplished if you will just
tear down that wall.