Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

This weekend, Casey and I went with his parents to see the new documentary by Ben Stein called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

If you've heard about the movie, you might think it's all about knocking evolution, but really I didn't think that was the premise of the film. I think that an evolutionist (at least one who is open to the idea of intelligent design) could see the film and agree with many of the arguments.

Expelled doesn't focus on the debate between creationism and evolution as much as it does the debate between atheism and intelligent design.

Richard Dawkins, a well-known scientist and author of the God Delusion, is frequently on-camera sharing his point of view. His take is that a person has to be stupid or delusional to believe in a God, and that evolution goes hand-in-hand with atheism. So, naturally, he is not a proponent of intelligent design.

Another scientist (whose name I don't remember) said that he rejects intelligent design but when asked where he thought life originated from gave his best guess as from "the backs of crystals." (As someone who believes in a very intelligent designer, answers like that always beg the little kid question of "where did the crystals come from?")

Others scientists who are either intelligent design supporters or just feel the argument is worth considering are also featured. Most of these individuals are scientists who have lost some academic or professional standing because of their affiliation with ID. One example was a scientist who lost his job at the Smithsonian after publishing the work of another scientist who gave the theory of intelligent design some credence.

Expelled doesn't present much evidence on either side of the evolution/intelligent design debate. Instead, the film's main objective is to persuade audiences that there should even be a debate - that intelligent design has scientific merits and is worthy of being a part of scientific conversation.

Overall, I thought the movie was interesting and good for getting people thinking/talking about the topic.

It probably won't be in the theaters long though, so if you want to catch it on the big screen you should probably go soon.