Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Directed by	Nathan Frankowski
Written by	Kevin Miller and Ben Stein
Produced by	Logan Craft Walt Ruloff John Sullivan Premise Media Corp.
Starring	Ben Stein
Music by	Andy Hunter° Robbie Bronnimann
Distributed by	Rocky Mountain Pictures
Release date	April 18, 2008
Running time	90 min
Country	United States of America
Language	English
Budget	3.5 million $

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial documentary film which claims that educators and scientists are being persecuted for their belief that there is evidence of “design” in nature. It claims that “Big Science" allows no dissent from the scientific theory of evolution, and blames the theory for a range of alleged societal ills. Starring Ben Stein, the film is due to be released on April 18, 2008.

The film promotes intelligent design — the idea that there is evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes, a form of creationism. The Discovery Institute which is at the center of promoting intelligent design, claims that it is a serious scientific research approach, and not creationism. However, Stein claims that the film presents evidence that scientists do not have the freedom to work within the framework of believing there is a God. What a reviewer describes as four or five examples of ordinary academic back-biting are presented in the film. It alleges that they are evidence of widespread persecution of educators and scientists who promote intelligent design, and of a conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms. Promotion of religion in American public schools violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial a United States federal court ruled that intelligent design is a religious view and not science, and so cannot be presented in science classes.

The film blames the theory of evolution for a range of things the film portrays as societal ills, from Communism to Planned Parenthood, while failing to define or explain either evolution or its supposed alternative, intelligent design. The evidence that this scientific theory is responsible for social problems does not exist. Within the scientific community the theory of evolution is accepted by scientific consensus and intelligent design is not considered to be valid science, but is viewed as creationism.

Although not yet released, the film is being promoted by Christian media and by organizations affiliated with the Discovery Institute, the hub and source of the intelligent design movement. As part of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns claiming discrimination one of the institute's websites, Intelligent Design the Future, makes the claim that Expelled "reveals the stark truth: Darwinists have been conspiring to keep design out of classrooms, out of journals, and out of public discourse." However, the Discovery Institute has been critical of some of the statements made in promotion of the film, such as American television personality and social commentator Bill O'Reilly equating intelligent design with creationism.

People presented in the film

The film is described by its promoters as citing several people as victims of persecution. Those named have featured in Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns.

Richard Sternberg is the prominent figure in the Sternberg peer review controversy which arose when, having served as editor of the scientific journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington and submitting his resignation in the previous year, he arranged for his last issue to include publication of a paper by leading intelligent design proponent Stephen C. Meyer. The review procedure was questioned and the journal subsequently declared that the paper "does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings" and would not have been published had usual editorial practices been followed.

The astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University, co-wrote the book The Privileged Planet promoting intelligent design claims. After the normal review of aspects such as his record of scientific publications which had dropped sharply after he joined the faculty, he was not granted tenure and promotion on the grounds that he "simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy." In the previous decade, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the department were not granted tenure. The Expelled roadshow portrays Gonzalez as a victim of religious discrimination and the Discovery Institute campaign asserts that his intelligent design writings should not have been considered in the review, a view that was contradicted by Gonzalez himself, when he listed The Privileged Planet as part of his tenure review file, thus requesting that it be considered, and by their claim that intelligent design is not religion but science, which would entitle his department to judge his work in that field. Dr. Gregory Tinkler of Iowa Citizens for Science stated that "Being a religious scientist is perfectly normal and acceptable, but scientists are supposed to be able to separate science from non-science, and good research from bad. Academic freedom protects a scientist’s ability to do science, not to pass off a political or religious crusade as science.”

Biologist Caroline Crocker claims to have been barred by George Mason University from teaching a Cell Biology class because her lecture promoted intelligent design, including statements that macroevolution was not established as "No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory", that many scientists believe that complex life reveals the hand of an intelligent designer, that experiments that she said were supposed to prove evolution had been found to be false, and that anti-Semitism, eugenics and death camps in Nazi Germany had had been based on Darwin's ideas and on science. Her contract as a part-time faculty member at that university was not renewed. A university spokesman said this was for reasons unrelated to her views on intelligent design, and that though they wholeheartedly supported academic freedom, "teachers also have a responsibility to stick to subjects they were hired to teach, and intelligent design belonged in a religion class, not biology."

Baylor University distinguished professor of engineering Robert Marks also appears in the film. The Baylor administration asked Marks to return an intelligent design research grant. Marks' collaborator, Discovery Institute fellow William Dembski, also appears in the film.

The film also includes interviews with scientists who advocate the teaching of evolution and are opposed to the intrusion of creationism and other religious doctrines in science classes, biologists PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, and anthropologist Eugenie Scott.

Claims presented in the film

The film alleges "that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions." It is claimed to show that educators and scientists who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have been unfairly ridiculed, presenting cases such as an application to be granted tenure being refused and a biology teacher having to leave the university, and describes this as due to a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms. The trailer shows Ben Stein stating that his intention is to unmask "people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God."

The press release for the film alleges that Stein discovers "an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma" and allows no dissent from what it calls "Charles Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection." However, at this time, intelligent design is not a credible scientific challenge to the modern theory of evolution for explaining the complexity and diversity of life on earth. Contrary to charges that evolution is equivalent to atheism (or associated with atheism) by many promoters of intelligent design and creationism, scientists commonly hold religious faiths, while using the methodological naturalism of the scientific method, which looks to nature to answer questions about nature and ignores supernatural explanations which are by definition "not within the scope or abilities of science." Although evolution is unequivocally accepted by the scientific community, it is not because it is dogma, but because of the overwhelming evidence for evolution. The science community rejects intelligent design not because it is associated with God, but because it is not scientific and instead is pseudoscience. and therefore the overwhelming majority of the scientific community views intelligent design not as valid science, but as creationism. This position was upheld by the outcome of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, when a United States federal court ruled that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that claims by proponents have been "refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."

The film implies that Darwin's theory of evolution was responsible for the Holocaust, a part of an ongoing Discovery Institute campaign, and a frequently-used and oft-discredited creationist charge. Stein has repeatedly claimed that evolution is responsible for the Holocaust in interviews promoting the film and on his blog on the film's website.

The film has been criticized for adding fuel to a media-driven manufactured controversy, demonizing "Big Science" and claiming nonexistent scientific credibility for intelligent design to lend plausibility to the argument that evolution is a matter of faith, rather than a large set of observations and data showing that evolution occurs, and a scientific theory explaining why evolution occurs.

Claims that film producers misled interviewees

The movie has been criticized by several of the interviewees, including biologists PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins and NCSE head Eugenie Scott, who say they were misled into participating by being asked to be interviewed for a film named Crossroads on the "intersection of science and religion", with a blurb which described the strong support that had been accumulated for evolution, and contrasted this with the religious who rejected it, and the controversy this caused.

On learning of the pro-intelligent design stance of the real film, Myers said "not telling one of the sides in a debate about what the subject might be and then leading him around randomly to various topics, with the intent of later editing it down to the parts that just make the points you want, is the video version of quote-mining and is fundamentally dishonest." Richard Dawkins said "At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front"; and Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education, said "I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t."

Mark Mathis (one of the film's producers who set up the interviews for Expelled) called Myers, Dawkins and Scott a "bunch of hypocrites" and said that he "went over all of the questions with these folks before the interviews and I e-mailed the questions to many of them days in advance". The film's proponents point out that Dawkins participated in the BBC Horizon documentary "A War on Science", whose producers they allege presented themselves to the Discovery Institute as objective filmmakers and then portrayed the organization as religiously-motivated and anti-scientific.

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times September 27, 2007 complaining about the deception. Speckhardt wrote, "If one needs to believe in a god to be moral, why are we seeing yet another case of dishonesty by the devout? Why were leading scientists deceived as to the intentions of a religious group of filmmakers?"

Defending the movie, the producer, Walt Ruloff, said that scientists like prominent geneticist Francis Collins keep their religion and science separate only because they are "toeing the party line". Collins, who was not asked to be interviewed for the film in any of its incarnations, said that Ruloff's claims were "ludicrous".

Reviews

Dan Whipple of Colorado Confidential, a self-described "award-winning independently-produced political news daily featuring original and investigative reporting", saw an early screening of the film at the Archdiocese of Denver in Denver, Colorado during the second week of December, 2007. Whipple was somewhat surprised that neither intelligent design nor evolution were defined in the film. According to Whipple, the film charges that intellectual freedom of intelligent design supporters is being restricted, but he was not able to find much substance in these claims when he investigated further. After the first half hour, Whipple reports that the film launches into a condemnation of evolution, blaming it for "Communism, the Berlin Wall, Fascism, the Holocaust, atheism and Planned Parenthood." Whipple remarks that the film ridicules the panspermia hypothesis, which is one of the alternatives to evolution sometimes suggested by intelligent design supporters. He also notes that the film acknowledges that evolution does not concern itself with abiogenesis, and then attacks evolution for misrepresenting the origin of life. Scientists with hypotheses for abiogenesis are ridiculed for stating that this is still not understood. Overall, Whipple found it to be fairly boring and uncompelling. Whipple subsequently reported that after his review the producers began asking people to sign non-disclosure agreements before seeing the film, which he thought ironic in relation to producer Walt Ruloff's statement that "What we're really asking for is freedom of speech, and allowing science, and students, people in applied or theoretical research to have the freedom to go where they need to go and ask the questions."

Tom Magnuson posted a statement on the Access Research Network blog, which is associated with the Discovery Institute, after he saw a private screening of the film. Magnuson stated that, "This is definitely a film that Darwinists will not want you to see." Magnuson gave the film a rating of "Four Stars".

On December 27, 2007, Concerned Women for America (CWA), a conservative Christian political action group, reviewed the film and posted a podcast discussing the film featuring Mario Diaz, CWA's Policy Director for Legal Issues, and Matt Barber, CWA's Policy Director for Cultural Issues, who went to a prescreening. Diaz and Barber thought the movie was entertaining, funny and shocking. They look forward to it being profound and controversial. They felt this movie presented an extremely credible case.

Roger Moore of The Orlando Sentinel previewed the film at the Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, although the organizers tried to disinvite him from attending after inviting him by mistake and despite his refusal to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Moore criticised the film's use of out of date research ("Citing scientific research as recent as 1953"), lack of factual evidence, the ineffectiveness of the movie's attempts at humor, and the use of imagery of the Holocaust, Stalin and Hitler to "in a not-quite-subliminal seduction way [...] demonize the people who might hold a contrary view". The rhetorical approach is compared to "Big Tobacco"'s attempts to spread doubt about the heath effects of smoking. The review described the movie's restricted pre-release screenings as " a stealth campaign, out of the public eye, preaching to the choir to get the word out about the movie without anyone who isn't a true believer passing a discouraging judgment on it".

As a whole, Moore judged that the movie "makes good points about academic freedom and the ways unpopular ideas are shouted down in academia, the press and the culture", but "not offering evidence to back your side, where the burden of proof lies, makes the movie every bit as meaningful and silly as that transcendental metaphysical hooey of a couple of years back, What the Bleep Do We Know?".

The producers have since issued an "online media alert" lambasting the professional film critic for criticising the movie. They characterise Moore's review as a "security breech [sic]" and claim that Moore gained entry by impersonating a minister. In response to Moore's charge that the film's manipulation of Holocaust imagery is "despicable", Stein states that "The only thing I find despicable is when reporters sneak into screenings by pretending to be ministers. This is a new low even for liberal reporters."[3]

Promotion

The promotion of the film is being managed by Motive Marketing, which was responsible for promoting The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Polar Express. The film's website includes trailers, additional material, press articles, and a blog. The blog's first entry was an open letter from Ben Stein which explains his personal premise for the movie. Stein utilizes arguments based on freedom of inquiry, teleology and the beliefs of historically prominent scientists. He also accuses the modern American scientific establishment as being "a new anti-religious dogmatism". The letter claims that Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein based their work and discoveries on creationist assumptions, and that they would not be allowed to pursue their science in the anti-religious scientific atmosphere that exists today.

The film's website asks for submissions of personal stories of discrimination against students for suggesting design or questioning Darwinian theory, with the enticement that a winning story, or stories, will be featured in the film.

To publicise the film, Ben Stein appeared on the cable television show The O'Reilly Factor. Intelligent design was described by Bill O'Reilly as the idea that "a deity created life", and Stein stated that "There's no doubt about it. We have lots and lots of evidence of it in the movie. And you know Einstein worked within the framework of believing there was a God. Newton worked within the framework of believing there was a God. For gosh sakes Darwin worked within the framework of believing there was a God. And yet, somehow, today you're not allowed to believe it. Why can't we have as much freedom as Darwin had?" The Discovery Institute quickly issued a statement that when Bill O'Reilly conflated intelligent design with creationism he was mistakenly defining it as an attempt to find a divine designer, and regretting that "Ben referred to the 'gaps' in Darwin's theory, as if those are the only issues that intelligent design theory addresses." It went on to assert that "intelligent design also provides a robust positive case, and a serious scientific research approach", a claim that had been explicitly refuted in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case.

Ruloff predicted in an interview at the end of August, 2007 with the Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin that the movie would open on Darwin Day, February 12, 2008. However in an interview in mid-January, 2008, Mathis used a later date for the movie's release, saying he hoped it would open the first or second week of April, 2008.

The "Expelled Challenge"

In order to promote the film, the website "GetExpelled.com" launched "The Expelled Challenge" which offers to pay schools up to US $10,000 to send students to see the movie. In what Wesley R. Elsberry described as "a kickback to school administrators", the programme offers between $5 and $10 for every ticket stub submitted by the school within the first two weeks of the release of the film. Elsberry noted that at the upper end of the range, the value of the reward is probably greater than the actual ticket price.

The programme also recommends a "school-wide 'mandatory' field trip" as "the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential" Elsberry criticises this as a call to "take children away from classrooms, fill their heads with obnoxiously delivered misinformation, and profit off of it".

Promotional interviews with producers

Walt Ruloff, executive director of the film, was interviewed on the Discovery Institute's ID the Future podcast. Ruloff said that "Ben Stein [is] obviously a great intellect, considered one of the smartest people as far as a Hollywood personality in the United States." Ruloff said that the dominant "Darwinist orthodoxy" was unfairly discriminating against religious scientists, discouraging any of the "future great minds" coming from the 85% of the American public that are religious. He felt Darwinism was preventing scientists from thinking outside the box, and therefore hurting science and innovation. He said he was surprised how widespread and entrenched the suppression of intelligent design is. Ruloff said that the emphasis on Darwinism was also preventing scientific advances with implications for health care, since scientists told him off-camera that as much as 30% of their scientific results had to be suppressed and were essentially "shelved" (particularly in RNA synthesis, and Ruloff claimed this percentage is growing). He was shocked to learn that the standard response in genomics and molecular biology for most questions is "no you can't do that" because the ideas violated Darwinism, so Darwinism is a science-stopper. Ruloff described the team he had assembled to make the film, and said he was glad that for the director, he had managed to hire Nathan Frankowski, who had previously been second unit director for the controversial ABC television movie, The Path to 9/11. Ruloff said he was looking forward to the film opening on Darwin Day, February 12th, 2007.

In January 2008, one of the producers of Expelled, Mark Mathis, was interviewed on a Victory Broadcast Service Radio program, whose mission is to "spread the Good News of Jesus Christ". Mathis stated that it was unfair that 90% of the American public believes that there is design in nature but in Academia, the opposite is true. Mathis said that at one time the Church had very strong control over science, and this was reasonable since the Church "advanced" science, and that now there is a backlash with the pendulum swinging the other way. Instead, Mathis said that now the Church of Atheism and Secularism excludes all ideas that are contrary to atheistic beliefs in climatology, biology and politics. Stein asks questions of scientists who subscribe to evolution "Columbo-style", and that it is "hilarious" to watch the scientists trying to answer, according to Mathis. Mathis stated that it was unreasonable for the scientists to claim that they were misled, since he personally contacted them and conducted the interviews and was quite open with them, and the scientists cashed the paychecks he gave them for their interviews. Mathis expressed surprise that the scientists answered his questions in a manner that was consistent with their publications, and supported evolution in the interviews and disparaged intelligent design. He was particularly dismissive of the complaints of Richard Dawkins since Dawkins was in the movie The Root of All Evil? and wrote the book God Delusion. Mathis said the reason that Darwinists oppose intelligent design is that this will mean they have to share grant money with intelligent design and cut into their booksales. Mathis predicted that this movie will have a big impact on the debate about evolution and government policy. Mathis stated that the movie will appear in the first or second week of April, 2008, but that the release date is not yet firm. Mathis was also interviewed by the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther in February of 2008.

Executive Producer Logan Craft, chairman of the board of Premise Media, was interviewed by Jerry Pierce for the Southern Baptist Texan, official publication of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, in January of 2008. Craft said that the reason intelligent design is so controversial is that it is a scientific challenge to "Darwinism", not a religious challenge. Craft said that it was clear with the discovery of DNA that the materialistic basis of science must be discarded and the supernatural admitted into science. Craft stated that as Freud and Marx had been rejected, Darwin must be cast aside as well, calling the trio the "the three bearded men, or ZZ Top of the 19th century". Craft's main complaint about Darwin was that his theory was too simple to describe the origin of life.

Press conference

A 50 minute telephone press conference with Stein and the producers was held in late January 2008. Dan Whipple of Colorado Confidential reported that journalists had to submit their questions by email in advance for screening, and at the conference "softball" questions were posed by Paul Lauer, a representative of the film's public relations firm. Only four outside questions were used, all from Christian organisations with only two of them from "the press". Questions came from the policy/lobbying groups Focus on the Family and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian program Listen Up TV, and the Colorado Catholic Herald. Whipple described Expelled as appearing to be anti-rational, and cited Stein describing problems with Darwin's Theory of Evolution as being the unanswered questions "Where did life come from?... How did the cell get so complex? ... Assuming it all did happen by Random Mutation and Natural Selection, where did the laws of gravity come from. Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? Where did the laws of motion and, of heat come from?"

Producer Walt Ruloff claimed that they had interviewed "hundreds and hundreds of scientists who wouldn't even talk" because of their fears for their career prospects if they strayed from the current orthodoxy or from a "Darwinian position". Whipple contrasted this with his own experience of interviewing many scientists holding very unorthodox ideas who were "forthright, diligent and feverishly eager to promote their ideas", and not finding any refusing to defend their research.

Promotional efforts by others

Many others in the Christian and Creationist communities are anxiously anticipating this movie. For example, Dr. Georgia Purdom of Answers in Genesis, a young earth creationist organization, discussed the film and the promotional campaign in an article that appeared December 17, 2007 on the AiG website. Purdom is glad that the film will highlight the discrimination against scientists who rely on the Bible, instead of human reason, for their work. She complains that the only scientists featured appear to be connected with the intelligent design movement, rather than creationists like herself. Purdom also expresses uneasiness about the "big tent" approach of intelligent design and this film, since it does not look like it will promote the bible as a better source of truth than the Koran or human reason. She equates the use of human reason with agnosticism.

Ray Bohlin of Probe Ministries also wrote about the upcoming film on the Probe Ministries website. Bohlin claims that the persecution of scientists who question Darwinism has led to the dismissal of tenured faculty. He also states that it was possible to doubt Darwin in biology graduate school in the 1980s, but it is no longer possible because of increasing restriction of academic freedom.

Screening to Florida legislators

In Florida, representative Alan Hayes who has filed House 1483: Relating to Teaching Chemical and Biological Evolution, an "Academic Freedom bill"reflecting a Discovery Institute intelligent design campaign, has invited Florida legislators to a private screening of Expelled.

See also

• Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns‎

External links

• Expelled homepage
• Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at IMDb
• Expelled Exposed — critical reviews and news coverage of the movie