Expelled, spewing into a theater near you

Ben Stein’s docuflunkary Expelled starts Saturday. Reviews I’ve seen so far focus on its clumsy scripting and propagandistic imagery, its intellectual dishonesty, and its outright total misunderstanding of what evolutionary theory is or is not.  The implication is that it will be naturally de-selected by the marketplace.

It would be nice if the movie fell to quick oblivion, but that isn’t going to happen. It really doesn’t matter if it’s bad or good. There’s serious money behind it, and a very popular religious meme.  Millions of people have a religious/political reason to see the movie, whatever its merits.  And it will live on in DVD performances in church basements everywhere.

The movie pits bad-boy rebel Ben Stein against “Big Science” to ask the question “But how did life begin in the first place?“  But Stein never catches on that abiogenesis is a separate question from evolutionary theory.  Instead the movie keeps trying to clumsily pack “Darwinism” and Nazis into the same box.

At least the TV ad shows Richard Dawkins saying; “God is about as unlikely as faries, angels, hobgoblins etcetera.“ 

UPDATE: Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog reviews Expelled, The Movie.  And Ken Hanke at Mountain Express says; Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking.  Still slavering for more?  Scientific American‘s John Rennie says; “Expelled; No Integrity Displayed“.

Posted by George on 04/16/08 at 06:59 PM
Religion • (13) Comments • Link
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