Expelled movie critique
Expelled is a fine piece of artistic craftsmanship. The creators of this movie certainly understand the power of visual media and how to utilize this power to its fullest potential. The integration of interviews with historical footage, old movie clips, and animation is accomplished to great effect. When speaking of the connection, for example, between Darwinism and Nazism, footage from Hitler's Third Reich is shown. When speaking of academic oppression by neo-Darwinists against scientists who promote Intelligent Design, a clip from The Planet of the Apes is shown in which a highly evolved ape turns a high-pressure water hose on Charlton Heston's character and yells, "Shut up, freak!" When speaking of the bankruptcy of the neo-Darwinist position, the classic scene from The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy discovers Oz to be a fraud is shown. Information is illustrated through the use of animation at 2 crucial moments: When a scientist in the film asserts that at least 250 proteins would need to evolve in order for the simplest form of life to occur, viewers see a cartoon made for the movie, which demonstrates this to be a statistical impossibility; When the complexity of cellular processes is discussed, a 3D computer model of the inner working of the cell is presented, which demonstrates the lunacy of asserting such processes could have arisen from non-organic material through natural selection. [An example of a similar, yet less intricate computer model can be seen below.]
Again, this is a high-quality production. The preview version of this film shown at Southern Seminary was not the final edit; the sound and lighting levels were not always perfectly consistent and viewers were told that some of the soundtrack would be changed. Even these minor flaws may not have been noticed if they had not been mentioned beforehand, and once they are corrected, this film will be on par with anything coming from Hollywood.
This film is propaganda. It strongly advocates a particular position, primarily through an emotional appeal. The film is highly successful as propaganda, but there are some inherent negative aspects to this kind of film: Information is, at times, subliminated to emotion, so that it is easy for viewers to lose track of who is being interviewed and some of the best arguments for Intelligent Design are either not mentioned or not explored in any great detail. Also (and this is my one negative critique of the film), this film may well be open to the charge of dishonesty in presentation. Not that the information concerning neo-Darwinism or Intelligent Design is in any way false, but Stein's narration tends to present the idea that what is being presented to the viewers is an open-minded exploration of academic freedom, whereas what is actually presented from the beginning is an argument in favor of Intelligent Design in education. It is easy to understand why Richard Dawkins and the other neo-Darwinists are upset by this film: They were apparently told that they were being interviewed for a film exploring the controversy between neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and instead they appeared in a film in which Darwinism is ridiculed and vilified (though rightly so, in the opinion of this author) and Intelligent Design is promoted.
Overall, I highly recommend this film and would urge readers to see it on opening weekend, beginning on April 18 so that more movies like this will be made. (If this movie is successful, the producers plan to do a film on the abortion debate- Ben Stein has been known as a pro-life advocate.)
Again, this is a high-quality production. The preview version of this film shown at Southern Seminary was not the final edit; the sound and lighting levels were not always perfectly consistent and viewers were told that some of the soundtrack would be changed. Even these minor flaws may not have been noticed if they had not been mentioned beforehand, and once they are corrected, this film will be on par with anything coming from Hollywood.
This film is propaganda. It strongly advocates a particular position, primarily through an emotional appeal. The film is highly successful as propaganda, but there are some inherent negative aspects to this kind of film: Information is, at times, subliminated to emotion, so that it is easy for viewers to lose track of who is being interviewed and some of the best arguments for Intelligent Design are either not mentioned or not explored in any great detail. Also (and this is my one negative critique of the film), this film may well be open to the charge of dishonesty in presentation. Not that the information concerning neo-Darwinism or Intelligent Design is in any way false, but Stein's narration tends to present the idea that what is being presented to the viewers is an open-minded exploration of academic freedom, whereas what is actually presented from the beginning is an argument in favor of Intelligent Design in education. It is easy to understand why Richard Dawkins and the other neo-Darwinists are upset by this film: They were apparently told that they were being interviewed for a film exploring the controversy between neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and instead they appeared in a film in which Darwinism is ridiculed and vilified (though rightly so, in the opinion of this author) and Intelligent Design is promoted.
Overall, I highly recommend this film and would urge readers to see it on opening weekend, beginning on April 18 so that more movies like this will be made. (If this movie is successful, the producers plan to do a film on the abortion debate- Ben Stein has been known as a pro-life advocate.)
Labels: Romans 1:20
posted by Andrew Lindsey | 9:20 AM
1 Comments:
thanks for your comments. the following is what i wrote to the professors interviewed in expelled:
Pompous Professors of Puerile Platitudes,
Having had the supreme pleasure of watching Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, I should like to offer the following comments to you proponents of Darwinism.
First let me state that I am sure many of you deeply regret consenting to be interviewed by Mr. Ben Stein. His innocently probing questions clearly caught you off guard as he gave you all the rope with which you eagerly hung yourselves. I would rate, in order of embarassment:
1. Michael Ruse, for his amazingly assinine comments (which incredibly he delivered with arrogant condescension) about life forming on the back of crystals.
2. PZ Myers, for his ugly castigation of religious values and his eager anticipation of a time when science would rule over religion. He will come to regret the strong Bolshevik overtones of his comments, I am certain.
3. Richard Dawkins, who timidly bleated, in response to Mr. Stein's question of what he will say to God if he finds out, after his death, that He really exists: "Why did you make it so difficult for us to see You?" This surely should qualify Dawkins for a Nobel Prize in Applied Chutzpah, as the PhD Oxford Professor selectively whines that the evidence for God is too obscure to be true while ignoring all the other Oxford academics who specialize in exploring the remote, the obscure, and the invisible.
4. Eugenie Scott, with her map of the US impaled with colored pins, indicating her desire to eviscerate religious faith from our public school system. The problem, Ms. Scott, is not that you want to teach science devoid of religious values, but that the science you teach undermines and destroys the religious values of the students who are forced to feed on its atheistic implications, as the sad case of William Provine proves.
5. Michael Shermer, for spewing forth all round foot in the mouth nothingisms.
6. William Provine gets a pass, since his thinking abilities unfortunately have been impaired by his medical problems; however his story contains the most pathos of all of you, since he came from a religious family and had his faith destroyed by studying the ideas of atheistic Darwinism in college.
Now I would like to regale you with a couple of specific comments:
1. For you Mr. Ruse, your idea that advanced life forms could have been initiated on the backs of crystals is an insult to the public's intelligence. However it perhaps is not an insult to your intelligence, since apparently you don't have any, despite your advanced degree in Philosophy. I am amazed that an intellectual buffoon like yourself could even be hired by, let alone attain a tenured position in, an American University.
2. This leads me to my second comment, for PZ Myers. Don't you think it is reasonable that the faculty at publically funded universities, like the University of Minnesota at Morris, where you work so arduously to poison the souls of your students, should reflect the overall religious principles and philosophies of the tax payers who pay their salaries? Or at the very least they ought not to promote ideas radically at odds with the values of the tax paying electorate? Do you have any sense of responsibility to the public at large, and do you feel no shame at all to disseminate ideas radically antithetical to its values? Are you such an arrogant ingrate that you take their money and run with it... straight to hell? Your advocacy of science over religion sounds exactly like the atheistic filth spewed out of Communist Russia that destroyed an entire civilization and enslaved half the globe. And I look forward to the day when a new McCarthy-type campaign will take anti-American scoundrels like you and drub you so far out of academia that the only job you can get will be teaching peasants how to milk cows on a Chinese agricultural commune.
3. Mr. Dawkins, Ben Stein hit the nail on the head, didn't he, when he asked you how you will respond to God when He tells you: "RIchard, I gave you so much, a multi-million dollar salary every year..." We could see you flinch when you heard those words of quiet but powerful truth. Yes, Mr. Stein saw right through your pompous theatrics into your rotten, depraved, and selfish soul. (And you do have a soul, don't imagine otherwise, and it will burn in hell forever as just payment for the damage you have wreaked on our planet by poisoning an entire generation against their Creator. You will share the hellfires with your friend, Charles Darwin, whose Down House in England was just the precursor to the eternally Down House of Fire in which you both will be tormented.) I am sure God, before He dispatches you to eternal damnation, will tell you something like the following: Richard, you consider yourself a brilliant academic. You regularly mock and disparage religious people as being ignorant and superstitious. You have a PhD and teach at one of the world's most prestigious universities: Oxford (but perhaps you are the Ox and not the ford [bridge, in case you didn't know]). Oxford Professors specialize in discerning and explaining the mysteries of life. Nuclear Physics, for instance, is a very difficult field, wouldn't you agree Richard? Not a subject for little children. Yet its abstruse nature has not prompted you to rise up and reject its teachings! You never have condemned those who teach its tenets! In fact, you and your colleagues at Oxford delight in probing the obscure and hidden truths of life. So why, even if I am hidden, do you complain that this necessarily implies that I do not exist? Furthermore, many of your fellow scientists have been explaining the mysteries of life by attributing them to Me. Many of these people are greater experts in their fields than even you are in yours. So I wonder why some of my children work so hard to reveal Me, while others work so hard to conceal Me? And since you have tried with all of your heart, soul, mind, and might, with which I have endowed you so generously, to conceal Me from a lost and dying world, then I have no choice but to conceal you in Hell forever. (And let me add a personal note, as an American. We Americans threw off the yoke of British political oppression 200 years ago, and we will not hesitate to endeavor today, with all the strength with which our Creator has endowed us, to throw off the yoke of British spiritual and intellectual oppression as well that comes against us from Charles Darwin, chief scientist of Satan, and his clever but errant Apostle, Richard Dawkins, to whom we can well apply Revelation 3:17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.)
4. Ms. Scott, I can only assume that you were poisoned by the wicked Department of Evolutionary Biology at CU Boulder and that, perhaps, this will mitigate the hellfire to which you are headed. However, your responsibility in overseeing the education of America's teenagers is particularly great, and the damage you have conspired to inflict on their delicate souls if very grave, so this may remove any extenuation when you stand naked in judgement before your Creator.
Despite my disdain for all you represent and for the damage you are inflicting on the hearts, minds, and souls of our nation's children, in obedience to my LORD I shall pray for your salvation, as I would pray for the salvation of Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin or the Boston Strangler. You all deserve one more chance. But mark my words, do not try God's patience for long, for He grieves deeply about the many millions of souls you are dragging along with you into deepest hell, and eventually He will intervene in a mighty and dramatic way, for the salvation of those who look to Him and to the eternal shame of His pathetic and puny human detractors.
Michael Korn
ICE WATER
For to whomever much is given much will be required, and whoever does not give glory to his Creator with the talents with which I have endowed him will have whatever little he possesses taken away and given to others, while he will be cast out, a worthless and defiant servant, into darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But to end this epistle on a more positive note, all of you obviously are gifted as educators. It is my prayer that you will recognize that this gift comes from God and that you will dedicate your lives to proclaiming the Creator, rather than disclaiming Him, to your young and impressionable students, whom He has entrusted to your care and nurture. AMEN!
I.C.E. W.A.T.E.R.
Israeli Christian Evangelists Worshipping Ancient Truth & Everlasting Righteousness.
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