Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...

In the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, narrator Ben Stein poses as a "rebel" willing to stand up to the scientific establishment in defense of freedom and honest, open discussion of controversial ideas like intelligent design (ID). But Expelled has some problems of its own with honest, open presentations of the facts about evolution, ID—and with its own agenda. Here are a few examples—add your own with a comment, and we may add it to another draft of this story. For our complete coverage, see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—Scientific American's Take.

1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes.

2) Ben Stein's speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup. Viewers of Expelled might think that Ben Stein has been giving speeches on college campuses and at other public venues in support of ID and against "big science." But if he has, the producers did not include one. The speech shown at the beginning and end was staged solely for the sake of the movie. Michael Shermer learned as much by speaking to officials at Pepperdine University, where those scenes were filmed. Only a few of the audience members were students; most were extras brought in by the producers. Judge the ovation Ben Stein receives accordingly.

3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie. As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit.

When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed.

4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there. One section of Expelled relates the case of Richard Sternberg, who was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks. The film mentions a 2006 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report prepared for Rep. Mark Souder (R–Ind.), "Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian," that denounced Sternberg's mistreatment.

This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie's case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal's editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last.

The report prepared by Rep. Souder, who had previously expressed pro-ID views, was never officially accepted into the Congressional Record. Notwithstanding the report's conclusions, its appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views. (More detailed descriptions of the Sternberg case can be found on Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and on Wikipedia.)

5) Science does not reject religious or "design-based" explanations because of dogmatic atheism. Expelled frequently repeats that design-based explanations (not to mention religious ones) are "forbidden" by "big science." It never explains why, however. Evolution and the rest of "big science" are just described as having an atheistic preference.

Actually, science avoids design explanations for natural phenomena out of logical necessity. The scientific method involves rigorously observing and experimenting on the material world. It accepts as evidence only what can be measured or otherwise empirically validated (a requirement called methodological naturalism). That requirement prevents scientific theories from becoming untestable and overcomplicated.

By those standards, design-based explanations rapidly lose their rigor without independent scientific proof that validates and defines the nature of the designer. Without it, design-based explanations rapidly become unhelpful and tautological: "This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this looks designed."

A major scientific problem with proposed ID explanations for life is that their proponents cannot suggest any good way to disprove them. ID "theories" are so vague that even if specific explanations are disproved, believers can simply search for new signs of design. Consequently, investigators do not generally consider ID to be a productive or useful approach to science.

6) Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution. Expelled includes many clips of scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, William Provine and PZ Myers who are also well known as atheists. They talk about how their knowledge of science confirms their convictions and how in some cases science led them to atheism. And indeed, surveys do indicate that atheism is more common among scientists than in the general population.

Nevertheless, the film is wrong to imply that understanding of evolution inevitably or necessarily leads to a rejection of religious belief. Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine, a leading neuroscientist who used to be a Dominican priest, continues to be a devout Catholic, as does the evolutionary biologist Ken Miller of Brown University. Thousands of other biologists across the U.S. who all know evolution to be true are also still religious. Moreover, billions of other people around the world simultaneously accept evolution and keep faith with their religion. The late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was compatible with Roman Catholicism as an explanation for mankind's physical origins.

During Scientific American's post-screening conversation with Expelled associate producer Mark Mathis, we asked him why Ken Miller was not included in the film. Mathis explained that his presence would have "confused" viewers. But the reality is that showing Miller would have invalidated the film's major premise that evolutionary biologists all reject God.

Inside and outside the scientific community, people will no doubt continue to debate rationalism and religion and disagree about who has the better part of that argument. Evidence from evolution will probably remain at most a small part of that conflict, however.

You view your faith as a gift, that is your prerogative. I view it as a way of explaining away things that you don't want to bother yourself thinking about. Luckily for us, there are still some that want to know.
You don't want to know, you want it explained. You're like the 10 year old that spoils the magic show by annoying the magician asking how he did the trick. Faith my friend is what you need to seek, not knowledge.
That being said, if God were to show himself tomorrow and provide proof that he created the universe, I'd be the first one in line to subscribe to his recollection of events. But until that point, I'm going to keep searching.

He did. You're too blind to see! His proof is in everything you see and hear. Some for the good and some that is not that great, but the proof is there. Very subtle but there. But prove it yourself. Make something out of absolute nothing. Dust could not exist without God. It just wasn't suddenly there. God created it as well as you. His wonderful gift is to give you free will to accept or denounce him. People like you only seem to accept him when your clutching your heart or about to die, yet you seem to denounce those that where hurting with addiction and were saved. It sounds like your "exposure" to God only comes from AA meetings. Try church and open up your heart. We are not freaks or vampires looking to cram Jesus down your throat. It doesn't work that way. God will reveal himself to you through his son, who died for you, if only you ask....and sincerely mean it.

You don't want to know, you want it explained. You're like the 10 year old that spoils the magic show by annoying the magician asking how he did the trick. Faith my friend is what you need to seek, not knowledge.

Or I want to do the explaining. And yes, I would be that annoying 10 year old. I guess that's why I'm an engineer and not a theologist.

You sound like a disgraced former Canadian Prime Minister.

"I don't know! A proof is a proof. What kind of a...proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof it's because it's proven."

From the horse's ~~ass~~ mouth to your ears.

You can't create something from nothing. And the whole idea of God brings up another issue. If God created us, who/what created God? And so on ad infinitum. Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation is the most probable, and since the whole idea of God gets us into an infinite loop of questions without answers, I'm more inclined to believe the simpler answer, that some other force created the universe.

Dust could not exist without God. It just wasn't suddenly there. God created it as well as you. His wonderful gift is to give you free will to accept or denounce him. People like you only seem to accept him when your clutching your heart or about to die, yet you seem to denounce those that where hurting with addiction and were saved.

I disagree. The idea of God couldn't exist without sentient life to create it. I agree that dust just wasn't suddenly there, but you CAN create heaver elements out of lighter ones, therefore it's not out of the realm of possibility that we started with the constituents of sub-atomic particles and worked our way up from there.

I'd be willing to bet a significant amount that I know a lot more about your faith and the history of it than you do about the Big Bang theory or any other theories about the creation/destruction of the universe. The problem I find with many people on BOTH sides of this argument is there is a degree of willful ignorance about the other side. I don't enter an argument without knowing enough about the other side to argue intelligently. I'm not trying to change anyone else's belief here, I'm just trying to show you that there are other points of view that are just as valid as yours.

It sounds like your "exposure" to God only comes from AA meetings. Try church and open up your heart. We are not freaks or vampires looking to cram Jesus down your throat. It doesn't work that way. God will reveal himself to you through his son, who died for you, if only you ask....and sincerely mean it.

If only. My experience is first hand, I attended Sunday school for about a year as a child. I did the weekly English reading at our church's Saturday evening mass for a time when I was a little older than that.

Cognitive dissonance is the state of holding two competing beliefs and being able to twist the facts enough to justify both of them. Tell me how exactly it is that God loves every single one of his children, and yet will not hesitate to send one of them to hell if they don't repent.

That being said. I do realize that there are MANY things we don't understand about life. And especially sentient life. We don't know exactly what it is that gives us "intelligence". Scientists are much more cautious to argue that we are alone in the universe (which is an open question, with exactly one data point), let alone the most advanced or intelligent species in the universe.

“People who assert evolution have a fundamental problem: origins. Their theory depends upon life appearing spontaneously from non-living matter. Nothing they can say about subsequent life forms on this planet change that fact. Yet, they artfully dodge this essential issue by saying they don’t deal in origins, even as their faith in the secular depends on the very origin they refuse to consider.”
Indeed!

ONLY God, ceates life.

This is where I just don't understand thumpers!

If God created The Universe and therefore every particle of matter and energy in it. Then when life sprang from the primordial cauldron three billion years ago, how could that not be God creating life through evolution? Why should that diminish one's faith?

How could any person of faith attempt to ascribe to God one method of implementing His plan over another?

How is it possible they do not see that Science has only validated the existence of God? "The Big Bang" was the moment at the beginning of time that God Created everything from. This singular causality fits quite adequately in Genesis if you do not attempt to pigeonhole God. Other Biblical evolutions are clearly bolstered by Darwin's Theory running parallel and true. You need not cast around for Magic Aliens or Intelligent Designers when it only took one Creator just as Genesis first explained and Science has not negated.

“If God created The Universe and therefore every particle of matter and energy in it. Then when life sprang from the primordial cauldron three billion years ago, how could that not be God creating life through evolution? Why should that diminish one’s faith?”

Where do you get this “primordial cauldron” idea and “three billion” years ago? My God SPOKE it into existence in 7, 24 hour days. He didn’t need “three billion” years to get His act together. Nor is He an “ape”. I and He are not the image of an ape. What you chose to believe - “three billion years” ago and this “primordial cauldron “ spells out rather clearly that you have NO faith. YOU just don’t see it or want to admit it.

“How could any person of faith attempt to ascribe to God one method of implementing His plan over another?”

A person of “faith” believes what He says. It takes away from the mulitpke choices that evolutionists got through all the time.

Creation and what Genesis states has NOTHING in common with Darwin or evolution. The choice is yours. Believe what you wish. My God delivers on what He says. I don’t know who your god is ... .

You can't create something from nothing. And the whole idea of God brings up another issue. If God created us, who/what created God?

God always was and always will be. The problem is that this argument is taken from the realm of human mortality and its limitations, not immortality and the power of the divine. God never had a beginning and will never have an end.

I agree that dust just wasn't suddenly there, but you CAN create heaver elements out of lighter ones,

Then where did the heavier element come from? A heavier one and on it goes. It came from something. Even if you subscribe to the "Big Bang" Theory where did the matter come from? It was always there? Why can that be believed but the existance of God cannot?

You know the history of a Theory? A theory is unproven fact. Its conjecture based on slim evidence, which is why its the Theory of Evolution not the Fact of Evolution. So you know alot about conjecture. God has revealed himself through numberous men and through his son Jesus Christ. There are more books written on Christ alone then the Big Bang and Evolution put together. Since you do not know Christ, you cannot possibly know more than I!

My experience is first hand, I attended Sunday school for about a year as a child. did the weekly English reading at our church's Saturday evening mass for a time when I was a little older than that.

A whole year? What where you? Training to be a Pope? Just kidding. Anyone can read. It takes more than just reading the bible. You choose not to believe the word of God, Free will baby! His greatest gift, and your unfortuniately your potential greatest loss.

Scientists are much more cautious to argue that we are alone in the universe (which is an open question, with exactly one data point), let alone the most advanced or intelligent species in the universe.

Same ones that invented Global Warming? What truly do they Not a slam against you, but true enlightenment comes from the word of God. Its existed for thousands of years and has yet to be proven wrong. Read The Case For Christ Written by an athiest lawyer seeking to prove Christ was not the son of God, and in his failing became enlightened! Good Luck FRiend!

God always was and always will be.

So you believe.

It's called nuclear fusion baby! A process that we utilize each and every single day. It produces much of the energy used by plant life, and therefore a significant quantity of the energy used by animal life (humans included). As for the big bang theory, when we start getting into things like dark matter and dark energy, well...it gets complicated. But because of the nature of the universe we can't see to the big bang (only the background radiation left over from it) or through the big bang, so there's no way of knowing when/how it happened or what existed before.

A theory is what best fits the facts as currently known. It's not conjecture based on slim evidence (that would be a hypothesis, but I wouldn't use the word conjecture). I'd like to see those numbers if you please. I would argue that the subject is the same, whether you're talking God or a non-theistic view of the creation of the universe. And the last sentence is pure hubris, nothing more.

Same ones that invented Global Warming? What truly do they Not a slam against you, but true enlightenment comes from the word of God.

Global warming, and anthropogenic global warming are two different animals. The world warms and cools naturally, we have little to no discernible affect on it. As far as enlightenment, God has stopped creating, man will continue to for the foreseeable future.

It's called nuclear fusion baby!

Which came from????? A process that we utilize each and every single day. It produces much of the energy used by plant life, and therefore a significant quantity of the energy used by animal life (humans included).

Oh yeah now I can see how this all accidentally just happened to come together. Happens all the time. Hey by the way, with the exception of the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, can you tell me the last time something tremendous just happen to come together? I mean with the randomness of atoms that appear from no where, things must be being created (without mans intervention) that are new and astonishing and only a few years old. Name 1?

As for the big bang theory, when we start getting into things like dark matter and dark energy, well...it gets complicated. But because of the nature of the universe we can't see to the big bang (only the background radiation left over from it) or through the big bang, so there's no way of knowing when/how it happened or what existed before.

So you believe in something you can't see, but can't believe in God? OK

Oh OK. Give me a fact on the theory of Evolution. The last subject is pure hubris, because you cannot speak authoritatively of it as I can, just like I cannot speak of the love you have for your spouse as you can.

I never said anthropogenic global warming and thats not what Scientist are agreeing upon. Its Global Warming and they say its caused by man, with no facts, only theories of what will happen in a computer model in 25 of 50 or 100 years. Water vapor isn't even figured in their "Theory". Scientists cannot even tell you how much condensation is created in 1 year, they just don't know. But its the same people who will tell us that the world is doomed in 25 or so years, yet cannot predict the weather for next Thursday.

This is a rather pointless argument since yours is a faith in man and mine is a faith in God. You'll go your way and I'll go mine from the looks of it. Neither converted, neither convinced. But mine has and will stand the test of time. Yours will crumble away.

Ben is one of the good guys!

That's what I've always thought. That's why it's sickening -- makes me feel literally ill -- to see him directly involved in these lies.

Did you even read the article? Stein, and the producers, lied again and again. Stein effectively lied -- given the natural expectation one has of a documentary film, even one that uses humor -- with that staged lecture, apparently presented as a real one. The producers lied to the interviewees about the name and the intent of the film. Then they lied again after the film was made -- and I've heard Stein himself repeat this lie in interviews -- about the name and intent of the film changing during it's production.

And those three particular lies are not even the beginning of it. The whole "expelled" premise is a lie. The claims, in most if not all cases, of persecution by the antievolution participants -- as documented here in the case of Sternberg, who was never "fired" from anything -- are bogus.

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