Someday someone will make an intelligent movie that coherently explains the hypothesis of intelligent design. This flick from Ben Stein isn't it. Stein would have us believe that Darwinism is an evil cult of professors who are intolerant fanatics. "Expelled" paints them as unthinking godless zombies with university tenure. Those of you who ever tried to find your professor during what are quaintly referred to as "office hours" may be tempted to believe this. Zombies in the teacher's lounge would explain a lot.

Darwinists think that species evolve over time through the process of natural selection. Strong healthy individuals with characteristics that help them adapt to their environment will survive and produce offspring. Kind of like Bill Gates competing in the information age with the captain of the football team for the affections of the head cheerleader. OK maybe that's not the best example.

The intelligent design hypothesis says that some things in nature can't be explained by Darwinism. It says some things are so complicated that they couldn't have occurred by chance. Examples might be single cell organisms, eyes, human beings, and the federal income tax code. It is true that Darwinism doesn't do a good job of explaining how life came into existence in the first place. There is presently no lab experiment for this. No one has been able to simulate the random creation of complex molecules capable of reproducing themselves. This type of molecule was probably the beginning of life. Basically the intelligent design people and the creationists say that if science can't explain everything yet we should throw science away. Or at least the part of science that challenges their belief in God.

Ben Stein does raise some important questions about academic freedom. Professors who advocate or even mention the intelligent design hypothesis have lost jobs, tenure, and grant money. Most of the movie dwells on this. In this movie Darwinists are intolerant Nazis who want to drive God, creationism and intelligent design out of the classroom. What Ben Stein fails to point out is that the theory of evolution has a mountain of evidence to support it. This would include a massive fossil record and DNA evidence. Curiously he provides little actual evidence to support intelligent design. Perhaps because there is none? Even more questionably Stein implies that Darwinism will lead inevitably to eugenics or even concentration camps. In fact that is what happened in Hitler's Germany and other places. The human race has advanced quite a bit in the decades since Darwinism was used to justify sterilizing and even killing people.

Really all that Stein does in his movie is compare the Darwinists to Hitler and point out the holes in our current understanding of how life first came into being and then evolved. God may be counted on to help the weak and oppressed. She would most certainly turn thumbs down on this assault on science that pretends to defend the free speech of the intelligent design advocates.

--Dan_in_Cincinnati