Imagine there's no legal case

A federal court in Elliot Spitzer's state has denied Yoko Ono's request that "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" be disallowed from using a clip from her late husband John Lennon's song, "Imagine". Here's how the New York Daily News put it in a story today:

The 15-second clip of the lyric, "Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too," is protected by free speech because the filmmakers are making a point about evolution and intelligent design, the judge ruled.

Opponents of ID take the bait on voodoo film criticism

Well the critics of "Expelled" have taken the bait: they are defending the idea that you can review a movie without seeing it. Here is one commenter, Dan, on why he supports voodoo film criticism:

You don't actually have to see a movie to know that it's ****.

... Nobody who is intelligent needs to see it. Just listen to Ben Stein. Just read reputable people who have seen it. Just learn about the history of the movie (i.e., the lies they told to their interviewees).

It's not rocket science. It's not science at all.

And what does this guy know about rocket science, anyway? I know something about it. I mean I haven't actually dealt directly with rockets or been at any launches or taken a degree in it or anything like that. But my father is an actual rocket scientist and I've listened to my father talk about it for years. I've even read some things he's written (and he is very reputable). I've also read some things about the history of rocket science. And you know what that means, don't you? It means I know rocket science too. So this guy needs to just shut up about rocket science because he doesn't know anything about it.

Like I do.

Then there's good ol' Frame:

If you're going to talk about integrity, you should stop defending ID right now because this movement is run by an organization of people who believe that the ends justify the means.

Ends justifying means? You mean like saying its okay not to actually see movies you are critiquing simply because it serves your purposes in wanting the movie to look bad?

I love it when defenders of the empirical method defend anti-empirical methods to pursue their purposes.

David Berlinski's response to John Derbyshire on "Expelled"

Here is David Berlinski's response to John Derbyshire's silly "review" of "Expelled" at National Review Online.

Pop Quiz: Which remark is more stupid? Stein's or Dawkins'?

L. Ron Brown at "The Frame Problem" takes Ben Stein to task for making careless remarks about science on the Glenn Beck show. Of course Brown employs the usual array of hyperbolic terms favored by Darwinists in such cases to describe Stein's remarks, in which he seems to blame "science" for historical atrocities. Were Stein's remarks careless? Sure they were. Shame on him. Were they examples of "Ignorance, deceit, and stupidity"? I don't think so.

I've been on plenty of television and radio interviews and I don't know if there is single one I didn't walk out of thinking, "I shouldn't have said it that way." But for every instance of hyperbole, there seems to be an equal and opposite incidence of hyperbole, and that is what we are getting from the Darwinists.

But let's face it, Stein's remarks were careless. Bad boy! An afternoon's detention I say.

But let's just remind the hyperreactive critics of Intelligent Design about their own record of stupid remarks made, not in the midst of a television interviews in which there is no editing option, statements made in carefully written statements in which they did have plenty of opportunity to make sure it said exactly what they wanted it to say.

Of this species of remark, my personal favorite is this one, by Richard Dawkins:

Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.

If Stein's remarks deserve afternoon detention, Dawkins gets a week's suspension.

John Derbyshire on "Expelled," or How to Review a Movie without Really Trying

I have always admired G. K. Chesterton's dictum that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, but I never appreciated the full scope of its application until reading John Derbyshire's recent review of Ben Stein's "Expelled" at National Review Online.

"What on earth has happened to Ben Stein?" asks Derbyshire. "He and I go a long way back." Are the two close? Are they old pals who have been through a lot together? "No," he says, "I've never met the guy." But wait. How can this be? How can Derbyshire have forged this bond of friendship with Stein without actually knowing him?

"Though I've never met him," he explains, "I know people who know him, and they all speak well of him."

Got it.

In fact, Derbyshire displays an amazing ability, far beyond that of the rest of us, to engage with people and things even though he has had no direct contact with them. Take "Expelled" for example. "So what's going on here with this stupid "Expelled" movie?" he asks--a question which could have been answered by the simple expedient of actually watching it. A man with Derbyshire's special talent, however, is not hampered by such constraints:

No, I haven't seen the dang thing. I've been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro ... and con, and I can't believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing.

That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it! This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review movies he has never seen. It is perhaps fortuitous that Bill Buckley, the founder of National Review, recently passed from among us: this is a talent I am not sure he would have fully appreciated.

This ability to judge a movie without having to suffer the indignity of actually watching it surely sets Derbyshire apart. Who else could accomplish the task with so few tools: a little hearsay, a few second hand reports--and perhaps a Ouija board. This is a critical skill at which the rest of us can only marvel.

Most film critics attend screenings: Derbyshire conducts a séance.

And what does Derbyshire think of "Expelled" after not having seen it? Very little, it seems. "It's pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance..." One would think, given Derbyshire's method of reviewing movies, that he would have a greater appreciation for ignorance and the uses to which it can be put.

But with his judgment in the can, Derbyshire, like his friend Stein in the movie itself, goes hunting for answers. And what does he find? How could Stein have participated in such an unseemly project? "The first thing that came to mind," he offers, "was Saudi money."

That's right. Saudi money.

Now I will confess that the oil-rich Saudis are not high on my list of people in whose interest it is to explain the dinosaurs away. But as unlikely as this thesis may sound, we must remember with whom we are dealing here, and how far his apparently occult powers of perception seem to extend. Derbyshire may indeed have never met a Saudi, or even been to their country, in which case, who could contend with his knowledge on the subject?

Derbyshire himself has to finally abandon this explanation. "For one thing, Stein is Jewish." There you go. "For another, he is rich, and doesn't need the money." Too true. And then there is Stein's character, which Derbyshire testifies to on the basis of the long and intimate association that he has not had with Stein: "No," he concludes, "Ben Stein is no crook."

The kind of long, painful process Derbyshire goes through to conclude that Stein is not, in fact, motivated by men wearing white robes (No, not those. We don't need to suggest that theory, since it might involve another long thought process and derail Derbyshire from his greater purpose) is one he might well have chosen instead to apply to the merits of the movie itself.

But why bother?

One of the beauties of Derbyshire's sibylline method of reviewing movies is that it places the reviewer at a safe distance from the actual film itself, allowing the critic to say things about the film that are unconstrained by what is actually in it. The downside, of course, is that the reviewer may get it all wrong and look like a complete idiot. But it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to place him in this latter category, largely because we have actually read his review, placing us perhaps too close to the subject for proper judgment.

But if one were looking for weaknesses in Derbyshire's review, they would point to things like his criticism of the quality of the graphics in the movie, which were actually quite good (though probably not as impressive when, as in Derbyshire's case, you don't actually see them), and to his uncritical acceptance of virtually every hostile allegation made against the production of the film.

But these indiscretions are tolerable compared with the alternative. The best defense of Derbyshire's critical approach of not directly exposing himself to the things he criticizes is to point out what happens when he does.

Although Derbyshire turns his nose up at actually seeing the movies he reviews, he is willing to get his hands dirty when it comes to creationists themselves. And indeed we have to admire Derbyshire's noble effort to actually get to know these people. It is admirable that he would lower himself to do this given the distasteful nature of the whole business:

Individual creationists can be very nice people, though they get nicer the further away they are from the full-time core enterprise of modern creationism at the Discovery Institute. The enterprise as a whole, however, really doesn’t smell good. You notice this when you’re around it a lot.

So even though Derbyshire has largely forsaken the direct application of his senses as a basis for making judgments, at least he has not lost all of them. He can "smell" these creationists, and, if they are not too densely congregated, he can even tolerate the odor. It is a measure of his commitment to the truth that, despite the offense to his olfactory sense, he is still willing to pursue it no matter into what unpleasant situations it might lead him.

One can imagine him, conducting his research at a local Baptist church social, reaching out to shake with his right hand, while holding a handkerchief to his nose with his left. For a man concerned with the very fate of Western civilization, it is a sacrifice he is willing to make.

Yes, Western civilization: This is what Derbyshire feels is at stake in the debate over Intelligent Design, and it is "creationists" who threaten it. And who are these creationists? They are "shifty," dishonest, nasty, and (I hesitate to repeat the term in the context of a Derbyshire film review) uninformed. They even have "bad manners."

Apparently, they weren't observing proper table etiquette at that Baptist social.

And to what can we attribute these moral shortcomings? Again, Derbyshire has a hypothesis. But, unlike the Saudi Theory of Why Ben Stein Supports Creationism, this one somehow makes it through Derbyshire's rigorous verification process: "My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are."

His proof for this theory? The fact that many Intelligent Design advocates deny they are creationists. Now one explanation of why these people might deny they are creationists is the fact that they actually aren't. But this doesn't fool Derbyshire. No, sir. They are, he says,

a handful of eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories, and [who] set about presenting themselves to the public as “alternative science" engaged in a “controversy” with a closed-minded, reactionary “science establishment” fearful of new ideas.

Derbyshire does not offer any actual proof for this. In fact, he doesn't even give examples of the misrepresentations he says characterize the movie. "The misrepresentations in Expelled are far too numerous for me to list here, and the task is unnecessary since others have done it." After all, he didn't bother to watch the movie before reviewing it, so why should he offer actual proof of what is wrong with it?

Western civilization has many glories. There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.

It is on behalf of these testaments to greatness (and, oh, did he forget to mention good manners?) that Derbyshire charges Intelligent Design with "blood libel on Western Civilization." After all, would these achievements even have been attempted if it hadn't been for Darwin? Would the painting, and music, and architecture of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries have even been possible without the concept of Natural Selection? Is there any great building in Rome or Florence or Vienna that does not know owe its very existence to ...

Oh, wait.

Darwin didn't come along until the 19th century, did he? In fact, almost all of the things in Derbyshire's list of great Western achievements were accomplished by men who believed that this world was ... the product of design.

But what about science? We can't say that science isn't in danger from these dishonest, shifty, unmannerly people, can we?

And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone.

Of course, at least Stein has actually seen the world, which is more, Stein might respond, than Derbyshire has done with his movie. In fact, that a man whose preferred means of critiquing movies is akin to looking into a crystal ball would venture to criticize anyone for being unscientific is an irony perhaps too obvious for a mind as esoteric as Derbyshire's to notice.

Well, okay, but how about Rudyard Kipling, whom Derbyshire quotes as an example of someone who courageously manned the battlements in the defense of the West, and whose name he invokes as a model of how we too should stand in the fight against the barbarians, who now go under the name "creationists"?

Kipling? The author of the Just So Stories, in which the peculiarities of various animals are explained in mythological terms ("How the Camel Got his Hump," "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin," "How the Leopard Got His Spots")? That Kipling? Well, okay, he's not exactly the paragon of science, but I'm hip with that.

For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.

Trouble is, if it is Kipling's cause in which Derbyshire wants Ben Stein to join him, it is Derbyshire, not Stein who will have to rethink his position in order to do so.

I just want to see the look on Derbyshire's face when, after Stein has joined him on the battlements and they are singing their rousing war songs, they get to this particular stanza:

God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

("Recessional," by Rudyard Kipling)

Oh, and we should probably point out that the deity referred to here is not Darwin.

John Derbyshire has Bill Buckley rolling over in his grave

If you believe the rhetoric from ID critics about the lack of integrity on the part of the producers of "Expelled," you ought to check out the reviewers. John Derbyshire at National Review has written a negative review of Ben Stein's "Expelled"--without actually having seen the movie! So far no outrage from the Darwinist Truth Patrol, which, of course, would pounce on the same indiscretion if an ID proponent committed it. In fact, Ed Brayton gives it a nod of approval.

I wonder what Brayton would do if someone posted a criticism of Darwin's Origin of Species without ever having read the thing.

But isn't there a level of hypocrisy to which even the critics of ID will not descend in the criticism of the movie? For example, certainly the National Center for Science Education, which runs a site called "Expelled Exposed" to criticize the shortcomings it sees in the movie would think it was just a little too blatant a move to include the review on its site. But no, it's there too!

My only regret in reading Derbyshire's review is that I cannot now criticize it without having actually read it.

In fact, I know the anti-ID putties will find some way of defending Derbyshire, and I'm fine with that. But here are rules: I will not accept any comments on this post unless you haven't read it (this post that is). I will only approve it if your comments are based exclusively on what others have said about this post. Got that?

Okay, let's see what you can do.

ID: It's a Creationist Plot

There are people who apparently have a deep-seated need to believe that Intelligent Design proponents are really creationists in disguise, and that once they have control over the nation's schools, they're going to rip off their clever scientist disguises to reveal men in short sleeve dress shirts and horn-rimmed glasses who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Acting on a preordained set of instructions, this view seems to suggest, they will proceed to outlaw any mention of evolution in schools, and will execute plans that involve, among other things, taking students on weekly field trips to Ken Ham's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

It is a frightening vision of the future: a flood of creationism let loose on the nation's schools. The end of science is near, and to ride out the crisis, ID critics are building themselves a rhetorical ark and bringing the fallacies aboard two by two.

The charge that ID is part of some creationist conspiracy was recently reiterated by Larry Arnhart, the author of Darwinian Conservatism. Arnhart, a professor at Northern Illinois University, writes in a recent post about the "Rhetorical Blunder in Ben Stein's 'Expelled'," a blunder which has to do, he thinks, with what is really behind Intelligent Design.

The first thing you should do when you write about someone else's blunders is not to make them yourself in the process of doing so. It just looks silly. But Arnhart makes one that he repeats throughout his entire discourse on the inadvisability of blunders.

Arnhart makes the following statement about "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed":

This movie is the latest project of the Discovery Institute in promoting the political rhetoric of "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science.

It is? In fact, Discovery Institute did not produce the movie. It was included in the movie, but so was Richard Dawkins, who, last time anyone checked, wasn't involved in the production of the movie either. If he had been, he would have had one less excuse not to know what the movie into which he walked with both his eyes wide open was about. The movie was actually produced by Premise Media, which has no organizational connection with Discovery.

But Arnhart's main objective in the article is to bolster the "It's a Creationist Plot" theory about Intelligent Design. "The folks at the Discovery Institute," he asserts, "have made a big mistake in their production of this movie." The mistake (which Discovery doesn't make) in making this movie (which it didn't make either) is a contradiction Arnhart claims to have detected:

On the one hand, the rhetorical strategy of the Discovery Institute is to say that "intelligent design" is not a creationist religious belief but pure science, and therefore teaching "intelligent design" in public high school biology classes does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition on establishing religion. On the other hand, the popular success of the Discovery Institute's rhetoric depends on appealing to Biblical creationists who assume that "intelligent designer" is just another name for God the Biblical Creator.

In other words, Arnhart is asserting that a position should be judged on the basis of who supports it, not by what it actually holds. This is rather strange reasoning for someone like Arnhart to use. If we applied this logic to Darwinism, of course, we could conclude that it is really atheism in disguise, since atheists unanimously support it. But if we did that, people like Arnhart would fuss and fume, and point out that a position should be judged on the basis of what it asserts, not who supports it.

Darwinists have clearly not developed a sense of consistency. Maybe Nature is saving that for the next step up in the evolutionary progress of their species.

In "Expelled," which Discovery made but really didn't, this contradiction, says Arnhart, is on full display:

When Bruce Chapman--President of the Discovery Institute--is interviewed by Stein, Chapman says that journalists distort the true position of intelligent design by saying that it's a creationist religious belief, because the "intelligent designer" is clearly God. Chapman vehemently denies this. But then for the rest of the movie, it's asserted that anyone who denies "intelligent design" is therefore an atheist who denies the existence of God!

Asserted by whom? Chapman? Maybe Arnhart could provide some evidence of this. I've seen the movie twice, and I don't recall this assertion being made by anyone in the movie. I could see, if the assertion was really made, that it wouldn't matter who made it, since Arnhart is operating under the assumption that the whole thing was produced by Discovery, and therefore any such assertion could be laid at the feet of Chapman, who is Discovery's director. But then we have already determined that that assumption is erroneous, haven't we?

I think what Arnhart means to say here (I'm trying to bail you out here Larry) is that the movie claims that anyone who is a Darwinist is an atheist who denies the existence of God. But note that it isn't proponents of ID who make this claim in the movie, but proponents of Darwinism in the form of people like Richard Dawkins. This has, of course, sent the ID critics into paroxysms of indignation because they seem to think that casting Dawkins in a lead role is somehow misrepresentative of the public debate over Intelligent Design.

The only adequate response to this is to point them to the sales figures of Dawkins books. And those by his fellow Neo-Atheists--Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett--haven't been too shabby either. The Darwinists who disagree with the Neo-Atheists, like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Educators (NCSE), get upset every time anyone talks to Dawkins about this issue on the grounds that she and her more presentable colleagues are the ones people should be listening to.

Well, maybe they should. But are they? And who is Eugenie Scott anyway? Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion hit #4 on the New York Times bestseller list. How many books has she sold? If Eugenie Scott wants to be a big star in the next Ben Stein movie, then she's going to have to do a better job getting her literary career off the ground. That's all there is to it.

Eugenie, we'll be pulling for you.

To keep asserting that the Neo-Atheists are not at the heart of the debate over ID is to simply have ignored the press coverage of this issue over the last couple of years. These are, in fact, the people who are among the most visible opponents of Intelligent Design. And it isn't as if people like Scott were not included in the movie: they were (despite their lack of star power).

But Arnhart and other critics of the movie feel somehow that the makers of an admittedly partisan movie about Intelligent Design have some kind of obligation to comprehensively state their opponents' case for them in their little hour and a half. Here is a group of people who have control of virtually every scientific professional association, every public university science department, and every secular textbook publishing house--and they want the producers of "Expelled" to use the 90 minutes of equal time they paid for to make the other side look good.

Go figure.

I suppose we should be happy that ID critics have gotten religion on the issue of accuracy in the media, and are now so intent on preaching it to the mulitudes. But their conversion has come a little late, hasn't it? Where were the Defenders of Truth like Arnhart when PBS was doing a hatchet job on Intelligent Design in NOVA's "Judgment Day," which was supposed to be, not a partisan, but an unbiased account of the controversy? Well, the one most like Arnhart--namely, Arnhart himself--was praising it.

Arnhart attempts to sound unbiased on the Intelligent Design debate--a pose he strikes often on his blog:

The problem, however, is that both sides of this debate are caught up in a frenzy of rhetorical posturing that makes it impossible to have a thoughtful exchange of competing ideas.

If Arnhart is serious in his concern for ensuring that the debate over Intelligent Design is being conducted on Marquis of Queensbury rules, he would presumably observe them himself. But when, in the very act of condemning Intelligent Design proponents for misrepresenting evolution, he repeats the tired and discredited argument that ID is really disguised creationism, he descends to the very behavior that he laments in others: misrepresentation.

I'll have to admit, Arnhart does look noble in his objective pose. But if you're looking for an unbiased view of the debate, you'll have to look to someone other than Arnhart, whose claim that he is monitoring both sides of this debate for rhetorical posturing is, alas, a rhetorical posture.

Ben Stein vs. Yoko Ono

Ben Stein's response to Yoko Ono on Ono's suit against the movie "Expelled" for using a short clip from John Lennon's song, "Imagine":

So Yoko Ono is suing over the brief Constitutionally protected use of a song that wants us to "Imagine no possessions"? Maybe instead of wasting everyone’s time trying to silence a documentary she should give the song to the world for free? After all, "imagine all the people sharing all the world…You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the World can live as one.”

We're going to put Ono's lawsuit in the file with clips from rock groups that go around spouting socialism at their concerts--which you have to pay $40 to attend.

Ten ways Darwinists help Intelligent Design

An excellent rundown of how ID critics mishandled the campaign against ID and the recent movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." I'm telling ya', their lack of fitness for survival becomes more evident every day.

Part I
Part II
Part III

Richard Weikart on Darwinism and its consequences

Richard Weikart summarizes the findings in his recent book on the historical and philosophical connection between Darwinian ideas and Nazi eugenics policies.

Physician, Heal Thyself: Dembski on accusations that Darwinists were treated unfairly in the movie "Expelled"

William Dembski, on the accusations that Darwinists were treated unfairly in "Expelled":

I find it remarkable that the Darwinists are belly-aching about the treatment they received from EXPELLED producers. Our side experiences far worse. When the BBC interviewed me for their documentary on ID, they didn’t tell me it would be titled A WAR ON SCIENCE and that my colleagues and I would be portrayed as those trying to destroy science. Whereas the Darwinists were filmed in their offices and made to look professorial, they had me walking down a railroad track, Behe suspended in mid-air on a carnival ride looking ridiculous, etc. Finally, they spliced in commentary by Ken Miller ostensibly critiquing my work on probabilities, which he then was forced to repudiate since the criticisms were so patently off target with respect to my work — he attributed the fault to bad editing on the part of the BBC. I blogged on this here and here.

So, if you want to debunk dishonesty and sleaze in documentaries, the BBC is far more worthy of your attentions. The worst that can be said about the producers of EXPELLED is that they didn’t tip their hands early. In consequence, we find Darwinists with their pants down and looking unimpressive. I’m sure that hurts. Take the pain.

An opportunity for the Darwinists to charge the Village Voice with hypocrisy. Will they take advantage of it?

Dembski makes an interesting observation on his blog today: While the Village Voice is condemning the movie "Expelled" for drawing a documented historical connection between Darwinism and Naziism, it is praising the movie "Constantine's Sword" for saying that Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, fostered religious hatred that "culminated in the holocaust."

Who'll give me odds that the people who are always charging Intelligent Design advocates with hypocrisy with the least little provocation will make excuses for the Voice?

Expelled critics: so bored they can't see straight

I saw "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," the controversial new documentary film by Ben Stein on the Intelligent Design debate, at one of the private screenings that was part of the grass roots marketing for the film, and I was disappointed. That's right. Here I made a trip all the way to Louisville, Kentucky from my home in Danville (almost 2 hours away), I go get a big bag of popcorn and a drink, climb the steps in the stadium seating at the Tinseltown Theater for the private screening and, as it turns out, not a single, solitary Darwinist tried to sneak past the big, scary looking octogenarian security guards to try to get in.

So instead, I had to turn my attention to the movie itself, which was excellent. It was effective in its presentation of its views, it was in turns funny, ominous, clever, illuminating, and entertaining. Now I know why the Darwinists are having such a fit--and spending so much time and effort throwing it: this is a powerful expose of academic intolerance. If this one gets wide exposure, they get a well deserved black eye. Whether it does get wide exposure is uncertain at this writing, but I wonder about their strategy, since the more public indignation they manufacture, the more attention they give the movie.

What are they thinking?

People who have doubts about Darwinism (and their numbers are not inconsiderable in this country) have an obvious motivation to see the movie. But this is a movie the Darwinists aren't supposed to like, much less go see. But if I were a Darwinist, what with all the hoopla, I'm going to lay down my 5 bits just to see what all the fuss is about. I'm guessing that their strategy is to convince people that the movie is not very good, which they have spilled a lot of ink trying to do.

There are several things the critics are saying to accomplish this apparent objective, some of which have nothing to do with the quality of the movie at all.

The movie, say the Darwinist critics, wasn't honest with the Darwinists who were interviewed for the film. In other words, they lied. They didn't tell them what the film was about. The producers, of course, dispute this, and point out that they not only told them what the film was about, but gave them the questions in advance and answered whatever questions they had about the film. But they didn't reveal to them the title, say the critics. No, and they probably didn't tell them who the clapper loader and lighting gaffer were either. So what?

What difference does that make to what people like Dawkins would have said? Would they have been less honest about what they believed? If so, then wouldn't not telling them what the movie was about at all have been a greater contribution to the truth about which the critics say they are so concerned? Would Dawkins, et al. not have been willing to state their case at all if they knew more about the film than they apparently wanted to know? Well that would have been big of them.

But the main point is that that has nothing to do with the quality of the movie. Even if it were true, it has nothing to do with whether, when you leave the theater, you thought the hour and a half was well spent.

The film, some say, is intellectually garbled. Read: it it didn't come to a conclusion they agree with. Are there really people going to this movie to witness a visual academic treatise? They only wish. Look, the movie is self-consciously (and self-confessedly) channeling Michael Moore--with the appropriate ideological adjustments. This is infotainment folks, get used to it.

There's the charge that the film doesn't give a definition of Intelligent Design. This could be a problem for dull minds that can't put two and two together to make four. But I have asked myself the question, if I did not know what Intelligent Design was before I saw this film, would I know afterward? I certainly would. What I would not think, after seeing this film, is that Intelligent Design is creationism, which is what the reviewers making this charge wanted to see, and are now upset because they didn't.

In fact, this is the best thing about this movie: it completely dispels the notion that Intelligent Design is just warmed over creationism. Let's face it, it's just hard to the square the image of, say, David Berlinski, the polymath Princeton PhD from, postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in mathematics and molecular biology, analytic philosophy, and philosophy of mathematics, and former professor at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, and the Universite de Paris with the stereotype of the creation scientist--particularly when Berlinski, a secular Jew, is shown being interviewed casually slouched back in a chair in his exquisitely decorated Paris townhouse.

Then there is the assertion that no definition of evolution is offered. But evolution is discussed again and again, in detail, with shades of meaning parsed and commented on. Again, the lack of a definition isn't the problem for the critics: rather, it's the lack of a positive portray of Darwinism as they see it is.

The movie, say others, caricatures Darwinism. Well let's face it: any 90 minute movie covering any topic is going to caricature anything it deals with. Caricature is when you take the significant aspects of something and exaggerate them for dramatic effect. And the alternative is? Besides, if the Darwinist critics of this film don't like caricature, they ought to check out their portrayals of ID sometime. They can start with the charge that ID is the same thing as creationism.

In fact, ID critics seem to find it singularly profound to judge this movie on criteria that have little to do with the purpose of the movie. The movie doesn't prove ID; the movie doesn't give an accurate and detailed scientific description of this or that; the movie doesn't give a balanced treatment of the issue; yada, yada, yada. Of course, these are not things the movie even purports to do, much less attempt. This is not a movie about Intelligent Design or evolution. This is a movie about the debate over Intelligent Design and evolution. Any criticisms that don't take account of this are simply nonsensical and irrelevant.

If you slog through the comments from critics and keep your eye peeled, you can find an occasional criticism that, right or wrong, actually belongs in a movie review. The film, say some, is "boring". C'mon. Unless you fall within the category of totally ignorant of the issue of evolution and uncaring (in which case you didn't buy a ticket to go see the movie in the first place), you're going to be mad--either at the Darwinists' ideological cartel, or at the producers for making the movie. You're either going to be cheering Ben Stein on or gnawing on knuckles in frustration. But bored? No way.

In fact, one wonders how such a boring film can elicit such hostility. Peter McWilliams once defined boredom as "hostility without enthusiasm." But these people are not only hostile, they are enthusiastic in their hostility. If they're bored, they sure are worked up about it.

The negative reviews of Expelled are primarily written by people who disagree with the film's central contention, just as the positive reviews are largely from people who agree with it. When it comes to a film like this, there is little room for objectivity. Darwinists aren't going to give this film a positive review any more than a conservative would give a positive review to a Michael Moore film. If you agree with it you like it, if you don't you don't. It's pretty simple.

I actually went to the movie not expecting much. Call me gullible, but I actually believed some of the rhetoric coming from the critics. I was thinking, okay, here these people were nice enough to invite me to the sneak preview and I'm going to walk out feeling obligated to write up something nice about it when I may think it was just a shameless piece of propaganda. Maybe I just won't say anything. Yeah. That's what I'll do.

I needn't have worried.

The thing that I was expecting to be particularly turned off by was the communist and Nazi allusions I had heard were in the film. The film, said one reviewer, "wanders off to blame the theory of evolution for Communism, the Berlin Wall, Fascism, the Holocaust, atheism and Planned Parenthood." Well, to say that this constitutes "wandering off" is, I suppose, the right of the critic concerned about the integrity of a film, but I doubt that is the motive behind the criticism. The point of the film is whatever the filmmaker wants the point of the film to be, and if part of the point is to analyze the ideological origins and implications of the idea of Darwinism, then it's not "wandering off."

In fact, the Nazi and communist imagery was perfectly appropriate to the filmmakers' point. They were talking about ideological totalitarianism. So why isn't imagery that shows totalitarianism in its political form not relevant to it? While I think the more relevant comparison is McCarthyism here, I'll also readily admit that that analogy is not nearly as dramatic, and probably less useful for a filmmaker.

Is the imagery overdone? Perhaps. But those critical of this aspect of the film have to answer the charges included in the film that, in fact, National Socialism and communism relied on a Darwinian view to help ground their political ideologies. Are they denying that they did? All I've heard is squealing that the charge was made. Was Charles Darwin a Nazi or a communist? Of course not. And, being the gentleman that he was, he would undoubtedly have been appalled at the use to which his theory was put.

But he was not just a gentleman: he was a Victorian gentleman. And the whole Victorian project was to try to maintain the traditional moral system without the religious system that engendered and undergirded it. In that respect (and a few others) Darwinism was a product of its time. But the Victorian project was accounted a failure: this moral system could not be maintained without the religious foundation, as Friedrich Nietzsche had predicted. Darwin himself accepted it, good Victorian that he was, but his theory only served to undermine it.

The film doesn't give us a complete account of all this, partly because it can't. But it does call attention to the historical connections, and to connections with the eugenics movement as well. The question is whether these connections are a coincidence or not? Is there something about Darwinism that lends itself to this? When morality is undermined, are we supposed be surprised when it is violated?

The reaction to "Expelled" has not only been hostile, but sometimes ugly (not that that should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the rhetoric of those opposed to Intelligent Design). The review that ran in my local paper was by Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, who urged readers not to see the film because Ben Stein might profit from it: "Ben Stein wins your money if you go to his expose on bias against Intelligent Design." One wonders whether that is an equally good reason not to read Moore's reviews.

Then there is FOX News' Robert Friedman: "After seeing a new non-fiction film starring Comedy Central's Ben Stein, you may not only be able to win his money, but also his career ... But that career may be over come April 18." If Friedman were a university department chair and Stein was a professor, he could ensure that, now couldn't he?

Whatever Darwinism's ramifications for morality, it certainly doesn't do much for politeness.

Why P. Z. Myers should be wearing the short pants and sneakers

I have theorized elsewhere about the Darwinists' diminishing status in the gene pool, but there is new and even more alarming evidence of the deterioration of the Darwinist subspecies--further proof that those who believe in the survival of the fittest are less fit for survival. It is becoming increasingly evident that there is a serious lack of creativity among a few Darwinists that could threaten their station on the evolutionary tree.

These days I get most of my news via my Google Reader, and about half of it over the last week seems to be about an attempt by biologist P. Z. Myers to sneak into a private viewing of the new movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," Ben Stein's expose of Darwinist thought control in our institutions of higher learning. Myer's attempt to get into the private screening (which was invitation only) was foiled when he was recognized and told that the private screening was, well, private.

From the indignation with which this incident has been received by the anti-ID crowd, one would think that he was beaten with truncheons by big men in steel-toed boots and physically dragged away from the theater. But, alas, it is not so. Turns out he was just standing there dumbly in line waiting to get in to see the movie, was recognized, and was then asked by theater security to go away, which he did, according to reports, without a struggle.

Such is the state of the Darwinist mindset these days that so unimpressive a performance is considered the stuff of heroism. But P. Z. thought it was something, and he has recounted several times now how he bravely endured his confrontation with theater security (and we know their reputation). I mean what was he supposed to do? They had badges.

But P. Z.'s story about being "thrown out" gets even more gut-wrenching. After being separated from his family (who security apparently let in to see the movie), Myers ended up at a local Apple store at the Mall of the Americas, where he blogged about his experience.

Talk about being in the belly of the beast.

In any case, what are we supposed to make of all this hoopla? Well according to the Darwinists, this is an example of the hypocrisy of Intelligent Design advocates, who throw people out who disagree with ID from the showing of a movie about how people who disagree with Darwinism are thrown out of the academy.

But is limiting the attendance at the pre-screening of an admittedly partisan movie by its creators to invitees only really the same thing as throwing professors out of their academic jobs for having beliefs at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy in their particular discipline--particularly when the institutions engaging in the heave-ho make so much of their respect for academic freedom?

Let's just say the question answers itself.

Memo to Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, et al.: Go make your own movie and invite only the people you want to come and we promise we won't whine about it when we're not on the V.I.P. list. Oh, and if we decide to crash your party, and are so uninspired in the attempt that we can't even fool a few theater employees, we promise to do the honorable thing and blush in shame.

Hand it to Richard Dawkins: at least he was wily enough to actually succeed in getting in (his passport lists him as "Clinton Richard Dawkins")--evidence that Dawkins may possess important survivability traits Myers apparently lacks.

But wait a minute: do we really want them to go away and leave the movie alone? The irony of the sophomoric attempts by the neoatheist crowd to crash the ID party is that the more they do it--and the more they draw attention to the fact that they did it (or, in P. Z.'s case, tried to do it)--the more public attention they draw to the movie.

According to BlogPulse, which apparently measures such things, "Expelled" was the number one topic of conversation in the blogosphere last Monday. If I'm the producer of "Expelled," I pop a champagne cork every time a famous Darwinist tries to sneak into a sneak preview of my movie. More attention = more press coverage = more viewers at theaters when it opens in April.

So where are the rest of them? Maybe Sam Harris could avoid detection by using a false beard--and perhaps Daniel Dennett could avoid scrutiny by shaving his off. Or how about if Christopher Hitchens got a friend to open the exit door for him. We did this when we were kids at the local cineplex. Trust me. It works.

All we ask is that you don't embarrass other members of the species by trying to infiltrate the theater with attempts so unimaginative that you can't even get past theater security. In fact, they created the Darwin Award for just this kind of thing. Wouldn't it be fitting if it went to a prominent Darwinist?