Expelled - Could This Be The World's Worst Movie?

Once upon a time, my mate Emlyn and I wrote, directed, filmed and ‘acted’ in a thing called Thomas is Different - The Movie.

It was, being generous, a turd. This may have had something to do with the fact that we were pissed for most of it, and hadn't the first clue about how to write, direct, shoot or act in a flick. On the rare occasion I've been forced to see any of it since, I have normally ended up in a fetal position, mewing helplessly, a speck of white dribble gleaming at the corner of my mouth. It was a definite candidate for the world's worst movie.

Now, however, there's a new contender in town, and unlike our piece-of-crap movie, this one apparently had quite a lot of money behind it, and the people making it were almost certainly not drunk.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a movie that purportedly investigates how a sinister cabal of scientists and educators are censoring anyone who dares even think that there might be any evidence of intelligent design at work in the universe.

Intelligent Design is Creationism by another name. It claims to be scientific and a serious contender to evolution, but is essentially saying,' um... God did it'. There is no serious evidence to back up their claims. Their best attempt is a thing called 'Irreducible complexity', which says that certain biological systems could not have come into existence except as a complete entity, since removing one part of the system renders the whole thing useless. If you're talking about a respiratory system, then you can see there's a sort of logic - if you remove part x, the lungs no longer work, the organism cannot possibly survive. The problem is that as a system is put forward as irreducibly complex, mainstream science discovers how such a system could evolve in small incremental stages. Examples include the flagella of certain bacterium (debunked), the eye (debunked) and the blood clotting cascade system (debunked). Despite the fact that examples keep getting debunked and it has been shown time and time again that very complex biological systems absolutely can arise through incremental change, the Intelligent Designers keep insisting this is a valid theory. Enough about Intelligent Design - after all, if they can't even be bothered to actually try and explain what it is in the movie, why should I?

Expelled maintains that people who have published pro-Intelligent Design material or even have sympathies with ID have been expelled from their jobs and colleges and otherwise victimised. A number of examples are given in the film. On further investigation, none of the claims stands up. Here's one:

Having previously given notice of his resignation six months previously, Richard Sternberg, published a pro-ID article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in his penultimate edition as editor. Other editors on the paper subsequently questioned how Sternberg was able to choose himself to handle with the article in question, given it wasn't in his field of specialism and other editors were much better qualified to carry out a peer review. As a result of Sternberg's failure to adhere to proper editorial policy, the paper was withdrawn, branded 'substandard science' and the journal issued a statement saying the PBSW supported the American Association for the Advancement of Science's statement that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity.

What terrible victimisation did Sternberg suffer..? er... none whatsoever. He retained all other posts he held at the time he published the offending article. Oh, and he was, according to Expelled, made to give back his office keys and denied access to specimen collections by the Smithsonian where he had another unpaid position. According to the Smithsonian, Sternberg was moved to a different office as part of a move involving 17 other people that was arranged prior to the publication of the offending article and retains access to the specimens. It would appear that bullying has gone through some changes since it last happened to me.

There's more on the other 'victims' at Expelled Exposed, a website set up to counter the claims in this movie.

The movie also features eminent pro-evolution scientists such as PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott. All were told they were taking part in a movie called Crossroads that would investigate the ID/evolution debate. Expelled producer Mark Mathis would later claim that movies used working titles all the time. True. However, it later emerged that the domain name for the Expelled movie had been purchased prior to interviews with Myers, Dawkins and Scott being set up. Their interviews are edited selectively and presented out of context in order to make it seem as though the scientists, and by extension, evolution, are silly and trivial.

Riddle me this: does the Bible - in the Ten Commandments, no less - not state that 'Thou shalt not lie'..?

The single most egregious part of this movie is its attempt to suggest that 'Darwinism' - a term nearly exclusively used by Creationists and IDers who hope to poison the well by implying that Darwin's less pleasant personal characteristics must be inherent in evolutionary theory (which is a bit like suggesting that because John Maynard Keynes was gay, Keynesian Economic Theory must therefore show its cock to George Michael in public toilets) - directly caused Nazism and the holocaust.

PZ Myers has a great post on his blog Pharyngula. It makes the point wonderfully. The thing from Darwinism which IDers and Creationist would have you believe was an essential pre-requisite for Nazism and the Holocaust is this:

"If members of a population die or are killed off, they will leave no descendants for subsequent generations."

As Myers points out, "Any idiot can figure that one out - and many idiots have". The idea that it took Darwin to state this before anyone could attempt a genocide are clearly ridiculous - not least because God orders quite a few in the Old Testament. We should also consider the fact that Christians were carrying out pogroms against Jews for centuries before Darwin came along. Martin Luther held some particularly vile ideas about Jews. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels was a defrocked monk who advocated the sterilisation of Jews as a lesser race in the early 20th century. He used the Bible to support his views. Finally, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman has previously made the point regarding this argument, "Trivializing the Holocaust comes from either ignorance at best or, at worst, a mendacious attempt to score political points in the culture war on the backs of six million Jewish victims and others who died at the hands of the Nazis."

Richard Dawkins makes an entirely sensible observation:

"[...]there are two reasons why we need to take Darwinian natural selection seriously. Firstly, it is the most important element in the explanation for our own existence and that of all life. Secondly, natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'."

At an early pre-release showing of the movie, interested parties were invited to apply for tickets via public website. PZ Myers did so, under his own name. When he turned up at the cinema and showed his ID to collect his tickets, he was ejected by the movie's producer. His guests, however, were allowed to see the movie. They included Myers's wife and daughter and a certain Professor Dawkins, who described the decision as "an extraordinary and costly lapse of judgment" and who further went on to describe the film itself as "a shoddy, second-rate piece of work" and "drearily boring, the tedium exacerbated by the grating monotony of [presenter Ben] Stein's voice".

Of course, one shouldn't take Dawkin's word that this film is a suckfest. You can't take the word of the numerous reviewers that say it's pisspoor either.

You can't take my word for it either; I haven't seen it.

"You haven't even seen it?"

Nope. It's only out today, and that's in the US. Here's a challenge to anyone who thinks that I should see it before criticising its contents: Feel free to point out anything I have claimed is in the film that is not. Feel free to point out any untruths in my rebuttals of what is in the film. I will not edit them.

My reason for writing this is two fold. Firstly, I want to promote Expelled Exposed which provides a commentary for the film. I may have accidentally linked every mention of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to Expelled Exposed. Whoops...

Secondly, although we're not nearly as badly off as the US in terms of this kind of crud being foisted on the public, it is happening, and it's getting worse not better. The people behind Expelled may not be much good at movie making, but make no mistake that they are good at getting their message out there, and that they target those without the necessary knowledge to understand why their science has the prefix 'pseudo'. When my daughter gets to an age where she's in a science class, I want her taught science, not superstition.

I will watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and I think perhaps you should too, preferably without paying the makers for the privilege - but only if you can do that without committing an offence, obviously.

Alternatively, I have a copy of Thomas is Different - The Movie, if you're interested..?