Expelled: The Victim Card and Other Thoughts

Since Darwin's bones turn 200 this Thursday (and his influential tome 150 years), this week is Darwin Week at Clemson University (or at least, the Department of Biological Sciences is celebrating- everyone's welcome to the party, even Wallace fangirls like myself). Monday kicked off the celebration by showing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein's documentary on intelligent design. I'd heard about it when it came out, but wasn't sure I wanted to actually pay money to see it/was too lazy to youtube it. So when this popped up on my facebook events, I jumped at the chance.

John Scalzi described the Creation Museum as a very expensive, very fancy temple to horseshit. Borrowing his analogy, Expelled takes fecal matter, mixes it in brownie mix, then bakes it to present as a visually appealing package with a less than pleasant nutrition content.

The film's approach can be summarized as

• Show victimized scientists persecuted by the Darwinist establishment
• Appeal to America's love affair with the First Amendment
• Discredit evolutionary theory by quote-mining, including the origin of life with the origin of species (equating panspermia with aliens, the crazy-complex evolving crystal thing, etc.
• Compare the scientific establishment to Stalin, Hitler, and other oogie boogies.
  

All very well and good rhetoricwise, but attacking one theory does not spontaneously generate evidence for your own. Intelligent design was briefly described in the beginning by the Discovery Institute director, but no real evidence was shown. While many academically decorated intelligent people were interviewed in the film, not many actually provided the research for ID, opting instead to hate on Darwin.

The name of the film refers to the handful of scientists interviewed who were, according to Stein, 'expelled' from the scientific establishment because of their connections to Intelligent Design theory. Maybe the interwebs have hardened me, but that segment makes me want to tell them, "BOOHOO, go cry elsewhere. :/" This site explores the actual reasons why these individuals were removed from their various posts, some, such as Gullermo Gonzalez's decreasing publication output and general level of success in his field, really do have nothing to do with touting Intelligent Design.

I love the first amendment. I can speak my mind (except calling out disasters in movie theaters), publish said free thoughts, practice (or not) my own odd duck deist perspective, gather in places and bother my elected officials, if I feel like it. America does too, for the most part, so any whiff of freedoms being tromped on usually gets our goat. So when Ben Stein accuses science of stifling dissenting voices, we're expected to sit up and do a double take. However, science ISN'T quashing anything; it's patiently waiting for them to provide acceptable evidence for theory status. Peer-review, testable, observable evidence. Until that shows up, Intelligent Design cannot be considered a science.

Also, as PZ Meyers says, science is not a democracy. Hypotheses must be tested and demonstrated. They must be repeated and observed again and again, reinforcing their validity. Sure, y'all can say 'There must be an intelligent designer!", but until that can be feasibly demonstrated, it's not science.

Quotemining. It's evil. Don't do it. Cutting and pasting does not make the quote you want exist, even if it creates a nice little soundbite.

Another pet peeve is the assumption that evolution = how life was created. Evolution moves life through change and creates new variation, but the actual STUDY on the origins of life is abiogenesis. Minor point, but there it is. It's an exciting field whose theories for the most part go over my head, but its a gross oversimplification to cut them down to "growing on the backs of crystals" or "coming from outer space", which only makes it easier to point to Intelligent Design and say, "Hey! Our idea isn't so ridiculous now compared to these silly scientist folks, is it?"

The most irritating and offensive aspect of Expelled was the Cold War imagery and implications that evolution led to Hitler, Stalin, and the Holocaust. Social Darwinism is an ideology separate from the scientific theory of evolution (if I recall correctly, Malthus was musing over such before On the Origin of Species was published). It arose from the colonial period, the White Man's Burden type of thinking. Might as well blame Kipling too. The atrocities committed in Nazi Germany were not 'natural selection'; 'twas artifical selection by a government presumptuous enough to deem a certain archetype as the 'ideal' with horrific consequences.

In a less mature fit of internet giggles, I realize Expelled visualized Godwin's Law- decidedly more than halfway through the film's 97 minutes, imagery of Hitler popped up. Oh the lulz before the facepalm.

I'm going to have to find a copy of Bill Maher's Religulous to balance out my documentary content for the month.


Also, I cannot write an essay to save my life. I can try, but it usually ends up being regurgitated ideas with florid wording, needing more textual support. So I apologize for that abominable piece turned in Tuesday...