"Expelled" flunks out.

We will be hearing quite a bit about Ben Stein's new "documentary", Expelled this week. The controversial film opens on April 18th at selected theaters nationwide and, lucky us, one of those selected theaters is the Loews theater at the Loop in Methuen.

Now...I am loathe to talk about a film I haven't seen and given the thrashing I gave many global warming deniers who savaged An Inconvenient Truth without seeing it, I think I'm obliged to see the film before offering a critique. I hate the idea of forking over hard earned money for a propaganda piece and I'm hoping some intrepid soul will "hook me up" with a bootleg. That being said, there are resources aplenty from people in the scientific community who have seen advanced copies and the most damning reviews come from the staff at one of America's most esteemed magazines, Scientific American (S.A. is not a peer reviewed science journal but it's editors, writers and contributers are scientists and science journalists and S.A. is very highly regarded by the scientific community). The S.A. website has an entire section devoted to the film. Most damning, and revealing, is a complete, unedited discussion (mp3 format) of the film between the editorial staff and Expelled associate producer, Mark Mathis.

Since I haven't seen the film yet I won't offer any commentary on it's merits, or lack thereof. I promise a review will be forthcoming. I do want to make one point. The manufactured controversy over evolution vs creationism/intelligent design is getting far more traction that is should. If there were anything of merit to ID, any empirical evidence, anything that could be seen or observed in nature, anything that could be tested or quantified, anything you could model, ID would be given very serious attention by scientists and laypersons alike. The problem here is that ID and creationism (they really are the same thing) aren't scientific concepts. ID isn't a theory or a hypothesis, it's not supported by evidence, it doesn't adequately explain anything we observe in nature. The appearance of design isn't evidence of design. ID is merely a scientific sounding way to sneak GOD into the classroom.

One thing is clear, the theory of evolution is the only rational, scientific explanation for the rise and speciation of life on earth. Every living thing on earth, from microbes in soil to human beings, descended from simple, single celled organisms, growing in primordial ooze over 2 billion years ago. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". To claim that the universe and specifically (and especially) man, must have been designed, is an extraordinary claim, one that is not supported by anything other than human conceit and fear.

I'll have more, much more, once I've seen the film.