Having reported last week on plans by Ray Comfort’s evangelistic organization Living Waters to distribute 175,000 copies of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—with a creationist introduction written by Comfort—on secular university campuses, Inside Higher Ed returns to the topic today from a different angle.

But while that group is fighting for the hearts and minds of students at secular colleges and universities, there is also a theological and scientific struggle taking place at Christian colleges. Some professors, with support from prominent scientists, are trying to defend the teaching of evolution and to make it safe for those who teach biology and the Bible to talk about ways in which belief in evolution need not represent an abandonment of faith. Many Christian colleges have statements of faith — which in some cases must be followed by all students and faculty members — that endorse the literal truth of the Bible or of specific parts of the Bible (six literal days of creation, for example, or that Adam and Eve are the parents of all humans). So teaching evolution as scientific fact, which would just be taken for granted at many non-Christian colleges and universities, raises all kinds of delicate issues.

The misguided use of phrases like “belief in evolution” notwithstanding, the article gives a pretty good overview of the approach of folk like Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, and their BioLogos Foundation.

HT: Pharyngula

Way back in May 2008, John Hobbins posted a link to a Templeton Foundation “conversation” on the question, “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” I’m just now getting around to reading those essays—shows you how far behind I am. I have no intention of giving a thorough review or response to each essay, but in the very first essay, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker pushed one of my “hot buttons.” Pinker wrote:

Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created).

Now I do agree that one requires incredible gyrations and willful rejection of overwhelming evidence in order to cling to a “young earth” cosmology. Nevertheless, I find it incredibly tiresome for atheists to out-fundamentalize the fundamentalists. I agree that it’s inappropriate to try to use the Bible as a science textbook—but “science textbook” and “worthless drivel” are not the only possible genres for Genesis 1 and similar texts.

Comments like Pinker’s imply that not only modern young-earth creationists, but also the biblical authors themselves and all the tradents in between are utter morons. Perhaps Pinker believes that; I certainly know that some folk today believe that. Yet let’s imagine for a moment that a literate Judean of the 8th-4th centuries BCE would also be smart enough to perceive “absurdities” in a text with no less facility than a 21st-century CE psychologist. With specific regard to Pinker’s parade example, I seriously doubt that any ancient Judean of any period could fail to notice that, “absurdly,” the Genesis 1 story operates on a cycle of evening and morning for three days in the absence of sun and moon, which allow humans to measure days. In fact, the narrator even calls attention to this “absurdity” by specifying that sun and moon function as timekeepers:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. (Gen 1:14–15, NRSV)

The ancient believers who created, edited, preserved, and transmitted knew very well that you can’t measure days without reference to the sun. They knew very well that Genesis 1 presented a schematic account of creation rather than an historical (much less scientific) one. And, in a not-very-subtle way, they told readers as much in the very text of Genesis 1.

I submit to you that “absurd” chronologies and geographies serve in biblical narratives as genre markers informing readers that the discrete textual unit in which these markers appear is not to be taken as “history,” but must be read in a “non-literal” mode. This is not necessarily the only function of such markers; in Genesis 1, for example, the placement of celestial bodies on “day four” also serves as a kind of polemic against the worship of astral deities. Even so, when we encounter the “absurdity” of measuring days without the sun, or the “absurd” geography of Genesis 2, or the “absurd” chronologies of Daniel and Judith, our response ought neither be to apologetically defend the text (as if the “absurdity” were not really there) or to cynically discard the text, but to seek the genre mode in which the author wished for us to read the text—as meditation, myth, or edifying fiction, for example.

Everybody who spends any time with the Bible understands that the biblical writers consciously used various sorts of metaphors and other forms of non-literal language, but I often think that the biblical writers’ “metacognitive” awareness of what they were doing goes under-appreciated. But consider Psalm 19:

Day to day pours forth speech,
     and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
     their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
     and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:3–5 NRSV)

This poet seems to feel a need to acknowledge his use of metaphor, perhaps to proleptically counter charges of “absurdity.”

Please don’t misunderstand: I have no doubt that the authors of Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Psalm 19, and so on believed—like everybody else in ancient southeast Asia—that a deity had created the world by an act of special creation. But my point is that the person(s) who wrote Genesis 1, and expressed their creation faith in a schematic seven-day creation story, weren’t so foolish as to suppose that they were giving a precisely accurate timeline of the deity’s creative acts—and they told us so right there in the text.

A truce between science and religion achieved by sealing the border would be a capitulation to compartmentalism that we should surely reject. How and Why are different questions, but the ways in which we answer them have to fit together and make mutual sense.

— John Polkinghorne, Traffic in Truth:
Exchanges between Science and Theology
(Fortress, 2002)

Young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis has begun selling an “Expelled Action Kit“:

Have you seen Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed? If not, click the Expelled banner at right to find the nearest theater showing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Then, take a friend (or better yet, a whole group of friends!) to watch and then discuss it together over pizza or dessert! Do this as soon as possible to help ensure that Ben Stine’s [sic] amazing, much-discredited (by evolutionists!) documentary stays in theaters as long as possible. We urge you to use Expelled as a tool for outreach. We’ve viewed it and agree that it will be a very popular “evolution-busting” tool to expose the lack of academic freedom in America’s schools today. Once you’ve seen Ben Stein you’ll want to equip yourself and help your friends. That’s why we’ve assembled this incredibly low-priced value pack of Creator-affirming materials, plus you’ll even receive an exclusive coupon good for $5 off Expelled here at AnswersBookstore.com as soon as the film is available to us on DVD!

Now here’s the really weird thing about this. Expelled promotes the intelligent design movement. In the movie, Stein interviews several prominent intelligent design advocates, who insist that intelligent design springs from science, not religion, and especially that intelligent design does not depend on or even affirm a historico-scientific reading of the biblical book of Genesis. Prominent design advocates like Michael Behe even explicitly affirm biological evolution except for certain “irreducibly complex” biochemical processes and microbiological structures. Stein et al. devote a whole segment of the movie to arguing that intelligent design is much different from creationism.

Meanwhile, AiG’s “Expelled Action Kit” includes an “Origins Belief Chart,” which AiG describes as follows on the “Action Kit” page:

This 11 x 17 inch wall chart will help you understand how the four most popular origins beliefs—biblical creation, intelligent design, old-earth creation, and molecules-to-man evolution—handle 16 different topics like dinosaurs, fossils, the age of the earth, origin of man, and moral authority.

Note that “biblical creation,” as AiG styles its particular version of young-earth creationism, stands apart from “intelligent design” on AiG’s wall chart. If you follow the link for more information about the “Origins Belief Chart,” you can learn why:

Everyone has a worldview that is shaped by what they believe, but very few people view life from the biblical worldview. What about you? What is the foundation for your worldview?

This chart outlines the four most popular origins beliefs—biblical creation, intelligent design, old-earth creation, and molecules-to-man evolution—and how they view 16 different topics like dinosaurs, fossils, death/disease, and moral authority. Is your worldview based on anything other than the inerrant and authoritative Word of God? Find out today!

In AiG’s “worldview,” only “biblical creation” is truly Christian. Everything else, including “intelligent design,” is some degree of rubbish.

So it boils down to this: if you hurry on over to AiG today, you can buy a wall chart that shows in brief why intelligent design is wrong from a YEC viewpoint, and you get a coupon for $5 off an ID PR movie which AiG plans to sell when available.

Curioser and curioser.

I don’t often link to content on Richard Dawkins’s web site, although I read it frequently. However, a post from this past Sunday deserves wide attention. Here’s the background to the story:

On 18th April, the day Ben Stein’s infamous film was released, Michael Shermer received the following letter from a Jew (referencing a past article that Shermer had written debunking the Holocaust deniers) whose identity I shall conceal as “David J”.

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

Shermer wrote to Mr J to ask if he had by any chance just seen Expelled, and he received this reply:

Yes I have. You know, I respect you as a human being and you have done great work exposing psychics and frauds, but this is a very touchy issue that affects me and family emotionally. Our family business was affected because of Auschwitz because now, our family has nothing. It is gone. Things began to make sense once I saw the movie and I am just appalled. I have learned a lot from Ben Stein, a Jewish brother, who has opened my eyes up a bit.

It seemed to me that Ben Stein and his lying crew were more to blame than Mr J himself for his revolting letter. I therefore decided to write him a personal letter and try to explain a few things to him. It then occurred to me (indeed, Michael Shermer suggested as much) that there are probably many others like him, whose minds have been twisted in this evil way by the man Stein, and that it would be a good idea to publish the letter. I decided to wait 24 hours to see if he would reply, although I didn’t expect him to. I am now publishing my letter to him, exactly as I sent it to him except that I have removed his name.

Richard

Dawkins’s “open letter” to this “Mr J” discusses in some detail—and with some forcefulness—the entire “Darwinism enables Naziism” claim in Expelled. I encourage everyone to read Dawkins’s “open letter” and suggest that discussion thereof take place in the comments thread there—which already stands at 377 comments.

Well, actually I stayed off-campus today partially because I don’t have any finals or meetings today, and partially because I had a few errands to run, such as finding a 9-inch lefty baseball glove for my 4-year-old son (I only found one after searching through five different stores), getting a haircut, and watching Expelled—in approximately that order of importance. In a way, I didn’t really want to give Ben Stein and Premise Media my $8.75 (matinee price in Thousand Oaks!), but I felt that since I have already been critical of the movie’s production and promotion, I had better see the content for myself before I said much more.

I found most of the content of Expelled to be fairly predictable, based on the pre-release news and reviews. My jaw did drop open at a couple of scenes that I had not anticipated, to which I shall come presently.

As I see it, the film basically tries to support four claims. Regular Higgaion readers will find it no surprise that I think Expelled fails to make its case on each point. In fact, I don’t think a successful case can be made for any of the four points, though I know that some Higgaion readers (including at least one GeM who always makes me Grena grin somehow) will disagree with that latter assessment. On the former note, however, I suspect that even staunch intelligent design proponents would have to agree that if there are cases to be made on these four points, Expelled does not make the cases very well. But on this, of course, I cannot speak for anyone but myself.

1. Expelled claims that a Darwinian academic-media-judicial establishment ruthlessly and systematically suppresses discussion of intelligent design. Expelled trots out the usual suspects: Richard (von) Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Guillermo Gonzalez, Robert Marks, Michael Egnor, and (here’s the surprise contestant) Pamela Winnick. Anybody who has paid close attention to the growth of and resistance to the intelligent design movement has heard all of this before. As you might well imagine, Expelled puts the darkest, most conspiriatorial spin possible on these cases. You can get a good treatment of each “persecution story” at the NCSE’s Expelled Exposed web site. None of these cases are what they are cracked up to be. Since these have been well documented elsewhere, I need not take time to go into the details here.

Of course, Expelled has nothing to say about any of those people who have experienced negative job consequences for teaching modern evolutionary theory—people like Steve Bitterman, Alex Bolyanatz, Richard Colling, Nancey Murphy, Gwen Pearson, Chris Comer, Paul Mirecki, Eric Pianka, and so on.

2. Expelled claims that the intelligent design movement offers a legitimate scientific challenge to modern evolutionary theory. I can’t imagine that anyone, even a fervent design advocate, could think that Expelled actually makes the case for this claim. All we really get are some assertions by folk like William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and a few others that there really is a “there” there, and the now-infamous rip-off of XVIVO’s cell animation. Expelled simply shows several minutes of this video, without comment. I suppose that Stein and company want readers to infer that the cell’s complexity rules out evolution. Yet the film never actuall goes to the step of making the “irreducible complexity” argument; there is no talk of bacterial flagella or blood clotting cascades. (Michael Behe is strangely absent from the film.) This matter has, of course, been debated over and over and over again—which fact makes it hard for ID advocates to support the victim stories from item 1 very well! At any rate, I shall leave it to the scientists and the ID advocates to debate whether ID models really have any status as science. Actually, I would recommend the book Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse in Dialogue (ed. Robert B. Stewart; Fortress, 2007) as a good starting place (if you need one) where you can hear from advocates on “both” sides of the debate.

Before moving on to the next point, though, I do need to say that my irony meter just about went off audibly in the darkened theater when Stein tried to make this point by interviewing, of all people, Jonathan Wells—the same Jonathan Wells who famously wrote:

At the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father’s many talks to us, and through my studies. Father encouraged us to set our sights high and accomplish great things.

He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin’s theory that living things originated without God’s purposeful, creative activity. My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted and thus saw no room for God’s involvement in nature or history; in the process, they re- interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even God as products of human imagination.

Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

“Father” in this passage is, of course, Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church. In the testimony quoted above, Wells clearly states that his motive for getting a Ph.D. in biology at Berkeley was to “destroy Darwinism,” because of an antagonism to “Darwinism” stemming from “Father’s words, my [theological] studies, and my prayers.” Yet Expelled has the gall to put Jonathan Wells on-screen while trying to say that the ID movement is motivated by science rather than religion. Unbelievable.

3. Expelled claims that “Darwinism” leads (almost) inevitably to atheism. As many will already know from promotional clips, Expelled tries to achieve this through interviews with Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers, along with very short clips featuring Daniel Dennett and Oxford chemist Peter Atkins. These fellows are well-known atheists, and Dawkins and Myers, at least, credit science and their study of evolution at least partially for their own atheism. This is where the exclusion of folk like Ken Miller and Francis Collins from the film really chafes. There are many, many scientists who affirm robust versions of both modern evolutionary theory and Christianity—but you’d never know it from watching Expelled. Since Expelled seems to want viewers to believe that “Darwinism” leads ineluctably to atheism, the omission of these “complications” really does make a material difference in the film’s argument. Expelled is calculated to make uninformed viewers think that all evolutionary biologists think about religion like Dawkins and Myers do.

I personally found two moments within this “story arc” particularly egregious. One involves the aforementioned Richard Dawkins. Before I go any further, I should like to make it clear that I disagree with Dawkins about a great many things, and once upon a time I set out to do a long serial review of The God Delusion here on Higgaion. I never finished, because I was working from the audiobook, which proved very difficult to review. I have since purchased a paper copy, but never got back to finishing that long review. Perhaps I shall do so in the future. I agree with David Berlinsky when he says, in Expelled, that Dawkins doesn’t make a good philosopher. Yet Stein pulls a really dirty trick on Dawkins in his Expelled interview. Stein presses Dawkins on whether Dawkins can completely rule out intelligent causation in the development of life on earth. Dawkins, being appropriately humble, replies that of course he can’t be absolutely certain. After a bit more pressing from Stein, Dawkins allows only that intelligent design could be involved if some more-highly-advanced intelligent species from somewhere else did some genetic engineering on early terrestrial life. In a voiceover, Stein then mocks Dawkins for believing that aliens, but not God, could have “designed” life on earth.

But Stein and company have spun the exchange to mislead viewers on two fronts. First, Dawkins doesn’t genuinely believe that space aliens manipulated life on earth. He knows, however, that he cannot absolutely rule out any intelligent tinkering with life in the past—he is too intellectually honest to claim 100% certainty on this point. Therefore, he says (in effect), “If any intelligent designing were done, it would have to have been done by an intelligent being that had itself evolved.” Dawkins says this, of course, because he is a materialist through and through (I mean “materialist” here in the philosophical sense, of course, not in the consumerist sense). Since he cannot entertain the idea of supernatural entities as anything other than a kind of thought experiment, of course he must say that “If any intelligent designing were done, it would have to have been done by an intelligent being that had itself evolved.” Given a materialistic worldview, there is no other possible conclusion. Now I don’t think we should treat such philosophical materialism as a given; it is far from proven, and as a theist, I believe that such philosophical materialism is actually false with respect to reality. Expelled actually starts to get interesting when it flirts with this issue of materialism, but it doesn’t really go anywhere except into another fit of misrepresentation (more on that in a moment). Yet Stein plays dirty when he takes a statement that Dawkins offers as a counterfactual conditional and treats it as if “Dawkins believes this alien nonsense” (“I thought this was science, not science fiction,” Stein intones).

Second, the exchange is misleading by omission in that Stein does not ask Dembski or Meyer about aliens. But in their attempts to argue that intelligent design thinking stems from scientific questions rather than religious beliefs, design proponents have run circles around themselves denying that the “intelligent designer” must be God. It could be space aliens, they say.

Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel—fallen or not; Plato’s demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science. (Michael Behe, “The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis,” Philosophia Christi 3 [2001] 165; HT: IDEA Center)

“It certainly could be God, a supernatural creature, but in principle it could be space aliens of high intelligence who did the designing,” he [Philip Johnson] says. (San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2002)

Intelligent Design does not require an omnipotent or omniscient creator. This may be the single thorniest problem that Intelligent Design theory poses. The problem is often obscured by the fact that many opponents of Intelligent Design argue that ID is just a way of “sneaking in the Judaeo-Christian God.” They are mistaken. Remember that Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed that space aliens designed the universe. While his supposition is easy to ridicule, his reasoning is worth considering. As it exists, the universe shows intelligent but not perfect design. The easiest explanation is that the universe is the product of a lesser god, a demiurge such as Plato proposed in the Timaeus. An Intelligent Designer, yes, but not a perfect one. Space aliens are an obvious modern candidate for the role because they are gods only in terms of superior technology. They need not be thought of as morally superior, and certainly not as commanding obedience to a higher moral code. (Denyse O’Leary, “Intelligent Design: Beyond Creationism vs. Evolution,” March 2002) [Note that O'Learly misrepresents Crick; he suggested that aliens might have seeded the earth with biological life, not that space aliens designed the universe. The first claim has not caught on among scientists, and the latter is self-referentially incoherent.]

Dembski himself says something very similar in The Design Inference. Yet Stein does not mock Behe, Johnson, O’Leary, or Dembski for their “it might be aliens.” Why not?

The second really offensive thing about the “ID vs. atheism” part of Expelled was the misleading use of interview clips featuring Alistair McGrath and John Polkinghorne. In these clips, both McGrath and Polkinghorne criticize—as they often do—a purely naturalistic or materialistic worldview like that espoused by Richard Dawkins. Both McGrath and Polkinghorne have specifically criticized Dawkins on this very point. However, viewers unfamiliar with McGrath and Polkinghorne might easily come away from the film assuming that because they criticize philosophical materialism, they implicitly agree with the intelligent design crowd. But they don’t. Polkinghorne, for example, has written that

[a]fter all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life.

and that

[e]volution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.

and, elsewhere, that

ID also makes a scientific claim of identifying molecular biological systems of irreducable complexity, but I do not believe it has made its case. It is not enough to consider a single system in isolation, since evolution works in an improvisatory way, coopting what has been useful for one purpose to help acheive another. ID also seems tacitly to make the theological mistake that God, who is the creator and sustainer of nature, would not be conetent to work through natural processes, which are as much expressions of the divine will as anything else.

Polkinghorne is a congenial man, and he is no materialist, but his is also no intelligent design advocate!

What about McGrath? McGrath certainly does not believe that modern evolutionary theory is inherently inimical to Christian faith, or that it ineluctably leads to atheism:

Now the rhetoric of [Dawkins's] argument demands that Darwinism, Lamarckism, and belief in God are three mutually exclusive views, so that comittment to one necessarily entails rejection of the others. Yet it is well known that many Darwinians believe that there is a convergence between Darwinism and theism. The extent of that overlap is most certainly open to discussion, and it is far from being a settled issue. Yet Dawkins’s conclusion depends upon proposing an absolute dichotomy—either Darwinism or God—when the theories themselves do not require such absolutist ways of thinking (though they certainly permit it). (McGrath, “Dawkins, God, and the Scientific Enterprise: Reflections on the Appeal to Darwinism in Fundamentalist Atheism,” in Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse in Dialogue [Fortress, 2007], p. 104)

Yet by selective editing, the producers of Expelled make McGrath look like he actually believes there really is an absolute dichotomy between “Darwinism or God”!

By the way, I have not been able to discover an unambiguous statement from McGrath, in print, regarding his attitude toward the intelligent design movement as such. However, the quotation above is quite clear and repudiates the point that Expelled tries to make McGrath support!

4. Expelled claims that “Darwinism” devalues human life and, as a result, was a necessary condition for the emergence of Nazi atrocities (and, by implication, Stalinist Communism as well, although the film makes this claim only by association, through the use of cutaway shots). This claim has been debated to death, and my attitude to this claim is pretty well summed up by the illustration that some science bloggers have taken to using:

To be sure, the Nazis did employ certain forms of eugenics—but they also employed Christian anti-Semitism and, for that matter, ballistics. But eugenics was a perverse attempt to transform “natural selection” into “artificial selection”; more properly, it applied the principles of selective breeding—which long preceded Darwin—to human populations. Stein’s attempt to link Darwin himself to eugenics depends on a very selective quotation. Stein reads the following passage from The Descent of Man:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick, thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

However, Stein does not read the very next sentence:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

Had Darwin lived to see Nazi eugenics, he would have been as appalled as Stein.

The one word that expresses how I most felt when coming out of Expelled is: deceived. Expelled tells stories that are simply at odds with reality. The film overblows its “martyr” stories, presents no actual evidence for intelligent design (it just assures us that such evidence exists), plays up a false dichotomy between “Darwinism” and religious belief, and tries to smear “Darwinism” with a false causal link to Nazi atrocities. Stein comes off not as a fearless crusader for the truth, but as a con man. Don’t buy a used car—or a worldview—from this guy.

At least three more reviews of Expelled have been posted online by mainstream newspapers. Stephen Whitty of Newshouse News Service—the review is published in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune—gives Expelled 1/2 out of four starts, but the three-paragraph review actually tells readers very little about the film. The Chicago Tribune reprints Roger Moore’s 1-star review from the Orlando Sentinel. Given Moore’s history with the film already, there are no surprises as he pans the show, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong in his assessment. Finally (for now), MaryAnn Johanson of the Colorado Springs Independent also pans the film. Here’s the real heart of Johanson’s review:

It’s nuttiness right from the opening moments of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Images of Nazi atrocities and the terrors of life behind the Berlin Wall are smugly deployed in an attempt to editorialize away basic scientific fact. In a saner universe, you could scoff at Stein and not give his nonsense another thought. But we don’t live in that universe. We live here, where the religious insecurity of a scientifically illiterate populace is being twisted by people who certainly know better.

We cannot dismiss this movie, because all those who care about public discourse in America and the ongoing war on scientific literacy need to see it in order to arm themselves against the idiocy. The film — written by Stein, Kevin Miller and Walt Ruloff, and directed by Nathan Frankowski — shows just how insidious the “intelligent design” proponents are.

Stein’s thesis is that Big Science, academia, the media and the courts have been bullying the poor, brave mavericks who “dare” to question the theory of evolution. These heroic few instead believe that only an “intelligent designer” could have guided it.

Since Stein is unable to adequately critique evolutionary science, he resorts to a kind of name-calling that is purposely designed to mislead his audience. He constantly refers to those who accept evolution as “Darwinists,” which is akin to referring to quantum physicists as “Newtonians” or “Copernicans.” He does this even though one of his own ID proponents notes that biological science has moved on from Darwin just as physical science has moved on from Newton.

Call it nutty, call it silly, call it what you will—but ill-conceived misconceptions can’t just be left unanswered.

Update: See now also Sean Means’s review in the Salt Lake Tribune (a generous 1½ stars out of 4).

Some time this morning (April 17), the young-earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis posted the following text on its blog, identifying the text as an “e-mail blast” that would go out later in the day (please note that the “I” in the e-mail is apparently AiG frontman Ken Ham):

I urge you to go to one of the 1,000 movie theaters that will be showing the excellent and entertaining documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which starts tomorrow.

I have already attended two previews of Expelled, and I look forward to seeing it again—that’s how great this film truly is. It exposes how radical evolutionists will persecute those who don’t accept evolution. It gives many examples of scientists and others whose careers have been ruined by the “evolution police,” but at the same time manages to be humorous. That’s because of its witty host, the actor Ben Stein, and the insertion of funny movie clips.

Stein is not a biblical creationist and comes from a Jewish background, but we have found some common ground with him as he does a masterful job of exposing the scientific problems with Darwinian evolution as well as the ruthlessness of its defenders in suppressing academic freedom. It’s not a Christian film, but very much worth your time because you will get a better understanding of the creation/evolution battle of today and how it is at the front lines of the culture war. Plus you will see compelling evidence for design in the universe.

Go to the film’s website, and if you don’t see one of your local movie houses listed on the site, call the theater’s manager and urge that it be shown. Your recommendation can go a long way to getting the film played and having your community see it. Or ask your pastor to call and ask how the church can book a certain showing of Expelled and then fill the theater with church members and guests.

Previews of the film have been met with standing ovations. Go see it for yourself and be prepared to stand up and cheer. (By the way, look for the scene in the film where protesters are picketing our Creation Museum!) For the moment, watch a video clip of Expelled at:

http://www.wingclips.com/cart.php?page=expelled

Meanwhile, the old-earth creationist organization Reasons to Believe reportedly sent out the following on their mailing list (quoted here as forwarded to the ASA mailing list):

Dear RTB Chapter members,

With the impending release of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed” (April 18), the Reasons to Believe scholar team thought it best to prepare a statement of our position, a guide for answering questions from chapters, networks, and apologists. Keep in mind that the mission of RTB centers on reaching out to science-minded people with two purposes:

1. to bring the Gospel message to those who would not otherwise hear it, and

2. to strengthen the faith of those who fear that science conflicts with the Christian faith—equipping them for ministry in the process.

In order to accomplish these purposes, we must first earn the right to be
heard.

After previewing the promotional materials provided by the movie’s marketers, we were concerned that the movie took an adversarial approach to the scientific community. A number of RTB scholars and staff attended a prerelease screening in Los Angeles recently and confirmed that EXPELLED definitely does take such an approach. The movie draws an analogy between the Berlin wall and the scientific community’s response to intelligent design. By doing so, EXPELLED implicitly argues that the scientific community deems certain questions off-limits, particularly any question about the legitimacy of neo-Darwinian evolution. The movie further argues that academia, the media, and the courts all conspire as “thought police” to oppress any and all dissent from the party line.

Clearly some oppression and discrimination have occurred, but the experience of RTB scholars and many of their contacts refutes the movie’s premise that the scientific community systemically and unilaterally fosters these injustices. While individual scientists and institutions have behaved unfairly at times, this charge cannot in all fairness be leveled against the scientific community as a whole.

Regardless, from RTB’s perspective, the central question is this: when injustices do occur, how should we respond? Consider the response of Nate Saint to his son’s question, as depicted in the movie, End of the Spear. Nate, Jim Eliot, and three other missionaries were preparing to make contact with the notoriously violent Waodani tribe in Ecuador. Stevie asks if they will shoot the Waodani if attacked. Nate replies: “We can’t shoot the Waodani, son. They’re not ready for heaven. We are.”

If science-minded skeptics indeed represent a mission field, then we should not come out shooting. EXPELLED seems to do just that. While an entertaining movie, its main thrust runs counter to RTB’s mission of seeking to engage scientists in the scientific arena. Consequently, any endorsement of EXPELLED by RTB hinders our ability to spread the Gospel message to those we hope to reach.

Therefore, we ask all chapter members and volunteers to refrain from endorsing EXPELLED in any official way. This request does not extend to your personal interactions-only to any actions taken in association with or on behalf of Reasons to Believe.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

The RTB Scholar Team

I find these contrasting responses quite fascinating, not least because the general tenor of Reasons to Believe’s old-earth creationism has much more in common with the intelligent design model than does Answers in Genesis’s brand of young-earth creationism. Yet AiG makes common cause with Expelled (“B.S. isn’t a biblical creationist, and he’s not even a Christian, but since he’s an anti-evolution Jew, let’s pack the theaters!”), while RTB distances itself from Expelled after rightly concluding that the film vastly overstates its case for the “persecution” of ID advocates by an academic-media-judicial conspiracy.

So props to RTB, and slops to AiG. Even if you regard modern evolutionary theory as a pernicious evil that must be stopped, you still ought to value an honest debate that focuses on substantive issues instead of fearmongering through (sometimes wildly) exaggerated cries of “Victim!”—especially if your opposition to evolutionary theory stems from Christian convictions.

In a startling display of synchronicity, New Scientist staff writer Michael Le Page answers a silly question that came up in the biblicablogosphere on the same day. Duane and Drew answered it too, but then, they knew the question had been asked, so their very fine answers don’t count as Jungian synchronous events. Le Page busts open the anti-evolution myth that “‘survival of the fittest’ justifies ‘everyone for themselves.’” The teaser to the article reads:

The “fittest” can be the most loving and selfless, not the most aggressive and violent. In any case, what happens in nature does not justify people behaving in the same way

Please read the full article if you have any lingering suspicions that evolutionary biology really supports “man’s inhumanity to man.” It’s short, sweet, and to the point.