JISHOU, HUNAN — Want to buy a propaganda film really cheap? Now’s your chance. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is now available to the highest bidder.
Expelled was the 2008 embarrassment that tried to prove once and for all there was a vast conspiracy to teach evolution while suppressing Intelligent Design and other “explanations” of life on Earth, and putting Hitler in power. Or something like that. The New York Times called it “one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time.”
Narrated and hosted by the riveting Ben Stein, it tanked at the box office, so badly it seems, that its production company, Premise Media, is in bankruptcy court.
According to a document (PDF) filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, on May 31, 2011, the trustee of the bankruptcy estate is seeking to auction “[t]hat certain feature-length motion picture (‘Picture’) ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto.” The auction is scheduled to take place on-line from June 23 to June 28, 2011.
As awful as the movie was, I reckon somebody will probably bid on it. I hope the winner is a film collector, who will stash it in a vault somewhere, and not some Intelligent Design fanboy, who will try to inflict it on us again.
Like a lot of other science bloggers, I spent a lot of time dissecting the anti-evolution movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, after its release last spring. Since I did not want to contribute any money to the people who made that anti-intellectual POS, I only critiqued the freely available background information.
And I am proud to say I still haven’t seen the movie. I figured I’d wait until either it was dirt cheap in the DVD remainder bin, at the Goodwill, or available in the torrent channels.
Famed film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, must have had the same idea. He waited until now to publish a review of Expelled in his blog.
Briefly speaking, he doesn’t like it, not one bit. Two thumbs down. I don’t think he much cares for Ben Stein, the narrator and promoter of the film, either. He concludes his scathing analysis of the film, its promoters and Stein’s opportunism thusly:
Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt.
This clip from Ben Stein’s interview on Trinity Broadcast Network includes his amazingly stupid, misinformed crackpot idea that scientists murdered Jews during World War II.
I had always assumed it was Nazi soldiers “following orders.” My bad.
Watch it and weep. Someone took Ben Stein’s brain.
Actor/commentator Ben Stein appeared on the Trinity Broadcast Network on April 24 to discuss the anti-evolution flick Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Excerpts of the half-hour interview with Paul Crouch Jr. are now on YouTube.
In this clip, Stein talks about how the faithful can combat the Darwinist agenda of suppression and atheism, completely misinterprets the Kitzmiller v. Dover court decision, and relates the “crashing” of a private screening of the film by an Orlando film critic. He also spins the filmmakers’ expulsion of biologist PZ Myers from another private screening in Minneapolis, missing the irony that the producers of a film alleging suppression of ideas should expel someone from seeing the film.
Then, Stein states that science teachers should “teach the evidence” about the origins and development of life, and ask students to decide whether evolution or Intelligent Design provides the better explanation. “The role of science is to disprove itself,” Stein says in one jaw-droppingly stupid moment.
Finally, he alleges that “Darwinists” refuse to consider alternative theories, because it would mean the loss of their jobs and comfortable pensions, and makes ridiculous connections between evolution and atheism and communism.
Ben Stein, the “star” of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed reveals his appalling lack of scientific understanding in this excerpt from his appearance on Paul Crouch Jr’s show on TBN April 24.
Stein, who interviews several scientists in the anti-evolution movie, asserts that Darwin’s evolutionary theory cannot explain the complexity of living cells nor can it explain how life began. He continues by discussing his own religious beliefs and his comfort with the concept that there is evolution within species, but not with the evolutionary prediction that new species arise from existing ones.
In this excerpt of Ben Stein’s appearance on Paul Crouch’s TBN program, Stein talks about his involvement with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and his dismay “Darwinists” are restricting “academic freedom” by suppressing anti-evolution scientists.
Stein, who is Jewish, also reveals his interest in the connection between Darwinism and Nazism, and asserts that Darwinism/evolution has become a religion for some in academia.
Late last month, actor/economist/commentator Ben Stein appeared on Paul Crouch Jr.’s TV show on the Trinity Broadcast Network to talk about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stein made some incredibly stupid comments during the half-hour show, some of which have made it onto the ‘Net.
Most of the program featured three excerpts from the anti-evolution film, which is showing nationally in about 650 theaters. TBN has it in its entirety, but excerpts are now available on YouTube in five parts.
In this part, Crouch introduces Stein and invites him to summarize the movie and the reasons behind it. Stein repeats the movie’s assertion that “Darwinists” are restricting academic freedom.
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