EXPELLED the movie is due out in theaters nation wide in February of 2008! This is going to be a very controversial film and I cannot say just how thankful I am that Ben Stein has committed himself to fighting for the academic freedom of our scientists and scientists around the world. This is truly a blessing and an awesome surprise!
I encourage everyone to visit the site and follow the blog on this one. You can even sign up to volunteer to promote the film! It even has a sign up (check box) for youth leaders who want to get their kids involved! 🙂
Well, enough from me. Please check out the trailers on the sight. If the trailers tell us anything, I can almost guarantee that this movie is going to upset a TON of science and academic leaders! And why not since they need to be shaken up anyway. 😉 Here is one of the trailers…
Lastly, I’m re-posting Ben’s first blog entry from yesterday. Hope you enjoy reading it…
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I’m Ben Stein – many of you know me from the classic film, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,†or from my Comedy Central show “Win Ben Stein’s Moneyâ€. Still others of you may know me as a speechwriter, for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. You may even have read my books, attended one of my lectures at The American University, Washington DC, or seen me on the talk shows.
I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.
Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.
Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.
Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design†would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often … and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ben Stein
Why did the producers of this film have to obtain footage by lying to the people they interviewed about what was being filmed?
Jim,
I have no idea, nor have I heard anything about that. Thanks for the info. I read your post and I agree that people should be very careful about what they sign! It will be interesting to see how they edit the comments of those they interviewed.
I was under the impression that the film was primarily concerned about interviewing scientists that had lost their jobs or been threatened about their jobs or tenure. I knew those things had happened, well before I heard anything about this movie. So, I do know that the movies trailer premise is legitimate. They are not lying about those things. And I doubt that there will be lies in the film. But I have no doubt that this is propaganda. THAT is the whole point of the film!
I guess the next step is for another film to be made that seeks to argue in favor of getting rid of or silencing scientists who believe in ID. 🙂
What do you think?
This film is representing a commonly held misconception about how science (and how academia) works. (And I’m going to put a disclaimer here, I haven’t the foggiest idea how tenure works for the Arts, I just know how it works for biology/physics/chemistry).
I hope you would agree that someone who publicly said that the sky is green and that the sun revolves around the earth probably is not someone who should be teaching science at a university. This is not an issue of academic freedom, but an issue of “do you understand some fairly simple grade school facts about the universe”. And if s/he lost his job due to saying those things, could he cry, “I’m being persecuted for my beliefs!”. Your beliefs are irrelevant in science.
If I tell my boss something about my experimental work, I need to be able to back it up with hard data. I need to be able to prove assertions that I make. If I repeatedly tell her things that are not demonstrably true, I will lose my job. Is that persecution? Is requiring competence persecution?
That’s the fundamental problem with intelligent design/creationism. There simply are no data to support it. Indeed, I’ve never had someone even propose an experiment that could be done to test it. If you can’t test it, it’s not science. Science is not a list of known facts about the universe. Science is not ideas (Aristotle was not a scientist, after all, he was a philosopher). Science is the process by which we gather evidence. If you can’t gather evidence, or you have no evidence, you’re not practicing science. You’re practicing philosophy (or religion) and would be better off in a philosophy or religion department.
Is that persecution? No. It’s demanding competence.
Glenn:
It looks like the film is going to focus a lot on two alleged cases of persecution of ID scientists–Richard Sternberg and Guillermo Gonzalez. Unfortunately, the facts do not support either case. Sternberg, who had office space at but did not work for the Smithsonian Institution was violating rules at the lab (keeping items stored in his office in inappropriate conditions) and violating procedures at the journal he edited (publishing an intelligent design paper without putting it through appropriate review, in the last issue he published during his term as editor)–and the result was that he was given no punishment nor was he discriminated against in any way. Gonzalez was denied tenure as a result of his tenure review, most likely because he had virtually no publications–a strong requirement for tenure at *any* school. I have links to detailed discussions of both of these cases on my blog post about this movie.
If the movie presents Sternberg and Gonzalez as evidence of persecution of ID scientists, that is yet more fraud on the part of its producers. And unfortunately, this kind of dishonest PR seems to be all that the Discovery Institute does–it spends millions on trying to preach a message to the general public and to get its material into public schools, but it spends virtually nothing on any actual scientific research. (It used to actually be nothing, but in response to this criticism they’ve handed out some nominal grant funds, though to date nothing of any substance has been published as a result–in fact they’ve said they can’t talk about what their research results are. That’s not science.)