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Review: Stein shuns intelligent debate in dishonest 'Expelled' - Salt Lake Tribune:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Movie - Review - The New York Times:
Failing to make the argument -- baltimoresun.com:
Alas, the movie's makers (Stein and co-writers Kevin Miller and Walt Ruloff, and director Nathan Frankowski) don't debate honestly. Stein mocks university officials for not "getting off [their] script," but says nothing about the repetitive talking points from the ID crowd. The ID folks complain that the term "evolution" is too vaguely defined, and yet never adequately define what "intelligent design" is. They swear they aren't espousing religion, then try to discredit the leading evolutionary biologists - such as Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers - because they are atheists.And E! also gets it:Movies:
Oddly enough, the tactics employed in "Expelled" undercut the movie's argument, most notably in the interviews with Dawkins and Myers and in Stein's trip to Darwin's British home (now a museum). Either the filmmakers suckered these participants under false pretenses [true], or the evolutionists are more open to debate than Stein suggests [true]. Perhaps the intelligent-design proponents know that in a truly open debate, their argument isn't fit enough to survive.
Despite insisting "intelligent design" isn't pro-God propaganda, Stein argues we're waging a religious war (cut to cannon fire) with Darwinists smiting the faithful with—gasp!—atheistic ideas. Most outrageously, he plays the overused Nazi card—he tours an old concentration camp and notes Hitler himself was influenced by Darwin. Yes, kids, studying evolution leads to this (cut to dead prisoners).Yay, the NYTimes actually did a fact check!
Expelled pretends it wants to encourage debate but shuts down and edits around every Darwinian scientist who attempts to explain complex issues, as Stein makes snide remarks in voice-over.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Movie - Review - The New York Times:
Every few minutes familiar — and ideologically unrelated — images interrupt the talking heads: a fist-shaking Nikita S. Khrushchev; Charlton Heston being subdued by a water hose in “Planet of the Apes.” This is not argument, it’s circus, a distraction from the film’s contempt for precision and intellectual rigor. This goes further than a willful misunderstanding of the scientific method. The film suggests, for example, that Dr. Sternberg lost his job at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History because of intellectual discrimination but neglects to inform us that he was actually not an employee but rather an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term.And not that I'm following the advice, but the LA Times (echoed in the Baltimore Sun) has the real final word:
Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.
Failing to make the argument -- baltimoresun.com:
In some ways the film is itself an afterthought, a formal necessity toward the ultimate aim of mobilizing and propagating a specific agenda. As a work of nonfiction filmmaking it is an atrocious sham, and as agitprop it is too flimsy to strike any serious blows. The most rational, genuinely effective way to deal with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is to not be drawn into its web, to simply ignore it.
