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Saturday, March 08, 2008

A Kansas City business magazine reviews Ben Stein's new film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" calling it "arguably the smartest and most sophisticated documentary ever produced on the right side of the cultural divide on any subject, ever."

Move over Roger Ebert. There's a new sheriff in town.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketIngram's Magazine executive editor Jack Cashill stuffs every far left boogeyman he can into an 824-word piece extolling the virtues of Stein's "engaging frontal assault on the oppressive neo-Darwinist establishment."

References to Michael Moore, the Earth Liberation Front, Al Gore and Baghdad's first-recorded snowfall last January dot the review apparently designed (no pun intended) to serve as a clever repudiation of liberal filmmaking, environmentalism and global warming.

Except what does cinematography, domestic terrorism and climatology have to do with the evolution? Not a thing.

Which is part and parcel of the film's core weakness to set up strawman arguments to criticize Darwinian theory and evolutionary biology neither of which address the origin of life -- the central tenet of Intelligent Design.

As Colorado Confidential reported, in what appears to be the first published review of the film, for all its evolution bashing the film never  makes the case for intelligent design nor is there any explanation of the ID orthodoxy.

Our follow up story on the film producers' press conference also yields the same maddening tendencies -- blow a lot of smoke about Darwinism and oppression of scientific thought but then don't take any legitimate questions from reporters to further the debate.

What's more off-putting with the review is a weird and gratuitous aside that a nuclear physicist in the film, whom Cashill refers to as a "creationist" quotes and all, is wearing a yarmulke -- and if that wasn't a big enough clue for the reader, that the scientist is Jewish.

Huh? How's that relevant?

Cashill's review is also available online at World Net Daily.

The film opens nationwide on April 18 -- coincidentally, the same day in 1521 when Martin Luther was tried for heresy by the Holy Roman Empire. Luther was the leading proponent of Protestantism which later led to Evangelical Christianity, the modern day movers and shakers behind promoting Intelligent Design to debunk scientific theory and advance religion in academia and politics.

Comments

1 comment

[1]
Ben Stein is a piece of work. Very occasionally he has something interesting to say, but, for the most part, his constant irrelevancies about the luxurious hotel room he's been given on his speaking rounds, the very rich and important people he's hanging out with . . . yadda yadda yadda . . .

Honestly, it makes him sound incredibly insecure. And I guess he should be.

Posted by shirah at Saturday, March 08, 2008 17:58:45

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