Expelled Discussion Takes Another Turn

I've been following the Expelled saga since before it was released. There was even some local hoopla prior to its release. It all seemed like humorous reading for a while, encountering delicious lines like this:

The film shockingly exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the scientific establishment. As Stein says in the film, “Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science.”

I've wandered through many articles on the topic of Intelligent Design, atheism, Darwinian evolution, and such. I find it almost as entertaining as the global warming tennis match. Irony like this is just funny:

One highlight among many is Stein’s one-on-one interview with Richard Dawkins, the dashing Brit who has made a small fortune as the world’s most visible neo-Darwinist.

To his credit, and to the utter discomfort of the public education establishment, Dawkins does not shy from discussing the atheistic implications of Darwinism.

Indeed, Dawkin’s anti-deity call to arms, The God Delusion, has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Where Dawkins wanders into a black hole of his own making is in his discussion of the origins of life on earth.

To Stein’s astonishment, Dawkins concedes that life might indeed have a designer but that designer almost assuredly was a more highly evolved being from another planet, not “God.”

Stein does not respond. He does not need to. For the past hour of the film, the audience has met one scientist after another whose academic careers have been derailed for daring to suggest the possibility of intelligent design.

If only they had thought to put the designer on another planet!

I keep meaning to put it in my NetFlix queue, and fill my time with reviews and commentary such as this one from American Thinker or another from Human Events.

And along the way another brouhaha erupted. And I too wondered if Ben Stein missed his own point. In the meantime, I continue to watch this Darwinian tennis match -- my head bobbing this way and that. And also, of course, reading articles such Ben Stein Provokes the Liberal Wrath by Phyllis Schlafly. The Dang Thing.