Ben Stein to battle Darwin in major film
Actor-commentator stars in 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'

2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Ben Stein, the lovable, monotone teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Wonder Years" is back in the classroom in a major motion picture release slated for February 2008. But this time, the actor will be on the big screen asking one of life's biggest questions: "Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?"

That's right. Evolution – and the explosive debate over its virtual monopoly on America's public school classrooms – is the focus of the film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

In the movie, Stein, who is also a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. Even worse, say publicists for the feature film, "along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin's theory of random mutation and natural selection."

"Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way," says Stein. "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. It's anti-the whole concept of learning."

As "Expelled's" official website asks: "What freedom-loving student wouldn't be outraged to discover that his high school science teacher is teaching a theory as indisputable fact, and that university professors unmercifully crush any fellow scientists who dare question the prevailing system of belief? This isn't the latest Hollywood comedy; it's a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead."

"Expelled" documents how teachers and scientists alike are being ridiculed daily, denied tenure and even fired believing there is evidence of "design" in nature and challenging the current orthodoxy that life is entirely a result of random chance.

For example, Stein meets Richard Sternberg, a double Ph.D. biologist who allowed a peer-reviewed research paper describing the evidence for intelligence in the universe to be published in the scientific journal Proceedings. Shortly after publication, officials from the National Center for Science Education and the Smithsonian Institution, where Sternberg was a research fellow, began a coordinated smear-and-intimidation campaign to get the promising young scientist fired. The attack on scientific freedom was so egregious that it prompted a congressional investigation.

In the film, Stein meets other scientists like astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite of an extraordinary record of achievement. Gonzalez made the mistake of documenting the design he has observed in the universe. And there are others, like Caroline Crocker, a brilliant biology teacher at George Mason University who was forced out of the university for briefly discussing problems with Darwinian theory and for telling the students that some scientists believe there is evidence of design in the universe.

Unlike other popular documentary films, "Expelled" isn't one-sided – it confronts scientists like Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," influential biologist and atheist blogger P.Z. Myers, and Eugenie Scott, head of the National Center for Science Education. In fact, the creators of "Expelled" spent two years traveling the world and interviewing scores of scientists, doctors, philosophers and public leaders for the film.

According to the New York Times, Dawkins, Scott and other evolutionists are now claiming the film's producers deceived them into going on camera by hiding the "Intelligent Design" orientation of the film.

But Stein denies misleading anyone. "I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was about," he told the Times.

In the end, say the film's publicists, the production delivers to viewers "a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly funded high schools, universities and research institutions."

"The incredible thing about 'Expelled' is that we don't resort to manipulating our interviews for the purpose of achieving the 'shock effect,' something that has become common in documentary film these days," said Walt Ruloff, co-founder of Premise Media and the film's co-executive producer. "People will be stunned to actually find out what elitist scientists proclaim, which is that a large majority of Americans are simpletons who believe in a fairy tale. Premise Media took on this difficult mission because we believe the greatest asset of humanity is our freedom to explore and discover truth."

The Dawkins Delusion

Does Richard Dawkins exist? Many people would say yes. But Dr. Terry Tommyrot thinks otherwise. Following on the heels of last year's bestseller The God Delusion, comes the stunning sequel that is taking the scientific community by storm: The Dawkins Delusion. In a revealing interview, English biologist Dr. Tommyrot explains how belief in Richard Dawkins is, in fact, a harmful delusion, and how it can be explained scientifically. More specifically, Tommyrot explains how the complex patterns of language found in Dawkins' books are best explained by natural evolutionary processes and that "claiming that Dawkins did it puts an end to an inquiry that promises to give us a satisfying explanation of how these books came to be, without the need for invoking a superstitous Dawkins-of-the-Gaps hypothesis." Furthemore, Tommyrot argues that invoking some mysterious Dawkins to explain the design found within these books gets us nowhere, because it only raises more questions: "If Dawkins designed the books, then who designed Dawkins?"  

The Design Inference

Because a few people still seem to be struggling to understand the rather simplistic concepts of "intelligence" and "information", I thought I would post this video which I think does a pretty good job of further elucidating these concepts. It also does a good job of explaining how the information stored in the genetic code is analogous to information found in other systems such as human language systems and computer programs. The video is only ten minutes long so I would encourage anyone who is still struggling with these very basic concepts to watch it in its entirety. After watching if you still feel the need to debate semantics then feel free to do so, although I feel it is really a waste of time. The two main things I hope that each of us can take from this whole discussion is: 1) At present, there are no known natural processes that can explain the origin of genetic information or the origin of the first single-celled life form, and 2) Everyday experience has demonstrated that there is only one known source for producing information, and that's intelligence. Moreover, the principle of uniformity states that the natural processes operating in the past are the same as those that can be observed operating in the present. It is often summarized by the statement: "The present is the key to the past." Hence, if we observe from our everyday experience in the present that information is only produced by intelligence, then according to the principle of uniformity, it is logical to assume that information was only produced by intelligence in the past.

Currently Reading Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design see related

DNA: The Design is in the Details

In part one I described how Miller’s attempts to produce the essential building blocks of life in the laboratory failed because, even though Miller did succeed in producing amino acids, the ones he produced were of the wrong variety. Miller’s experiment produced the right-handed variety (dextro) while the amino acids necessary to yield life are of the left-handed variety (levo). Moreover, Miller's experiment also produced several organic acids which would have destroyed the amino acids he created long before they formed a protein. To prevent this from happening, Miller had to use a “cold trap” to isolate the amino acids from the organic acids as soon as they were formed. In other words, the only reason the amino acids survived was due to the intelligent intervention of Miller. But let us assume for the moment that Miller had succeeded in creating the right kind of amino acids needed to yield life. And let us further assume that he was able to produce them without the organic acids that would have instantaneously destroyed them. Would it then have been possible for the amino acids to link up together and form the first functional protein necessary to sustain a living cell? The answer is a resounding NO. This is because the more difficult problem that abiogenesis faces has yet to even be discussed: information. What must be explained is not only how the organic building blocks of life can be created via natural processes, but the source of information that properly assembled those building blocks to form the first life form. Paul Davies summed up this obstacle for abiogenesis well by employing the metaphor of building a house:

Let us consider another example. A novel is composed of letters which combine to form sentences, which in turn, combine to form paragraphs. But if these letters were not ordered in the exact way that they are, they would appear nonsensical to us. Consider the following sequence of letters: MIET NDA DTIE ATIW RFO NO NMA. Doesn’t make much sense does it. That’s because while the sequence is complex, it is not specified. In other words, the letters do not conform to any independently-given pattern. But suppose we were to re-arrange the letters in the following way: TIME AND TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN. Suddenly the same letters convey a message to our brains. The first sequence is complex but is not specified. The second sequence is both complex and specified. Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity have what we call "information content." That is, they have the ability to transmit information to intelligent agents. Scientists have found that the same is true of the coded information found in human DNA.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule. By now most people are familiar with the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. It is like a long ladder, twisted into a spiral. Molecular biologists have discovered how DNA stores the information necessary to direct protein synthesis. It was Crick who first proposed the "sequence hypothesis". According to the sequence hypothesis, information on the DNA molecule is stored in the form of specifically arranged chemicals called nucleotide bases along the spine of DNA’s helical strands. Chemists represent these four nucleotides with the letters A, T, G, and C (for adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). By 1961, a series of brilliant experiments confirmed DNA’s information-bearing properties. The amount of information in the DNA is so vast that it led Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins to claim that the amount of information in just a single strand of DNA would fill up 1,000 Enclyclopedia Brittanicas! The DNA molecule is exquisitely complex, but in addition to its complexity, it is also specified. Like the above sequence of letters, the 'letters' in DNA must be in a very precise sequence. If they are out of order then the information that the DNA transmits to the cell is garbled and will lead to a loss of cellular function. To summarize, the information found within DNA is both complex and specified. Hence, scientists have come to refer to it as “specified complexity”.

But how does all this lead one to the conclusion of design? Well, first of all no natural processes are known to produce structures with high information content like that found in DNA. Furthermore, if we consult everyday experience, we readily note that objects with a high information content such as books, computer programs, and musical scores are always the result of an intelligent source. For example, if you were to trace the information on your computer screen back to its original source you would invariably come to a mind--that of a software engineer or programmer. As Bill Gates has noted, "DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." Moreover, it is important to note that this is not just a case of reasoning by analogy. It is more than an analogy. In fact, in terms of structure, the two are virtually identical. All this leads us to one inevitable conclusion. If the information content found in human language and computer language is always the result of an intelligent designer, then it is only logical to conclude that the information content found in DNA is also the result of an intelligent designer.

NOTE TO READER: This post can also be found on our group site: Alliance Against Methodological Naturalism.