makeshiftmind

Ben Stein’s pseudo-documentary Expelled, a film about the alleged prejudice against intelligent design advocates in scientific establishments, has been receiving a lot of negative attention in the scientific community because it borrows heavily from Michael Moore’s playbook, i.e., it’s a dishonest film that does not present facts accurately.

Scientific American, a very popular scientific magazine, has written an interesting article called “Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know…” that details six of the film’s most disturbing flaws. Atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, who was interviewed for the film, claims that, among other things, he and his colleagues were told that they were being interviewed for a totally different film, and that their quotes were taken out of context and twisted. He has posted an article called “Lying for Jesus” that heavily criticizes the film. The film’s Wikipedia article catalogs the controversy surrounding the film with quite a bit of detail.

Whether you are a creationist, an evolutionist, and ID advocate or just undecided, twisting facts, distorting quotes, and citing material out of context is a very low way to solicit your position. Don’t accept less than the truth.