So tonight’s movie at Harding was Expelled, a documentary by Ben Stein concerning the issue of intelligent design. He raised many good points in the interviews he conducted with scientists on both sides of the Intelligent Design v. Evolution debate. Much of the movie was concerned with the simple fact that there is no “academic freedom” in the world of science. Those who dare question Darwinian evolution are “black listed” – they have lost their jobs and careers, have received threatening/hateful mail, and have become a laughing stock of the scientific community. All this simply because they are dissatisfied with the blanket “answers” provided by Darwin’s theory.

One main goal of his documentary was to show the devolution of morality and ethics in lieu of Darwinian evolution (natural selection, etc.). The climax (of sorts) of the movie was his discussion about Hitler and the Nazi regime – how they played off of evolutionary principles in order to create a “master race,” which ultimately lead to ethnic cleansing, eugenics, and unprecedented genocide. If there is no god, if there is no overarching, transcendent moral/ethical code, then one would naturally assume that an event such as the holocaust would eventually take place. Who’s to say that what they did was “wrong” if they were simply helping evolution by speeding up the processes.

Towards the closing of the film, Ben Stein holds a one-on-one interview with Richard Dawkins, acclaimed scientist/evolutionist and author of books like The God Delusion. Dawkins is one who is vehemently opposed to the theory of Intelligent Design and professes to be a non-believer in any type of divine being whatsoever. Yet even he admitted that there are markings throughout nature which point toward some type intelligence behind it. Incredibly, however, he feels that a more plausible theory than a god is the idea that life was, in effect, planted on earth by beings from another planet which (through Darwinian evolution) became so intelligent to the point that they could travel light years through space, plant some sort of life-bringing substance on the earth, and then leave indefinitely. Yes, that’s right – Dawkins is more willing to believe in ALIENS than a god. Yet even that theory doesn’t address the issue of the initial source or (in the words of Plato) the “First Cause.”

The agenda of the film is not necessarily say, “Yes, there is a god, and I.D. should be taught in schools.” Really the point was to show more of a hidden agenda of the evolutionist school. It seems to be a power play mostly. The reasons given by evolutionists he interviewed as to why intelligent design should not be more rigorously pursued as a viable option were along the lines of, “It’s stupid.” They gave no real reasoning for it. No scientific evidece has been found to disprove and discount the theory of intelligent design. In fact, according to Dawkins the evidence in favor of intelligent design in the world is somewhat convincing (not his words exactly).

This is not a closed case by any means. Science is always growing. The comparison between the scientific world of Darwin and the world of today is astronomical. As it was said in the film, if a cell in the time of Darwin were a Buick, the cell as we know it today would be a galaxy. I’m just waiting to see what surprises and, dare I say, revelations the future has in store for us.