We rented a documentary by Ben Stein called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It shows the reality of the wall in the scientific community barring the theory of Intelligent Design--"certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
His main goal in the documentary is to show how educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the crime of merely believing that there might be evidence of design in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance.
It is very eye opening whether you are atheist, agnostic, or religious. Kind of crazy actually. One of the most interesting concepts in the documentary for me, it wasn't a battle between fanatical Darwinists vs Creationists. Scientists who don't necessarily believe in God are being ostracized from the academic community. They are not necessarily religious--they are merely posing the question that maybe life wasn't formed off a crystal, but there is some intellectual design to life, some organized planning and structure to everything.
I'm obviously religious and believe in God and what is interesting to me with my experience in science, how minimal it may be, what I have learned of science, especially organic science, supports and strengthens my religious beliefs. For example learning simple biology and the functions of a cell convince me that their was intelligence involved to create such complexity--for me this is God. But for some, many being these scientists interviewed in the documentary, the more they learn of science, the less likely religion is, and the more religious people are "primitive" and superstitious. One Professor from Cornell described his process of Christian to atheism really interestingly. Basically, once you give up God, then you give up morality, then you realize there is no purpose to life and you can finally give up all hope. For him, this was liberating. To me, that seems debilitating.
Whether you like science, are religious, atheist, or care about Darwin or Creationism, I think you will enjoy the documentary. I'm no scientist and I liked it. It uses clips as transitions that are really great--our favorite being "Shut up you freak!"...."It's a MAD HOUSE!" from Planet of the Apes. It poses interesting ideas and facts while entertaining all the time.
Go to Redbox, use the free code: DVDONME or BREAKROOM and check it out for free.
Rhett buys evolution text books for leisure reading and was really familiar with a lot of the brains interviewed, so needless to say he loved it.
Molly: Remember all the conversations you had to endure with Rhett talking all about Evolution vs Creationism? You would have loved being there watching this with him girl.
1 comment:
Cool. My sister watched Religuless (?spell). She liked it but, from what she told me, it seemed like it pretty much just bashed on anyone who has some sort of Faith.
I'm not really into that.
Faith is an easy target to rip on. I think they should find something that takes a little more effort to rip apart.
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