Hey, it's guest-blogger time!! Wheee!! Here's a review of Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled," by my friend, Chris. Comments? Questions? Personal anecdotes?

Scott,
 
So, I went and saw the movie, 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'.  I’ve since read a lot of reviews out there that poke at many of the simpler flaws in this movie, like the blatant quote-mining of its interview subjects; its attempt to package atheism and the theory of evolution with Nazism and genocide, materialism, determinism, etc.; the film's lack of any substantial positive content to support the case for an 'Intelligent Designer'; etc.  So rather than go over all of that ground, I'd rather focus on the more fundamental issues presented by the movie.
 
But before I do, one thing I would like to challenge is what seems to be a favorite tactic of theists, including Ed Morrissey in his review that you forwarded to me, to attempt to portray atheism as a rival belief system containing positive assertions (e.g., an assertion that something either exists or that some event has occurred; examples of positive assertions would be that quarks exist or that a crime has been committed).  When atheists cannot prove the non-existence of a god, theists claim that atheism is no better off than belief in God.
 
While it is no doubt true that atheists have positive beliefs about things, including Dawkins, that doesn't mean that atheism is a system of positive beliefs.  The word atheism is a conjunction of the common prefix for negation, 'a', and the word for belief in a god or gods, 'theism'.  So, 'atheism' literally means 'non-theism', or the absence of a belief in god.  There is an infinite potential of things that I don't believe in -- including elves, unicorns, and God -- but knowing that implies nothing at all about what I do believe; neither whether I'm a godless, altruistic communist like Marx, or an atheistic, egoistic capitalist like Rand, or something else entirely.
 
'The onus of proof is on he who asserts the positive.'  I always thought that was a well-understood principle in philosophy.  After all, this is the very principle underlying the American legal principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty.  Proof is based on physical evidence and logical reasoning.  Things that don't exist (or events that didn't occur) have no physical characteristics that can be offered as evidence (since they don't exist!), and so it makes no sense to demand them of those holding the negative position (an atheist or a legal defendant).  The best that a defender of a negative position can do is to point out flaws in the reasoning of those asserting the positive position, or state the reasons for why such a thing cannot exist (or, for why the event in question could not have possibly occurred, which in law is called an 'alibi').
 
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It’s been said that no one ever doubted the existence of God until philosophers tried to prove his existence.  The explanation is that the tools of philosophers – logic and reason – are ultimately inconsistent with religion.  Logic and reason are also among the primary tools of science, and so for that reason, I suspect this movie’s loud assertion of the scientific validity of an ‘Intelligent Designer’ will have the effect of only hastening the demise of that 'theory'.
 
Aside from the narrator and guide of the movie, Ben Stein, the main character in the movie is biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.  I don't know what kind of biologist Dawkins is, but from what I heard from him in this movie and what I read in his book, 'The God Delusion', he is a lousy philosopher and an ineffective critic of theism.  He says some really stupid things.  No doubt, the filmmakers featured Dawkins so prominently -- and not an Objectivist philosopher, or someone like Christopher Hitchens, who they also interviewed for this film -- because of Dawkins' philosophic incompetence.
 
The 'Intelligent Design' (ID) advocates claim their views are science.  But is that true?
 
'Science' is systematic knowledge gained by the use of reason based on observation, where 'reason' is the faculty that identifies and integrates observed perceptual data in conceptual terms in accordance with logic.
 
'Supernatural', etymologically, means that which is above or beyond nature.  'Nature', in turn, denotes existence from a certain perspective; it is existence regarded as a system of interconnected entities governed by law, and therefore open to observation and understanding.  'Science' is understanding of 'nature'.
 
The designer that ID posits as the creator of life cannot be a natural being (even a natural 'alien' being, as Dawkins idiotically suggests in the movie) because, by the very premises of the ID proponents, the existence of such a natural being complex enough to design other life must itself necessarily require a designer.  So, the designer that ID postulates must, ultimately then, be a supernatural being.
 
‘A system of belief in and worship of a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe’ is the definition of 'religion', and the term for that supernatural power in a monotheistic religion is ‘god'.
 
So, ID is not science because ID is about a supernatural being, whereas science studies the natural.  The ID movement is a religious movement.
 
Given the constant attacks against atheism in the film and by ID proponents generally, it’s abundantly clear anyway that ID’s advocates are religiously motivated.  (Honestly, not that everyone doesn’t really know this, of course, but the point’s proven now.)
 
No one -- not even the filmmakers -- has accused academia or mainstream scientific research centers of discriminating against scientists for their religious views, but only for their stated scientific views.  And, or course, it's entirely appropriate for scientists to be evaluated on the quality of their scientific views (otherwise we'd have all kinds of kooks teaching every kind of nonsense in the schools).  There's nothing unfair about this, at all.  And, no one has said that religion can't be discussed in academia -- in the humanities.  They've only said that it's absurd to attempt to characterize religious views of the 'supernatural' as science.
 
Far from being unfair, the exclusion of religious content from science is critical to the further growth of civilization.
 
There’s nothing currently known that couldn’t have been ‘explained’ by reference to the actions of an imagined supernatural entity.  This is, in fact, what humans have done for all of their existence prior to the development of science.  And everything still currently unknown about nature could likewise be 'explained' by reference to a supernatural being.  To accept ID as an explanation for anything would be a complete death sentence for science.  Why bother studying nature when we can just say, 'God did it!'
 
ID is nothing more than another attempt by ignorant humans to explain the unknown in nature by positing the existence and actions of some magical, ‘supernatural’ entity.  The IDiots pushing ID want to take us back to the Dark Ages, when 'God did it!' served as a sufficient explanation for all natural phenomena that were not yet understood.  What brought humanity out of the Dark Ages wasn’t religion, but its rejection through the increased reliance on reason in the Western world (starting with men like Aquinas and his attempts to use pagan, Aristotelian logic to prove God’s existence).
 
Few people seem to realize that the current ID debate is not new.  For the most part, it is nothing more than a rehashed version of the 'Design' arguments made by theologians for the existence of God for hundreds or years, at least back to Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages.  And, of course, these arguments have been refuted by philosophers.  The best presentation that I know of is "Atheism: The Case Against God", by George H. Smith.  As Smith relates them, there are three basic forms of the Argument from Design:
 
(1) The Teleological Argument (that natural entities act to achieve specific ends, which behavior cannot have been by chance).
 
(2) The Analogical Argument (that natural objects display a level of complexity that is obviously evidence of conscious design).
 
(3) The Argument from Life (that the origination of life from the random interaction of molecules is unbelievably improbable).
 
The film provides versions of the second (Analogical) and third (Life) forms of these arguments, but not (that I could tell) of the first (Teleological).  The central focus of the film's argument (to the very limited extent that it actually makes one) is on the 'improbability' of life arising without a designer.  The notion of 'improbability' seems to be the common thread running through all of the design arguments.
 
In philosophy there is something analogous to an alibi in law; a statement by those defending the negative atheistic position as to why a supernatural entity cannot possibly exist.  The basic problem with all theistic arguments boils down to an evasion and contradiction of the most fundamental axiom of philosophy, that 'Existence Exists', and its corollary axioms of Identity ('A is A') and Causation ('An entity must act in accordance with its nature').  And, this contradiction of basic axioms certainly exists with respect to all references made by theists (and also, for that matter, by Dawkins) to 'improbability' in their arguments.
 
Rather than go into a full discussion of this, which is more involved than I can go into here, I'll just refer anyone interested to Smith's book, which is thankfully still in print nearly thirty years after its initial publication.  Or, I'll gladly discuss it with anyone who's interested.