Expelled Lulz, Again

So, a couple of friends of mine and I went and saw Ben Stein's movie Expelled. Imagine Al Gore's documentary merged with Michael Moore's having butt sex with Ronald Reagan. That pretty much sums up the quality of the editing.

There are enough cut scenes to soviet bloc Germany and references to the Berlin wall to make the film very boring. Combine that with Stein's monotone voice and a random segment of him getting lost in Seattle, and the movie ends up being a snore.

Luckily, there are interviews that do instigate "teh lulz" from my friends. The one which made me nearly laugh out loud was the interview with Caroline Crocker, former George Mason instructor of cell biology. She claimed she was "disciplined" for having a couple slides about intelligent design. Much to the discredit of the movie, they never explained that her job was a non-tenure track instructor position. They also do not mention that she had joint positions at GMU and Northern Virginia Community College. they do not mention that it was her students that complained about the instruction material and how it did not relate to the scope of the course. They did not explain that her position as a contingent faculty member is dependent on (1) student reviews from course evaluations and (2) staffing needs.

The entire movie is based on this tactic of not going deeply into the matter of each person who was "expelled". For a movie that begins with the premise of freedom of inquiry, it seems to me that inquiry ended only at the point where they could build their case and not at the deep heart of the matter for each individual.

Another "lulz" moment was when Stein said he sought out top scientists to discuss this topic with, and the first person of a long string of one-liners from various scholars was Daniel Dennet. Now, I like Dennet. I would not call him a scientist: his main profession is philosophy of the mind. And he has written a good book about evolution. But he's still not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, and he readily admits it at public appearances I've seen of him. So I chuckled to myself in my seat.

The last "lulzy" moment I'm going to bring up is an interview Stein had with a professor of the history of biology. [1] It was part of the movie which showed that atheists in the biological sciences justify their atheism with their knowledge of evolutionary biology. PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins were featured in this segment. The professor of history in biology was as well. The professor gave a spiel about how evolutionary biology removes god, purpose, and free will. I couldn't resist but laugh very hard in the theater that my friend clasped my mouth to shut me up. Daniel Dennet has written extensively on the view that determinism and free will are not incompatible. His presence in the movie and the movie's attempt to drive home that evolutionary biology necessitates the end of free will was too much irony. Too much.

And the last relic is my friend's response to the molecular biology video ripped from Harvard's XVIO. During the video, I was chuckling due to the cheesy 2D-1/2 graphics on the screen. But when the clip was over, my friend yelled at the top of his lungs "EPIC FAIL!" 'Twas funny.

If you haven't seen the movie yet but are going to, please do me a favor. Can you count the Reagan references throughout the movie? Reagan pictures are like an Easter egg throughout the entire film. That's a new game now.

The only thing I got out of the film was that I wanted a pull-out back scratcher like Stein had in one of the clips. That's basically it for this weird conglomeration of soviet bloc Germany, chopped interviews, and Ben Stein getting lost in various cities.

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[1] I unfortunately do not remember his name.