I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to me that Ben Stein is starring in and has cowritten a movie about Creationism called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The guy’s been a right wing fascist longer than he’s been a popcult icon (he was a Nixon speech writer, for the love of the Shambling Ones), but he’s always seemed like one of ‘The Good Ones,’ i.e. a right wing fascist with a sense of humor and a stunning intelligence to back up his arguments. Until now – the guy who hosted the very smart quiz show Win Ben Stein’s Money has seemingly turned his back on reason and science.

His film has begun showing to evangelical megachurch groups, and Orlando Sentinel critic and international playboy Roger Moore got an invite to a screening. But just before the screening he learned the invite had been revoked. Moore decided to go anyway, and using his best spy techniques sat amongst a crowd of Holy Rollers and watched the garbage Stein unspooled. He then wrote a scathing review: ‘It’s a rabble-rouser of a doc that uses all manner of loaded images,
loaded rhetoric, few if any facts and mockery of hand-picked “weirdo”
scientists to attack those who, Stein claims, are stifling the
Religious Right’s efforts to inject intelligent design into science
courses, science curricula and the national debate.’

The New York Times tracked down Stein and got some comments from him, including saying that Moore’s charges that the movie uses Holocaust denier tactics is ‘nonsense.’ Says Stein, ‘[T]here’s just a lot of people who don’t believe that big science and
Darwinism should have a stranglehold on academic life, and they have
been waiting for a voice.’

I don’t get this. Science isn’t democracy. You don’t get a voice. I know that Ben Stein understands this, since he’s not a stupid man. Just because you don’t understand science doesn’t make it wrong… and it sure as shit doesn’t make it ‘religion,’ as some especially retarded Creationists like to say. No, you can go to school and learn the basic facts and maths and double check all of the findings of science. I can study theology for decades but there will never be a theorem that allows me to prove God. And in fact I’d wager that most of these Christian morons wouldn’t want to study theology, since that discipline promotes philosophical thinking about God instead of blind dogma swallowing.

We’ll never get invited to a screening of this movie, which is opening in April, but I’m going to keep an eye out for it. I honestly believe that the people who back ‘Intelligent Design’ are among the most dangerous elements of our society, people who are a step away from being American Taliban. When facts and logic have no place in your view of science, what hope does freedom and liberty have in your view of government?