Two Are Better Than One

“EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED”

(By Dr. Rex M. Rogers, Consultant – Cornerstone University)

Say “Ben Stein,” and the word, “comedian,” is more likely to come to mind than “intellectual.” And Ben is certainly funny. But he’s more than that and proves it in his feature film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

This film asks the weighty question, “If we expel freedom in science, where will it end?” To find the answer, Stein travels to twelve countries on four continents, interviewing an impressive list of scholars in the sciences, theology, and philosophy. He asks them why “Big Science” makes no use of the hypothesis of God and why Intelligent Design (I.D.) discussions are suppressed. The answers he records are breathtaking in their political correctness, disdain for religion and religious people (“idiots,” one scholar said), cavalier attitude toward debate, and fear of free speech.

Expelledis not an advocacy flick for Intelligent Design. Rather, Stein probes why a scientific elite is systematically betraying one of America’s founding principles: the freedom to create, explore, fail, overcome, inquire, debate.

I.D. is simply the study of patterns in nature best explained by intelligence. It is not necessarily Christian or religious. Yet in its zeal for Darwin’s theory of evolution, the scientific community stifles serious consideration of Intelligent Design. I.D. is called propaganda, a racket, stupid, an excuse to introduce creationism into the classroom, and, my favorite – boring. But what could be more intellectually engaging than to allow evidence, rather than the courts, to decide the merits of I.D., evolution, or any other theory of origins?

No matter. In the scientific community today, power trumps freedom in the name of truth.

The intellectual supremacy that rules science is on full display in Expelled.It’s a supremacy based upon a worldview, a philosophic paradigm rejecting the idea of God, or even the idea of “an Intelligence,” while embracing the “staggeringly improbable” idea that life began by chance. In this view, human beings, along with the rest of the universe, were not created by the Sovereign Creator of the Bible’s book of Genesis, nor by some kind of Intellect. Life began when, by chance, crystals, or particles or an explosion generated a molecular cell. Life (you and me) just happened. Thereafter, Darwin’s evolutionary processes took over and the cell became an organism became a fish became a monkey became a cave man became our Great, Great Grandpa.

Some anti-theists waffle a bit, suggesting the cell was initiated by a visitor from another galaxy – a brainy being of some kind – but they’re uncertain about what or who. Though there’s not a shred of evidence for this fantasy, anti-theists still smugly maintain the alien space traveler wasn’t God. And they conveniently avoid explaining the origin of that alien species.

Proponents of Darwinism-sans-deity claim their pseudo-religion grants us freedom from primitive superstition. But it’s a faux freedom that enslaves human beings to meaninglessness. No deity? Then no objective standard for determining right from wrong. No morality. No accountability. No responsibility. No life after death. No certainty, just chance, just chaos. Most devastating of all: No hope.

You see, suppression of freedom to debate all ideas in the scientific classroom is about more that Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. It’s about more than academic freedom. It’s about scientists teaching a philosophy that devalues human life (what Pope John Paul II called a “culture of death”) and – literally – makes anything acceptable. Eugenics, euthanasia, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Why not? If life begins in the Great Lottery in the Sky why should we believe it ends any differently? And if life begins and ends meaninglessly, then what happens in the middle doesn’t matter either.

Scientists who suppress freedom inexorably create an Orwellian world where only two choices are left to us: “Nihilism” – pointless, violent fear and loathing, or “Hedonism” – pointless, immoral, pleasure-seeking. Is it any wonder that so much of cinema today is about one or both?

Ben Stein’s Expelled does freedom proud. And in doing so he serves up truth and hope.

(Dr. Rex M. Rogers – Consultant to and former president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dr. Rex M. Rogers is the author of a nationally syndicated newspaper column and the author and voice of the daily radio program called “Making a Difference.”)

NOTE: Our daughter Anna and her husband Garl brought us to see “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” by Dr. Ben Stein last Saturday in Mt. Vernon. Their pastor highly recommended this film.

We returned home on Sunday, and I looked in Google for a good write-up on it. Some 500 were present, and as a guess I found 80-90 % extremely negative towards it. I was not surprised.

When I was a boy of seven in grade two (1930), our teacher showed us a slide of the “Missing Link” from which she said, “We are descended!”

When I attended the University of Saskatchewan 1946-48, our biology professor, Dr. Ralston, firmly let us know in his class that “Evolution” by Darwin was the only logical, sensible and scientific explanation to creation.

About that time I stopped in at a restaurant in Saskatoon for breakfast. When I raised my head following asking a blessing on God for His provision of food, a Royal Canadian Mountain Police officer sitting beside me said, “The day will soon come when all people like you will be in jail where you belong.”

I replied – “I suppose you do not know who I am. I am the Student Body President of St. Andrew’s College, Seminary of the United Church of Canada. I would like your name and number so I can report you for such discourtesy.”

Of course he abjectly apologized and asked if I would just forget his error.

The President of the University of Saskatchewan listened briefly at the door to Dr. Bob Finley, guest speaker for the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. His response was a grunt of disgust, and a mutter that soon such heresy would no longer be allowed in Canada.

My daughter Anna has lent me a number of courses from “The Teaching Company.” One was on “The Human Body,” presented by a very eminent physician, surgeon and professor. He did an excellent job, but spoiled it by presenting Evolution not as a Theory – which it is – but as “Fact,” which cannot be discussed in the light of his view.

The article above – for me – but cements the conclusion that Ben Stein was entirely correct in the need to challenge the somewhat bigoted scientific community in this area.

Dr. Ivan Panin from Russia was an eminent Philosopher, Mathematician and master of English. Following his conversion to Evangelical Christianity, he spent 100,000 hours in demonstrating an unanswerable mathematical proof through Bible Numerics of the divine inspiration of our 66 books of the Bible.

Jesus Christ, Lord and Creator of the Universe – will one day judge all human beings for the deeds we have done in our bodies. It will be interesting to hear our devoted evolutionists seek to justify turning the youth of our land to such amazing theories of creation! It certainly takes more faith to accept the amazing theories descending from Darwin, when the explanation of God in Genesis covers the answer so much more acceptably.

In conclusion, not only attend the showing of Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” – but by all means bring your children, grandchildren and friends.

This is a breath of fresh air after the amazing theories our students are subjected to in the classroom not only of higher learning – but right down to kindergarten.

Your friends – Jim & Marie Watt.