What debacle?

ahhh, that debacle.  I thought you referring to a new one like everyone walking out halfway through the feature or something even funnier.

(I thought I was a registered member here, but it has been a while, so I guess I have to do it all over again).

I went to see 'Expelled' today. Yes, I admit it: I paid actual, "In God We Trust" tainted money.
And I deserved to be punished for this. But I really wanted to see what they had to say, and how much they would piss me off. And I wanted to be able to let others know what this movie is like, so they can decide whether or not to see it (or how to find some way to see it without your money becoming 'Ben Stein's Money.' (pun intended) .

Well, it is definitely a propaganda film, that's for sure. But they do give our side some opportunity to present the scientific (and atheist) point of view. This is also the only movie I've gone to in which I can say I have met 4 of the people who are in it (however briefly, mostly at AAI last year) : Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Daniel Dennett, and Eugenie Scott.

The central theme of the movie is that scientists who are in any way Intelligent Design- friendly - or critical of Darwinism - are being denied academic freedom. Ben Stein talks about, and with, several people who were apparently fired or denied tenure, and / or subsequently not hired at other universities. The movie is not only of interest to me as an atheist, but because my Dad recently retired as a university professor, and he was active as a Historian of Science, frequently writing about (favorably) evolution, as well as about the ID and creationist "scientists" and why they are wrong.

Stein uses a lot of cheesy old black & white 'stock' footage, interspersed with current interviews, ostensibly to underscore his point that ID proponents are somhow being bullied. There is a lot of imagery of barbed-wire fences and implications about blacklisting and government looking-over-your-shoulder, lots of propaganda about how the Scientific Establishment won't tolerate dissent or questioning. A bit of foreshadowing, perhaps.

Folks here will be glad to know there is a healthy dose of Richard Dawkins, though Stein does his best to try to make him look bad (unsuccessfully), and he actually gets some opportunity to talk about "The God Delusion." Near the end is sort of a dramatic build-up to Stein's "confrontation" with Dawkins (the drama is lessened by the fact that Dawkins has already made several appearances in the movie by this point) . An interview with Michael Shermer seems to be aimed at getting Shermer to apply his "skeptic" role towards Darwinism, which doesn't really work for Stein. Daniel Dennett makes a couple of appearances, but doesn't really get any substantial time. Stein does a lot of traveling - including to France and Poland - which almost seems like an excuse to spend his money - he says something like 'I needed to unwind, so I went to ___ '

One of the most disturbing, outrageous things that Stein does in this movie is his self-righteous attempt to link Darwinism / Evolution with Hitler and Nazism. Seriously. He goes to the site of a concentration camp in Europe (Dauchow - sorry I can't spell it - Germany I think...or is it Poland ?) and talks to a woman there who tells him how the whole thing was based on Darwinism (and Stein adds in Malthus) , via eugenics and the like. No mention of Herbert Spencer (who was associated with "social Darwinism," which takes Darwin's ideas in a different direction...) . He also talks to and about atheists, at some points trying to link it with communism.

There does seem to be some pretense of objectivity, with Stein claiming he was skeptical about ID ..until...such and such , and he seems to think that if science is any good at all, it must explain EVERYTHING - so that if it doesn't , the implication goes, it must be wrong. He asks a number of scientists how life began - at its very beginning, that is, - how could something come from nothing ? and for the most part, the scientists rightly say, we don't really know. There is some apparently didactic information about DNA and cell structure (I'll leave that for someone else to say how accurate or useful it actually is, i'm no biologist) , and so I guess I can say it's nice that they actually discuss and talk about some of the important scientific questions we all ask, even if the movie maker seems to have a persecution complex. Stein seems to think that academia's rejection of creationism is censorship and denial of open debate and freedom. It doesn't seem to occur to Mr. Stein that perhaps it was simply rejected because it is poor science.