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“American Thinker” Reviews Expelled

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Ben Stein’s Intelligent Adventure
By Kate Wright

Ben Stein’s new film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, is a documentary that appears to be about Intelligent Design and the shortcomings of Darwinism. The film is not just an exploration of the limitations of The Origin of Species, but a journey to uncover the mindset that Darwinism engendered among those with an agenda to replace traditional understandings of God with pure materialism.

But far from offering a weighty discourse on theories of monism, Stein delivers a pop culture MTV-style Road Film that has already reignited the Culture Wars, with a just-issued cease and desist letter from a group at Harvard. The Harvard letter claims that a clip in the film plagiarizes an “Inner Life of the Cell” animation, and possible further legal action could disrupt the opening of the film on April 18.

We enter Ben Stein’s argument through images of the building of the Berlin Wall. Using inter-cuts, upbeat music, original text, and exciting graphics, Ben creates his own music video genre, as he visits professors who were “expelled” from universities and think tanks for merely mentioning the words “Intelligent Design” in their work.

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Comments
I sure hope Harvard follows through with their "cease and desist" demand. What fabulous publicity for the film that will be if it opens with a law suit against it! It could easily double the number of people seeing the film, and make Harvard look foolish and petty. As they say, you can't buy that kind of publicity.StuartHarris
April 15, 2008
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Blogs on "Expelled Stein" at Blogpulse are surging. As are blogs on "Intelligent Design".DLH
April 15, 2008
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"This is a first-rate expose about the consequences of suppressing freedom of expression, based on the questionable assumption that atheistic secularism is the state religion of the United States of America". Well stated indeed. Thanks for the link, DaveScottoc
April 15, 2008
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"But far from offering a weighty discourse on theories of monism, Stein delivers a pop culture MTV-style Road Film that has already reignited the Culture Wars, with a just-issued cease and desist letter from a group at Harvard." This last part just seems wrong. The letter is from XVIVO (and not signed by their supposed attorney Peter Irons, whom I suspect is working pro bono in ideological sympathy to draft the letter). The letter seems to be a cheap counter-publicity stunt by friends and allies of the NC"S"E, and that it is going nowhere fast. The animation in question, Inner Life of the Cell, concludes with "Copyright ©2007 Robert Lue and Alain Viel, Harvard University." As I wrote today, it looks like XVIVO did work for hire, and that the copyright belongs to Harvard and a few of their professors. I doubt XVIVO has standing, which is probably why Peter Irons, esquire, did not sign the XVIVO letter himself, but instead asked that his so-called clients send it instead.William Wallace
April 15, 2008
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That's the finest review I've seen yet.SCheesman
April 15, 2008
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