Manufactured Persecution.

Perhaps the funniest thing about intelligent design is not so much that people are trying --and failing-- to build a scientific theory around the notion that life on earth was the result of some magic man's whimsy, but the real thing that cracks me up is the whole controversy creationism's proponents manufactured so as to drive their half-baked, home-spun twaddle into the mainstream. They've gone to great lengths to bark out their tales of oppression and censorship. They even dug up a sympathetic semi-celebrity and made a movie to stoke the fires of zealotry and feed the complex of persecution that all religions need in order to bring substance to their faith. After all, what would religion be without its demons --and science has always been a dark and shady monster lurking in the hallways of academia.

Now, this movie seeks to caterwaul endlessly about the censorship of "Big Science" toward theories opposing evolution; however, their entire message collapses because that censorship they so desperately need doesn't exist. It is not the fault of science that the stultifying madness of intelligent design fails to measure up to even the loosest definitions of the word "theory."

However, rather than spending time in a lab gathering data which supports their "theory," they make a movie to blather on about how no one believes their silliness. And, rather than convince us with cold, hard facts, the creationists point to and accuse and condemn those who would rather build their beliefs around a testable, verifiable reality as opposed to the supernatural.

Their nonsense doesn't belong in our science classes for the simple fact that science, by and large, tends to avoid appeals to the superstitious in pursuit of answers. And there's a reason for this. After all, what good is an answer when you have no facts to support it?

Even I, a simple English major, know this.

So what is the real motive behind the movie Expelled if not yet another attempt to evangelize our public schools?

Personally, and this may sound somewhat odd, I'm actually happy this movie is coming out for no other reason than it will open up a dialogue as to what does and does not constitute science with regards to education. And, when held up and scrutinized, intelligent design will simply crumble to dust in the light of what is actually a very effective and successful process of testing and proving and learning (which is why, rather than doing actual lab work to support their nonsense, they have to make movies to manufacture a controversy that doesn't really exist). After all, if America is to succeed intellectually, it will not be because we bow to those who wish to cast us backward into an educational system of the Dark Ages. The only way for science education to succeed is to study the works of, and learn from those who bucked that archaic system of superstition and actually propelled humanity forward by refusing to accept the notion that god did it.

-DP