Ben Stein suggests in his documentary, "Expelled," that we are at such a crossroads in academia today, when professors are losing their jobs because they dare to talk about intelligent design as a possible answer to the question of how life began. Stein presents these researchers as modern-day Galileos, martyred for daring to suggest an alternative to spontaneous evolution as an explanation for the origin of life.
While Galileo focused on the world "out there," intelligent design scientists study the world "in there" as well, inside the single cell from which life springs. Modern science has discovered that cells are much more complex than Darwin ever imagined. A single tiny cell contains a blueprint — design, if you will — of the entire organism as it will eventually exist. Discoveries regarding DNA and RNA make it difficult to accept the idea that the original cell emerged by chance, "out of the mud, on the backs of crystals," as one ID detractor suggests when pushed by Stein to explain how it all started.
How did it start? That's the big question. Intelligent design theory begins with the idea that certain features of the universe cannot be explained by evolution. That's all. This is similar to saying in a scientific article that certain features of the vertebra cannot be explained by reference to some current theory. This is useful. Knowing what we don't know leads us to investigate other paths until we do know.
Darwinians have already made adjustments to their theory to account for evidence of the Big Bang, and both theories now coexist peacefully. The fact that ID cannot be replicated does not make it false, any more than not being able to replicate the Big Bang makes it false; it just makes it unproven — and still open to debate. But because ID theory might possibly lead to theological speculations on the nature of the designer, the debate bangs shut. How scientific is that?
Had Stein devoted more of his documentary to the scientific foundation for intelligent design, his film might have received a warmer reception from the critics. But I doubt that anything would have made a difference; being a fellow traveler of intelligent design produces the same reaction today as being a supporter of evolution did a hundred years ago. Like the scientific community, the liberal literati are skeptical of anything that "emerges with [creationism] clinging to its back."
Nevertheless, I sympathize with Stein's decision to include the mind-boggling possibilities suggested by the theory of ID — that design implies a designer, someone else "out there." Like Einstein imagining the time travel suggested by relativity, or physicists reveling in the implications of quantum theory, or a biochemist contemplating the healing powers of nano technology, ID proponents are understandably tantalized by the possibility of connecting with other intelligent beings in the universe. I suspect most scientists are tantalized by that idea too. It's just that ID comes too close to supporting the concept of a designer with a proprietary interest in his or her creation. But scientific atheists who smugly reject that possibility do so on an emotional level, not a scientific one.
Yet the theory of an intelligent designer does not necessarily imply a god that has to be worshipped. For that matter, the designer does not even have to exist anymore. As Robert Frost suggests in his sonnet, "Design": "What brought the kindred spider to that height,/ Then steered the white moth thither in the night?/ What but design of darkness to appall?/ If design govern in a thing so small."
Similarly, ID and evolution do not have to be mutually exclusive theories. Evolution explains how organisms adapt and change, but it does not explain how the first organism came to life. As long as we don't know, we should keep looking. But even ID scientists who shun theology are shunned by the scientific community. "Show us the peer-reviewed articles, and we'll consider taking you seriously," they sneer. But that's just the point: peer-reviewed journals are controlled by the academicians who refuse to consider ID. And if they won't even consider the articles, the articles can't be peer-reviewed.
Those who refuse even to consider the idea of a sentient being designing a helix or planting a seed are as closed minded as the intelligentsia of Galileo's time who mandated that the sun revolved around the earth simply because they did not have a current theory to explain the path that the sun made across the sky each day. Open your eyes! Is it utterly impossible to consider that someone from another planet may have visited Earth even once in its eons of existence and left behind a seed? It doesn't have to be a whole Garden. Even Richard Dawkins admits to this possibility of an alien Johnny Appleseed in "Expelled."
The folly of scientific closed-mindedness is also seen in another film released last month, "Horton Hears a Who!" (Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, directors. Blue Sky Studios, 88 minutes). When Horton is seen carrying around a little dandelion from which he claims to be hearing voices, his detractors and even his friends begin mocking him by carrying around dandelions and making the same claim. I think the directors intended this to be a slap at the "invention" of religion. But thousands of people making false claims about hearing a voice doesn't change the fact that one of those voices — the one belonging to a Who — is real. And if the possibility exists that it is real, isn't that possibility worth investigating?
No matter which side of the debate you support, spontaneous evolution or intelligent design, the documentary's larger point — that those who hold the power in academia tend to suppress and even expel teachers who support politically incorrect ideas — is valid. Graduate students in economics have confided to me that they have been advised not to admit attending conferences or seminars sponsored by libertarian or conservative thinktanks like the Liberty Fund, Cato, or Young America's Foundation for fear of being blackballed when they begin their job search. ID is just another example of suppressed speech, and that is a practice that concerns all of us. (See Gary Jason's
review of "Indoctrinate U" in this issue.)
Stein's interviews are intercut with black and white clips from movies and newsreels, some frightening, some ironic and funny. One can't help but chuckle at the sight of Dr. Frankentstein chortling crazily, "It's alive!" right after a scientist Stein is interviewing suggests that the first cell came to life through a strike of lightning. However, many of Stein's clips are deeply disturbing. He begins his documentary with scenes from Hitler's Germany, printing the opening credits on Berlin road signs to suggest that we are at a similar crossroads today. (In fact, the original title of the film was "Crossroads.")
Stein tours Dachau, reminding viewers that Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest" led to eugenics and its justification for "destruction of the weakest." Hitler used the theory of eugenics to justify killing Jews, blacks, gays, and those with mental and physical handicaps in order to create an elite Aryan super-race. But Stein goes too far in suggesting that today's scientist is Hitlerian, and evolutionists are understandably angry at being likened to the Holocaust engineers.
While the juxtapositions may be over the top, the metaphor works on the level that director Nathan Frankowski intended. College administrators are building an intellectual wall akin to the Berlin Wall that separated the East from the West. "Our world view is influencing the interpretation of science," he suggests. "Academic freedom exists only for those on the right side of the [intellectual] wall."
You may not agree with Stein's position on this issue (and there are plenty of websites you can peruse that tear this film apart), but libertarians everywhere ought to agree with this: no idea should be considered too dangerous to be discussed.
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