When I watched to movie trailer for Expelled, I knew I had to see this movie. But something in my upbringing means that I can never watch a movie alone. So I expected some difficulty in convincing my wife to take time out of her busy schedule to watch a documentary of talking noses (must be something about Stein) since our last disastrous movie night was "The Phantom Menace". What I didn't expect though, was holding a sobbing woman for the last 5 minutes of the flick.

It's a powerful movie about a boring subject, which it approaches with all the seeming sophistication of a college frosh film and journalism major. Stein opens with blurry b/w video of the Berlin Wall being built, juxtaposing 50's b/w movies with handheld interviews, which at times were so jumpy my stomach complained. It gave a corny pastiche to those dreadfully dressed scientists sitting in front of dreadfully messy desks (authentic, embarrassingly authentic), all on their dreadfully best behavior, and all so dreadfully boring.  (He even has one scientist ranting on boredom, which is Stein's trademark: ironic humor.) So it wasn't too surprising that at about the 30 minute mark, a yuppie couple noisily left, leaving the three of us to endure the remaining hour. I snuck some sidelong glances at my wife, wondering if her eyes were half closing, but they were glued to screen, seeing things I couldn't.

Now this isn't to say that I was bored. Far from it. I have endured every insult Stein displayed, from censure to tenure denial, to firing, administrative stone-walling and name-calling. These were all too familiar faces I was seeing on the screen--the arrogant professor, the slimy administrator, the well-moneyed lobbyist--and there was no joy in watching their comeuppance. The movie will neither affect their careers, their salaries, nor even their reputation among their colleagues. This is not a vindictive movie, which would have been a failure anyway, and despite what critics say, Stein has no interest in editing their interviews for "cheap laughs". What Stein is after is something else entirely, and that is why my wife sobbed uncontrollably through the credits, through the screen being rolled up, through the lights coming up and the Muzak piped into an otherwise empty room.

Because ultimately, the ID versus Darwin issue  is not about whose theory gets printed in the textbooks, taught in the classroom, or even who can get grant money from Uncle Sam. The issue is about faith, its antecedents and consequents. Evolution is a religion, Stein demonstrates, a religion antithetical to God, to faith, to hope, and to life. There is an absolutely devastating interview with a college professor who lost his faith in a freshman biology class, and who had lost all hope for life. Devastating because it all rang so true, despite Dawkins acknowledgment that no evolutionist would ever admit to it. Devastating because he was propagating this same hopelessness to a fresh crop of students. Devastating because my own dear wife had come within days of suicide, as a result of losing her faith during a 7th grade biology class.

Nor is the loss of faith a neutral event, a fender-bender on the journey of life, but an all-consuming passion. Stein has Dawkins reading with obvious relish his famous blasphemy paragraph from "The God Delusion",  oh-so-desperate to spread his anti-faith. Stein never preaches, but lets his enemies tell the story. Faith must be stopped even if it takes lying, stealing (returning professor's grant money), and violent coercion to end it. So Stein drags us, kicking and screaming, back to Hadamer, back to Dachau, to understand where this road will finally end.

If the movie had ended there, I would still have been grateful. It takes enormous bravery to link evolution to atheism, and atheism to Communism, and both to National Socialism. He is pushing every button on the academic robo cop, so as I said, I admire his chutzpah. But then in the last five minutes, Stein does something miraculous, he gives us hope. He shows The Wall coming down, by the hands of students, at the behest of Presidents, ending with a charge to a classroom full of college kids: Truth will triumph; don't let the academic SS stop you; sacrifice your career, sacrifice your reputation, sacrifice your security, because the future is yours, and only you can take it back. It is the same miracle God did 32 years ago when he gave my wife her future back, with a promise.

So tell your friends. Tell your nerdy friends. Tell your nerdy atheist friends. Tell your college kids, tell your teenagers. It's a movie worth seeing twice.