Well Expelled has officially finished its run here, so I suppose I will have to wait a month or two before purchasing the DVD. As I commented in my review, the movie pulled a rhetorical stunt befitting the modernists: it framed the debate not about facts or theories, but about the response to facts and theories. It's a classic tactic, here are some chestnuts to warm you up. The psychologist defense, usually given in response to an impregnable logical argument, garnering extra points if said with feigned concern "Why, is it important to you?" Or the paternalist defense, extra points for replicating the SNL churchlady tone "That isn't nice!" and so forth.  If you are a skeptic about some unsubstantiated claim, you are labelled a demented denier, making your response more important than the claim itself. Indeed, we live in a post-modern century starved for fact but consumed with response (spin).

Now this post-factual debate makes Materialists squeamish, watching the inroads of social scientists into hard science territory, but by-and-large they make a Mephistophelean deal to eliminate the competition (Christianity) if they will still be allowed to their materialist "research". So, for example, many Progressives and Materialists in the first half of the Modernist Century, supported post-modern state policies (such as the expulsion of "jewish" science) because they believed the state was acting "scientifically" in most other areas (and appreciated the immoral windfall). This convergence between Materialism and Fascism at the feeding trough of power is more than an historical coincidence highlighted in Expelled, it is a logical and sociological necessity, just as Hayek argues that socialism is the road to serfdom.  For the delicate balancing act between experiment and theory that defines science will rapidly decay into idolatry and alchemy without a unifying force of an external intelligence. Materialism's success is its greatest damnation.

Two centuries ago, the shoe was on the other foot, with Christianity defending the status quo, and Materialism undermining its factual foundations, but today it is Materialists with the status. So what Ben Stein was able to accomplish so brilliantly was the impersonation of a 19th century Materialist, focussing on the defense, the response of materialist scientists. Now mind you, had Stein applied the ICR approach, if he had marshalled his un-Darwinian facts and made anti-evolution counter-claims, he would have been toast, not least because the victor has rewritten the textbooks and the dictionaries, as well as made liberal use of those post-factual techniques. So Stein avoided direct confrontation, and merely showed them at their unflattering best, defending their theories with poor logic and high arrogance.

Of course they cried foul, since it was terribly post-modern of Stein to do this. But no one suggested revisiting those 19th century debates, when the clergy and bishops got the same treatment. For the sad fact remains that the 20th century was the pinnacle of Materialism, having seduced the West to abandon Christianity with glorious promises of wealth, happiness and leisure. And had even 10% of paradise arrived, they wouldn't need to have this debate with Stein in the first place.  Materialism has been its own worst enemy, making no allowances for good intentions, purer minds, or nobler lifestyles in its monomaniacal acquisition of material goods. So all Stein had to do was to ask the question (like the 19th century skeptics before him) "how do you defend your miserable failure to deliver the goods (since of course, there can't be anything else you could deliver)?"

The first and strongest human response is to attack the messenger, and Dawkins responds accordingly,

Not just incompetent at public relations, incompetent in his chosen profession of film-making, for the film itself, as I discovered when I saw it on Friday (and this genuinely surprised me) is dull, artless, amateurish, too long, poorly constructed and utterly devoid of any style, wit or subtlety. It bears all the hallmarks of a film-maker who knows nothing about the craft of making films. I'll come to that in a moment. But first, I should deal with some questions that have arisen over the Good Friday Massacre of Mark Mathis' reputation (some commentators are publicly wondering whether the film will ever be released, speculating that its financial backers will pull out for fear of being tarnished with some of the ridicule?)

Dawkins prediction was way off, the movie grossed at least $7.6M, which is 12th highest take out of an historical 547 documentaries, beating out #13 "Roger and Me", and #21 "Imagine: John Lennon". But then, Dawkins knew that, calling the audience "sycophantic" for enjoying the film. But more relevant is Dawkins argument that Stein's edited dialogue didn't do justice to their defense. Would more time help? Here's the unexpurgated Dawkins:

One example is the treatment of the philosopher Michael Ruse: a decent man, bluff, bearded, articulate, and with a genuine and sincere desire to explain difficult ideas clearly. Stein asked Ruse how life originated. Ruse's immediate impulse (as mine would have been) was to launch into an honest effort to explain a difficult scientific idea. He began by saying that he doesn't know how life originated, and nor does anybody else. At this point in his interview, Ruse probably had no notion that his interlocuter had a completely different agenda to promote, with no hint of sincerity to balance his own. Ruse patiently explained that the origin of life (nothing to do with the Darwinian theory itself but the necessary precursor of Darwinian evolution) is an interesting and unsolved mystery, one that scientists are actively working on. By way of example, Ruse could have chosen any of a number of current theories. He chose just one (it would have taken too long to explain them all) purely as an illustration of the kind of properties such a theory must have. He happened to choose the theory proposed by the Scottish chemist Graham Cairns-Smith, that organic life was preceded by a strange and intriguing world of replicating patterns on the surfaces of crystals in inorganic clays. At no time did Ruse say he believed the Cairns-Smith theory, only that it was the KIND of theory that scientists are actively examining, as a CANDIDATE for the origin of evolution. Stein just loved it. Mud! MUD! The sarcasm in his grating, nasal voice was palpable. Maybe this was when Ruse realised that he had been had. Certainly it was at this point that he started to show signs of exasperation, although he may still have thought that Stein was merely stupid, rather than pursuing a malevolent and clandestine agenda. Stein kept returning, throughout the film, to the phrase "on the backs of crystals", and the sycophantic audience in the Minneapolis cinema dutifully tittered every time.

Somehow, I remain unconvinced. One gets the feeling that no matter how much airtime or column inches Dawkins or Myers or Ruse is given, they won't be able to explain it any better. In fact, this is the whole reason they come across as arrogant, because in their hearts they believe that they can't explain it any better, so it is the audience's fault for being stupid.

If this be true, that Darwinism is just too complicated to be explained sufficiently even by experts (think Einstein's theory of Relativity), then our educational system has failed. No, not just in Kansas, but in every state, and for decades. Clearly then we need to look overseas, for someone who was properly educated, who can evaluate the argument for us laymen. Someone like John Derbyshire, the product of fine British public schools.

So what’s going on here with this stupid Expelled movie? No, I haven’t seen the dang thing. I’ve been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro (including the pieces by David Klinghoffer and Dave Berg on National Review Online) and con, and I can’t believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing. It’s pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance and obscurantism....I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old Biblical creationists were, in my opinion, wrong-headed, but they were mostly honest people. The “intelligent design” crowd lean more in the other direction. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles.

Well, Derb has a strong opinion independent of actually seeing it, despite having had a positive opinion of Stein beforehand. Notice also how he calls creationists honest peddlers of porn, which is a good indication of where his allegiances lie.  Evidently, based on the poor reviews from his otherwise political opponents, Derb has changed his mind about Stein completely. This was pointed out to him by various colleagues, to which Derb responded,

Some readers of today's column are upset / angry / scornful that I have presumed to pass comment on the Expelled movie without having seen it.  As Barack Obama might say: You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In any case, I am not reviewing the movie. What I am doing is, heaping well-justified abuse on the heads of people who, for "sentimental qualms" and from a position of ignorance, trash scientific method, the greatest achievement of our civilization.  And uniquely of our civilization. A mature scientific theory is as much a glory of our civilization as is a cathedral or a university; and it is uniquely of ours. Other civilizations had temples, universities, systems of government, literature, philosophy; but only we of the West came up with scientific method, and the whole world owes the innumerable fruits of that method to us.  I am a huge fan of Western civilization. Thus, when people — well-educated people, who ought to set an example for the general — sneer at and spit on these majestic creations of the human intellect, I get mad. They are taking sides with barbarism. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Ben Stein ought to be ashamed of himself. And no, I won't sit through his wretched movie.

So evidently Derb believes that Materialism / Darwinism is the greatest accomplishment of Western Civilization, which demands respect irregardless of how one feels about it. (Strikingly parallel to the 19th century defense of Christianity!) Now if this argument were valid, that one can praise the scientific method without making any reference to the people who practice it, then the Nazis should remain respectable scientists. And of course, that is the whole point of Stein's comparison: either Materialism doesn't deserve our respect, or the Nazis don't deserve our disrespect; either Materialism cannot demand our religious worship, or morality has something to do with scientific theories. Derb still doesn't get it.

Well, I shall always strive to engage all reasonable points of view civilly, but everyone has his limits. "Darwin inspired the Holocaust" is a tad the other side of my limits.If that is the point that the creationists' mad lucubrations have driven them to, then yes, I think we're out of the civil-discourse zone. It's a matter of values.

Derb keeps insisting that it is a moral issue he is debating, and that creationists are immoral. Now you begin to see Stein's genius, keeping his opponents completely off balance by forcing them to argue the religious foundations of an atheist theory. The debate ratchets up a notch when Stein gives an interview in which he says

…Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Derb is so upset, he resorts to drink. A blogstorm erupts, with the two sides using different assumptions. Materialists by-and-large view science and religion as occupying two separate worlds, making the Nazis into evil people who add to their sins by distorting value-neutral science. Pre-modernists, on the other hand, view materialism as a religion, otherwise known as atheism, making the Nazis a direct consequence of atheistic religions that elevate science.

Now as readers of my blog will know I am in the second camp, but perhaps less well-known is that the first camp is a crock. Just as Derb said in his first blog that he has the highest respect for creationists...right after calling them purveyors of porn, so also defenders of the Kantian "wall" or Gould's "magisteria" that separates religion from science, then turn around and demolish the wall at the first opportunity. Here is Derb suggesting that science is something different from religion, yet "heretical" to it. In other words, the wall only keeps religion in, it doesn't keep atheism out. Now you understand why Stein begins his documentary with the building of the Berlin Wall.

Derb still sees the depradations of Post-Modernism, the devastation of German civilization, and yet attributes it to the abandonment of Modernism. He refuses to entertain the thought that Modernism has any weaknesses, that Modernism isn't solely responsible for the Enlightenment, that Modernism isn't the acme of history. Thus when historians remind Derb how Modernism betrayed the Jews of the Holocaust, Derb objects with a breathtaking denial of history,

No, David. "The world is truly revealed as upside-down and backward" when intelligent young Jews sign up to the anti-science crusade.
One of the best reasons to be a philosemite in our time is sheer gratitude at the disproportionate contribution Jews have made to the advance of Western civilization, and to our understanding of the world, this past two hundred years. The U.S.A. dominated the 20th century in culture and technology, to the great benefit of all mankind, in part because of the work done in math and science by the great tranche of pre-WW2 immigrant Jews from Europe.
Now you have joined up with people who want to trash the scientific enterprise and heap insults on one of the greatest names in intellectual history. For reasons unfathomable to me, you and Ben Stein want to sneer and scoff at our understandings, hard-won over centuries of arduous intellectual effort. Don't the two of you know, don't Jews of all people know, where this anti-intellectual agitation, this pandering to a superstitious mob, will lead at last? If you truly don't, I refer you to the fate of Hypatia, which you can read about in my last book (Chapter 3), or in Gibbon (Chapter XLVII). You new pals at the Discovery Institute no doubt think Hypatia got what she deserved.
Civilization is a thin veneer, David. Reason and science are bulwarks against the dark...
You and Stein are playing a dangerous game, a game that Jews should be the very last to play. The ADL, for all its faults, at least understands that.
I really, seriously wonder how much of a future the U.S.A. has. We are sinking into a bog of mediocrity, frivolity, superstition, and ignorance. When even Jews join the parade of folly, it's hard to keep hoping...
Our civilization is on the way out. I hope it at least outlives me, but I am less and less sure it will. I'll be damned if I won't go down fighting, though.

Derb is particularly thin-skinned about Darwinian criticism, considering what Stein could have said. For Derb is defending Modernism with the same fire that Chesterton defended Christianity, only Chesterton rationally defended a religion, whereas Derb irrationally defends an irreligion.

And that, of course, was the whole point of Stein's documentary: to show the religious bases of atheistic, Darwinian materialism. A task he admirably achieves.