Tag: Richard Dawkins

Every once in awhile, I like to watch a documentary that has something to do with religion. Not frequently at all, just 1 out of 10 maybe. They usually bug me, they can come off as self righteous (heh?)

Even if those documentaries are ones I might agree with, I still glare at them and tend to find myself way more critical. But I picked The Unbelievers for no good reason. Probably because of the awkward title.

The Unbelievers is about two men who you may have heard of, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss.

Krauss is a theoretical physicist and works at Arizona State University and Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist from Oxford. They are maybe even more famous for being atheists, writing books about it and going around talking about it on talking tours!

Oh hey, that is what this documentary is about. These two, being in debates, talking to groups, and hanging out with each other as they talk about ways to bring down Jesus.

But at least they do it openly and not in shady dark business rooms.

To be fair, this is more of a movie about them talking about why science and reason need to be used more often in debates. To ignore stuff like cultural backgrounds or religious reasons to make political policy, but instead use logic and their brains.

A fair reason I guess.

But also it seems like the last 25% of it was to support the Reason Rally, a fest in DC about atheism and reason. Alright, another okay fest. I guess.

At this point you might be able to read complete apathetic-ness towards the topic of the film. I was definitely interested in the documentary when I sat down to watch it. But then it felt like nothing happened throughout it. Why should anyone care about random celebrities and their opinions on these two men? We don’t.

Do random cherry picked snippets really help drive points home? No. If they wanted it to be actually intellectually challenging in any way, they show us larger unedited segments of some of these debates they took part in. Makes it seem like they are hiding the other side. If they want to show they are in the right, they should be able to show why in response to what the other side says.

It just seems extremely forced, not fair, and on top of it, boring because of it. If this thing was two hours long, showed a complete debate and maybe an intro and after math, it would do far better for their cause than what we are given. Instead, this documentary just feels like a waste of time.

Whew.

Just whew.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was a documentary that raised up quite a stir when it was released. Like. A lot of stirs, a lot of negative feedback, and a lot of controversy. I think I vowed never to watch it back in the day, didn’t want to accidentally give it any money. So yeah, watching it was totally biased, and I probably made up my mind ahead of time. Deal with it. Reviews (and life) are sometimes not fair.

Hey, stop looking at that Darwin statue. Stop it right now.

The “documentary” was split into four basic parts. First, Intelligence Design as an alternative to Evolution, and the scientists who have tried to do research in it who have been “expelled”. Then eventually, that Nazis are a result of Darwansim/Evolution being taught. Whoa whoa whoa.

That seems like quite a jump, but yes. Ben Stein went full on Godwin’s Law. Made in 1990, he stated that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

I used to love Ben Stein. Not for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off either. I hate his scene, and I hate everyone who quotes it when there is any silence. That isn’t original or funny. People should stop that. I liked him for Win Ben Stein’s Money. A great and funny game show, and well, it proved Ben Stein was kind of smart.

But a movie entirely about Intelligent Design? That isn’t even the big issue. The biggest issue is the amount of deception that went into this propaganda, to show only his (/their?) side of the coin. I realize that most documentaries are biased, which is why I rarely review them. But at least they try to hide the biases a little bit.

How could you Ben?? I trusted you!

So here is why it is bad. First off, in between the clips of interviews and scenic shots, there are clips from old shows and movies thrown in, to make light of certain arguments and mock them. Serious documentaries don’t do that, but comedic ones might. This one was not going for comedy.

Secondly, the amount of distortion done to the interviews, and facts not shown just to show one side and lie about it, is astronomical. That is a big science unit. In fact, there is a really long wikipedia article on the movie, that not only explains complaints by many of the interviewers, but also why their examples are wrong based on the facts they showed in the documentary. Literally, almost everything is wrong in this documentary, making it deceitful as fuck.

Even better, two professors at Iowa State University were mentioned in this, and at the time of writing, I am a graduate student there. Heck, I have talked to both of these professors, including Dr. Hector Avalos, a religious studies professor here, and he confirmed the same things. They were told they were getting interviewed for a different movie. The questions they were asked were misleading, their responses cut up to different questions to make a point that wasn’t made, and other shady tactics.

The scientist in me is literally exploding with rage over the attack on science in this movie, using underhanded tactics. The good person in me is similarly exploding, at the deception and lies thrown about. This is why I have a rating system that goes from 0 to 4, not 1 to 5.