...please reconsider, because it is an absolute waste of your time. Spend the time watching Nova's Judgment Day" documentary instead, which actually conveys both evolution and Intelligent Design creationism in a more intelligible way.
But if you absolutely, absolutely cannot ignore it -- for example, because you have students asking you what you think about it -- then you could do worse than Arthur Caplan's review of the movie. Caplan takes the focus off the distraction of the movie's premise, and back on to the movie's shortfalls in accurately describing Intelligent Design creationism, the historical context of the Holocaust, and the role of evolutionary theory in explaining life's diversification as opposed to its origin:
What is it that devotees of intelligent design believe that gets their colleagues in such a rage? Do they just want to invoke god as the starting point of the universe? Do they see god's hand in the design of every creature? Are they asking us to see the gods of every faith and tradition -- those posited in Catholicism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, etc. -- in our DNA? Do they believe that competitive accounts of creation based on the Bible need to be in every American classroom? Do they see empirical proof of god in every molecule, plant, animal, rock, vegetable and fungus? "Expelled" never really tells us.
One suspects that sympathy for those portrayed in the movie as hapless pariahs might be reduced if the movie spent more time describing what it is this tiny handful of Ben Stein-proclaimed martyrs actually believe.
This paragraph seems to have the filmmaking style down to a T:
The movie's faux tale of an evolutionist led Inquisition is followed by Stein interviewing a short parade of self-avowed atheists who also are fervent Darwinians as they mock intelligent design in particular and religion in general. They also look frumpy. As an antidote we get deep, sincere ruminations mainly from some monumentally pompous thinker no one has ever heard of who is nevertheless stylishly attired and living in a gorgeous apartment in Paris. He assures what is hopefully an increasingly irritated audience that god and science can live together in peace. They can but for no reasons ever articulated by this fellow or in this film.
Maybe they're just saving the real explanations for "Expelled 2! The Wrath of Dawkins" or something?
