Day 57: Expelled

Today, I decided to watch Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled," which explores the debate of whether or not intelligent design and evolution are compatible.  Being an atheist, I heard of this documentary several times.  I thought surely the documentary can't be THAT bad.

Result:  I couldn't even watch the whole thing at once.  I'm currently watching the last 15 minutes while catching up on stuff on the internet.  I can't pay attention to both, but distraction is the only way that I can get through the rest of this documentary.

This documentary is full of propoganda, inserting all kinds of clips and videos that have nothing to do with what he is trying to say.  If he just removed all of the black and white clips that he inserted, the video would be much smaller.  What does the Berlin Wall have to do with intelligent design?  Nothing!  He's just trying to say that scientists are waging a war against intelligent design; they say that the two don't go together.  I completely agree with them, but I was open to watching the documentary to see what he and other people had to say.  I can't say that I learned anything insightful from this documentary, other than the fact that it pissed me off. 

The ultimate moment for me of this documentary was when he said that Planned Parenthood's mission was a form of social Darwinism; they sought to disallow people in the lower economic status from having babies.  That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.  So I guess that means that there shouldn't be clinics in developing or third world countries where they can get free contraceptives.  Because of course, if the man wants to have a baby, then the woman has no say in the matter.  I could go on and on about this, since I just learned about all of the subject of birth rates and such this semester in my environmental science class.

Anyways, I liked this documentary in the sense that it got me really fired up, and it was interesting for me to see how I reacted while watching it.  Ugh.