For a filmmaker one of the most satisfying benefits in producing a film is receiving audience feedback. One of our primary goals was to make a film that would raise the level of dialogue and discussion around this topic.  And hearing your stories of the difference Expelled is making in your lives and the discussion it is encouraging nationwide it is a tremendous honor to have made this film.

A question we consistently receive after audiences have watched the film is, “what can I do?”  A significant contribution you can make is to make your voice heard and one way you can do that is sign the Academic Freedom Petition www.academicfreedompetition.com In June, the state of Louisiana passed legislation protecting the free speech rights of teachers and students in the science classroom.  This is hopefully one small step in many which will happen across the country in securing the necessary free speech for generations to come.

At the core of Expelled is the message of freedom, particularly the freedom of speech.  Just following the opening of the film, it was hit with two lawsuits over the use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine”.  We included ten words from the song, “nothing to kill or die for and no religion too” which we felt demonstrated how the views from the ivory towers connected to pop culture and were nothing new.  We feel the criticism and use of the song are warranted and protected free speech under the fair use doctrine. Recently these suits brought by Yoko Ono and EMI/Capitol Records were dismissed which we see as a positive step not only for Expelled but all Americans free speech.   Going through these legal issues have been difficult but we deeply appreciate all the encouragement we received from you.

If you have visited the site before you will notice it has been updated quite a bit.  We encourage you to look around and discover some of the new elements including memorable clips from the film and new trailers.

Thank you again for all the continuing support you have given Expelled and keep the conversation going.

The Producers

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The legal dispute arose over a short animated video clip that Premise

Media commissioned demonstrating the inner workings of a cell. In
response to threats made by XVIVO that Premise had violated their
copyright, Premise sued XVIVO in Federal Court asking it to rule that
there was no infringement and that the animated clip was an original
work of authorship.

XVIVO did not defend the lawsuit, but instead agreed that Premise
Media had not infringed any of its intellectual property rights. XVIVO
also agreed to withdraw its threats. In exchange, Premise Media
agreed only to dismiss the lawsuit with each party paying its own
costs and attorneys fees. The parties reduced this agreement to
writing, and it was filed in Federal Court this week with the
dismissal motion.

John Sullivan, Executive Producer of EXPELLED, said, “EXPELLED is an
important movie with an important message. Even before the movie was
released, various parties were trying to silence us. They will
continue to be unsuccessful. This walk away agreement is another
indication that we have done nothing wrong. Our message will carry on
both in theaters throughout the summer and with our DVD roll out this
October.”

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The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the Imagine clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry. Unbiased viewers of the film will also understand that the Imagine clip was used to contrast the messages in the Documentary and that the clip was not used as an endorsement within Expelled.

Contact: Megan Erhardt (ext.136 ) or Mary Beth Hutchins (ext.105 ) at 703.683.5004

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From the WorldNetDaily By Jill Stanek On April 18,

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” will boast the largest U.S. opening of any documentary film ever.Scheduled for release in 1,000 theatres, “Expelled” will be hotter than “Farenheit 9/11,” which debuted on 868 screens, and much more convenient to see than “An Inconvenient Truth,” which I was surprised to find opened on only four screens nationwide despite all the hype, peaking at 587 before its appeal melted.What’s “Expelled” about? Synopsizes CNS News:

“Expelled” calls attention to the plight of highly credentialed scholars who have been forced out of prestigious academic positions because they proposed Intelligent Design as a possible alternative to Charles Darwin’s 150-year-old theories about the origins of life. Instead of entertaining a debate on the merits of competing theories, the scientific establishment has moved to suppress the ID movement in a “systematic and ruthless” way at odds with America’s founding principles, the film asserts.

Liberals have been going ape about “Expelled” for months as it has been screened around the country.(Column continues here)

Editor’s Note: Questions have been raised about the origination of some of the animation used in our movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Claims that we have used any animation in an unauthorized manner are simply false. Premise Media created the animation that illustrates cellular activity used in our film.- The Producers of “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed”

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The globe’s leading Big Science atheist is ‘shocked! Shocked!’

 Anyone reading this blog who isn’t aware of the dustup that occurred at the Mall of America somewhere in Minnesota this past Friday must not be a reader of the New York Times (or any of the teeming millions of ‘mom and pop’ atheist/Darwinist / boffin blogs that are all atwitter about it and still writing well into the night.) The controversy around Premise Media’s upcoming movie Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday, March 24th

Suffice it to say that getting caught sneaking into a movie is apparently a much, much bigger deal in Minnesota than it is in the rest of the country.

But we understand. What could possibly be more depressing than finding yourself with nothing to do, in town for an atheist’s convention, …in Minnesota of all places? Imagine traveling all the way from England to pal around with an assistant biology professor – and then finding out that your host is a would-be gangsta of sorts? Desperate times call for desperate measures.

If you want to read a highly entertaining, frothy and fairly apoplectic 3,500 word rant (Lying For Jesus?) about what supposedly happened, written by the more famous of the two ‘perps’ – the one whose claim-to-fame is that he successfully ‘snuck in’ to the invitation-only screening of the soon to be released movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed – you can read the unapologetic (if decidedly rabid) version written by that famous Oxford professor and “God Delusion’ author Richard “Clinton” Dawkins himself. (Warning – some language may not be suitable for children.) Keep in mind that he got caught red-handed and was then seriously upbraided in the Q&A follow-up by the film’s talented Assistant Producer Mark Mathis - and so ‘Clint’s’ account must necessarily be taken with a grain of salt.

Or if you want to read a more level-headed (if still not quite ‘fair and balanced’) account, you can click here for The New York Times version (No admission for biologist) of what some are now calling the Great Northfield Minnesota Raid. The once fabled Grey Lady of journalism is not what she used to be, but then again – former President Nixon’s ‘Watergate’ started with a simple report of an attempted ‘break-in, too. So you never know. You just never know.

If on the other hand you prefer the account written by the ‘perp’ who got away – the alleged ‘mastermind’ of the caper and the one who actually claims to feel ‘mighty’ about it (his attempted gate-crashing) but who was unceremoniously frog-marched out of the mall by a local rent-a-cop before he could perpetrate…then the assistant professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris’s bi-polar tale of ennui and ecstasy is the one for you .

Now – by all accounts – what most would consider a business-as-usual kerfuffle is in fact turning out to be a bona fide ‘international incident’ of great and momentous import. One fellow has even taken it upon himself to painstakingly compile a growing list of over forty (count ‘em!) individual URL’s of blogsters who have weighed in.Songs are being written. Screenplays are in the works. The mind boggles.

Most of us, however, haven’t yet finished reading even a tenth of Professor Dawkins’ screed alone, and so – since we weren’t there – we are not about to try and recap, regurgitate or rebut any of the no-doubt well intentioned but dauntingly disparate accounts from the dizzying array of eyewitnesses, passersby, spectators, pundits or perpetrators.

We wouldn’t know where to begin. Seriously. But we are concerned about Professor Dawkins and Mini Me…they seem to be awfully agitated, and we think that we know why. Remember, fellahs: it’s a free country.

– Deacon Blue

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A rousing SRO preview on Tuesday of the new Ben Stein documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, brought a Kansas City audience to its feet.

And with good cause. Stein’s often funny, always engaging frontal assault on the oppressive neo-Darwinist establishment is arguably the smartest and most sophisticated documentary ever produced on the right side of the cultural divide, on any subject, ever.

As such, Expelled represents still another blow to the progressive orthodoxy of government-issued science in its winter of discontent.

The winter started early when in November two separate labs, one in Wisconsin, one in Japan, announced the breakthrough discovery that adult skin cells can be reprogrammed to mimic embryonic stem cells.

Just two years earlier, the elfin journalist Chris Mooney had likened adult stem cell research to creationism and assured the readers of his best seller, The Republican War on Science, that this “dogma” had been “resoundingly rejected by researchers actually working in the field.”

As the winter rolled on, and as all four major global temperature tracking outlets showed a precipitous drop in annual global temperature, and as snow fell in Baghdad for the first time in recorded history, only Al Gore remained in meltdown.

Meanwhile, on a seemingly daily basis, the neo-Luddites from the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front have been putting a distinctly left wing face on the “war on science,” in this case a real war on real scientists.

And into this breach, armed with his trademark tennies and bemused grin, marches Ben Stein, America’s only economist/ presidential speechwriter turned comic actor. The producers at Premise Media could not have recruited a better on-screen presence.

Although the role Stein plays has been compared to the one Michael Moore plays in his film, the Stein persona is conspicuously brighter and more benign.

Nor do Stein and his producers resort to the kind of editing that make Moore movies something other than documentaries.

In Bowling For Columbine , for instance, Moore cobbles together five different parts of NRA honcho Charlton Heston’s Denver speech a week after Columbine.

Moore then inserts into the mix a “cold, dead hands” remark from a speech Heston gave a year later. In the process Moore turn Heston’s conciliatory Denver address into a provocative call to arms.

This isn’t film making. This is fraud.

Stein resorts to no such tricks. He gives certain interview subjects all the time and all the rope they need to hang themselves, unedited.

One highlight among many is Stein’s one-on-one interview with Richard Dawkins, the dashing Brit who has made a small fortune as the world’s most visible neo-Darwinist.

To his credit, and to the utter discomfort of the public education establishment, Dawkins does not shy from discussing the atheistic implications of Darwinism.

Indeed, Dawkin’s anti-deity call to arms, The God Delusion, has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Where Dawkins wanders into a black hole of his own making is in his discussion of the origins of life on earth.

To Stein’s astonishment, Dawkins concedes that life might indeed have a designer but that designer almost assuredly was a more highly evolved being from another planet, not “God.”

Stein does not respond. He does not need to. For the past hour of the film, the audience has met one scientist after another whose academic careers have been derailed for daring to suggest the possibility of intelligent design.

If only they had thought to put the designer on another planet!

The choice of Stein as narrator is inspired for another reason. That reason becomes most apparent when he and two “creationist” allies, mathematician David Berlinski and nuclear physicist Gerald Schroeder, visit a remnant of the Berlin Wall, the central metaphor of the film.

At the wall, the three discuss the value of freedom, the central idea of the film, and the need for the same in science. The audience has already met Berlinski, an amusingly sophisticated American living in Paris.

The audience has seen less of Schroeder, but he is wearing a yarmulke. All three are Jewish.

Indeed, it would be hard to imagine any three individuals on the planet who less resemble the Inherit the Wind stereotype that Darwinists have been scaring soccer moms with for the last half century.

Expelled opens nationwide on April 18 th. The neo-Darwinists and their allies in the major media will do their best to kill it.

Co-producer Mark Mathis tells me that two network news producers have already chosen not to cover the film because it was “biased,” unlike, say, the much-covered Fahrenheit 911.

The producers have contracted with the same firm that marketed Mel Gibson’s The Passion to get the word out. They will use much the same strategy.

Central to this strategy is the creation of a powerful buzz and a strong enough opening weekend to catch Hollywood’s attention and hold it.

Put April 18 on your calendars. Bring the kids. You won’t be disappointed.

Who is Jack Cashill?

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Poor PZ…associate professor Paul Zachary Myers over at the University of Minnesota has his knickers in a twist over the film EXPELLED, again. He hasn’t seen it, (it isn’t out yet) he clearly doesn’t understand the film’s premise – but he sure seems hell-bent on making sure that his readers don’t go to see it with an open mind!

And we think that we know why.

Paul is one of the stars in the film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. He’s probably remembering all of the things that he said on camera, when we interviewed him and faithfully recorded it all. That couldn’t be making him feel very good.

When the film comes out in April – we think that he’s going to have some explaining to do – and his handlers at Big Science aren’t going to be very happy with what they see and hear him say. The same goes for fellow-traveler professor Richard Dawkins, the atheist author of “The God Delusion.” He’s definitely going to be in trouble with Big Science too, once the film comes out. The truth sometimes hurts.

Big Science doesn’t like it when they can’t control the message: it’s why we made EXPELLED.

Now it appears that the associate professor Myers is regretful, and lashing out against the film again in his modest science-blog, “Pharyngula,” attempting to mitigate the inevitable criticism of his performance, in advance. His latest is a vein-popping, eyes – bulging, 3,000 word, eleven-screen diatribe posted on his website, a “critique” of a simple eight-hundred word editorial that the producers of EXPELLED wrote on Darwin Day.

From his lengthy, over-the-top screed, we can’t really sort out what it is that upset him so, but one thing is painfully obvious: he is literally sweating over the upcoming release of our film.

As well he should be.

But a three thousand –-word “analysis” of a simple eight hundred word movie-blog editorial seems like a strange way for a university-employee to be spending his time, to us. It may be he just doesn’t have enough to do… we can’t be sure. But one gets the feeling that associate professor Myers isn’t used to the idea of having to listen to folks who disagree with his gloomy, state-sponsored neo-Darwinian version of materialistic science.

Which is of course the precise point we make in “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.” It’s called freedom of speech.

Can anyone even imagine a tenured professor at a reputable university spending so much time obsessing over a film that he hasn’t even seen? That won’t even be released until April!

You would think that a supporter of academic freedom would welcome a well publicized point-of-view that challenged the reigning orthodoxy in his area of supposed expertise. And one would hope that a fair-minded associate professor would at least pay his readers and students the intellectual courtesy of seeing the film, before coming unglued over it in public. Apparently not. This is maybe the fifth time that the idle professor has written negatively about EXPELLED on his blogsite.

We wonder – why are the disciples of Big Science so unnerved by the mere prospect of a simple documentary film? What have they got to hide?

Support Academic Freedom

We, the undersigned American citizens, urge the adoption of policies by our nation’s academic institutions to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution. Teachers should be protected from being fired, harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for objectively presenting the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory. Students should be protected from being harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against for expressing their views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory in an appropriate manner.” Sign up here.�

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As a result, “Darwin Day” has now supplanted Lincoln’s Birthday in the popular imagination; both men were born on February 12, 1809.

We think that that is a shame.

The title of Charles Darwin’s book is not “The Origin of The Species.” The full title seems shocking: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” That last half of the title, often overlooked, sounds like it could come straight out of a Ku Klux Klan manual - which is precisely why Big Science rarely quotes the full title (even though Darwin was not referring specifically to “man” in his use of the words “favoured races.”). Big Science is uncomfortable with even the suggestion that evolutionary theory might favor politically incorrect thinking.

Darwinian evolution theory is a viable scientific theory. Author of The God Delusion Richard Dawkins has stated that Darwin’s evolution theory has provided atheists with “intellectual fulfillment.” If you grant that, then you must also grant that it has given a great many racists “intellectual fulfillment,” too.

Here is how Darwin himself translated his own gloomy scientific theory into an even more disturbing worldview (from the Descent of Man)

‘At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropological apes… will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state…even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla’.

(more…)

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No less a genius than the evil Karl Marx noted that even after capitalism succumbed to Communism, society would still be imbued with the class artifacts and cultural values of the system that preceded it. Much smarter analysts than I have noted that the whole system of Marxism, especially its sharp attacks on capitalists as a class, was motivated by Karl Marx’s envy of the much wealthier industrialist/capitalist members of the Marx family.

In other words, major theories do not arise out of thin air. They come from the era in which they arose and are influenced greatly by the personality and background of the writer. (In law, this theory is known as “legal realism”. Judges make up their minds on the basis of their prejudices and then rationalize their decisions by pretending to be bound by prior case law. One might call what happens with ideologies “political realism.” Persons make up their ideologies based on their times and their life situations.)

Darwinism, the notion that the history of organisms was the story of the survival of the fittest and most hardy, and that organisms evolve because they are stronger and more dominant than others, is a perfect example of the age from which it came: the age of Imperialism. When Darwin wrote, it was received wisdom that the white, northern European man was destined to rule the world. This could have been rationalized as greed–i.e., Europeans simply taking the resources of nations and tribes less well organized than they were. It could have been worked out as a form of amusement of the upper classes and a place for them to realize their martial fantasies. (Was it Shaw who called Imperialism “…outdoor relief for the upper classes?”)

But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was “owned” (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism. By explaining that Imperialism worked from the level of the most modest organic life up to man, and that in every organic situation, the strong dominated the weak and eventually wiped them out,

Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism. It was neither good nor bad, neither Liberal nor Conservative, but simply a fact of nature. In dominating Africa and Asia, Britain was simply acting in accordance with the dictates of life itself. He was the ultimate pitchman for Imperialism.

Now, we know that Imperialism had a short life span. Imperialism was a system that took no account of the realities of the human condition. Human beings do not like to have their countries owned by people far away in ermine robes. They like to be in charge of themselves.

Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder.

But its day is done.

Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media. Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life, a striking lacuna in a theory supposedly explaining life.

Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process.

Now, a few scientists are questioning Darwinism on many fronts. I wonder how long Darwinism’s life span will be. Marxism, another theory which, in true Victorian style, sought to explain everything, is dead everywhere but on university campuses and in the minds of psychotic dictators. Maybe Darwinism will be different. Maybe it will last. But it’s difficult to believe it will. Theories that presume to explain everything without much evidence rarely do. Theories that outlive their era of conception and cannot be verified rarely last unless they are faith based. And Darwinism has been such a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies, maybe we would be better off without it as a dominant force.

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

By Ben Stein

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This is real life in America, the land of the free…and the home of the brave. It isn’t about “religious nuts,” it isn’t about politics… and it certainly isn’t only about science.

It is about America, and the unseen silent hand of repression that is taking hold of science, in our public universities and government laboratories.

That said…we are overwhelmed with gratitude…and hope…to see the outpouring of free, no-holds barred debate that has been generated. It has energized us.

With but one look at the over two thousand or so posts to date – you can see that our film’s central theme has been validated: such controversy as you see displayed here isn’t really only about science, is it? ☺

The scientists and educators in this film who are being kicked around and whose lives and are being destroyed by a cadre of elite “antitheist” scientists aren’t Hollywood actors – they are real people, who have dedicated years of their life the pursuit of knowledge, and the pursuit of scientific evidence, no matter where it leads.

These are not folks who have devoted their lives to chasing the almighty dollar, or to pursuing fame and celebrity. They are better people than that. They receive relatively very little for their dedication and demanding, hard work.

For them…the “silent hand” of academic suppression is all too real.

(more…)

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