Win Ben Stein’s Intelligent Design

From the guy who wrote some of Richard Nixon’s best speeches, spoke the monotonous and droning “Bueller,” and was arguably Comedy Central’s smartest game-show host comes a polarizing documentary about intelligent design. Ben Stein, teaming with novice director Nathan Frankowski, tackles issues of evolution vs. creationism, and freedoms of speech, thought and academic pursuit.

Starting with Stein’s opening speech at a university, it is obvious that the filmmakers have an objective. In a sense their aim is the inverse of “Inherit the Wind” (1960), the pseudo-factual film where a schoolteacher accused of teaching of evolution is put on trial. Although the evolution movement revolutionized scientific research as we know it, Stein argues that science has since become rigid and unreceptive to any knowledge religion might have to offer. But can science and religion coexist?

The most shocking parts of the film feature Stein interviewing academics who have been fired and sometimes blacklisted for even mentioning the term “intelligent design” in their research. Obviously something is wrong when scholarship is censored, but beyond this consequential point, the arguments in support of academic freedom stray the path. It becomes progressively unclear whether the film’s message is to push for uncensored scholarship or just to promote intelligent design in the classroom.

There is a lot of discussion about the relationship between Darwinism and Nazism, with the blame for Nazi genocide placed solely on evolutionary theory. With no one to rebut the claim, this would be the equivalent of saying that the signing of the U.S. Constitution led to the Sept. 11 attacks. Furthermore, the film often cuts nonsensically to historical war footage and clips of Nazi Germany during otherwise candid interviews to emphasize certain points. Throughout the film, Stein offers almost no evidence in support of intelligent design yet verbally berates and obnoxiously questions his Darwinist subjects with whom he disagrees.

There are important messages in this film, specifically the questionable right to free speech and academic pursuit. With a controversial issue like the question of existence, Stein argues that both evolution and intelligent design need to have a voice. In the film, however, his seems to be the only voice.