Ben Stein, that prototypical “scholarly” individual, forever doomed to playing the role of the “smart guy” in the media, has finally managed to break free of this rigid mold. Yes, the learned professor from Ferris Beuler’s Day Off, the academic judge on America’s Most Smartest Model, and the polymath from Win Ben Stein’s Money will finally get to display his great versatility as an actor. You see, in his next film, he will not play a scholar or an intellectual; he’ll play an idiot.

The film, called Expelled, has the perfect tagline: No Intelligence Allowed. But they needn’t worry, as no intelligent person would ever deign to gain admittance to a movie promoting Intelligent Design, that retooled creationism in science’s clothing that continually burrows itself into our media in an attempt to criticize the theory of evolution with ham-headed arguments fueled by willful ignorance.

I can already tell you the basic premise of the movie without having seen it. First, Ben and his cronies will try to establish that Intelligent Design is a legitimate scientific explanation. No doubt they will do so with mindless appeals to mousetraps and Mount Rushmore. Seriously. The extent of their “science” is pointing to Mount Rushmore, exclaiming “This is obviously designed because it is so complex!” and then misapplying this analogy to biology.

And they get half of the argument correct, surprisingly. When a scientist looks at Mount Rushmore, he does indeed know that it is designed. The problem is that the creationist doesn’t understand a scientist’s reasoning process allowing him to reach this conclusion. A scientist does not simply notice that the sculpted cliffs are complex and then infer that they must be designed. Instead, he will use his previous knowledge to propose models to explain the appearance of these faces on the cliffs. He can suppose, for instance, that they were likely carved with tools, that they were intended to resemble past American Presidents, and so on. Using this model, he can test it by searching for evidence of carving, explaining how such carving could be accomplished, and even finding documents and other sources of evidence detailing that sculptors were contracted to create images of past Presidents. Notice, then, that it isn’t a simple case of inferring design from complexity. If science were that easy, then we’d probably understand everything in the universe by now. Unfortunately, science is not easy, much to the chagrin of creationists and Ben Stein, who would surely lose his money in a game show involving biology.

So what’s the difference between Mount Rushmore, say, and a cell? Well, for one, models of natural processes like erosion and weathering do not account for Mount Rushmore, nor does there seem to be any sort of selection pressure to produce the seeming order we observe. But observable models involving construction of sculptures and various other feats are known and adequately account for the sculpted visages. In short, we can explain, using many lines of evidence, how the sculpted faces appeared, how they were made, when they were made, why they were created, and so on. Now, let’s consider a cell. When someone supposes it was “Intelligently Designed” can they propose any specific mechanism? Can they, for instance, tell us what tools the designer used? Who the designer is? In what way the basic material was manipulated to produce the cell? Unfortunately, they cannot. And that is why their speculation is not scientific. It explains nothing. It is a cheap, empty answer devoid of solutions, providing no further research avenues or other routes of intellectual stimulation on the matter. It’s a dead end.

What’s worse is that the model of evolution clearly and unequivocably accounts for the complexity we observe in biology. When the evidence is taken as a whole, it is almost impossible to doubt the truth of evolution. Based upon observations of fossils, we know the timeline of life progresses from simple organisms to complex life, something we’d expect if evolution were true. Within this timeline, we find that creatures share many similarities called homologies (which betray evolutionary ancestry), and furthermore that these similarities fall into JUST the right place on this timeline. (If, for instance, mammals and reptiles shared similarities, but reptiles arose in the precambrian and mammals just a few million years ago, this similarity would not be indicative of evolution as the time gap is too far apart to claim descent. The fact that these similarities MATCH the order of appearance of organisms is quite a stunning confirmation of evolution.) We can also consider vestigial parts, biological structures that indicate a past evolutionary function that has long since passed. Certainly we’d expect evolved creatures to retain some features from their evolutionary past that are not exactly perfect for their current ecological niche, and we find this throughout biology. (Combine this with all the other evidence to see its collective force–the vestigial parts betray an evolutionary past that fits the timeline implied through homology as well as the order of each organism’s appearance int he fossil record. We don’t find, for instance, whales with huge similarities to, say, fish, but vestigial structures showing a past land-bound lifestyle. Instead, we find that whales have huge similarities to LAND MAMMALS and have vestigial structures pointing to a past life ON LAND. This would have to be an amazing coincidence if evolution were wrong!)

The evidence goes on like that–on and on–and it is useless to try to detail it all right here. But needless to say, evolution more than adequately accounts for the complexity of life, and Intelligent Design cannot even begin to account for the vast array of facts that evolution has already explained, even with Ben Stein’s winning endorsement.

Anyway, the movie will no doubt move on to more political territory after first flailing about, unconvincingly trying to convince viewers that ID is a science. The bulk of the movie will then appeal to “fairness” and the democratic ideal of “teaching both sides,” which are reduced to nothing more than empty buzz words in this context. In the realm of biology, ID is not even a “side.” It has no point of view and nothing at all to offer to the science classroom, or any classroom at all for that matter. What exactly is there to teach? Are teachers supposed to talk about poor analogies like Mount Rushmore and mousetraps? In the end, none of these “objections” to evolution amount to anything remotely scientific. They are worthless thought experiments that appeal to flawed intuitions that have nothing to do with scientific reasoning involving constructing empirical models and testing them against reality and evidence. To ask educators to “teach” ID is like asking them to “teach” that though the science claims the world is spherical, the world is actually “flat,” because otherwise the water would fall off the other side and the ground wouldn’t look so flat! Again, criticizing legitimate science with faulty appeals to intuition is NOT a legitimate use of our science classrooms.

As others have quipped about this movie (I believe it may have been PZ Myers, that bastion of good sense), Intelligent Design hasn’t been expelled–it flunked out! Regardless, I plan on seeing this movie, if only to visciously critique it, but I will see to it that these frauds do not receive any money. I will simply purchase a ticket to another movie showing at the same time and instead go into the dreaded ID movie. I’ll feel better if Harry Potter part seventeen gets my money rather than Expelled.