Anachroeden Reviews

An American Carol (2008)

Aren't comedies supposed to be, you know, funny?

[1/10 · 11 October 2008]

Some slapstick, mostly the kind of stuff you laughed at when Tom & Jerry did it thirty or forty years ago. Script-wise, it makes 'Goodburger' seem like comic genius. If you loathe Michael Moore, you'll probably find it hysterical. If you watch any network but FOX News, you'll possibly get a chuckle. But if you're just looking to throw away $9, go buy nine scratch-cards and save yourself the hour and half of your life.

I thought it was going to be good farce, going in. I'm no fan of Michael Moore, but it takes some particularly vile cowardice to claim that anyone "hates America" because of their political views. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain hate America. Joe Biden might accidentally call it the wrong name and Sarah Palin can't locate it on an unmarked world map, but they don't hate it. If the producers were seeking to attract the attention of independent moderates in the election season, they needed to put more work into the humor and less into making their already-fanatical base bark and clap like seals.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)

Suspension of Disbelief

[1/10 · 20 April 2008]

It's unusual for a film to simultaneously call itself a "documentary" and require such a tremendous suspension of disbelief. ID is not science, not because of some vast worldwide conspiracy among intellectual elites, but because it does not meet the minimum standards from which scientific fact is derived. There is no means to test for the hypothesis put forth by ID, no evidence to support the hypothesis put forth by ID, and no means to therefore teach it as science. Evolution, on the other hand, has vast factual support, including direct observation on the wholly-arbitrary scales of "microevolution" and "macroevolution." The "theory of evolution," just like the "theory of gravity" and "theory of mathematics" does not question IF evolution occurs, because that is proved FACT, but HOW evolution occurs, since there are aspects of that up for debate.

Something Stein also misses is that evolution is the study of changes within a biological (living) system, NOT the spontaneous creation of biological matter; that is known as the theory of abiogenesis, which is another largely-explained aspect of the origins of life, but -- unlike evolution -- one which has only been partially replicated in a controlled, observable environment.

Stein wants to know why ID cannot be considered science, tries to poke holes in questions about evolution he does not personally understand (but which ARE in reality understood and explained, see http://www.expelledexposed.com ) and pretends that the philosophical concept of ID has some place in scientific thought. On some level, it's tragic to see the intellectual downfall of an otherwise fairly intelligent man. On another level, get drunk before you watch this with friends and laugh at the sheer disregard for the definition of "science" Stein portrays.

There is no "freedom of speech" issue at stake, here. ID has as much place in the science classroom as the American Revolution has in algebra class: it is philosophy, NOT science. There is no conspiracy to keep the Tooth Fairy out of science class, nor Santa Claus, nor the Flying Spaghetti Monster, yet all have the SAME evidence for them as ID/creationism. Stein neglects to ask why Boogymanology isn't scientifically disprovable, yet this is the basis for the ENTIRE argument for ID.

By itself, the film is much like a parody of ID, but with only the straight man to deliver the setup. The real tragedy is the intellectual molestation of children whose parents have a similar lack of basic science education as the film's producers.