by Jim Jordan

Created on: April 29, 2008

This documentary is full of humorous and at other times moving historical footage that gives it the feeling of a collage and accelerates the pace as the clips are only a few seconds in length. It is entertaining and easy to follow.

Ben Stein begins by interviewing scientists who were "expelled" for suggesting a guiding force might be behind what we are now able to see in living organisms. He then interviews scientists who represent the established view that Evolution is settled science. Once both sides are presented the interviews go back and forth between the ID scientists and the Establishment scientists.

Contrary to some groaning by scientist P.Z. Myers and Scientific American writer Michael Shermer, I could not find anything misleading about the interview segments of the evolution proponents. I have read P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins and others before and they say the same things they always say.

Points the movie makes well.

The truth that macro evolution cannot explain the origins of species or life is laid bare. It's pure hypothesis. "Proteins clung together on the backs of crystals" and "we really can't say" are two responses I recall from evolutionary scientists. A glimpse of the amazing complexity of the cell was a great illustration that "guiding" (as Richard Sternberg put it) is going on.

The wall the Establishment has erected. It would seem that the Establishment elite in this country have pulled a curtain down over science that is far more iron than that of Europe. It is undeniable that unless a scientist who considers ID is working in a Christian university then their career is in jeopardy period. Iowa State's representative flat out stated that Guillermo Gonzalez's embrace of ID cost him his tenure. No matter what people think this is unusual. Wittgenstein referred to several other philosophers as being "like slum landlords" - and wanted to hit one over the head with a poker - but he never got anyone fired for proposing a new theory where the old one is found wanting. "No idea is accepted if it is guided" states one professor and P.Z. Myers clarifies that before going on an anti-religion rant. The line in the movie that stuck with me was its purpose, "to make it apparent to the world that a wall exists".

The media's blockheadism. A reporter, Pamela Winnick, is interviewed who was reprimanded for giving both sides of the debate without taking the side of Evolution - instead she was neutral. Stein reveals that the media have been repeating the same

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