Writing in the Boston Globe (May 8, 2008), Kenneth R. Miller blasts the creationist propaganda film Expelled, writing, "American science is in trouble, and if you wonder why, just go to the movies. Popular culture is gradually turning against science, and Ben Stein's new movie, 'Expelled,' is helping to push it along." "There are many things wrong with this movie," Miller observes, citing not only its errors of fact but also its deliberate misrepresentation of science as atheistic: "showing a scientist who accepts both God and evolution would have confused their story line."
Moreover, Miller continues, "by far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells Stein that the Nazis were practicing 'Darwinism,' and that's that. Never mind those belt buckles proclaiming Gott mit uns (God is with us), the toxic anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, the ghettoes and murderous pogroms in Christian Europe centuries before Darwin's birth." (The Anti-Defamation League similarly condemned Expelled for misappropriating the Holocaust.)
After quoting Expelled's spokesman Ben Stein's bizarre claim that "Science leads you to killing people," Miller concludes, "'Expelled' is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science."
Miller, a Supporter of NCSE, is a professor of biology at Brown University, the coauthor of the most widely used high school biology textbook in the United States, and the author of Finding Darwin's God and the forthcoming Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, which Publishers Weekly (April 14, 2008) described as "thoroughly enjoyable and informative." NCSE's website www.ExpelledExposed.com contains a collection of reviews and resources concerning Expelled.