Ben Stein, an actor, game-show host, economist and a former Nixon speechwriter, has made a movie about intelligent design – the theory that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.

After reading about a 2005 court case in Pennsylvania in which a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district from teaching intelligent design, Stein wanted to know more about the theory.

“I thought this is strange. Why would a court of law be telling people that they can’t study a variety of evolutionary explanations? What’s a court doing here? What’s that all about?” said Stein while sipping camomile tea at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto recently. He was in town promoting a documentary about intelligent design that he co-wrote and narrates, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Stein thought a movie about intelligent design would give him the opportunity to discuss “how Darwinism led to social Darwinism and how that led to Nazism and the Holocaust.

“I always wanted to talk about that,” Stein said.

But his executive producer, Walt Ruloff, wanted to look at the belief in an intelligent creator of the universe, so Stein thought: “I’ll just investigate this and talk to some mainstream scientists. They’ll straighten us out – they’ll have all the answers and we’ll go on and do the movie about the Holocaust.”

When Stein spoke to mainstream scientists, he found their answers less than satisfying. “They didn’t know how life started, why the cell was so complex, where gravity, thermodynamics, laws of fluid motion or physical laws that govern the operation of the universe came from,” Stein said.

“Well, if they don’t know those incredibly basic things, then how can they say Darwinism explains much? Darwinism doesn’t seem to explain much at all.”

Stein’s research on intelligent design proponents – those who question Darwin’s theory – brought him surprising results. Scientist Richard von Sternberg had been expelled from the Smithsonian Institute for publishing an article by Stephen Meyer arguing that we’re products of a higher intelligence. This was not an isolated case. Many others who were shunned for their beliefs were interviewed for the film.   

What did the those who do not support intelligent design say? Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University and a prominent atheist, told Stein, “On the whole they aren’t scientists,” but admitted, that he’s “pretty hostile to rival doctrines.”

Philip Pettit, a political philosopher at Princeton, said intelligent design is not “a research program,” because every theory in hard science must be falsifiable by natural evidence – there must be the potential for the theory to be demonstrated wrong in the natural physical world, and it can’t be proved that the world was not created by a higher intelligence. Daniel Dennett, a philosopher of science at Tufts University, dismissed intelligent design as propaganda.

“Darwinists couldn’t explain about the creation of the universe and the creation of life – huge subjects. They could just repeat their same old Darwinian orthodoxy – that it all happened by accident,” Stein said.

“I didn’t find any of them particularly inspiring. I just thought they were cocky and arrogant, and were asking us to take it on their word because they’re the boss. ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ – as the Who sang in their song [Won’t Get Fooled Again]. They just seemed to be saying, ‘We’re in charge, shut up!’”

Stein wondered why it is that a “theory that isn’t threatening anyone with anything makes people so fearful? But it does.”

Mainstream media in the United States attacked his film on a “scale never seen before outside of [attacks on former president Richard] Nixon or [president] Mr. [George. W.] Bush. Intelligent design seems to drive people the craziest of anything,” Stein said.

“We were just trying to understand the limits of freedom of speech and the limits of Darwinism. If people want to disagree with us, they are free to disagree, but the vituperative nature of their disagreement is stunning.”     

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is currently playing in theatres across Canada. For more information, visit www.expelledthemovie.com.