About a billion words have been writ thus far about Expelled and the controversy that has sprung up around it—some would say “manufactured by its promotion”—over recent several weeks. Last Friday, I had the opportunity to talk for twenty minutes with Mark Mathis, Associate Producer on the film and one of the figures at the center of that controversy. (I published the transcript of my interview with P.Z. Myers, the other major player in that controversy, a couple of weeks ago.)
Rather than rehash a wealth of issues already covered in depth here at SteinWatch—or at Pharyngula, the official Expelled site, and now collected and distilled at the NCSE’s Expelled Exposed site (with just a tinge of biased reportage)—I dove right in to try to get some hard answers from Mathis about open questions related to those existing controversial issues.
You may judge for yourself how successful I was in getting satisfactory answers. Personally, I’d feel better knowing a bit more yet before I write my own review of the film later this week.
Greg Wright: The latest “big news” is the letter from XVIVO that is being touted as a lawsuit—which is nothing more than a letter of intent to pursue legal action—regarding the animated sequence in Expelled.
Mark Mathis: Right.
GW: Obviously, if there were a lawsuit in process, you clearly wouldn’t be able to comment on anything related to that. But my suspicion is, based on the letter itself—which has been disseminated on the web in PDF format, which I find a little odd—that the folks who wrote that letter haven’t yet seen the finished film. Do you know whether they have or not?
MM: I think that your suspicion is probably well-grounded; but I couldn’t tell you if they have. I suspect that they have not.
GW: Now, I’m also under the impression—and I don’t know the facts here, so you can straighten me out—that the animation that was on the DVD that was handed out at word-of-mouth screenings is not the animation that appears in the final film.
MM: That is correct.
GW: So as I see it, XVIVO issued a letter asking for animation to be pulled from the film that isn’t even in the film.
MM: Yes. I would say that is correct.
GW: I have compared the original Harvard footage with the promo DVD version that Myers has posted at Pharyngula, and though I’ve only seen the film once, as I recall, there are very, very substantial differences between the final cut of the animation and the version that appears on the promo DVD. Is that right?
MM: You know, I haven’t made— I believe that’s the case; but I haven’t actually watched what Myers has posted. I haven’t made my own comparison. I apologize; I should have done that, because I have the DVD version. I have the film on PC, too, so I can do that. My problem has been that I’m running so hard and fast doing twenty-seven other things that— I know that we’ve got Executive Producers who have dealt with this specifically, and this is kind of in the periphery of what I’ve been involved in. But I’m glad you brought that up, because I need to make that comparison myself, just for my own. But I know, because I’ve watched both, that certainly there are significant differences and improvements, and I believe that, because of those substantial differences, there isn’t any merit to the charge.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Greg, when you interview Mathis or anybody else associated with the production of the film, could you please ask them to define what the heck they mean by “Darwinism”?
It appears that Stein has absolutely no idea what Darwinian evolution is actually about. To him, it is “lightning striking a mud puddle”, something the Origin of Species never mentions. On Hannity and Colmes, Stein made the egregious claim that Darwin thought it would be foolish to allow the inferior races to survive. I’d like to know where Darwin said this. He continually makes ill-informed statements e.g. evolution has not changed since Darwin’s time and that no speciation has been observed. Clearly he’s either ignoring or ignorant of the Modern Synthesis. Clearly he’s not familiar with Darwin’s finches or the fruitfly literature, or with cichlids in Lake Victoria. What infuriates me is that if he’s going to bash mainstream scientists, he should at least know what they actual say. Instead he’s erecting a strawman, and calling it “Darwinism”, a term few evolutionary biologists use today because evolutionary theory encompasses more than Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection.
Mathis seems to be conflating Darwinism with “materialist philosophy”, which comes across as being either simplistic or disingenuous. What is taught in biology classrooms in high schools and universities is not materialism, but a theory which explains the diversity of life. Claiming that students are being taught materialism in lessons on evolution holds no more water than saying that a lecture on Newtonian mechanics is teaching materialism. If Nazi Germany was a “purely materialist” society, then why did Hitler make continual references to God? How about “Gott Mit Uns”?
And Stalin and Pol Pot? Give me a break. Saying Darwin was responsible for the actions of Stalin is breathtakingly ignorant. Stalin did not believe in natural selection - ascribed to Lysenkosim, a biological theory which had negative consequences on the productivity of his country for decades. Likewise, I’d challenge Mathis to find a clear link between Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and Pol Pot. Equating Darwinian evolution to “materialism” and linking him to all “materialist” regimes shows either astoundingly poor scholarship or malice.
I don’t deny that social Darwinism may have had some influence on Nazism, but social Darwinism is not what is taught in biology classrooms. It is a misappropriation of evolutionary biology, and for what it’s worth, I think the film (and unbiased and purely objective Discovery Institute fellow, Richard Weikart) overstate the connection in order to score points with a sympathetic audience. But my question is, so what? I think there’s an undeniable connection between atomic physics and Hiroshima. I don’t think that warrants making a documentary that bashes atomic physicists by calling them atheists and materialists, and interspersing their interviews with victims of Hiroshima.
I find it amusing to see that the producers make it sound as though people are outraged because they’re hitting a nerve. I’m more aghast at the fact that the film is simply wrong on so many counts. Evolutionary biology does not teach “materialist philosophy” or attempt to explain the origins of life or of matter. Perhaps Ben Stein should have bothered to open a biology textbook before making this documentary. The film ignores the fact that evolutionary biology simply does not dictate nor necessitate a materialist worldview. Theodosius Dobzhansky who made the famous claim, “Nothing makes sense in biology, except in light of evolution”, was a Christian. Ken Miller and Francisco Ayala are devout Christians. There are probably millions of theistic evolutionists worldwide. How did Mathis respond to this? First, he claimed that casting Miller “would confuse the film unnecessarily”. He even goes so far as to claim that Miller is not a “real” Catholic, in the SciAm roundtable discussion. I’ll let you read into that what you will.