When the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein, hit theaters back in April, I didn’t go see it. In fact, I made it a point to deliberately avoid it, mainly because I’m not a fan of propaganda movies from any extreme, whether they feature Ben Stein or Michael Moore. And when you have the primary figure in the documentary, Stein, claiming in an interview with TBN that, “Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people,” it’s not hard to guess what the main point of the movie will be, what kind of statement they’re trying to make. Whenever I hear representatives of opposing ideologies blame the other for atrocities and claim their opponent’s philosophy is what led to those acts (in this case, Stein claiming Darwinism is to blame for Hitler, and Richard Dawkins – interviewed in the film – asserting the root of evil is religion), I always think of two kids standing in the middle of the schoolyard, pointing and yelling at each other, “nuh uh, it’s your fault!”

In the chapter The Church is Responsible for So Much Injustice, in his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller writes,

“Violence done in the name of Christianity is a terrible reality and must be both addressed and redressed. There is no excusing it. In the twentieth century, however, violence has been inspired as much be secularism as by moral absolutism. Societies that have rid themselves of all religion have been just as oppressive as those steeped in it. We can only conclude that there is some violent impulse so deeply rooted in the human heart that it expresses itself regardless of what the beliefs of a particular society might be – whether socialist or capitalist, whether religious or irreligious, whether individualistic or hierarchical. Ultimately, then, the fact of violence and warfare in a society is no necessary refutation of the prevailing beliefs of that society.”

I ended up watching Expelled last week with some friends, and later wished I hadn’t wasted the time. One big problem I have with films like Expelled is that they deliberately paint a black and white picture, ignoring the fact that issues are complicated in real life and hoping their viewers don’t have the mental capacity to see past their broad brush statements. Stein has stated in interviews that they deliberately chose people to interview on the extreme sides of each issue, avoiding people in the middle because they “didn’t want to confuse people.” I would have loved to have seen an interview with Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project, a Christian and a highly respected scientist, who also happens to believe in evolution, explaining his beliefs included in this film. Instead we get the producer claiming in a New York Times interview that Dr. Collins holds his beliefs only because he is “toeing the party line,” an assertion Collins calls “ludicrous.” (On a side note, click here for a fascinating interview with Dr. Collins about his work on the human genome project and his belief in God, among other things.)

At the end of the day, though, I fall in line behind author Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, Walking on Water), who said in an interview, “Somebody once asked me in a college setting what I thought about creationism versus evolution. I said, “I can’t get very excited about it. There’s only one question that’s worth asking, and that is, did God make it? If the answer is yes, then why get so excited about how?”