Chris Heard: Why Ken Miller isn’t in Expelled

On Higgaion, Chris Heard, associate professor of Religion at Pepperdine University exposes how vacuous ‘Expelled’ really is. Remember how SciAm did a review of ‘Expelled’ and an interview with Mathis, associate producer of “Expelled”. Knowing that whenever an Intelligent Design Creationist gets to speak, there will be some jewels, Chris shows how also in this instance, Mathis did not disappoint.

Ever wonder why people like Ken Miller or Francis Collins are not in “Expelled”? Mathis explains by first disavowing himself of the decisions about who to interview

Mathis wrote:

I would tell you this. And this is keeping in mind who you’re talking to is an associate producer. I don’t make decisions about who gets interviewed, and, and I don’t make decisions about if they’re interviewed, what makes it into the film.

Then the real reason

Mathis wrote:

But I would tell you from a, my personal standpoint as somebody who’s worked on this project, that Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily. I don’t agree with Ken Miller. I think that you, I think that when you look at this issue and this debate, that really there’s, there’s one side of the line or the other, and you, it’s, it’s hard to stay, I don’t think you can intellectually, honestly, honestly intellectually stand on a line that I don’t think exists—

Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily… And Rennie, the SciAm interviewer does not disappoint:

Rennie wrote:

that somebody like Ken Miller is wrong. But I mean, you say he would have, his presence would have “confused the film.” The point is what, it would actually had, I mean, it would have, it would have considerably undercut the major point that is made, that really that belief in, in evolution obliges you not to believe in God, and to—

Things however get even better as Mathis continues to ‘argue’ that Ken Miller’s form of Catholicism is not Catholic enough…

Chris Heard says it all when he observes

Chris Heard wrote:

What brazen arrogance of Mathis to declare that Ken Miller is not a “real Catholic”! What about Francis Collins? Is he not a “real evangelical”? What about John Polkinghorne? Is he not a “real Anglican” (ordination’s not good enough)? To shift gears, what about the 11,196 (as of April 9, 2008) signatories to the Clergy Letter Project? Are active clergy not “real Christians”? Or maybe Mathis would say that Lutherans, Nazarenes, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Moravians, and the other “flavors” of Christians represented by those 11,196 signatures aren’t “real Christians” either? Getting back to Ken Miller, at least two popes—Pius XII and John Paul II—specifically affirmed the compatibility of evolutionary biology and Catholic Christian faith (as long as special provisions were made for the direct divine production of human souls). Agreeing with two popes is hardly an aberrant in Catholicism.

and then brings home the main point

Chris Heard wrote:

But to return to the main point: the real reason that folk like Miller and Collins find no place in Expelled is because they do “confuse”—that is, complicate—the simplistic and false dichotomy that the filmmakers wish to construct. When your whole schtick is to pit religious “design proponents” open to the supernatural against atheistic, philosophically materialist “Darwinists,” all those pesky scientists who simultaneously affirm evolutionary biology and a robust Christian faith become very, very inconvenient.

Amen…