Fallacies of Ethos, Pathos and Logos in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

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In Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008), Ben Stein travels the world to expose the incarceration in the realm of science. Stein’s goal is to rile up the audience to stir up desire and motivation of the voice of the people to bring down the unjust wall in scientific academia. Ben Stein fails to persuade his active viewing audience that universities have used unfair practices to exclude research and believers in intelligent design from the scientific community, but succeeds in persuading the unpretentious and idle audience. Ben Stein losses his credibility and ultimately his persuasive power through the use of misrepresentation of messages and facts, fallacies of ethos, pathos, and logos, and the digression from the main point of the documentary. The unpretentious audience overlooks these fallacies and is persuaded through the visual tools in the documentary. The documentary begins with Stein speaking before an audience, addressing the principle of freedom in America. He then advances to discourse of the loss of academic freedom in the scientific community through interviews of scientific figures such as Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Michael Ignore, Robert Marks, and Guillermo Gonzalez. These interviews are contrasted with clips of scientists who refute the idea and validness of intelligent design. To get a perspective about the credibility and thoughts of Darwinism and intelligent design in the scientific community, Stein is referred to talk to other figures of science such as Bruce Chapman, Paul Nelson, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Jonathan Wells. Stein then begins his in depth investigation interviewing Richard Dawkins, David Berlinski, and Michael Ruse, looking to determine how Darwin theory applies to the cr... ... middle of paper ... ...a possible and the probable theory to explain the creation of life. Upon further analysis of Expelled: No Intelligence allowed, we can see that the documentary is tied up in fallacies of ethos, pathos and logos, misrepresentation of facts, and the deviation from the main theme of the documentary. With this in mind, Ben Stein fails to persuade the active viewing audience, but succeeds in persuading the inactive viewing audience. The inactive viewing audience will be convinced from Stein’s use of appeal to ethos, pathos and logos, and will overlook the fallacies in the documentary. Stein uses appeals that are rooted in fallacy, incredible information, and misguided reasons to persuade us of this. Stein wants us to raise our voices to bring down the wall between academic freedom, but we must look at his motives and reasons he takes to instill us with these notions.

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