Richard Dawkins sitting in movie theater watching 'Expelled' right now.

[Superhobo]

EXPELLED!

There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied.

I'm still laughing though. You don't know how hilarious this is. Not only is it the extreme hypocrisy of being expelled from their Expelled movie, but there's another layer of amusement. Deep, belly laugh funny. Yeah, I'd be rolling around on the floor right now, if I weren't so dang dignified.

You see … well, have you ever heard of a sabot? It's a kind of sleeve or lightweight carrier used to surround a piece of munition fired from a gun. It isn't the actually load intended to strike the target, but may even be discarded as it leaves the barrel.

I'm a kind of sabot right now.

They singled me out and evicted me, but they didn't notice my guest. They let him go in escorted by my wife and daughter. I guess they didn't recognize him. My guest was …

Richard Dawkins.

He's in the theater right now, watching their movie.

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

 

[Joker]

That's awesome.

 

[Timstuff]

Egotistical atheist vs. egotistical Christian. Maybe we should set up some windmills, since between the two we could power a whole city for days with all the hot air.

 

[Superhobo]

Egotistical atheist vs. egotistical Christian. Maybe we should set up some windmills, since between the two we could power a whole city for days with all the hot air.

What's 'egotistical' about it?

 

[Timstuff]

I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if it's egotistical or not. I am interested in seeing it however, just because I want to see if it actually lives up to the promise of being a fresh take on a subject that's been treaded many times before.

Just to be clear to everyone though, I am no fan of Richard Dawkins.

 

[Superhobo]

I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if it's egotistical or not. I am interested in seeing it however, just because I want to see if it actually lives up to the promise of being a fresh take on a subject that's been treaded many times before.

Just to be clear to everyone though, I am no fan of Richard Dawkins.

It's not. It's really, really not. I mean, have you watched the trailer? I lost three brain-cells from that, alone.


So, what's your beef with the Dawkins? Just wondering. I'm not really either way on him, so -

 

[Timstuff]

Because he hates my faith. Is that good enough?

 

[Superhobo]

Because he hates my faith. Is that good enough?

Sure, but I don't see how that makes his opinions on anything else any less valid.

 

[Timstuff]

I didn't say his opinions are invalid, but I do not agree with them since I am not an atheist, nor do I have a naturalistic world view as he does. The reason I don't like him is because he is actively crusading against religion, which I take offense to since my faith is and always has been an important part of my life.

 

[Superhobo]

I didn't say his opinions are invalid, but I do not agree with them since I am not an atheist, nor do I have a naturalistic world view as he does. The reason I don't like him is because he is actively crusading against religion, which I take offense to since my faith is and always has been an important part of my life.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this, I guess. But, here's a couple of reviews for 'Expelled," so we can both go away 'happy.'

"More Expelled! Reviews: Intelligent Design Film Chock Full of Hitler

The producers of Expelled! apparently invited a member of the New Orlando Sentinel to an early screening by accident. The result is another early glimpse at Ben Stein’s Intelligent Design flick that didn’t exactly impress so much as enrage the reviewer with its duplicity.

I lost track of the number of times Stalin’s image hit the screen, and in the ways the movie equated science with Darwinism with atheism with Hitler or Stalin. Subtle, it’s not.

The guy from the Sentinel did seem to think there was something to the “academic freedom” message of the film, however. Which means that it was effective enough to at least partially hoodwink even a hostile reviewer into thinking that ID proponents have been merely “shouted down” or even discriminated against on the basis of their beliefs. Educating viewers on this scam is going to have to be a major focus of efforts to counter this propaganda when it reaches a wider audience.

The reviewer also mentioned something I’d been previously unaware of: Stein was apparently involved in the utterly crackpot right-wing movement alleging that Bill Clinton was part of a huge murder conspiracy in Arkansas. He even wrote a forward to one of the books.

Stein wanted to call Expelled! “From Darwin to Hitler.” Perhaps a better title for this latest outing would have been “From One Loony Conspiracy Theory to Another.”

Link


Here's another, a rather long one -

Check it, foo.'

 

[Timstuff]

Well it sounds like the movie is not worth my time, and any legitimately valuable information it may offer could just as easily be found through a quick google search-- without the thick blanket of anger and frequent Stalin and Hitler references.

 

[Knightsaber Priss]

I'm sorry, but I fail to realize why this is significant. I always thought of Creationism as a spiritual explanation for Evolution. I just can't buy that single celled organisms just decided to merge to form more complex lifeforms. There has to be some sort of intelligent design there. Just think of it this way, we're all comprised of dense nuclear particles. Who's to say "God" isn't a sentient mass of nuclear particles which would explain everything described about "him" in the Bible.

 

[Addendum]

[YT]ylAsZQyOBMk[/YT]

 

[Superhobo]

I'm sorry, but I fail to realize why this is significant. I always thought of Creationism as a spiritual explanation for Evolution. I just can't buy that single celled organisms just decided to merge to form more complex lifeforms. There has to be some sort of intelligent design there. Just think of it this way, we're all comprised of dense nuclear particles. Who's to say "God" isn't a sentient mass of nuclear particles which would explain everything described about "him" in the Bible.

Well, science. It's got nothin' to do with chance.

Read this.

 

[Superhobo]

I'm sorry, but I fail to realize why this is significant. I always thought of Creationism as a spiritual explanation for Evolution. I just can't buy that single celled organisms just decided to merge to form more complex lifeforms. There has to be some sort of intelligent design there. Just think of it this way, we're all comprised of dense nuclear particles. Who's to say "God" isn't a sentient mass of nuclear particles which would explain everything described about "him" in the Bible.

*sighs*

Okay.


When we talk about 'creationism,' we not talking about the kind that you've just defined. What we're talking about, and in fact what the film concerns itself with, is "Intelligent Design -" which, well, read this -

Check it, foo'.

Ho hum.

 

[GhostPoet]

Hmm...why are evolutionist films not called propaganda films?

 

[Superhobo]

Hmm...why are evolutionist films not called propaganda films?

And which films would these be?



(Also, probably because it's real, quantifiable science. At a guess.)

 

[dodgers2213]

lmao, loved every bit of it

 

[Venomfan]

i think the movie has a valid point after watching the trailer. I have seen what it is talking about happen tons of times, a scientist says he believes in God and then suddenly he has lost all credibility. It is stupid, since science can never possibly tell whether there is a God or not, so why does it matter if a scientist believes on does exist. it certainly doesn't close any doors.

 

[Superhobo]

i think the movie has a valid point after watching the trailer. I have seen what it is talking about happen tons of times, a scientist says he believes in God and then suddenly he has lost all credibility. It is stupid, since science can never possibly tell whether there is a God or not, so why does it matter if a scientist believes on does exist. it certainly doesn't close any doors.

Read the reviews I posted - it's not believing in god that takes away your credibility. Heh.

The film starts off as a stirring defense of academic inquiry, charging that Darwinists are squashing debate by depriving researchers in intelligent design of positions in academia. I suppose I should mention that Charles Darwin (1809-1882) is the founding intellectual giant behind evolutionary theory. Were he alive today, however, I can't guarantee that he would ascribe to my ten cent version of evolutionary theory above. Genes, for instance, had not been discovered as agents of heredity when Darwin did his work.

"Expelled" trots out several martyrs to the Darwinist inquisition. The poster boy is Richard Sternberg, whom the movie says was ousted from his position at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and from his editorship of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington when he published in that publication a peer-reviewed article of scientific evidence that supports intelligent design. There is some dramatic if unfocused footage of Ben Stein being denied admission to the upper floors of the Smithsonian by a security guard when he tries to grill muckety-mucks at the museum about these injustices.

This repression of scientific thought, we can all agree, is horrible if true. But it isn't true.

This is a dispute among academics. Faults on both sides, I'm sure. Perhaps because there is so little at stake in these fights, they are among the most vicious known to political man. A lot of cyber-ink was spilled over the Steinberg tussle long before Ben Stein got around to it. You can read Sternberg's version of his persecution here and a non-ID rebuttal here. It's even made Wikipedia, which has got to be the high water mark for a bureaucratic pissing match.

The allegations made in "Expelled" are wrong. Sternberg never worked for the Smithsonian, so the Smithsonian couldn't threaten his job there. He was a visiting scholar with research privileges, assigned an office. He still has both the office and the research privileges. He wasn't deprived of his editorship. His term as editor had expired so he was stepping down anyway in favor of another editor when the controversial ID article was published.

In short, contrary to the assertions in "Expelled," Sternberg suffered no harm whatever from the dustup. Which is not to say that he wasn't criticized. He was. Harshly, rudely and sometimes childishly by fellow scientists. But rough and tumble argument is part of the world of science, whether you're studying intelligent design, string theory or evolutionary biology.

There are three or four other cases explored in "Expelled," all of which are presented in black-and-white terms as anti-ID intellectual repression by a Darwinist cabal. Closer examination of the specifics of each reveals pretty ordinary academic backbiting. There isn't space enough on the internet to go into them here. I'll leave it as an independent exercise for the morbidly curious.

 

[Timstuff]

And which films would these be?



(Also, probably because it's real, quantifiable science. At a guess.)

A documentary discussing evolutionary theories is not propaganda. A documentary that's set to smear the creationist community or disprove intelligent design however, is propaganda, just as much as Expelled is. Anything that is a rallying cry to stamp out an opposing viewpoint is technically propaganda.

 

[Joker]

I love the fact that this movie apparently compares darwinism with hitler. Hitler was a Christian...part of his whole rhetoric was that the white, blonde haired, blue eyed, christian was going to take over the world. While the man belived in eugenics, you cant equate that to him being an athiest...it just wasnt the case.

And I agree with Dawkins. And if you look at Myers newest post, where he has a clip of himself from the movie, I totally agree with him. Religion should be like knitting, not something people are killing each other over, as they are now.

And really, saying you dont like Dawkins cause he wants to "destroy your faith" is a ridiculous argument, coming from any religion. Ever since religion as a wholes birth, they've been trying to destroy each other, and atheism. Whether by conversions, or by the sword. I've known people in real life who were constantly telling me I was going to hell, and I needed to convert and accept there invisible man. So dont get all offended about some guy saying "uh, no, you're crazy," after he's probably been given the same god damn speech his entire life from people trying to convert him, and destroy his was of thinking and beliefs.

 

[Superhobo]

 

[Venomfan]

i dunno atheism seems like such a joke to me, i just don't understand how an intelligent person could claim there is no God. i've got no qualms with agnosticism because those people actually used their brains and realized that nothing can ever be done that can actually prove a God or w/e does or doesn't exist.
and Hitler was not a Christian. it's pretty obvious he just said he was to get the religious on his side. we know a lot about his beliefs, and they're all heretical

 

[Superhobo]

i dunno atheism seems like such a joke to me, i just don't understand how an intelligent person could claim there is no God.

In the same way that a similarly intelligent person could say that there was one.

i've got no qualms with agnosticism because those people actually used their brains and realized that nothing can ever be done that can actually prove a God or w/e does or doesn't exist.

I'm certainly glad you don't hate us.

and Hitler was not a Christian. it's pretty obvious he just said he was to get the religious on his side. we know a lot about his beliefs, and they're all heretical

What are you talking about?

Read this, foo.'